SUP Chapter 101: Devouring the Star! New Profession Unlocked!

In the void, Jonathan Kent knelt on the shattered starry river.

His breathing was heavy, sweat sliding down from his forehead, but evaporating into crimson mist the instant it fell into darkness. The whispers in his ears were like tens of thousands of ants crawling inside his skull.

Irresistible, like a bone-deep affliction.

Hearing it brought a dull pain, as if someone were using a rusty scalpel to cut open his skull.

"Get out!"

Under his roar, bright light seemed about to illuminate the surroundings, yet still could not penetrate those layers upon layers of darkness to bring him away from this sinister place back to reality.

A sense of helplessness washed over him.

"Someone help me..."

The suffering Jonathan wanted to call for help but received no response.

In the void, only the sound of his own heartbeat echoed.

"Why refuse such an opportunity? Is it because of the ignorance of being unable to awaken a superhuman brain?" That voice mocked, and Jonathan gritted his teeth, his nails digging deep into his palms.

"Clark Kent is very strong, isn't he? He's the omnipotent Superman you all speak of." The invisible voice suddenly became gentle, like a benevolent elder.

However when the tone trailed off, Jonathan could hear countless drowned souls screaming within the voice patterns, like wails sealed in coral reefs, transmitted across hundreds of millions of years of seawater.

"But even the most powerful life will eventually die."

The ensemble of chaos and madness seemed to explode beside Jonathan's ears at this moment.

Carrying indescribable noise.

Countless illusory yet incredibly realistic bubbles appeared.

They swayed before Jonathan's eyes, completely filling the space around his body. Jonathan wanted to dodge, but one bubble enveloped him, and he seemed to instantly appear in a new world.

What met his eyes was a scene that horrified Jonathan beyond measure.

He saw it.

He saw kryptonite chains piercing through collarbones, hanging his father Clark on the rusted satellite wreckage. Lex Luthor, wearing a presidential uniform, was methodically peeling off the "S" symbol from the blue suit with a scalpel.

"Look, citizens."

He aimed at the live broadcast camera, holding up the bloody cloth, his tone contemptuous.

"So-called gods are nothing more than bleeding chunks of meat."

Amid the thunderous cheers.

Jonathan, standing in the square below, wanted to rush forward, but was directly held down by soldiers along the way, forced to witness it all. The scene vanished with a thunderous crash amid his roars and howls.

"Did you see that?"

That voice rang out again.

"You're trying to bewitch my thoughts!"

Jonathan turned to flee, but crashed into another scene. On the scorched farmland, half a Kryptonian crystal was embedded, and Lois's rotting finger was still hooked on the alarm button.

A burly, imposing black alien slowly approached. His shadow gradually enveloped the brand-new baby carriage, and the brown-haired, blue-eyed baby's cries inside came to an abrupt halt.

"Ian!"

Jonathan rushed forward.

His hands only caught a handful of empty illusion.

He saw the baby carriage was completely charred inside, while the burly alien held Clark's suffering head in his hand. Jordan was also dead in a haystack not far from his mother Lois.

"Fake! It's all fake! You can't fool me! Stop!" Jonathan, unwilling to accept this scene, retreated frantically, falling directly into intricate, chaotically interwoven scenes.

"Why stop? This isn't intimidation, this is fate, countless possible fates." That voice chuckled lightly, colors surged, and more terrible images flooded toward Jonathan like a tide.

Superman pierced through the chest by a huge, ferocious monster, completely fallen, he was transformed into a war machine by a terrifying green monster, even Clark personally killing his wife Lois.

Each scene was more unacceptable to Jonathan than the last.

He fled everywhere but there was nowhere to escape.

Constantly forced to witness more scenes.

"No..."

Jonathan finally couldn't bear it, his willpower somewhat collapsing as he slumped to the ground. He saw Clark with red eyes approaching him, as if about to directly twist off his head the next moment.

"They are all futures that could happen."

