At Vought Headquarters, 99th floor, inside the conference room of The Seven.
Homelander watched his gradually declining data, his expression slowly twisting into a grimace.
Especially upon seeing that the ‘Most Welcomed Person of the Year’ award was given to Morgan, which made his blood boil with rage.
This honor should have been his!
This was his throne, and there should only have been him soaring through the skies!
He was the one who should receive everyone’s adoration…
…the one and only ‘god’ of this world!
“Starlight!!” Jealousy drove him to roar like a madman, his eyes flickering with red light.
Vaguely, something seemed to be writhing within his blood vessels…
Tremendous energy surged from Homelander’s eyes.
Heat Vision sliced through the conference room door, accurately striking Morgan’s statue among The Seven’s collection.
Yet, shattering the statue didn’t seem to quell his anger.
A thought crossed his mind, and his gaze slowly turned towards Manhattan.
The next moment, Homelander, standing with toes inward, crashed through the tempered glass and shot away like a rainbow.
He, Homelander, does not wait to kill!
“Beep, beep, beep!
Beep!” In the Manhattan East District, Morgan had just finished her tests and landed inside her house.
Feeling a faint ache in her body, it told her that if she went any faster, her physique wouldn’t be able to withstand it.
[Open Panel] Name: [Morgan Stacey] Tier: [Neighborhood-Level Hero] Physique: 15 (Ignores conventional firearms) Strength: 12 (A single arm swing equals three tons) Speed: 20 (Supersonic flight) Constitution and Strength are too low; cannot allocate points.
Energy: 18 (One blast equals an RPG) Free Attribute Points: 0 (Gains 1 point per 100 million fans per month.
Settled for this month.) Abilities: Superhuman lv.2, Electrical Transmission and Reception lv.3 Current Fans: 211 million [Reach 80 total points to become a City-Level Hero and unlock the next feature!] As expected, there are limits to point allocation.
You can’t just dump everything into one attribute, otherwise it’d be ridiculous if your body disintegrated mid-flight.
Just as she was pondering how long it would take to surpass Homelander relying solely on the free points from fans…
The pager Morgan carried with her began to issue frantic warnings.
A crimson line of text displayed on it.
“He’s coming to kill you!” This was a warning arranged by Vought’s higher-ups; they were doing their best to protect Morgan, their cash cow.
“What?
It’s just the top spot on a list, winning an award.
Has he gone mad already?
I have to fight Homelander now?
Seriously?!” Faced with this sudden situation, Morgan had no choice but to…
Contingency Plan for Homelander, Activate!!
Pressing the emergency button at home, the highly-paid lighting crew, cameramen, director, and others were in position in a flash.
One minute later, Homelander, having flown across half of New York State with bloodshot eyes, arrived murderously in front of Morgan’s Manhattan home.
He quickly locked onto Morgan’s figure, ready for a one-hit kill.
He was going to burn this damned woman to a crisp!
I, Homelander, am forever number one!
The next moment, he realized something was off…
“Wait, is she…
live-streaming right now?!” In his moment of stunned hesitation, Homelander saw his own figure captured by the cameraman and appear on the screen.
Instantly, Homelander’s snarl transformed into a kindly smile.
His eyes were no longer red, his grin became radiant, and the bulging veins smoothed over in an instant.
Forcing an awkward smile, he stepped forward with immense reluctance to congratulate Morgan on her achievement.
At this moment, his arrival made the live stream explode with activity, but Homelander’s smile was uglier than a grimace.
In the past, he was always the star of such moments.
For him, today’s live stream was like a cuckolding scene—he was the one being cuckolded and had to congratulate the other party.
Right now, watching the one he loved (the award) being taken by the person before him, Homelander’s murderous intent peaked, yet he dared not act.
Ask him, Homelander, why?
Though invincible in this world, he is utterly terrified of online backlash…
Because he still needs these fans to fill the void in his heart; he feels he has no heart.
Without the world’s adoration, Homelander would be nothing but a freak, abused and raised in a laboratory since childhood…
In the end, unable to abandon his public persona, Homelander dramatically turned this overnight assassination attempt into a thousand-mile journey to offer congratulations.
Having done nothing but thoroughly enrage himself, he waved to the audience after several tens of minutes, took off with toes inward, and vanished into the night.
Watching Homelander gradually disappear into the distance, Morgan breathed a long sigh of relief, thinking to herself that she had survived the night.
However…
“Damn it, why is Homelander crazier than in the original?
He actually came to kill me directly?” “The main plot hasn’t even started yet, how is he already this insane?” “…Wait, when he first arrived, those furious veins on his face looked extremely abnormal!” A drop of cold sweat slid down Morgan’s cheek.
In the original storyline, Homelander shouldn’t be this crazy at this point, and his veins weren’t that terrifying, right?
There’s only one explanation for this situation: this damn world isn’t just the TV series version?!
No wonder, no wonder she had encountered mutated creatures several times—they were actually the Tumor Beasts from the spin-off comics?
Recalling the pixelated, bizarre creatures she’d encountered, she had thought they were just failed subjects injected with Compound V.
They had kept chasing her, so she kindly blew them all to smithereens.
Turns out they were Tumor Beasts!
“Trouble!” In the comics, adults or animals injected with temporary Compound V gain Superhuman abilities and grow tumors that erode the host’s consciousness.
(Black Noir, Butcher.) These tumors do everything possible to ensure their own survival, even resurrecting the host.
But the resurrected person isn’t essentially you; it’s a monster that has taken over your consciousness.
Once the host’s consciousness dissipates, they drop the act entirely, take control of the body, and transform into mindless monsters.
Extremely terrifying!
Thinking about how Vought sold this temporary Compound V as a ‘resurrection drug’ everywhere in the comics sent a shiver down Morgan’s spine.
By now, in this world, such monsters have probably existed for quite some time!
And the reason there hasn’t been widespread chaos is probably because their state is like Hughie’s father’s—sometimes normal, sometimes insane, still retaining some consciousness.
Once they complete the mutation on a large scale, a massive army of super-powered Tumor Beasts will likely arrive…
And some heroes are long-term users of Compound V…
Could Homelander be one too?!
Forget it, no point dwelling on this mess.
Once I power up, it won’t matter who you are.
——————————— Anthony Runt was the son of a car factory owner.
He vaguely remembered colliding head-on with a large truck.
He should have been in eternal rest, but he unexpectedly opened his eyes again.
It was said that the vehicle’s safety features saved him, and his family even won several contracts because of the accident.
But he felt something was off.
The amount of time he spent conscious each day was decreasing.
At first, he thought he just hadn’t fully recovered.
But slowly, ten hours, eight hours, six hours…
his waking hours grew fewer and fewer.
And every time he woke up, he found the meat in the fridge completely gone and the furniture in disarray.
In the vast house, only his parents sat by, watching him with tears in their eyes.
Until today…
…his parents were gone!
Did they abandon me?
Maybe it’s for the best.
Their lives shouldn’t be bound by mine.
Checking the time, he didn’t have much conscious time left; it had been compressed to just one hour a day!
Next time, maybe I won’t wake up at all?!
He thought to himself…
In a daze, he looked at the Starlight poster in his home, momentarily lost in thought.
My favorite hero, you are so beautiful.
It’s a shame we never got to meet.
Before eternal sleep…
I think, I should go see her.
Opening his phone, the live stream showed Starlight being interviewed after winning the ‘Most Welcomed’ award.
Luckily, it’s not far…
Starlight, I’m coming to find you…