Harry's gaze sharpened at once, a killing chill flashing through his eyes.
A vast surge of mental power roared out like a tidal wave, slamming against the walls of reality and making them hum in response.
His chaos magic rose up like the whisper of some ancient demon god, pouring itself out to answer the fierce demand in its master's heart.
Bitter cold spread in all directions.
In the blink of an eye, the entire second floor was sealed in ice. Everywhere you looked was a white, frozen world, steeped in endless stillness and frost.
And yet not a trace of that cold leaked out. In barely a heartbeat the second floor had become a frozen domain, but downstairs Uncle Ben and Aunt May didn't feel the slightest thing out of place.
The instant the cold swept out, Peter shuddered violently and instinctively tried to back away from Harry. But even with his newly enhanced body, he couldn't escape the wave of chill; it froze him solid in an instant.
The bone-piercing cold didn't invade his flesh or harm his body. It simply bound him in place, locking every muscle.
He stared in terror at his usually familiar big brother. He had never seen Harry look this frightening.
All of Harry's controllable magic streamed out of him, weaving itself into a barrier that isolated this frozen space from the rest of the world.
The power inside him boiled. Even some of the wild, unordered chaos magic was being stirred up, whispering to him, begging to be unleashed to wipe out this entire dimension.
Harry ignored the raging force in his core and looked coldly at Peter—or rather, at the unseen web of destiny wrapped around him.
He melted the ice around Peter's head so he could breathe, then said gravely, "Peter, why is there a high-dimensional magical curse on you?"
Peter shivered, teeth chattering. "Harry, what's going on? I don't know anything about any high-dimensional magical curse!"
Harry frowned and changed tack. "Have you felt anything strange lately? Noticed anything weird?"
That jogged Peter's memory. His eyes lit up, and without stopping to think he blurted out everything that had happened to him recently.
"This morning I went to the nearest produce market to buy some groceries, and out of nowhere a spider bit me. I didn't think much of it—just felt kind of off, went home and crashed on my bed.
"When I just woke up, though, I realized I was insanely strong. I yanked the doorknob right off without trying, and I can climb walls like a spider.
"Harry, I think I mutated—I've got spider powers!"
"Spider powers?" Harry immediately thought of the earlier radioactive leak—and the spiders mutated by it. "What exactly can you do?"
"So far I only know I'm super strong, and I've got this danger sense.
"Just now, before you froze me, I knew something was about to happen, but the ice came so fast I couldn't dodge.
"Oh, right—what did you mean by a high-dimensional magical curse?"
Harry's expression grew complicated, joy and anger knotting together inside him.
He should have been happy that Peter had gained powers, becoming a superhuman like him. But the web of fate wrapped around Peter made it impossible to celebrate.
Through the perception granted by his chaos magic, he could feel that this web was both a curse and a trial.
Under the influence of the Web of Fate, one of Peter's relatives would die. At the moment of that death, he would grasp the meaning of life and truly become a hero.
Harry told him this, and Peter's face went ashen. He could hardly accept it.
He had just gotten his powers, just become a superhuman like Harry. Maybe, with those powers, he could find a girlfriend someday, make some money, close the gap between himself and Harry.
So why did it have to be like this?
If the price of having power was the cursed death of a loved one, he would rather give that power up.
But Peter quickly steadied himself again. The hesitation and confusion from a moment ago vanished. "Harry, is there any way to fix it? Even if I lose my powers, I don't want you guys getting hurt!"
Harry flashed a dazzling smile. "Don't worry. We've got a way to have our cake and eat it too."
Peter's eyes lit up. "What way?"
Harry's grin grew even brighter, with a hint of wildness sneaking into it.
"I'll use magic to force the curse's target to lock onto me instead. I want to see whether this so-called curse is stronger than my chaos magic."
"Can that really work?" Peter asked nervously.
"Relax. I've got this."
Harry drew his wand and tapped the air in front of him.
Space itself cracked like overburdened glass, fractures spiderwebbing out from the point his wand had touched.
Clear cracking sounds rang out as fissures spread like a web.
In the next instant, the entire space shattered like a mirror, dragging both him and Peter into the Mirror Dimension.
"Don't worry, Peter. This'll be over soon."
With one hand, he wielded magic, sketching several spell arrays in a flash to suppress the web of fate wrapped around Peter.
His other hand was wrapped in chaos magic. Scarlet, deep blue, ashen white, pitch black, bright yellow and other hues crept across his palm, making it gleam like a star-filled sky.
The chaos magic answered his call. That hand could now touch the very concept of destiny.
He seized the transparent web covering Peter. With a crackling hum, he tore away the portion saturated with the curse's aura and shoved it down into the endless sea of chaos.
That fragment of web was immediately crushed under boundless chaos magic. In his soul-sight, Harry saw a transparent thread linking him and Peter together.
From that moment on, the curse of the Web of Fate was pinned beneath a greater power and could only act on him alone.
Faced with this mysterious and unfathomable curse, Harry felt no fear at all. If anything, he was excited. "Come on then, little brother. Let me see what you really are, Web of Fate."
But now wasn't the time to study it. Harry dissolved the Mirror Dimension and told Peter not to mention any of this to Uncle Ben and Aunt May, so they wouldn't worry.
Peter nodded over and over like a pecking chick.
…
His research into the Web of Fate went smoothly. He was already getting information from Peter about his new abilities, and with the big light orb helping to analyze things, Harry quickly pieced together some data about the web:
The Web of Fate searches the multiverse for hosts, grants them powers like super strength, super speed and accelerated healing, and links all their destinies together.
Every host of the Web of Fate will eventually lose the person most important to them.
The farther the Web's master is from a host, the weaker the curse's power on that host becomes.
Harry read the third line and his lip curled in a faint, disdainful smile.
He glanced at the curse fragment pinned under layers of chaos magic, looking as pitiful as a little girl being scolded, and decided he didn't need to stay away from Peter to solve this problem.
With the processing power of the big light orb, he'd be able to crack the Web's curse in a matter of months—and might even be able to turn it into a spell to strengthen the body.
As for the rest of the powers, they were whatever. What really interested Harry was Peter's little "spider tingle."
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.