Chapter 26: The Drunken Symbiote

The symbiote's learning speed was astonishingly fast. Only a short afternoon had passed since Shiler copied this ability, and the other voice in his brain could already communicate with him using clear brainwaves. Although it could only express some simple emotions for now, this was already quite remarkable.

After being able to communicate with this symbiote, Shiler intended to start testing its abilities. He thought this symbiote was similar to Venom; as long as he shouted "Mask!" like in the movie, a sticky, gooey thing would come out to wrap him up, and then there would be two big white eyes, a mouth full of sharp teeth, and a long tongue.

The symbiote could directly sense the image in Shiler's imagination. It sent a series of denying brainwaves and kept repeating one sentence in Shiler's mind:

"I won't be sticky, I won't be sticky, I won't be sticky, I won't be sticky, I won't be sticky..."

It seemed to be because it sensed that Shiler didn't seem to like the sticky feeling of symbiotes.

To be honest, Shiler just didn't want to hurt this little guy who had just been born. After all, it would be his capable assistant in the future. Shiler didn't actually dislike the sticky texture of symbiotes; he just couldn't stand it at all.

No matter how powerful a symbiote was, that texture like a pile of mud was truly hair-raising.

Seeming eager to prove that it wasn't sticky, Gray Mist, having just learned to communicate and interact, controlled his body before Shiler could react and stood up. Then, in an instant, Shiler found that the world in his eyes had changed.

He lost his eyes, or rather, he lost his entire tangible body and gained thousands of sensors instead.

Shiler found that he could suddenly clearly feel every detail of everything in the clinic's bedroom. These signals were constantly transmitted to his brain, but it wasn't an image he saw, but rather something he felt.

His eyesight was nowhere near good enough to see the uneven details of every fiber in the quilt, but he felt it now. At first, the massive amount of information from each sensor made his brain completely unable to react, but soon, this information was quickly processed by his other thinking organ—the symbiote—and fed back to Shiler's brain again. Such a massive amount of detail gave Shiler a thrill of controlling everything.

Immediately after, Shiler found he could control this state, so he began to coordinate the work of all sensors, letting them spread out as much as possible.

Until these sensors spread to the full-length mirror in the bedroom, Shiler saw that he had turned into a mass of gray mist.

That's right, he had lost his entire body and transformed into a mass of drifting mist.

Every factor in the mist became his sensor. Thousands of symbiote factors quickly wove into a massive information-gathering network, not letting go of any detail. As long as it was a place the factors could enter, there were no secrets for Shiler.

For example, Shiler could even see the arrangement of iron elements in the electric kettle. If he focused his attention, he could also feel the distribution of oxygen in the air, as well as the existence of other rare gases. This microscopic observation ability, which had reached the molecular level and even approached the atomic level, made this world even more grand and magnificent than what Shiler could observe as a human.

"Thank God, you aren't that kind of muddy symbiote," Shiler thought.

Gray Mist seemed to feel it had been praised. It sent a very happy emotion, and as if to further demonstrate its power, it directly controlled Shiler, and the mist he had turned into dispersed.

The gray mist began to no longer gather together, but instead dispersed evenly like ordinary mist. Soon, Hell's Kitchen was shrouded in a hazy fog.

A large number of factors became more dispersed, but they still constantly transmitted various information to Shiler's brain. After the range expanded, this information increased by hundreds or thousands of times, but with the symbiote helping him process it, Shiler could simply focus his attention on a certain part. For example, he could even feel that five or six blocks away, in the center of Hell's Kitchen, gangs were having a shootout.

He could even feel the trace of every bullet passing through the crossfire.

He focused his attention, wanting to find a bald man with a target pattern on his forehead.

Gray Mist locked onto him in an instant, and even transmitted all the microscopic element information in the environment he was in back to Shiler's brain.

This ability was simply too powerful. Where there was mist, no one could escape Shiler's eyes.

Shiler felt that if it were his own brain processing so much complex information, he would probably go crazy on the spot, but this symbiote seemed to have this ability innately.

In a thick fog, the information transmitted back by every factor could be classified, filtered, and concentrated by it at an extremely fast speed. In an extremely short process, Shiler only needed to put his attention on what he wanted to know, and he would naturally know it.

He was like a person playing SimCity from a god's perspective, able to observe all the movements in the fog at any time. No detail could escape the infiltration of the Gray Mist factors.

In addition, these magical factors could infiltrate the interior of objects to cause destruction, for example, destroying the stable molecular structure, turning the object into powder in an instant.

But Gray Mist told him that this ability only targeted things with stable molecular structures and could not have any interference from other forces; otherwise, it would also be unable to exert influence.