That voice appeared again, drifting uncertainly, the chaotic symphony gradually disappearing. Jonathan saw the Superman before him dissipate like smoke, everything instantly enveloped by harmonious scenes.

The sunset dyed the Kent family barn golden.

In the distance, Sam Lane's Ferrari drove into the driveway, with exaggerated birthday balloons tied to the roof, "Happy 100th Birthday to Me" swaying in the wind.

Grandma Martha also sat there with a cheerful smile.

"Look at your dad, how much did he embezzle this time."

Clark sat in the porch rocking chair, his temples already showing gray, but his smile still warm. A photo album lay spread on his knees, Lois leaning against his shoulder, her finger gently pointing at a certain photo, both laughing out loud simultaneously. In the yard, the adult Jordan and Ian were repairing that talking Hellcat.

It was now painted red and blue, with a crooked "S" symbol printed on the hood.

"Can you please not use heat vision to weld screws?" Jordan was complaining.

"Last time you directly melted through the gas tank!" His tone was resentful.

"No, that was your nephew who did it, not me. If you don't believe it, I'll go back tonight and beat him up first, he'll definitely admit it." Ian was just as Jonathan remembered him.

Habitually shifting blame, even his own son wasn't spared. The Hellcat's radio suddenly started playing a country song automatically. The two young men were stunned for a second and both looked toward Jonathan, who was slumped on the ground.

"What are you standing there for? Come help us lift this car up."

Amid the beaming smiles, Jonathan once again felt a warm atmosphere.

And just as his thoughts were in chaos.

The voice suddenly drew close to his ear.

"This is the future you want, isn't it? Now, we can help you move toward such a future." The voice was full of temptation, Jonathan's pupils slightly contracting.

"This isn't just for you." Its whisper coiled around Jonathan's reason like a venomous snake, as if adding the most important weight, "It's also for your... family."

The collapse of psychological defenses might happen in just an instant.

After all, the Kent family were all family-oriented heroes. Jonathan lowered his head. Around him, those lights trying hard to penetrate the darkness began to extinguish, just like the gradually dimming pupils in Jonathan's eyes.

"What should I do?"

The seventeen-year-old boy asked in a low voice.

His voice hoarse.

That ray of light that seemed about to illuminate this world completely disappeared at this moment, but Jonathan, with his eyes closed, could still feel that things emerging in the darkness were constantly approaching him.

In the void, something laughed.

Darkness flowed over Jonathan's ankles like viscous oil.

"You only need to... accept us!"

At this moment, Jonathan seemed to see countless sinister shadows reflected in his eyes. He roared, but only sat up from his own bed, cold sweat soaking through his pajamas and seeping into his sheets.

His heart pounded wildly.

Almost as if it would burst from his chest.

"What did I dream about!"

Returning to reality, Jonathan could no longer remember what he had actually seen. He desperately tried to recall, but there were only fragmented pieces that couldn't even be put together into complete information.

"There must be something, there must be something very crucial." Jonathan's subconscious was frantically reminding him, but everything in the dream seemed to have been forcibly carved out of his memory by some power.

"This is..." Jonathan frowned and gasped heavily.

He stood up and found something had fallen from his blanket to the floor.

"Hmm?"

At the same time, Clark also suddenly woke up from the first-floor sofa.

At this moment, his super hearing caught some sound from the second floor that shouldn't exist. It wasn't the "criminal words and deeds" from Ian's room, nor was it Jordan, who liked to grab certain vital parts while sleeping, unconsciously using super speed in his dreams causing disturbing movements, but rather some viscous sound as if something was chewing.

"Knock knock knock~"

Clark instantly appeared at his eldest son's door.

He knocked on the door.

"Jonathan, are you alright?" Clark Kent asked in the way an ordinary father would, inquiring whether his son was safe, even though he could see what was happening inside the room if he wanted to.

"I'm fine, I just had a nightmare. I can't remember what nightmare it was, but it was probably really scary." Jonathan was changing sheets and clothes in his room.

He still couldn't recall what happened in the dream. Even the fragments he remembered when he woke up were gradually fading away. People often experience this when dreaming, so he didn't suspect anything about it.

