Adjusting Plans

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(General P.O.V)

The Parker family were having dinner. Aunt May had cooked her special meat loaf recipe for her 'boys' and the chatter at the dinner table showed that they were all excited to try her cooking. 

Brian was poking fun at Peter about their next door classmate, who Peter had a massive crush on. Peter was blushing red which made Aunt May and Uncle Ben even more eager to know who it was that had reduced their genius nephew into a blubbering mess.

All in all it was a happy family moment. Something that Brian cherished greatly. He'd never had the same type of attachment to his real parents that he shared with his new one.

When the dinner was over and everyone safely tucked into bed, Brian was up and getting ready.

(Brian's P.O.V)

It's been 6 years. I stood Infront of a mirror and stared at my body. The results of a decade worth of training showed themselves through the cut muscles and ripped lines of definition. I traced some of the scars I'd gotten while training, lost in thought. Reviewing the memories of all that had happened so far.

I'd taken the master up on his offer to compete in the martial arts tournament held every 2 years. The tournament however wasn't like anything I'd seen before. It wasn't filmed or broadcasted anywhere. The tournament involved only a few old dojo's, schools and temples and it had been held over the course of centuries. It was a legit martial arts tournament. In the junior division, the fighting wasn't as brutal as the other divisions but I'd bled more times than I could count.

I'd also seen evidence of more martial artists using the mysterious energy in the air in different ways. It wasn't anything strong or powerful however but coupled with centuries worth of martial arts those unique skills were formidable. 

I'd participated in 3 of those tournaments and only won the most recent one. I'd been pushed to my limits and back and if it wasn't for the progress I'd made in enhancing my resistance seals, I would have probably lost. 

The prize for winning the tournament was different each time. The first time that I had participated, the winner had walked away with 5 million us dollars. The second time the winner had been given the chance to enhance their body through a 3 month session in a gravity and rejuvenation chamber. It seemed like there were traces of cultivation still left behind but the problem was that there wasnt a martial artist who had broken the human limit that existed.

The tournament I had participated in, had a very convenient prize for me. It offered the user access to the archives of the ancients. A library that contained books about the profound understanding of martial arts from masters across history. You could learn anything from there and for any martial arts fanatic this prize was greater than money. 

I however used it to understand the martial arts community more. Why? I'd seen something that triggered a memory in my first tournament. A memory that made me excited. There was a martial temple called, the order of the medallion. Their symbol was similar to the symbol of a powerful medallion artefact that could grant one powers. 

Which meant, this was a shared universe.

A combination of Spiderman and the Medallion movie, starring Jackie Chan and Lee Evans. And I still didn't know how many more fictional worlds existed in this universe. 

But what I did know, was that this was it. A way to achieve the overwhelming power I needed easily, fast and conveniently. I already knew the plot of The Medallion. And it's events happened only 1 year after Peter became Spiderman. The plan to get the spider bite that gave Peter his powers had just risen up in importance. 

But more than that I understood I would need more than just Spiderman's powers to defeat a Highbinder. A Highbinder, is the immortal state granted by the medallion to those who were resurrected by it.

It's what Jackie Chan's character becomes after he saves a Shaolin kid, who then uses the power of the medallion to not only resurrect Jackie but also turn him into a Highbinder. A god-like being with powers like immortality, super-speed, super-strength, telekinesis, limited energy manipulation and an ultra speed regeneration. 

It made it so, that anyone changed by the medallion could survive anything. The only thing that could take away their powers would be the medallion itself. So I'd started planning.

First I made sure to learn everything in the archives of the martial arts community then cut ties with my dojo. The reason being, I wanted limited interaction with martial artists whose whole community was set up in a pseudo-cultivation way. 

I didn't want the drama that came with dealing with cultivators. No matter how small a similarity it was. The other reason was that I had learned everything I could from the dojo and the fights had gotten too easy. I had fought some of the teachers and come out on top. 

After quitting, I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time, which I used well. I helped out Uncle Ben at the store and joined Peter's nerd crew. Due to my influence, although Peter was still his geeky self he was still much more confident which actually made him closer to Harry. I would have thought that with his different personality from the movies, he wouldn't have become friends with the Osborn but some things were just set in stone, I guess.

