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Chapter 56: This Show Is Written Badly! Fuck The Writer!!
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"If you seek to waste my time, I will see to it that everything you have built, everything you have touched, Is reduced to ashes and buried in the dust of Oblivion! Perhaps then, in that Emptiness, You will find the time... And the respect... To pay attention!"
Adam's eyes snapped open. He didn't flinch from the horrific display. Instead, he looked… analytically curious.
He leaned forward, peering at the glowing, demonic entity as if it were a puzzling lab specimen.
"To be clear," Adam said, his own voice eerily calm in the face of the infernal, "You are actually real? Tangible? Not a psychosomatic break? I haven't finally, completely lost my mind?"
The hellish light receded, pulling back into the form of the middle-aged man, though the eyes remained pits of ancient malice. A grin stretched across his face, too wide, too full of teeth.
"You lost your sanity the moment you decided your destiny was 'Absolute,' little bird. But that is precisely why you interest me. Only the gloriously, ambitiously insane are worthy of my gracious deals."
Adam's mouth twitched. He rubbed his temple, a genuine headache forming. The performance was over.
This was real. He was in a moving car with a demon lord. The questions came rapid-fire, a defensive barrage of logic.
"Who are you? Why me? I'm decently intelligent, I grant you. But I have no real power. No political sway. My influence is a sapling. I am, in the grand scheme you clearly operate in, a nobody."
The man; the entity; preened slightly, a king acknowledging a clever peasant. "I have worn many names. Satan. Lucifer. Beelzebub. You may call me Mephisto."
He said it with the casual pride of stating a well-known brand. "And you sell yourself short. You are a catalyst. A vortex of chaos, ambition, and fascinating self-delusion. You are… useful."
"Useful for what?" Adam pressed, his cybernetic eye recording every micro-expression, every shift in the sulfurous energy. "What do you want me to do?"
Mephisto's eyes narrowed, the cosmic pits within them seeming to peer down endless possible futures.
"You will know when the time is right. The task will suit your unique… proclivities."
He leaned forward, the friendly mask back but now horribly sinister. "But let us not talk of servitude. Let us talk of sport. A wager."
Another parchment appeared, its text solidifying into clear, terrible promises.
The Wager: If Adam Cypher reaches his stated goal of becoming 'Absolute,' Mephisto shall grant him any three wishes, unlimited in scope, and gift him a portion of his own power.
If Adam Cypher dies before achieving this goal, Mephisto claims ownership of all Adam has, has built, has touched… and his soul in perpetuity.
"The conditions are favorable, are they not?" Mephisto crooned. "It suits your style perfectly. All reward, with the ultimate price for failure. The stakes you seem to love."
Adam frowned, stroking his chin. The gears in his head turned, not on emotion, but on loopholes.
"A bet. Let's say I believe you're real and I agree. What's to stop you from, oh, snapping your fingers and killing me the second I step out of this car? You win. Game over."
Mephisto's grin became genuinely delighted, a shark seeing blood. "Nothing! Those are the rules of the game! I could indeed end you now. The question is… do you believe I will?"
"Do you believe the sport of watching you strive, watching you build your little empire of sand before the tide, is more entertaining to me than the immediate, petty satisfaction of your soul?"
He leaned back, spreading his hands. "Who will win? Are you not curious?"
Adam opened his mouth, a dozen more analytical questions on his lips; definitions of 'Absolute,' parameters of 'death,' clauses on interference.
Most importantly, he had a question that he kept to himself. Can Mephisto truly just snap his finger and delete him?
From his audience's comments, it appears that many Marvel universes have limitations on demon activity, the most obvious being the Sorcerer Supreme.
Is this universe the same? Can Mephisto truly show such a power here? He had to wonder.
Mephisto let out a soft tch. His smile turned fond, as if leaving a promising child to his play. "We will talk later, Adam Cypher. The party awaits. Do prepare a worthwhile answer when I visit again."
He didn't vanish in smoke or flame. He simply wasn't there anymore. The oppressive weight lifted.