"You didn't peek at me, did you?" Jonathan could imagine his father standing in the hallway, brows slightly furrowed, super hearing capturing the subtle changes in his heartbeat, breathing, and blood flow.

"Of course not, if it's not necessary. Do you need hot chocolate?"

Clark was still standing outside the door.

"No need, I still have to lose fat. Dad, you surely know that good physique is important for football players." Jonathan walked to his desk.

A book he had just picked up from the floor lay there.

Perhaps Clark really hadn't peeked.

Otherwise, Jonathan felt he would probably ask what the hell he was browsing at the desk, of course, it was also possible that only he could see this book?

"Alright, call me anytime if you need help." The old father's voice was incredibly gentle, footsteps gradually fading away, the wooden floor making slight creaking sounds.

Somewhat deliberate but Jonathan didn't think much about it. His attention was all on the mysteriously appearing book. He swore he had never bought such a thing. The strange patterns on it looked quite eerie.

Speaking of book, it was more like an old leather notebook, looking somewhat thin, with no text written inside. After turning on the light, Jonathan also clearly saw the name on the cover.

"Death Note?"

He softly read out the crooked handwriting, which looked like a child's graffiti, or like someone who had never learned to write attempting to depict characters in a crude manner.

"This handwriting is even uglier than Ian's chicken scratch."

Jonathan complained while letting go of the mysterious notebook. He found he had roughly misread it earlier. This blank notebook at least had a line of text on the first page.

[We can help you conquer death]

The dark red handwriting was still crooked.

The light suddenly flickered once.

The next moment.

[I can help you conquer death]

The line of text on the first page seemed to have changed somewhat. Jonathan didn't know if this change was his illusion, since his brain was still somewhat muddled after just waking from sleep.

"Who put this in my room? Jordan or Ian? April Fool's Day hasn't arrived yet..." The nighttime tranquility enveloped Jonathan's room, with only occasional wind sounds from outside breaking this peace.

Under the dim desk lamp, Jonathan sat at the desk, his fingers gently flipping through the eerie notebook, he had a feeling of being watched, but looking around, he could see nothing.

The room was empty, the closet tightly closed, the curtains motionless, even the shadows quietly prostrate on the floor without any abnormality, but that feeling of being watched persisted.

It was as if something was standing right in front of him, yet refusing to be captured by his senses. This made Jonathan feel somewhat creepy, so he quickly threw the notebook he had picked up to examine back onto the desk.

"Creepy..."

Jonathan planned to go out tomorrow and throw this notebook away. When lying back on the bed, he once again looked around to confirm there were no other figures in his room.

That feeling of being watched was gradually receding, which also allowed Jonathan to fall into deep sleep again, outside the window, moonlight was cut by cloud layers, casting dappled light on the wooden desk.

The black notebook lay there quietly.

Countless dark red tentacles began to slowly extend from within it. They seemed to be displaced from reality, existing only in an invisible world, unable to be observed or seen by normal vision.

Information was being perceived and read.

The air in the entire room began to tremble. Shadows on the walls writhed like living things, creases in the bedsheets deepened without reason, but Jonathan only turned over in his sleep.

He didn't notice this strange phenomenon.

Clark didn't appear either.

[Guten Abend, gute Nacht~ (Good evening, good night)]

[mit Rosen bedacht~ (adorned with roses)]

[mit Näglein besteckt~ (dotted with carnations)]

[schlupf' unter die Deck~ (slip under the covers)]

Outside the window, the Hellcat's radio suddenly began playing the very famous German "Lullaby."

It didn't disturb people's sweet dreams.

At this moment, the tentacles that had been tentatively extending from the black notebook seemed startled by this sudden sound, retracting back into the notebook like they had been frightened.

As if nothing had happened.

The room returned to quiet and peace.

Perhaps, they were afraid of being discovered and didn't want to be detected.

The erosion of one world by another needed to be silent. Therefore, this force that had not yet grown strong could only curl back into the notebook used to hide itself.