Speaking of which, he still had a massive crush on MJ. That also didn't change. The only difference was that he had tried to ask her out but unfortunately MJ had the hots for someone else. No, it wasn't me. At least I don't think it was… I've been called clue-less a couple of times but… whatever, my eyes were unfortunately only set on one person. My Sexy Russian Spy. It didn't matter that she was a world or a million away. I wanted her and only her. That didn't mean I didn't have fun however. I just didn't have any romantic attachments to anyone. 

The rest of the free time I got, I doubled down on my seal-making. The principles of seal making were a mystery to me to be completely honest. I had just been stumbling around and luckily, I managed to make my own crude system. It involved a core seal that was covered by a distribution seal and finally an execution seal. Simple.

I made the core seal to draw in energy from the surroundings, doesn't matter what energy it was. Solar, electric, the mysterious energy. I didn't know. Yes, I had no idea what energy the core used as I'd only copied it from my first formation. I'd gotten the chance to study more formations since then but I didn't understand them very well. There was surprisingly little in the archives about Seal making.

Anyway, the core seal drew in energy, the distribution seal sent the energy to the execution array and voila, shit would happen. Only my cultivator's intuition helped me to get past the phase of the seals exploding in my face to even create something average. 

Despite my ignorance I didn't give up and finally, I made 4 bracelets that went on each of my limbs that increased my gravity by 2 times. That's where I'd hit a wall. I couldn't think of anyway I could increase the resistance seals without overwhelming the distribution seal leading to the whole thing breaking down. 

The next thing I did to prepare myself for the inevitable showdown with 'gods' was boosting my scanning ability. In its basic form, the ability only showed my parameters but after using it every day, meditating to recover and increase the size of the multicolored ball in my mind, I finally had enough psionic energy to add another function to that ability. 

At that point my mental strength level shot up to mid. Unfortunately I still couldn't use telekinesis or any other psychic abilities. The function I added to the Scanning ability was a limited control over my biology. The added ability would hopefully help me to choose what to change or focus on when it came to breaking limits. It would also alert me on my body's abnormal reactions to anything. 

The ability itself was pretty vague but the thing that Spark energy excelled at, was making the impossible possible so hopefully the function would work as intended. I'd stopped in thought after noticing the parallels between my Scanning ability and typical power systems found in fiction. 

Their similarities were great but the difference was that the scanning ability was my own brain child. There was no way it could betray me and at most it was only an assistant to keep track of my progress. 'But', I asked myself, ' Why not give it a name? Each day, the ability seems to evolve according to my own subconscious desires and calling it, ' my scanning ability' doesn't seem to fit in line with it's future growth.

So in the end I decided to call it 'The Interface.'

I mentally called up the Interface.

[Name: Brian Parker]

Cultivation level: N/A (99% to ???)

Body strength: Peak Human

Soul strength: N/A

Mental strength: Mid Psion

Special skills: Echo

My cultivation level was still missing a percentage to the next level. Ok, it had stayed that way for the past 2 years and echo had also stopped developing. I theorized that the next level was the realm of power that almost all martial artists in this universe couldn't achieve. It was a hard limit imposed that prevented them from stepping into real cultivation. The energy in the air just wasn't potent enough.

It seemed like my first bottleneck had come earlier than expected. So apart from pursuing seal making, I tried to improve upon my martial arts. Although, I strengthened my techniques with my body becoming even stronger. I had a qualititive change as I became a formidable opponent to face. 

The only thing I lacked was experience. I had been in brutal fights before. Fights that had blood running down your face and blinding you. Fights that made you so exhausted that you passed out. Fights that had you screaming in pain as your hand was dislocated or broken but all of them had lacked one thing. The risk of death. 

In the tournaments, the matches were no rules except for killing. Killing wasn't allowed. Anything else short of that was fixable. There were masters who healed someone up through the use of herbs and other remedies.

I'd of course searched for any pill making skills that could enable me to make pills that would increase my cultivation but that was a dead-end. 

That's besides the point. What I needed was to fight in a situation where it was either do or die. That was why I was standing Infront of a mirror. I looked to the side and saw a deep blue combat uniform that I'd ordered through my contacts in the martial community. You don't become a champion and expect to not have fans. 

I reached for the clothes and looked at the time. It was currently 12.02 am. 5 minutes later, I was looking at a 6 feet tall stranger with a half mask on. 

The only way I could get the experience I wanted was going for criminals. In that kind of fight I could push myself further than ever. 

Watch out gangs of New York, I'm coming for you.