This was the influence carried by the na Drex Valen.
Drex didn't deliberately make Thunderbolt Ross wait or try to play psychological gas with him.
On the contrary, he welcod Ross warmly.
Ross, however, had no patience left for political theater.
The mont he arrived, he got straight to the point.
By coming here, he had already surrendered the initiative.
So there was no reason to waste ti pretending otherwise.
"What do you want?" Ross asked bluntly. "What's the price for turning into a Hulk?"
Drex had actually spent the last several days thinking carefully about where Ross would fit best.
The military?
Impossible.
Ross' path there was finished.
Drex had already confird through various channels that the ard forces had zero intention of restoring Ross' position unless Drex himself donated several Dark Knight war machines.
Which was ridiculous.
Those armors were worth fortunes.
Drex would rather hand over cash than give away even one of them.
Then he rembered Ross' eventual position in the original tiline.
Secretary of State.
Strangely enough, after the Hulk and Abomination tore Harlem apart, Ross sohow avoided punishnt entirely and eventually climbed even higher politically.
Drex still wasn't sure how that happened.
But it was useful inspiration.
As for turning Ross into Red Hulk and placing him inside Deathwing?
Waste of talent.
Far better to help Ross beco Secretary of State instead.
That would be far more valuable to Drex in the long run.
Ross lay down on the experintal platform.
Drex put on multiple layers of protective gear.
Gamma radiation itself couldn't really harm him, but he had no interest in exposing his Kryptonian cells to unnecessary mutation risks either.
Better safe than mutated into sothing bizarre.
Then the gamma bombardnt began.
Ross scread imdiately.
The pain was indescribable.
His immune system collapsed almost instantly under the radiation assault.
Cells died by the millions.
Cancerous growths spread throughout his body at horrifying speed.
Large portions of his flesh began partially liquefying beneath the overwhelming gamma exposure.
The sight was nauseating.
Drex watched carefully.
Honestly, he suspected Emil Blonsky's Abomination had turned out comparatively weak because Blonsky only received the serum itself rather than proper gamma saturation afterward.
At the sa ti, this process demanded extre willpower.
If the subject lost consciousness, the transformation would fail completely.
Ross clenched his teeth hard enough to crack them.
Even as his body deteriorated into sothing barely recognizable, he refused to give up.
Because Drex Valen was still standing beside him calmly.
Which ant the situation remained under control.
And Drex truly did have control over it.
Under his enhanced vision, Ross' destroyed immune system and cellular structures began rebuilding themselves at impossible speed.
Not rely recovering.
Evolving.
Every regenerated cell beca vastly stronger than before while simultaneously storing terrifying concentrations of gamma radiation.
An ordinary human touching even a trace amount of that energy would probably suffer the equivalent of walking through Chernobyl during the ltdown.
Then Ross' skin turned red.
His body rapidly expanded.
Muscle swelled.
Bones thickened.
Thunderbolt Ross beca the Red Hulk.
Unlike the Green Hulk, Red Hulk didn't grow infinitely stronger through rage.
Instead, anger increased his thermal output.
The angrier he beca, the hotter his body grew.
At the sa ti, Red Hulk could absorb radiation and other forms of energy directly to increase his own power.
Gamma radiation.
Cosmic radiation.
Potentially far more.
The more energy he absorbed, the stronger he beca.
Drex reinforced Ross' psyche with telepathy during the transformation process, preventing the birth of a separate Hulk personality while quietly embedding psychic safeguards deep within his consciousness.
Ross barely noticed.
He was too overwheld by the sheer force flooding through his body.
Power.
Endless power.
He flexed instinctively.
The restraints around his wrists and ankles should have snapped instantly.
Instead...
Nothing happened.
Red Hulk paused.
Then pulled harder.
Still nothing.
His expression shifted.
Impossible.
He was the Red Hulk.
Ross strained with everything he had, muscles bulging violently as the entire laboratory trembled.
The tal platform didn't move even a milliter.
"Pointless," Drex said calmly. "This is a new alloy I developed. Even the Hulk couldn't break it."
Ever since mastering electromagnetism and gravity manipulation, tallurgy had beco absurdly simple for him.
To Drex, tal wasn't solid matter anymore.
It was visible molecular architecture.
He could fuse, restructure, and rearrange tallic compounds at will.
Even vibranium could now be artificially synthesized.
Adamantium?
No longer indestructible.
Drex could simply rewrite its molecular structure directly.
Even the original Kryptonian alloy he brought from the DC universe was no longer impossible to reproduce.
He had already reconstructed the missing molecular components through electromagnetic analysis.
This experintal platform itself was forged from vibranium and original Kryptonian tal.
Most mbers of the Hulk family would remain trapped permanently once restrained on it.
Ross slowly cald down.
Should he really expect anything less from Drex Valen?
The man had developed alloys capable of restraining the Hulk itself.
For the first ti, Ross wondered if gamma monsters were already becoming obsolete.
At Drex's command, the experintal platform suddenly dissolved into billions of nanomachines.
Ross regained his freedom instantly.
The nanomachines then reassembled nearby into a towering machine crackling with arcs of electricity.
Red Hulk narrowed his eyes.
"What is that?"
"An electromagnetic generator," Drex answered casually. "In case you suddenly decide attacking sounds like a good idea."
Of course, Drex wasn't about to solve problems by physically punching Ross unconscious himself.
The fewer people who understood how terrifying his personal combat ability truly was, the better.
Electromagnetism and gravity manipulation were already more than enough.
"You think that machine can stop ?" Ross asked, eager to test himself.
"If I were you," Drex replied, "I wouldn't challenge a scientist capable of controlling magnetism and gravity."
Then he smiled faintly.
"But feel free to try."
At the sa ti, he theatrically equipped a pair of nanomachine gloves.
Completely unnecessary, of course.
But deceiving non-scientists was easy.
If Ross believed Drex required equipnt to manipulate electromagnetic force, all the better.
Ross' challenge wasn't stupidity.
He simply wanted to prove sothing.
To prove to this arrogant super-genius that Hulk-level power exceeded even his expectations.
Red Hulk lunged forward with one massive hand.
Then he saw Drex smile.
Blinding white light erupted instantly.
Wild arcs of electricity burst outward, whipping through the laboratory like living serpents while violent winds spiraled through the air.
Ripples spread across space itself.
Monts later, the electrical storm compressed inward, condensing into a dense sphere of destructive plasma floating above Drex's palm.
The energy inside it was terrifying.
Residual shockwaves alone shredded the surrounding air and distorted space into twisting black lines.
Red Hulk frowned.
He didn't fully understand what he was seeing.
Still, instinct scread that sothing around him had changed.
At the last second, Ross abandoned the idea of catching the plasma sphere and stepped aside instead.
The glowing mass drifted downward slowly before touching the floor.
BZZZZZZZZZZ—
A deafening hum exploded across the laboratory.
The plasma spread into the ground beneath them.
Drex's fingers traced a strange arc through the air.
Then he clenched his fist.
Instantly, the vibrations stopped.
But the entire area had changed.
This section of space no longer belonged to the outside world.
It belonged to Drex.
His personal domain.
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