Such behavior was obviously very strange.

It was as if some evil that didn't want to be discovered was using seemingly harmless shells as cover, attempting to hide its darker, deeper, sinister nature.

...

Nightmare World.

Marvel Universe.

Ian slowly opened his eyes. He had once again completed the crossing between universes, coming from his beloved DC universe to the Marvel universe that might very much love him.

"Giving me an invincibility cheat and not blocking me from smuggling things, iron crush." He looked down at the magic book in his hands.

The name of this book had twisted and changed the moment it entered this world, from the original [Ian's Magic Book] to [Ian's Most Beloved Magic Book].

It had been following Ian for quite a short time but it seemed to have learned the essence.

For such blatant plagiarism, Ian naturally had to criticize it, then appropriately encourage it to keep up the good work.

He felt that the book's name change might be related to the bull-headed demon's first experience of smuggling, the kind of misunderstanding that demons easily had about having a universe growing inside one's body.

"Don't worry, I'm not a dimensional demon... don't be afraid, I generally don't eat books, but rather cherish books the most." After Ian's comforting words, two sparkling heart symbols immediately popped out from the book's surface. They bulged out from the eye socket positions of the yellow smiley face on the cover, and Ian used all his strength to press the hearts back in.

"Damn! Another iron crush!"

Ian had no time to tangle with the book in his hands, because when he looked up, he saw Galactus, that cosmic-level being who had once towered into the clouds had now completely fallen.

The sky had once again become the color of countless dark clouds gathering, like a curtain soaked with inferior dye, and Galactus, who had been falling at an abnormally slow speed before, was now lying flat on the earth.

The continuous rumbling of metal fracturing came from the distance.

"Someone's probably trying to feast on a god, but accidentally forgot to call me!" Ian quickly sprang into action, hopping like an agile rabbit, taking two steps then leaping dozens of meters high.

He comforted himself that he was just one level away from perfection while using [Ian's Victory Method] to pretend he was flying. This wasn't shameful, he remembered that in one version of the DC universe, Superman started flying this way too.

And indeed, it was much faster than simply running on snow or sliding on his butt. As long as his head was tough enough, when he crashed into things like road signs or iron railings on tall buildings, he could grab them with his hands in time to use them as leverage to throw himself forward another distance, Spider-Man's secret technique was nothing more than this.

Ian felt he had mastered it without a teacher at this moment.

The closer to downtown, the clearer Ian could see.

Galactus, that cosmic-level being who had once towered into the clouds, now presented the normal posture one should have after croaking, his massive body stretching across the horizon like a collapsed mountain range.

Moreover, it was being "dismembered."

Ian had always felt that few people knew that Galactus was actually flesh and blood, a kind of super-cosmic level humanoid creature, not naturally wearing that heavy armor.

Now, countless soldiers and researchers crawled over its body like ants.

That was tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people.

The number was really quite large. Ian had never seen so many living people in this world before. They were using laser cutters, quantum strippers, and some tools that were obviously black technology to dismantle Galactus's armor piece by piece, these black technology tools might be unnameable even to DC universe's top scientists.

"Plasma cutter, supernatural splitter..."

As for why Ian recognized some of the tools, it was naturally because the names he mentioned earlier, including the first few, were all products of Ian making up names based on their appearance.

Pure fabrication.

No academic content whatsoever.

Anyway, it was a group of "revived" scientists actually using technological creations to dismember the massive Galactus, which really exceeded Ian's understanding of technological creations.

"Worthy of being the Omni-machine Tony God!"

Ian sincerely exclaimed. He had already arrived near the area where Galactus had fallen. Obviously, when this guy fell, there was assistance from the [Assembled Corpse Alliance]. Otherwise, just Galactus's head alone occupying the entire city center would have meant this city and even the surrounding areas should have been smashed into ruins.

However, the area destroyed by Galactus's fall wasn't very large.

There was obviously external intervention.