But this was already a powerful enough ability.

When restoring his human form, Shiler could choose to gather his body in any place filled with mist. That is to say, within the range that Gray Mist could shroud, he could disappear from one place an infinite number of times and then suddenly appear in another.

But this couldn't completely replace flash-stepping, because transforming into gray mist, the gray mist dispersing, condensing, and then transforming back into human form required a certain amount of time, which wasn't as quick as flash-stepping.

Things on the Marvel side had come to a temporary end. Daredevil Ma Te was recovering, and little Spider-Man wanted to follow Stark to learn how to be a superhero, but unfortunately, he had final exams recently and had to hurry to make up for the missed courses, so he didn't have time to wander around anymore. Stark was annoyed by that bald Nick Fury and had been hiding in the lab tinkering with mechs all day recently, not going out much. So Shiler took a nap and returned to the DC world.

Not long after returning to DC, Shiler discovered a headache-inducing point about this symbiote in his body.

Shiler, who had returned to the DC world, was organizing his equipment. Among them, because Jonathan had been arrested, there wasn't much Fear Toxin left. Fortunately, he had almost swept away Jonathan's stock before, and the Fear Toxin he had left was all high-quality concentrated stuff.

He was taking out the remaining Fear Toxin to dilute it, preparing to put it into a spray bottle for his convenience.

Fear Toxin had no effect on Shiler at all, so he didn't need to wrap himself up tightly like Jonathan when experimenting. The only two living things in his entire apartment, Shiler and Pikachu, weren't afraid of this Fear Toxin, so Shiler didn't care if it leaked out during the experiment.

Plus, he didn't have any background in chemistry education, so when diluting, he probably violated two hundred laboratory regulations in one minute. Not wearing gloves or a gas mask was the least of it. Therefore, every time he finished, the room would basically be filled with low-concentration Fear Toxin.

This time was the same. Shiler, after a series of extremely non-standard chemical dilution operations, barely managed to divide the Fear Toxin into different spray bottles. But at this moment, a series of excited signals suddenly came from his brain.

"This is delicious, this is delicious, this is delicious, this is delicious, this is delicious, give it to me to eat, give it to me to eat, give it to me to eat, eat, eat, eat, eat, eat..."

Shiler was stunned. Was this symbiote saying that Fear Toxin was delicious?

He suddenly thought of the settings for symbiotes in the comics, especially the settings for Venom. The reason Venom could eat chocolate instead of human brains was because they all contained something called "phenylethylamine."

This was a chemical substance that would make the human brain excited. Both the human brain and chocolate contained this substance.

Could it be that Fear Toxin also had it?

Shiler thought about it. This was indeed very possible. Fear Toxin would induce the deepest fear in people's brains and would also make people's negative emotions suddenly active. It was hard to say whether Jonathan used this chemical substance when making this toxin.

Now it seemed that not only did he use it, but he also seemed to have used quite a lot.

"How do you want to eat it?" Shiler asked in his mind.

The symbiote didn't seem to understand either. It only knew that the thing in front of it was very attractive to it. Shiler had no choice; he could only take out a bottle of diluted Fear Toxin and spray it at his nose.

He instantly felt the symbiote in his mind become excited, constantly shouting in his brain: "Delicious, delicious, delicious, delicious, not enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, want more, want more, want more, want more..."

Alright, Shiler thought, the symbiote's appetite should be quite large. He simply took out a small bottle of undiluted Fear Toxin, which was still liquid, and poured it directly into his mouth and drank it.

This stuff didn't have any taste, but in an instant, he could feel the symbiote in his body seem excited to the point of being a bit confused.

It sent a long string of brainwaves that Shiler couldn't understand at all, and then used all the vocabulary it had just learned to shout in Shiler's mind.

Finally, after a while, a kind of mist began to permeate around Shiler. This was deeper than ordinary gray mist and became a bit black. Shiler smelled it and felt it might be Fear Toxin.

Alright, Shiler thought, it seemed that high-concentration Fear Toxin was a bit like strong liquor to the symbiote. Gray Mist was directly drunk.

Moreover, after the symbiote got drunk, its reaction was actually somewhat similar to a human's. First, it threw a drunken tantrum, said a bunch of nonsense, and then vomited.

The mist around Shiler should be what Gray Mist vomited out after getting drunk.

Gray Mist recovered quite quickly, but after it recovered, it still wanted to ask Shiler for liquor, which was sternly refused by Shiler.

But it obviously wasn't reconciled, humming and hawing in Shiler's mind, feeling very aggrieved.

Shiler was very helpless. How did his symbiote become a drunkard? ===== CHAPTER 27 =====