Chapter 93

“Hello, Mr. Stark, your uncle often speaks of you...”

Stark rolled his eyes and said without restraint: “He also talks about you all the time, General Robert—he says you’re a half-brained idiot...”

The faces of several men in military uniforms across from him darkened.

Stark was in a foul mood—he’d just finished arguing with Venom. This insatiable symbiote wanted to eat people’s brains wherever it went, and loved dragging Stark into walls; his head had just gotten a lump from one of those impacts, and he was currently cursing the symbiote inside his mind.

“Please sit down,” General Robert said, gesturing to a chair.

“No need. Why did you call me here? Get to the point—I have experiments to get back to.”

These military men seemed utterly unaccustomed to Stark’s blunt style; their usual negotiations involved half an hour of polite small talk, another half hour of aimless digressions, twenty minutes of nostalgic reminiscing and future dreaming, and only the final ten minutes devoted to actual business.

Stark had no interest in playing their games. He wasn’t incapable of feigning diplomacy—he simply saw no point. He didn’t want to waste a single word on these people. In Stark’s view, every sentence he spoke to them was a waste of humanity’s collective progress.

In the end, Stark sat down anyway.

General Robert stubbornly stuck to his own rhythm, launching one probing question after another at Stark.

Stark had no desire to entertain him, but Venom said inside his head: “You really hate him. Can I eat his head...?”

“No. Eating the brains of idiots lowers your IQ.”

“Really?”

“Of course.”

“Can’t you just punch him?”

“No.”

“Why not? What about your hard suit?”

“Hard suit? You mean my Iron Man armor?”

“I want to wear that suit too.”

“Do you even need clothes?”

“It looks interesting.”

“No. You can’t. You don’t know how to operate it—you’d break my armor.”

“I can operate it. Believe me.”

At that moment, Stark heard General Robert say: “We have sincere intentions for cooperation. I heard recently one of your friends has been similarly afflicted—like Obadiah. I feel great sympathy for my old friend’s plight. Fortunately, the military has developed a drug capable of fully stimulating neural activity to awaken dormant brain function.”

“Experiments have proven it highly effective for comatose patients, restoring brain awareness and control over the body.”

Stark raised an eyebrow. “So you guys actually do something useful after all.”

A lieutenant colonel entered, saluted, then two researchers placed a box on the table. When the lid opened, white mist drifted out, revealing a single syringe at its center.

Stark had no special knowledge of medicine or pharmacology. He was about to lean closer to examine the syringe when Venom suddenly surged with excitement inside his mind: “This is delicious!! Kill him, take this! It’s tasty! Good for you! Good for me too!”

Stark frowned. “On what basis do you draw this conclusion?”

“My genes told me!!”

“Are your genes reliable?”

Stark felt Venom growing increasingly agitated, almost delirious. General Robert noticed Stark shuddering and said: “I know Stark’s condition is poor. We’re happy to help you—for your uncle’s sake...”

“We’re even willing to provide this drug free of charge. The military is very interested in the nanotech exosuit you developed. Of course, we don’t want the suits themselves—we’ve made excellent progress with Oscorp. Biological armor is equally promising...”

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“But nanotechnology gives us an edge in information and intelligence warfare. You know we can’t afford to lose these fronts. More soldiers’ lives depend on it—better intelligence means fewer casualties...”

General Robert spoke with apparent emotion: “I know Stark Industries isn’t what the media portrays. I know young Stark, like his father, is truly a hero who cares for ordinary people...”

“From another perspective, cooperating with the military also saves more soldiers’ lives—after all...”

Just then, Robert noticed Stark trembling. He thought he’d finally broken through the genius’s psychological defenses and prepared to press further—when suddenly, a strand of black slime crept up Stark’s neck.

In an instant, a massive black monster with razor-sharp fangs filled his vision.

Venom swallowed General Robert’s head whole, snatched the box containing the syringe, and smashed straight through the window.

No one anticipated this turn of events. One moment, Stark sat calmly; the next, a mass of slime engulfed him, transforming him into a three-meter-tall black monster.

This black monster had a long crimson tongue and a mouth full of sharp fangs—it bit off a general’s head and stole the syringe.

Others panicked, but soon several helicopters chased Venom’s sprinting form.

Venom leaped rapidly across rooftops; even helicopter machine-gun fire barely touched him.

Only when he reached an open field on the city’s edge did he stop, swung a boulder, and smashed it into one helicopter. The unlucky craft took a direct hit to its rotor and spiraled down smoking.

The second helicopter ran out of ammo and hovered at a distance, too afraid to approach.

