"Boss, you are interested in Professor Connors and Doctor Otto's experiments?"
Norman guessed where this was going.
He remembered the grand slate Amano Ren had sketched: beauty elixirs, anti-aging serum, limb-regrowth therapy, and anti-cancer drugs.
Any one of those would drive the world mad.
No woman refuses eternal youth, no tycoon refuses more years, and no amputee turns away from a new life with a regrown limb.
Certainly no cancer patient refuses a cure.
Those four groups print money.
We are talking hundreds of billions, even trillions.
If Oscorp brings them to market, outpacing Stark Industries is not a problem.
Energy has huge potential, but so does biomed.
Humanity longs for the stars, yet longs even more for longevity and health.
People can skip spaceflight, but they cannot resist a longer life.
That is human nature.
And while Tony Stark has made a major breakthrough in energy, he has not handed out suits or reactor tech.
He reversed the slide after shutting down weapons and surged ahead, but constraints remain.
Once a real healing potion appears, Oscorp can spar with Stark again.
Amano Ren did not deny it. "Felicia, schedule Professor Connors and Doctor Otto at my convenience. Tell them Oscorp's new chairman and president is very interested in their research."
Felicia nodded, taking notes with spotless professionalism, listening when she should and staying silent when she should.
The empty calendar made her privately note that Amano Ren's schedule did not seem busy.
Norman's, by contrast, was booked past midnight for the next week.
Watching Norman Osborn serve to the bone for Amano Ren was surreal.
As former chairman he had lost all equity, stayed on as CEO under Amano's proxy, earned less, worked more, and barely touched the ground.
He was not dejected at all, but bright-eyed and grinding.
A born draft horse.
"Then I will have my secretary coordinate with Secretary Felicia," Norman added. "She can help."
They walked into Oscorp's Bio Research Division.
Led by a flock of lab coats, Amano Ren stood before the so-called thirteen super spiders.
"Boss, this one is a funnel-weaver. It spins a funnel that rivals steel cable and is a prime research target."
"If we can replicate this silk and take it into textiles, construction, aerospace, shipbuilding, the profits will be substantial."
The researcher pitched hard, clearly eager to impress the new and old bosses and win more funding.
Ren skimmed the briefs.
This spider's silk eclipsed prior lines across metrics.
Its sensory range was stronger as well.
He had already tested that smelting a stronger variant of a species boosted his parallel ability.
Such traits stacked and enhanced.
In other words, his smelting had no ceiling. Only the inputs did.
What he gained depended on the strength of the target's functional traits.
He already had Spider Sense, but it was basic.
Some Spider-Men had premonitions that were practically prophecy.
His gaze slid to an electron microscope nearby.
Could that be smelted too?
Optical microscopes, electron microscopes, telescopes, astronomical scopes.
Even special metals - vibranium, Uru, adamantium.
Amano Ren fell into thought.
He had tried to think boldly about developing the Forge, yet he was still far from exhausting it.
A few idle ideas had exposed a huge seam of potential.
When all of those properties converge in one person...
The scalp tingles just imagining it.
Not truly omniscient and omnipotent, but close enough to a diluted version.
Seeing him lost in thought, Norman cut the researcher short.
Silence fell for orders.
Ren came back to himself, eyes hot.
"Felicia, tell Finance and Purchasing to cooperate. Increase the budget. Let our diligent researchers push new lines."
"As for these..."
He swept a hand. "Take them all."
The lab head lit up. More budget meant better pay.
Dreams might finally scale.
Thirteen spiders were nothing to him.
"You heard him. Pack all the spiders."
"Stop," Ren said. "I mean everything - the electron microscopes and the other instruments too."
"...Huh?"
If you take everything, how do we research?
Are we being thrown out?
"Is this our only lab?" Ren asked.
"Of course not," Norman said, snapping from his daze. "Move to the lab next door and continue the next phase. Pack this room completely."
The researchers gaped.
What on earth.
Norman did not know either, but he knew this much - Amano Ren spoke and he moved.
Even if the instruments cost over nine figures, he would grit his teeth and crate them.
He was already thinking who to tap for funding.
Looked like his calendar would get busier.