The ambient sounds of the limousine rushed back in. The California sun streamed through the window, suddenly feeling unbearably hot.
For fuck's sake! The scream was entirely internal, a silent torrent of pure, undiluted frustration.
I don't want to talk to you later! I don't want to talk to you at all! Why am I meeting one of the final bosses in the second act?!
This makes no narrative sense! Why is my luck so catastrophically bad?! This show is written badly! Fuck the writer!!
A profound, soul-deep envy washed over him; not for a power, but for a fate.
He envied the fictional protagonists of the stories he'd consumed in his past life, who faced curated challenges and climbed predictable power escalations.
They weren't accosted by cosmic deal-makers before they'd even finished their first startup.
As that envy crested, something within his mutant power shifted. It wasn't a theft or an acquisition. It was a birth.
A new facet, born from the sheer, staggering magnitude of his misfortune. He didn't need to name it; he understood it.
Misfortune. A passive curse that would subtly twist probability against the targets in small, cumulative ways, depriving them of some of their luck.
Lost keys. Missed calls. Traffic jams at critical moments. The universe itself tilting slightly to spill his coffee.
Then more. If you would've had a lucky break, it's no longer there. If you would've survived a deadly incident, you'll no longer survive.
Most importantly, Adam can now gain someone's luck with the prime misfortune curse.
However, the more Adam thought about it, the less he wanted to use that now. How lucky must one be for that to justify forgoing Doom's intellect?
That has to wait til he elevates Envy.
The only comfort he had now, the only anchor in this surreal nightmare, was the steady glow of his [Information] panel.
He focused on it, and for the first time in a while, examined his full status.
[Information: Not Homeless]
[Natural Traits]
Envy (B): Slow. Stupefy. Brittle. Misfortune. Fade. Hollow. Recoil.
[Information Traits]
Technopathy (A). Mechanical Force (B). Information Vision (B).
The evolution was significant. His Cyberpathy had ascended to Technopathy (A).
It was no longer just communication and control. It was a form of potent mental force, but one uniquely channeled through the medium of technology.
He could now feel the city's power grid like a nervous system, hear the whispered conversations of satellites, and impose his will on machines with the ease of thought.
His mental 'muscles' had grown, but they were specialized; formidable against AIs, networks, and Emma Frost's telepathic powers.
Technopathy is, after all, a psychic power, so when it grew, his mental and soul also grew, and that by itself made his mind a fortress difficult to breach, on top of the Hollow curse.
But it's useless against purely organic minds. It was all of the previous things that had made him feel safe around Emma.
Mechanical Force had grown to B-rank, granting him a lot, the simplest of which was stronger, finer telekinetic control over mechanical objects.
But Information Vision was the true curiosity. It wasn't awakened through [Information].
It had awoken naturally after his life-or-death fight with Elektra, a moment of hyper-clarity where he saw the 'data' of her movements.
Now honed, it allowed him to visually parse and filter the raw stream of [Information]; the emotions, observations, and knowledge of others; into usable insights.
It was his direct line to the collective consciousness of those he's facing or even those thinking of him, as if he's reading them.
Yet, none of it felt like enough. Not against Mephisto.
His mind, fueled by Doom's intellect, conjured the dossier of his new, infernal wager partner.
Writing down in his mind everything he knows about him, and with the help of his imaginary friends. The dossier was quite complete.
Mephisto. A primordial demon, a Lord of Hell. Not a metaphor, but a dimensional conqueror. Reality warper on a localized scale. Master of soul-based magic and contracts.
He possesses vast psychic powers, time manipulation, and exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously.
Directly empowered by the suffering, despair, and corrupted souls of mortals.
Weaknesses: Bound by the letter of his own contracts. Vulnerable to truly pure spiritual power and artifacts of divine origin.
Cannot freely manifest his full power on some Earths due to ancient treaties and the watchful presence of beings like the Sorcerer Supreme.
The problem wasn't just power; it was attention. Why him?
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