Soon, armed forces arrived on scene. The struggle between Venom and Stark for control of the body slowed their escape; Stark fought desperately to suppress Venom’s overexcited impulses.

Finally, Venom regained some clarity and retreated back into Stark’s body. Stark returned to his human form—but faced a ring of armed troops.

Seeing Stark revert to normal, their commander didn’t lower his guard. Several soldiers in unusual armor stepped forward.

Stark recognized their armor—it was built from the tech he’d previously provided to the military. It looked outdated and obsolete.

Stark simply pulled out a cigarette. Instantly, a brand-new, sleek suit of armor materialized around him. He gave a mocking gesture and said: “Take these ancient relics you stole back to your grandpa. At least they’re better than a cane, right?”

About a dozen armored soldiers advanced. Their leader glanced around, then raised his arm and said: “Suit!”

Stark watched as a gel-like film spread from the armor’s base, instantly coating its surface, sealing all seams, transforming the entire suit into a single, seamless green biological armor.

Stark exploded in rage.

“You dare use Oscorp’s idiotic methods to insult my work!!”

Stark had never felt this angry—not even when the military smeared him in the press and pretended to be the good guys.

After all, what Stark prized most were his inventions born from his genius mind. Now, these military fools were giving his armor to Oscorp to corrupt!

And they’d turned it into a slimy, grotesque biological suit with globs of goo!!

Stark was furious beyond words.

He took a deep breath and asked inside his mind: “Can you even operate armor?”

“Much better than they can.”

“Alright...”

Stark extended his arm, now covered in metal armor, and said: “Suit!”

Instantly, black slime engulfed his entire body.

Unlike the sticky, limp gel of the enemy suits, the black slime formed a powerful net, wrapping every part of the armor tightly.

But the nanosuit wasn’t covered—it was systematically disassembled by the slime, reconfigured into new shapes, and layered over the black monster’s body.

Venom had already been nearly three meters tall. Now he became a towering four-meter-plus steel monster.

It was a creature entirely clad in pitch-black armor. Venom seemed to have inherited Stark’s sense of aesthetics—its surface was no longer lumpy, viscous tissue, but smooth, streamlined black plating.

Its head was no longer a gaping maw of fangs, but a helmet with two pairs of sharp spikes on each side, a diamond-shaped steel visor in the center, and a full-face mask covering the lower jaw.

The armor looked undeniably stunning—its proportions matched Venom’s form but were taller, with black slime-wrapped metal spikes along the shoulders, legs, and wrists. The faceplate resembled a gas mask, radiating a terrifying beauty, brimming with a wild, punk-metal charisma.

More importantly, the armor was controlled by a symbiote in perfect sync with Stark’s mind—meaning Stark no longer needed to operate it. He could move it as naturally as his own limbs.

Stark flexed his arm. The sensation was exquisite—he could feel the precise touch of every outer component against the air. For a suit fanatic, this was perfection.

He was the suit. The suit was him.

“Alright,” Stark said. “I’ll show you what a real biological armor looks like!”

The moment he finished speaking, he leapt straight up—CRASH—landing beside the bio-armor soldiers and smashing one in the head with a single punch.

The bio-armor soldier flew backward. Stark blinked, shaking his fist in surprise.

He didn’t know how to fight. He’d always relied on JARVIS’s tactical calculations. But now, he felt as if he were personally pummeling his enemies—and honestly, it felt amazing.

The massive black armor spun, delivered an uppercut. The bio-armor soldiers, barely two meters tall, looked like chicks before this giant—and were sent flying.

These bio-armors were designed to counter Stark’s Iron Man suit—not a four-meter-tall biological monster.

Their built-in tools—bio-slime to restrict movement, echo-fields to track flight paths, and gel-joints for agility—were useless. Venom’s armor ignored them all: slime spray? Just tear it apart. Echo-field? Useless. Flexible gel joints? One punch shattered them.

Venom’s fighting style was nothing like Stark’s. In truth, it was just wild, swinging punches—but its absurd physical strength and hyper-accelerated regeneration gave it overwhelming advantage in chaos.

Soon, the entire squad of bio-armor soldiers lay defeated.

But then, heavy military weapons arrived. Venom leapt, scaling a nearby skyscraper, and resumed his frantic sprint.

Once he’d shaken off all pursuers, Venom instantly retracted into Stark’s body. The nanosuit returned to his frame. He looked down at his unharmed arms and the pristine armor covering them, and said:

“Not bad. Thanks, slime.”

“You’re welcome, trash.”