hotmtlnovel Chapter 9: 09 What’s It Like to Wait for Your Doom?
Chapter 9: 09 What’s It Like to Wait for Your Doom?
Chapter 9: 09 What’s It Like to Wait for Your Doom?
After a brief chat with Kagura Hitomi, breakfast came to an end, and Happy Hogan began to rest.
Hitomi, however, took out her phone and tablet, using the flight time to catch up on some routine assistant tasks.
Even though this humanoid girl had grand ambitions and impressive abilities, there were still things to do — after all, you've got to make a living, right?
Not long after, Happy Hogan, sitting across from her, started snoring.@@@@
'No wonder you're so fat...'
Kagura shook her head and went back to work.
Over the past month, she'd gotten more familiar with her holographic UI and its "Infinite Concept Skills" system.
She'd learned to focus her mind on specific memories and use the system to scan them, acquiring new skills in the process.
For example, scanning memories from FATE about Artoria's sword "Excalibur" gave her a derivative skill related to cold weaponry: "Directed High-Energy Electromagnetic Pulse Emission."
Another scan, this time from Sekiro, extracted the concept of Dragon's Blood to give her a defense skill called Passive Ultra-Fast Self-Healing.
'Hmm, no resurrection skills? Interesting...'
The concepts she extracted from different ACG works weren't just copies but seemed to be "imitation and reconstruction" of the concepts, adding them to her skillset in unique ways.
The problem now, though, was that while she was accumulating these skills, she didn't have the QP (Quantum Points) to activate them.
And the next time she could earn QP seemed to be linked to "witnessing the rise of a superhero."
'Damn photosynthesis QAQ!'
Of course, during this peaceful month, Kagura hadn't had to rely on these powerful skills.
The most commonly used one so far was the near-omnipotent Electronic Hacking.
Aside from military-grade encrypted areas, she could hack into almost any electronic device.
She could connect to the internet at will and store information she saw and heard into nearby electronic media. It was a pretty handy ability — though, overuse tended to leave her feeling hungry...
Right now, however, the upbeat music from Tony Stark's side interrupted her thoughts.
'Ugh... here we go. The party's starting next door.'
After reflecting on everything, Kagura made up her mind to change this future.
No matter if Tony was hit by the bomb or not, once those Ten Rings terrorists captured him, he would inevitably become Iron Man.
But why should he suffer that pain?
If he had to go through this in the original timeline, he didn't have a choice. But here, in this world, he did.
Here, Tony Stark had her by his side.
The girl made a silent vow: 'As long as I'm here, Tony Stark won't be harmed. In the original universe, he suffered enough. Here, I'll protect him.'
Ding! A new task popped up in her holographic UI.
[New Task Added]
[Protect Tony Stark from harm during the attack/10 QP]
Wow.
Kagura was both surprised and touched. Not only did the system not force any tasks on her, but it also dynamically generated additional objectives based on her decisions.
It really understands people, huh?
Later, after the Weapon Demo...
The event concluded successfully, and Tony Stark's voice called out to Hitomi.
"Hey, Hitomi, let's go."
"Coming!"
She followed Tony Stark to the armored jeep, sitting beside him in the front passenger seat. Due to military protocol, Tony had to be protected by an armed soldier, and that's where Hitomi came in. Tony sat in the back with a young American soldier.
"Hey, Tony," Colonel Rhodes approached before they departed, seemingly skeptical about the plans.
"Sorry, this is the 'Happy Jeep,' the 'Boring Jeep' is over there," Tony cut him off, clearly uninterested in changing his arrangements.
Colonel Rhodes didn't press the issue. "You did great with the demo, Tony. See you back at the base."
Happy Jeep, huh...
She internally sighed. You'll soon find out what 'real' happiness is...