In the morning, the strong sunlight passed through a small gap in a window. That light fell directly on the eyes of a handsome young man, who was at that moment sleeping.
"Looks like I slept a lot," — he murmured, getting up from the bed.
After getting up, he took a quick shower in the bathroom of his room and changed his clothes.
He now wore a dark, long-sleeved kimono open in the front. The kimono came down to the heel of his foot, almost dragging on the floor along with the sole of his foot. The kimono was somewhat translucent, with no patterns.
The pants he wore were white and loose at the folds, allowing for fluid movements. Its fabric was thin but resistant, similar to the fabric of the kimono.
He left his room and, outside, his personal advisor, the former emperor, was there waiting in silence.
"Good morning, my lord," — said Leo's advisor, bowing his head as Leo passed by, slowly following behind him.
"How is the inspection going for the blue star I gave the descriptions for?" — Leo questioned his advisor.
"My lord, unfortunately, solar systems are very large. We need more time to search each one, and even having eliminated all the others with less than nine planets, it is still very difficult," — the advisor responded, still closely following Leo.
"I see. I didn't expect to find it so soon anyway, especially with your short life expectancy," — Leo replied and then continued questioning, "Is my laboratory ready?"
"Yes, sir, your laboratory is complete. Do you wish to go inspect it?"
"I do. Let's go," — Leo replied to the advisor and set off toward the laboratory.
To reach the place, Leo had to take an elevator that led to the underground level of his empire.
On the way, he asked his advisor a few questions about how the empire was doing and how Angela had been acting since the previous day. The advisor answered all of Leo's questions, omitting no important information.
He first told Leo about the development of the Thraxan empire in recent weeks. The empire had been experiencing great prosperity since Leo took over and killed all the corrupt ones who were present in the imperial council or in important positions, causing many resources that were previously denied to the citizens to finally reach them.
If before Leo had less than forty percent approval from the Thraxan people, now he probably had seventy to eighty percent approval. Not that it mattered much to Leo, but it's always good to reward your subjects when necessary to avoid unnecessary setbacks like a revolt.
After the elevator arrived at the laboratory floor, a straight white corridor stretched out ahead. Following this path, a few dozen meters later, they reached the laboratory.
At the location, a metallic door opened, revealing a huge laboratory. Everything there was made with the highest Thraxan technology. Various research instruments could be seen throughout the research laboratory.
"Tales, summon all the best scientists in the empire. Now we have the highest-grade laboratory ever created on this planet, and bring me a live Thraxan. I will begin some experiments," — Leo ordered his advisor, who quickly went to fulfill his orders.
'I'll go back, get the cube, and run some tests with it on Thraxan bodies,' — Leo thought, returning the same way he had come in search of the cube.
Half an hour later, everything was ready. A live test subject that had been in prison was prepared, and the scientists were already in the laboratory, clean and dressed in contamination-proof suits.
Some guards locked the human subject onto a leather bed and completely sedated him.
"Emperor, what do you wish to do?" asked one of the scientists.
"I want to find a way to extract the cube's core energy and reuse it in my own body, or find a way to integrate the cube itself into my body," — Leo explained his thoughts to the scientists before beginning the experiments.
The scientists nodded and, together with Leo, began conducting experiments with the cube.
Hours and hours passed. All the scientists were very tired, but no significant results had been achieved.
The test subject had been slowly destroyed by the energy the cube released. His body, instead of being nourished, was slowly dried out by the cube or even lost parts of itself upon contact with the cube.
'I think now I understand why the former emperors of Thraxan never did anything similar with the cube.'
'It would be too much time spent, along with many resources, not to mention that scientists die within a few months, so they lose a large part of a research. It doesn't matter if they leave written results, the teaching from the scientist himself is much better,' — Leo thought silently.
The test subject, who was already dead, was then cleaned up by some guards who had been outside the base waiting to be called.
"My lord, I hope you're not disappointed, but it will probably take years before we can extract results from these experiments," — explained one of the scientists present.
"I understand. I wasn't expecting it to be fast anyway."
"Since the test subject is dead, you're all free for today. Tomorrow be back here at six in the morning. I'll have living subjects prepared for you every day from now on," — Leo finished, going to clean himself in the laboratory's sanitation area.
The scientists only nodded and also went to clean themselves in the laboratory's sanitation area.
It was already late when Leo was in a training area that had also been prepared for him. It had just been completed today.
He trained in the flight area, which was a giant metal circle completely closed on the sides and top. The circle extended for several hundred meters. He flew around inside it, circling the interior. He was training to the limit of his body to achieve rapid evolution.
In the series, it is known that when a Viltrumite trains his body to the limit, they evolve rapidly. And now that Leo had time, he would do this every day from now on.
While he trained, he thought silently.
'We still haven't found planet Earth, so I don't know what part of the plot I'm in. Maybe a thousand years before everything happens in the series, it's hard to know.'
'But one thing I know: I'm hardly in the future. I find it more likely that I'm in the past.'
'One of the reasons is the Thraxan technology, which seems very similar to that in the comics/series, and another is the Viltrumite tyranny.'
'But still, I need to know what part of this time I'm in to be able to devise better plans. If I had to choose, I'd prefer to be a few centuries before Mark's birth, but I think that's unlikely,' — Leo stopped thinking, landing on the ground after reaching his body's limit.