"This is still when my Uncle Galactus was almost starved to death." Ian did a somersault in the sky, not 108,000 li, but definitely 180 meters.

He landed on a damaged high-rise building on the outskirts of downtown.

Looking ahead, that being who had once crowned himself with nebulae and stood upon star systems now lay like a whale with its innards scooped out across the broken city. Its silver-purple armor had been dismantled to pieces, revealing the pale skin beneath, yes, skin. At those torn armor joints, one could vaguely see light blue blood vessels still faintly pulsing.

A research team had even set up temporary tents, holding an academic symposium around an exposed nerve ending. Ian felt these guys were the real lunatics.

"Gwen, Gwen, come rate me! How much do I look like Spider-Man?" Ian saw an old acquaintance, so he threw himself into the air and landed directly toward Galactus's head.

At this time, Gwen, holding something in her hand, looked as if she might accidentally fall toward the ground.

"I caught you!"

Ian was overjoyed because he had accomplished something Peter Parker seemed never able to do.

"Has Peter Parker been cloned? I can teach him, guaranteed success." Ian directly grabbed Gwen by the scruff of her neck, lifting the stumbling Gwen back onto Galactus's head.

"Good God, how is it you, this... crazy boy showing up again." Gwen's neck was scrunched up into a ball, slightly startled, but at least her spine wasn't broken.

"Shouldn't it be magical boy? I saved you, and you don't say thank you or crown me the new Spider-Man, but instead you turn around and call me crazy?"

Ian widened his eyes, extremely aggrieved.

Gwen kept patting Ian's hand, but the boy didn't let go of her neck. She could feel that every time they met, his strength seemed to be growing explosively.

"Didn't you show me your mental illness certificate yourself?"

The speechless Gwen rolled her eyes.

"Oh, right."

Ian instantly stopped being aggrieved. Perhaps according to his theory of relativity, the grievance had largely transferred to Gwen, and this girl being held like a cat had a look of utter despair.

"Also, you didn't save me. Is there any possibility that I just wanted to jump down and fall to my death?" It was hard to imagine what kind of mental state Gwen was in to say such life-dismissing words.

Perhaps efficiency-focused?

She pointed to several huge square machines not far away, from which new bodies were continuously being "printed", flesh, bones, and uniforms all complete in five seconds.

"Oh, I see."

Ian seemed to understand. He looked at Gwen's hand, where she wore a special glove that allowed her to tightly grip a golden Infinity Stone symbolizing the power of the mind.

"Did you steal this from my Uncle Galactus?"

Ian looked around. Galactus's head was intact, and he couldn't find any place where gems could be pried out. Only the two caverns on the face they were standing on could be explored.

They were nostrils.

The mouth didn't even count because Galactus's mouth was tightly shut.

"This is called retrieval... quickly put me down, energy is limited, resources are limited, this glove of mine won't last much longer." Gwen's glove indeed showed signs of cracking.

"Oh oh, okay."

Ian wasn't one to like causing trouble.

He carried Gwen to the edge of Galactus's head and gently let go. Gwen fell down and crashed into a shape that couldn't be seen in most versions of Spider-Man stories.

After all, face-first landing.

Didn't conform to the visual design of dying beautifully.

"This thing shouldn't break from falling, right?"

Staff members nearby quickly came forward and collected the Mind Stone with a container.

A few seconds later, another machine dinged open, and a brand new Gwen walked out, patting non-existent dust off her uniform and even rubbing her no-longer-uncomfortable neck.

"Haven't you ever been a superhero? Some operations you just mess around with, acting on assumptions?" Gwen pointed to her neck, "Which superhero have you seen rescue people by grabbing here?!"

She was quite helpless and felt Ian needed guidance.

"Anyway, when my dad catches me, that's how he does it. He's the strongest superhero where we are... precisely because of this, I learned by example."

Ian's super brain could always come up with the most reasonable explanations.

"..."

Gwen opened her mouth, suddenly somewhat speechless. She had seen rich second-generation kids competing with their fathers over sports cars, prestigious schools, even superpowers, but she had never seen the daddy competition track extend into the superhero realm.

