The gate shimmered and released its prize.
Jayden Luther Cross stepped out of the dimensional rift, and reality itself seemed to stutter.
Two weeks ago, a desperate teenager had entered these dungeons. What emerged was something that would make gods take notice.
The Silver Grade Conductive Battle Suit had evolved with him. Once pristine armor was now scarred with patterns that looked like frozen lightning, each mark a memory of combat. It fit him like a second skin, black with electric blue veins running through the material, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat. The chest piece bore claw marks from the Guardian that had somehow become part of the design, artistic scars that spoke of survival.
Beneath the armor, transformation.
Six-foot-two of perfectly proportioned danger. The Genesis Energy hadn't just enhanced him—it had perfected him. His face was a masterwork that would make sculptors weep and models consider career changes. Imagine if a Greek god had fucked a fallen angel while lightning watched and took notes—that was Jayden Luther Cross now.
Cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, but somehow elegant. A jawline that belonged on magazine covers but promised violence. His features had that impossible beauty reserved for classical statues—too perfect to be real, yet undeniably alive. Asian heritage mixed with European aristocracy had created something that transcended both, like destiny had been saving up genetic lottery tickets for seventeen years just to cash them all in at once and break the fucking bank.
His hair—still black but shot through with veins of electric blue—fell perfectly despite two weeks of combat. It moved wrong, though, drifting against gravity, responding to the speed force that hummed constantly around him. When he stood still, the air vibrated at frequencies just below human hearing, a subsonic thrum that made primitive brains scream predator.
But the eyes. Fuck, the eyes.
Crystalline blue that held depths like staring into the birth of lightning. They glowed with cold fire, beautiful and terrible, the kind of eyes that made people forget their names, their spouses, their sexual preferences. When he blinked, reality seemed to skip frames, afterimages suggesting he existed in multiple moments simultaneously.
One look and panties dropped, hearts stopped, and LinkedIn profiles updated to "It's complicated."
The aura was violence wrapped in silk.
Level 30 pressure that felt like Level 50 to those who knew better. It didn't push—it promised.
Every awakened who felt it understood on a cellular level that this wasn't just power but power waiting to be unleashed. The air around him tasted of ozone and imminent death, that moment before lightning strikes when everything goes quiet.
The speedster's hum was constant now. Not quite sound, not quite vibration, but something between. Like reality was a guitar string and he was perpetually about to pluck it. Grass died in a perfect circle around his feet, not from heat but from existing at the wrong frequency.
On his left hand, the spatial ring—black and functional. On his right thumb, was another ring. Dark metal that seemed to drink light, so subtle in its wrongness that eyes wanted to skip over it. It had appeared sometime during his transformation, sitting there like it had always belonged, like his hand had grown to accommodate it.
If only he knew...
And standing there, waiting with the patience of apex predators, was Marcus Luther Cross.
Not alone, because trillionaires didn't do alone. A Bentley Mulsanne idled on the forest road, so black it looked like shadow given form. Two bodyguards—Level 80 minimum—stood at discrete distances.
A third figure held an umbrella over Marcus despite the clear sky, because comfort was never optional.
Marcus himself looked like what he was—a man who could buy countries and had, just for the tax write-offs. Armani suit that cost more than Harvard tuition, perfectly tailored to accommodate his shadow powers and his god complex. Not a speck of forest dirt dared touch him—it probably couldn't afford the lawsuit. His presence was different from Jayden's—not wild power but controlled dominance, the difference between a storm and a nuclear silo with good lawyers.
"Jayden," Marcus said, and shadows carried the word like silk-wrapped steel. "You look, well..."
The understatement was so profound it bordered on comedy. Like saying Jeff Bezos had pocket change. Like saying Hiroshima was a minor heating incident.
"Father." Jayden's voice had changed too—deeper, with harmonics that shouldn't exist. The speedster's hum made it resonate in ways that felt like being caressed by lightning.
Marcus gestured minutely. The bodyguard with the umbrella produced a tablet, displaying real-time market data. "You and your friend Mozart has been busy. Monster parts commodity index up four hundred percent. Quite impressive."
Of course he knew. Of course he'd been watching.
"Though I must say," Marcus continued, studying his son with the same expression he used for acquisition targets and particularly expensive escorts, "leaving a ten-trillion-dollar fortune to play dungeon crawler seems... inefficient."
Not 'dangerous.' Not 'irresponsible.' Inefficient. Because to Marcus Luther Cross, everything was about optimal resource allocation. His son could probably delete continents now, and he was concerned about ROI.
"I needed to understand what I'd become," Jayden replied. The hum intensified slightly, making the bodyguards shift nervously and reconsider their career choices.
"And what have you become?" Marcus asked, though his eyes—reading the aura, the presence, the sheer 'fuck you' energy radiating from his former cripple son—already knew.
Jayden smiled, and it was beautiful and terrible and made one bodyguard reflexively check both his weapon and his heterosexuality.
"Your heir," he said simply. "The one that won't need Viagra at seventy."
Marcus's own smile was smaller, colder, infinitely more dangerous. Like a shark that went to Yale. "We'll see. The car is waiting. Your mother has arranged dinner. Black tie, naturally. Try not to short-circuit the chandelier this time."
He turned, shadows following like obedient interns. "Oh, and Jayden? Do try to keep the electrical interference to a minimum. The new Patek Philippe collection doesn't appreciate electromagnetic fields. They're vintage, unlike your newfound concern for family."
As if coming home after awakening god-tier powers was just another minor inconvenience to manage. As if his son wasn't radiating enough presence to make Level 100s nervous.
Jayden followed, each step humming with controlled speed, leaving footprints that sparked and smoldered. The dark ring on his thumb pulsed once, unnoticed, as if approving of the game about to begin.
The Luther Cross heir was coming home.
And everyone who'd called him cripple was about to learn what that meant.