Chapter 17.1- All of Infinity in the Palm of my Hands

“Do you remember Project αύξηση?” I asked Kelex once I took my place back on the ship. Tivan was dead, his property, and belongings were mine in their entirety, and the celestial skull that made up knowhere would become mine in due time once I finished figuring out Braniac’s tech completely. It could wait; however, the goal was to study the celestials, and the fruits pf such study were unlikely to show themselves for years, so I could focus on more pressing matters. ‘The waiting room will always have patients, just show up as your best self and deal with the most urgent ones first’ I recited a phrase from one of my favourite productivity creators back on earth. Since I’d basically started and controlled the content boom, enjoying content from Instashare had been one of my favourite means of wasting time back when I called the Earth home. Now, so much was riding on me that I could rarely have a minute to myself for whiling away time and wasting my hours. 

“My databanks are uncorrupted, Kal El. I do not forget anything” He said, sounding slightly offended at the question. I resisted the urge to chuckle in amusement. Of course, he was affronted. 

“Good then. Remind me why we didn’t bother with it anymore?” I asked, trying to do my thinking out loud with Kelex as a sounding board and partner. Just what he had always been. 

“We calculated that the expected rewards were too limited and unnecessary. We projected, using your memories from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that your present levels of strength and power were more than enough to deal with any realistic threats and for the more fantastic ones, more strength would have done little to solve the situation” he said, accurately summarising our rationale behind abandoning the ambitious project that we’d been working on to take my powers to the next level. 

“We were wrong” I replied, looking away from Kelex to stare at the vast expanse of space. 

“The Black Dwarf was nowhere near as strong as me. But he was durable, and he had stamina for hours. If I didn’t come up with something unique to get through the durability, then it would have been possible that I’d have lost that fight if it went on for longer than it did. Especially without a close yellow star to enhance my powers and energise me” I said, feeling a twinge as I made the confession that it had actually been possible for me to lose in a fight like that. 

“If the rest of the Universe has seen similar buffs in power, then what we first viewed as sufficient to get by might end up falling short in an unexpected way. I need not explain to you what could happen if I ever came up short, do I?” I asked rhetorically. 

“Death”

“Not just mine. But thousands of people under my protection. Maybe even trillions when Thanos wipes out half the universe. Project αύξηση must begin.” I said to him, pressing the urgency and thought process on him.

“I agree with you. You must do whatever is necessary”. Kelex said, and I nodded. 

“Pull it up, then” I said, watching my previously clear glass view be overtaken by multiple displays charting my increases in strength, speed, and durability over the years. Everything was tracked, even down to the strength of my ice breath and heat vision. The only problem was that the records were a few years out of date. That would be the first thing we dedicated our time to doing. 

The second thing was a bit more esoteric. “Using the star charts, can you find any blue stars between our present location and New Kylos?” I asked Kelex and he nodded. The goal here was to test if this universe was like the ones where Kryptonians could get even stronger under the influence of a different kind of solar radiation. What I remembered was that blue made us even stronger than yellow, and white even stronger than that. 

I doubted that we could build a blue sun on our own in a few months or maybe even years, as we didn’t have much of a technology base to build on. Most of the work would have to be our own. 

“I’ve found one,” Kelex told me after about twenty seconds. His unfamiliarity with AIKO’s means of information organisation and categorisation was becoming obvious. In his own systems, Kelex could search for any bit of information and apply it to the preset situation in less than a second, here it took him about 20 times longer. 

“Good. Plot the path’” I said, and relaxed back into my seat before returning to the plans for Project αύξηση. 

From what I could see, the plans had five main categories; strength, speed, senses, esoteric powers, and endurance. There wasn’t necessarily anything for improving my invulnerability, since trying to do that skirted a bit too close to the self-harm category. More pragmatically, there was the fact that scarcely any things could hurt me in the first place, so trying to train that to get better was next to impossible. Even further, I wasn’t absolutely certain that consistently harming myself would improve my base durability by much. 

Apart from the exercises for improving those four categories, there was another aspect to Project αύξηση. Actual combat training to make sure I got combat experience in using the full range of my powers and fighting opponents roughly on the same level as me. This one would be harder. Unless I made use of virtual reality, it was going to be basically impossible. Anything I could build would be easy enough for me to handle. Even vibranium would only manage to take two punches from me at full power, so even the miracle metal wouldn’t help with that. Another option was to seek actual challenges, but if I didn’t manage to find therm in full-scale war with the Kree empire, then they wouldn’t be forthcoming for a bit. Maybe I could search out Asgard to use Thor as a sparring partner. I was sure that once I helped him awaken his full power, he’d give me a run for my money, as I stood now. Possibly, he’d even manage to beat me until I got stronger. 

Then there was the exercise aspect of that. For that, I’d taken lessons and inspiration from Dragon Ball. I’d do some good old-fashioned gravity training. The machine to do it was basically already prepared, and the only thing to do about it was integrate it into the fortress and the training room within. If I could ramp up to about 60 or even 100 times the earth’s base gravity, then I could train my speed and flight. Strength was even easier. I just had to use the gravity device to build special weights that, instead of being impossibly dense and accidentally creating a singularity, would just utilise enhanced gravity to make themselves harder to lift. Heat vision, I’d just practice by using it more often and trying to do more and more with it to make myself get better both at channelling it, reducing the time needed to charge up larger blasts and also getting more endurance with it, so I could use said larger blasts more often. Ice breath would work on the same principles.  

As for my senses, that would be easy. Controlled sensory deprivation would be the name of the game. I could already plot out the training exercises in my mind’s eye. Trying to dodge projectiles using only my sense of smell or something like that. I also had to prepare for sensory overstimulation. Hopefully, the new suit would help with that, but I still needed to be ready for when I got caught with my pants down. I needed a strategy for sonic or flash weapons, and the ability to endure them for long enough that I could actually do something about them. Having such obvious weaknesses was just begging to be killed by some two-bit bounty hunter with a dream and a large enough pair of balls. 

“Arrived at destination” Kelex announced, and I took in a view that felt like it knocked all the breath out of me. The blue sun pulsed. It was almost like it was breathing. If a yellow sun was a controlled fiery explosion, then the blue sun was just a series of pulses that each sent out power that made me feel like I could do the impossible. I took a deep breath, not focusing on the air but the radiation. It was like taking your first sip of coffee when all you’d had before was water. It was liberating and also surprisingly nauseating. It was like I was bloated after only a few seconds in the presence of this sun. And I was still on my ship. I could only imagine how it would have felt if I dared get closer. I wanted to. But common-sense won out in the end. It wouldn’t do to permanently cripple myself messing around with forces that I didn’t entirely understand. 

“Take all the readings and samples you need and then plot a course to New Kylos” I said to Kelex before sinking deeper into my seat and closing my eyes. I began to meditate on myself and the newfound power I felt coursing through my body. 

A/N; Let’s go!