After the flight training, Leo waited a while for his body to fully recover its energy and then resumed training, moving on to hand-to-hand combat. After that, Leo proceeded to weightlifting.
In the training room, along the edges, the flight circle completely surrounded the center of the training room, and in the middle was the 500-ton weight.
Leo was, at that exact moment, lifting 500 tons with difficulty. At his side, several doctors monitored his vital signs and were ready to lock the weight machine when necessary.
After some time lifting weights, he felt extremely exhausted, but it was a great sensation. The feeling was of becoming stronger.
A few years later...
In the blink of an eye, a few years had passed like this and now Léo was 9 years old. His body had now fully developed. Standing at 1.90 meters tall, he weighed 98 kilograms of pure muscle mass, with a low body fat percentage.
His body resembled an ancient Greek sculpture. His arms were broad and strong, his legs more defined than those of professional runners, and his abdomen was formed by several abs, as if there were potatoes there. A single word could describe Léo: beautiful.
Léo's training area, 11:30 a.m...
In his training area, Léo was now lifting a massive weight of 900 tons.
After a few sets, Léo stopped weightlifting, took a towel held by a servant, and wiped his sweat.
'It seems I've reached adulthood. This is probably my limit of rapid evolution. From now on it will be much harder to achieve major improvements quickly, even if I try hard. I need real combat,' — Léo thought silently as his eyes gleamed, eager for a fight.
"Emperor, I received information that will make Your Highness very pleased!" — said a young Thraxan, apparently 18 years old, approaching Léo and shouting joyfully.
This was Léo's new advisor, Lucky. His body structure was normal, and he hadn't been Léo's advisor for long, but since childhood, he had been trained and indoctrinated to be an advisor and loyal to Léo.
He was one of the successes among the Thraxans who were part of the Phoenix Project — the same project that genetically altered Angela. To be more specific, Lucky is the only success from the advisors' branch.
Since Léo took over the empire, he has continuously improved this project. Several Thraxans were divided into branches for this project, such as the genetically modified advisor branch, the genetically modified scientist branch, and so on...
They are usually discovered as child prodigies in their respective fields and then indoctrinated. After reaching a certain body age, they are genetically modified.
Many of them died during the genetic modification process, but a small percentage succeeded in surviving these experiments. Their number could be counted on fingers — no more than 20.
This project began to make great strides when the scientists' branch managed to produce a genetically modified scientist two years ago. Since then, this scientist has gained experience and improved more and more in creating new genetically modified Thraxans.
He also managed to clarify many doubts from promising young Thraxan scientists who used to die every nine months.
It was much better than in the past. Back then, scientists didn't live long, so they couldn't pass on their knowledge to younger scientists. So the older scientists, before dying, wrote their knowledge in a book or recorded a message.
But that would never compare to receiving knowledge directly from the scientist himself. After all, the scientist reading the book might get one of his doubts answered, but would certainly be left with many other questions, making the knowledge transfer very inefficient.
"Behave according to your rank, advisor," — Léo said, his face expressionless, as it usually remained almost one hundred percent of the time.
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry." — The young man responded with an embarrassed look while correcting his posture.
A lot of time had passed for the Thraxans, so this young man behaved as if he were in front of his idol: the great emperor who changed Thraxan and granted him practically immortality.
Since Léo took the throne, they had forgotten everything Léo did to seize power and the deaths of many resistance members. After all, all the old members of the empire were already dead. It could be said that the only person who still hates Léo on Thraxan is Angela.
Everyone else lives a significantly comfortable life. Citizens work and receive according to their efforts, which leaves them quite satisfied, and those who aren't satisfied and decide to do something wrong are judged publicly and executed as an example.
Many Thraxans find this completely fair and support public executions of criminals who oppose the emperor. After all, Léo had already created a great empire without hunger, as long as one made a bit of effort not to go hungry.
"Alright, now tell me what will make me happy." — Léo ordered.
"Answering the emperor: the three genetically modified scientists have discovered a way to increase the success rate of a genetic modification," — the young advisor clarified, his eyes gleaming.
For this young Thraxan, the success of the empire was also his success.
'That's it!' — Léo thought to himself, excited by the news, showing a rare smirk.
"So, what's the success rate now?" — Léo asked, quickly returning to his monotone expression.
"Sir, our current success rate is twenty-five to thirty percent."
"Those are great news. Go to the scientists and relay my orders: from now on, focus entirely on genetic modification in the scientists' branch!" — Léo shouted, prompting his advisor to immediately run off to inform the genetically modified scientists.
'Finally, the success rate has increased. From the start, I didn't focus on modifying many scientists due to the low success percentage, which would have ended up killing many genius scientists, who are already few in number.'
'But now, with this high success rate, I can create many genetically modified scientists who, in turn, will be increasingly capable of evolving and increasing the rate of creation of genetically modified soldiers. Then I'll be able to initiate my planetary domination plan.'
'Unfortunately, the law of nature still exists. Due to the genetic modifications in the Thraxans, their capacity for fast reasoning and learning was greatly reduced. After all, they had this excellent trait because of their low life expectancy, and after losing that disadvantage, nature or the heavens had to balance things out.'
"But, regardless, their capabilities can still be several times greater than those of humans," — Léo finished, muttering to himself.