Spider-Man’s Great Wisdom (Part Two)

Entering Stark Tower, Dr. Connors still walked at a rapid pace. Peter trailed behind them and said, "All right, Doctor, I’ve gotten you safely here. There shouldn’t be any danger inside Stark Tower, so I’ll be going now. I still have things to do…"

"Things to do? Of course you have things to do! What, are you planning to put on that strange skintight suit again and go swinging around?"

"I’m not just swinging around. That monster is wreaking havoc downtown. I have to stop him…"

"But hasn’t Stark already gone? Do you think he can’t beat that monster?"

"Uh, no, but he has to need help, right?"

"I need help too. Put down your backpack, put on a full set of lab clothes, and come into the laboratory with me. To solve this trouble, we ultimately have to start with the serum."

"But I have to join the fight. I can’t just be a deserter, can I?"

Dr. Connors stopped. He turned, held Peter by the shoulders, looked him in the eyes, and said seriously, "The battlefield isn’t necessarily out there."

He pointed out the window and said, "The most important lesson I learned during my military career was that a battlefield isn’t only where bullets are flying."

"Sometimes, here…" Dr. Connors pointed at the ground beneath their feet. "This is a more important battlefield than that."

"You need to understand that throwing punches has never been nobler than using your brain."

"You need to figure this out: beating that monster up won’t turn him into a good man who helps others, and the military won’t stop their evil experimental programs. If you want to solve all this at its root, strength alone isn’t enough. You have to use your brain."

"But what am I supposed to do? I don’t understand…"

Peter took the initiative to follow Dr. Connors onward, saying as he walked, "This is what I’ve always done—stopping bad guys from hurting people. What’s wrong with that?"

"There’s nothing wrong with it, but I think you can always do better."

"Peter, maybe that mutation in your body, that immense power you suddenly gained, made you feel like you went from weak to strong. It made you feel like you could change the world through that change."

"But in reality, even without that mutation, you could still do it."

"Haven’t you realized it yet? You’re a genius. Even without this great strength and abundant stamina, even if you just went through college step by step and entered a research institute, sooner or later, you could change the world."

"Your mutation only accelerated that process. It isn’t everything. You need to break free from that inflated emotion and think about who you really are."

"Who am I? I’m Spider-Man…"

"That’s true, but you’re also Peter Parker."

Dr. Connors entered the room and pointed at the lab bench. "See? This is your battlefield too. Here, you’ll do better than Spider-Man. Here, you can change the world too."

Peter stood in the doorway, rocking up onto his toes before rubbing his hands together. "Really? But… but no one has ever said that to me. They all think I’m weak, bad at sports, always alone, some antisocial freak…"

"Do the people who gave you those evaluations have three doctoral degrees?"

"Uh, they’re just high school students. Of course they don’t."

"Then who do you think you should believe?"

Peter hesitated.

After a while, he said, "All right."

Connors’s affirmation gave him quite a bit of courage. He rubbed his wrists hard and said, "Then I can give it a try. I won’t be Spider-Man today. Let Spider-Man take a day off. We’ll stay here and… do this…"

As Connors organized the materials, he said, "That’s more like it. He’ll have even more days off in the future. New York doesn’t need another superhero swinging around in midair, but this world will always be short of a Nobel Prize candidate."

"I think Peter Parker can take a day off too. I really do like swinging around over New York," Peter said with a shrug, as though a weight had been lifted from him.

This was the first time someone had told him that Peter Parker was more important than Spider-Man.

Originally, all the confidence he had gained came from being Spider-Man, the identity that possessed great power. After all, he had faced plenty of discrimination at school before, while Spider-Man, who could use great power to help others, had given his life meaning.

But he felt that Dr. Connors made a lot of sense. The people who looked down on him and excluded him were merely a group of high school students who had not even gone to college. Meanwhile, the people who affirmed Peter’s identity now had a combined total of seven or eight doctoral degrees. Peter was no fool. Comparing the two, these people were obviously more credible.

He had always known that his mind worked well. He could get excellent grades without putting much effort into studying.

But he had never thought about what changes he could bring to the world with his intellect.

That was also why he had been so excited after gaining the power of Spider Mutation. He had felt that he had gone from weak to strong, without ever considering that he had never been weak in the first place.

Peter actually had even more strengths. Even without such an intelligent mind or powerful abilities, his kindness and determination would have been enough for him to achieve something worthwhile in ordinary society.

Children his age were always full of fantasies about the future, yet also uncertain. When someone gave him such a firm answer, and the people giving him that answer had all achieved the very pinnacle in their respective fields, Peter chose to believe them.

Meanwhile, Stark, who had already arrived at the battlefield, had run into quite a bit of trouble. This Red Iguana, as Stark called him, was even more troublesome than the Lizardman.

First, he was even bigger than the Lizardman. He stood over ten meters tall, as tall as a building.

Second, he possessed Superhuman Strength. A casual punch could topple a building, and worse still, he seemed to be in a berserk state, nearly devoid of reason and capable only of charging and smashing wildly.

Stark originally liked dealing with brainless enemies like this, because Jarvis’s intelligent calculations could outmatch them tactically and make Stark’s victories easier.

But this Red Iguana, though mindless, was deadly because of his enormous size and immense power. Even if all he could do was charge and throw punches, that was enough to be fatal.