Superhero dad?

Super second-generation?

This touched upon Gwen's knowledge blind spot.

"I don't believe your dad would teach you to rescue people this way." Helplessly, Gwen could only judge based on her professional level that Ian's behavior definitely wasn't a proper rescue method.

"You don't have a bio-field, you don't understand." In response, Ian just shook his head, "Also, this isn't something my dad taught me, it's just that I was deeply influenced by it."

"Of course, you could also call it childhood trauma. After all, a childhood without childhood trauma isn't perfect, just like how elderly people without some reflection on child-rearing education are prone to dementia, see, win-win, I have a complete childhood, and my dad will have a perfect old age."

"I believe future reflections on child education will help him prevent dementia from time to time..." After wearing the Batman suit and being influenced by Batman, people become like this, having deep foresight that others cannot understand. Ian's words made Gwen's eyes grow wider and wider.

The logic sounded somewhat reasonable but the more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

"What are you rambling about..."

Unlike Madison, Gwen wasn't successfully convinced by Ian. She just felt her language organization skills were insufficient to refute him, but deep down she still knew there was a big problem with Ian's logic.

As for what problem, she'd have to go back and have Tony analyze it.

Only Tony could clearly tell her what breed of filial son this was, and only Tony's true wisdom could handle this incredibly weird boy.

No.

Sometimes Tony seemed to get silenced too, but that must be because Tony's massive computing power was being occupied. Now that he had freed up some computing power, he would definitely handle it with ease!

Gwen was filled with firm faith in the wise Tony God.

"The corpse you wanted, Tony has already prepared for you. Perhaps you can go find him now." Gwen didn't want to be disturbed by Ian, since she still had to guide in the last Infinity Stone later.

Today, the entire universe would welcome its most important moment.

If it weren't for what Tony had said before, Gwen actually wanted to capture Ian, or at least temporarily lead him elsewhere, since she really didn't want any variables to occur at such an important moment.

[Higher than me, higher than you, higher than this base, higher than... everything.] To this day, neither Gwen nor Betty had been able to understand what meaning lay behind Tony's words.

"Is it the Sentry? Or the All-Man?"

Ian had no hobby of dissecting gods. He was more concerned about the power he could obtain. As soon as Gwen mentioned corpses, his eyes immediately lit up like light bulbs.

"Both are available."

Gwen pulled a bicycle out of a nearby box. It was hard to imagine that with technology capable of dismembering Galactus, transportation still relied entirely on such primitive vehicles.

Who knows what the reason was.

Of course, Ian was completely uncurious about this question now.

"Good good good! Worthy of being my mentor, Tony the Omni-machine God!" Ian immediately got excited. His form of address made Gwen's eyes go blank for a moment, wondering if she had missed something.

She wanted to speak but stopped.

In the end, Gwen still didn't open her mouth to ask.

"Wait for me a moment."

Although the All-Man and Sentry had occupied Ian's brain, he hadn't forgotten why he came here. Under Gwen's gaze, he quickly drilled into Galactus's nostril.

"What did you go do?"

The bewildered Gwen saw Ian emerge looking very happy.

"High-end exploration often involves entering the most primitive caves. Don't ask, the answer is unsuitable for minors... young girls." Ian wiped his hands with tissue.

He had just gone to pay respects to Galactus's super brain.

His assessment was that it wasn't as good as his own.

[You have come into contact with unknown extraordinary matter. A new professional template has been unlocked. You can obtain a corrected extraordinary profession, Entropy Annihilation Lord by meeting the essential conditions for the profession.]

Of course, this was Ian's real purpose.

The harvest could even be said to exceed Ian's expectations. The [Sentry Rising] comic he mentioned about Galactus hadn't even been publicly released yet, but the professional template was still unlocked smoothly.

Somewhat strange?

Ian looked at his profession panel.

[Writer LV2 (3/20)]

Perhaps it wasn't very strange after all.

[NEXT CHAPTER]