Moreover, the Lizardman had only appeared a few days ago, and Stark’s armor upgrades took time. He had only just come up with some ideas for handling giant monsters and had not yet put them into practice when another hulking brute appeared. It left Stark rather annoyed. His current lightweight armor was not well suited to this kind of enemy.

As Stark considered his tactics, a gleaming shield flew in and struck the monster squarely in the forehead, knocking him stumbling backward.

The moment Stark saw Steve, his expression darkened. He had not forgotten how Steve had used the excuse of driving out Venom to beat him up badly, then refused to admit it afterward, insisting it had been for Stark’s own good.

Stark hated it most when people spoke to him in the tone of an elder. He hated it even more when someone beat him up first and then spoke to him that way. What he hated most of all was when that person, after beating him up, could then beat an even tougher enemy and make Stark look useless.

Steve retrieved his shield, leaped up, and landed directly on the monster’s neck before delivering two hard punches.

The brain was an important organ for any living creature. After taking two blows like that, the monster was dazed for a moment. Seizing the chance, Steve hurled his shield at the monster’s right calf. The monster recoiled from the pain, drawing back his leg, and Steve rammed him from the side, sending the creature crashing to the ground.

"Thank you, Tony. Other than you, I’ve never fought anything this huge before. You’ve given me a lot of experience."

Jarvis said inside Stark’s armor, "Your heart rate is excessively high, and your blood pressure is elevated. Please calm down and take a deep breath…"

Stark said, "Activate the Hive Plan. Immediately! Right now!"

"Are you certain you wish to disengage all safety locks and…"

"I’m certain! Activate it now!!"

In the middle of the fight, Steve looked up and saw Stark hovering in the air with one arm raised. He waved his hand, and countless shrieks of tearing air rang out. Dozens of black dots appeared overhead, arriving above the battlefield in an instant. They were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of armored suits.

Stark said, "Move aside, you antique!"

In an instant, one armored suit dived down and exploded directly. Red Iguana was blasted back several steps, while Steve flew backward with his shield raised. He waved a fist and said, "Stop firing on friendlies! You did that on purpose!"

Stark smiled. "You misunderstand. I was only doing it for your own good."

Stark waved his hand again, and more than a dozen armored suits flew over to surround the monster. Then, in an instant, high-voltage currents burst between them, forming an electrical net. After a violent flash, the monster let out an astonishing scream and was electrocuted straight into the ground.

Stark said, "This move really is good, but I think it still has room for improvement. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t record the inspiration for it as coming from that yellow-furred rat called Pikachu. He blew up my armor with electricity, and I still haven’t made him pay compensation."

Though the monster had been knocked down for the moment, he soon climbed back to his feet. Stark said with a headache, "He must be related to that giant lizard somehow. What the hell is with their Self-Healing abilities?"

Indeed, the charred scars left by the electrical attack had fully healed in just a few minutes. His stamina also seemed to recover quickly. After Captain America had just beaten him up, he was soon bouncing around again and resuming his destruction.

The two of them had more than enough offensive power, but without Spider-Man, they lacked some means of control. Spider-Man’s webbing was very effective against giant monsters like this, easily throwing off their balance or tripping them. Just as Stark was about to make a call, Jarvis informed him that Peter was conducting experiments with Dr. Connors.

He immediately cut off the communication without saying anything.

Just as the battle became increasingly intense, a red-and-blue figure suddenly appeared over the city. Peter swung over at high speed and kicked the monster in the back, knocking him flat onto the ground.

He carried a case in his hand. Tossing it to Stark, he said, "This is the antidote. Inject it directly. Give him all five doses, and the world will be quiet again."

Stark tossed the case to an armored suit nearby and said as he flew, "This is your research result?"

"No, it was mainly Dr. Connors. I was just helping."

"Then it’s your research result."

As he spoke, under Stark’s control, that armored suit opened the case, took out the syringes, and distributed them to several other suits. Steve drew the monster’s attention while several armored suits ambushed him from behind and injected the medicine.

The monster began screaming wildly and stretched out his arms, struggling nonstop. But before long, his body began shrinking smaller and smaller until he quickly returned to the size of an ordinary human.

Stark saw that the man lying on the ground had no arms. He sighed and said to Jarvis, "Send an armored suit to take him away. If anyone asks, tell them he was blown to pieces."

He saw Spider-Man standing atop a building. Stark flew over and stood beside him, then asked, "How does it feel when Peter Parker saves the world?"

"Great. I mean… it was amazing!"

Peter let out a breath, as if he had suddenly cast off some kind of burden.

For the first time, he had gained confidence in his true identity. This confidence was not founded on the great power Spider Mutation had given him, but burst forth from Peter Parker’s own character.

It was not as though he had never wondered what he would do if his Spider Mutation were only a Dream, if the power vanished the next day.

In fact, he had spent many days living in that doubt and fear. He was afraid of losing that identity. He felt that the world could not do without Spider-Man.

But today, for the first time, Peter felt that perhaps the world needed not only Spider-Man, but Peter Parker as well. It needed him—the him without any special powers.

"Wisdom is humanity’s greatest wealth." Stark did not look at him, instead staring ahead as he said, "Don’t set your sights on being a street hero. The path of wisdom is endless."

Peter smiled. He removed his mask as though breaking free from shackles.

His hair fluttered ceaselessly in the breeze. He saw the magnificent sunset clouds at the edge of the sky, saw the sun’s final brilliant radiance sink beneath the horizon—

He saw the gateway to a new world.