Sama pulled Tremble out of my palm for the tenth time, and I tilted my head as the same wound closed again, flexing my fingers. “Thanks. I like to Meditate down there as I pull in the juice, but it’s getting ridiculous.”

There were over four hundred Duplicates having fun on alternate worlds now, and they were all dipping into the Pocket. Feeding a bunch of Ten Cores was not simple, and their numbers were only going up!

It was Sama’s and Briggs’ fault for exploiting my ability to do that, so prevailing upon them to solve the energy supply problem now that Sama had proven she could do so wasn’t out of line at all.

Sama gave me a hairy eyeball, shaking her head. “You know I’m perfectly aware of how much energy I just gave you, right?”

“About equal to Rigel, I think?” Split across all sorts of subtypes, of course... every type of energy I could bring up, as a matter of fact. “You want me to expand access to the Pocket Space...”

Well, having access to a blue supergiant star’s equivalent of energy was a little high for even my needs, right?

She nodded. “Having to draw energy to power up Cores is a massive time suck, and in the end creates a dependency on the power supply. The only readily available supply we can use is the M’Krann, and that requires hooking up to it. I don’t want to be dependent on the mood swings of the Phoenix, although if history is any guide, we’d have to really piss it off for it to change its mind.”

“Freeing you up to use the M’Krann Crystal for other things.” I understood the viewpoint. “The problem is that the whole concept of the Pocket Space is based off Carol’s Flare hole and my dimensional connection from our version of it. My Dupes and Clones have the connection because I have it. I... am not sure how to open that connection to others. Moreover, allowing it to be done automatically.”

“Could you work with the Nova Force and find a way?” she asked calmly.

I went over the math of that. It was a lot of math, heady ten-dimensional stuff that sent my brains into pleasant overdrive.

I blinked. “Huh.” Well, what do you know?

“Yesssss?” Sama drawled out.

I shared the math with her. She followed it through, admittedly slower than I did, but she still hacked it. “Oh, that’s a decent start...”

A way for anyone, even someone with an existing Core, to get an Ultra Core... if they hit Twenty-One and Eternal/Legendary. It was basically a form of Create Legendary Wondrous Item... out of yourself. The Alchemy on it was pretty damn involved, too, but it could be DONE.

It meant the Super-Soldiers, Mutants, and Mutates all had hopes of getting an Ultra Core, if they could make it to their Road to the Eternal. Getting non-mortal was going to come with a significant upgrade now!

Celestial-imbued Eternals could go take a flying jump now...

“Go down this line.” She pointed out more equations, and I focused on those, and began to spin them out, focusing and bringing in a lot more Lore and understanding from different Skills that was relevant for what they were doing...

“Oh.” Sama smiled wickedly at my discovery, confirming what she’d expected. “Well, damn.”

Legendary Ultra Cores were possible. The Stat and Skill reqs, the power requirements to fill them, Eternal-Class all the way... “That’s like an excuse for most beings to explode,” I muttered, looking at the physical and mental needs to hold a Core like that. “Everything mental beyond 30, natural Constitution and Strength hitting 50...”

At a glance, it was probably something similar to what Thanos had done, and why he was vastly stronger than even the pure-born, experienced Celestial Eternals he was descended from.

“This is going to sound crazy, but could a god do it?” Sama asked me calmly.

I inhaled slowly, staring at all the math, bringing in everything I knew of Divine energy and physiques. “...Yes. It would be no different from Galactus granting a god the Power Cosmic, from a real standpoint, which we both know can be done. I’m not sure how much will stack, I only know that it will. They aren’t going to be immune to the Stat Reqs, however. This is us designing a starter Eternal Core, not something bestowed by a billions-year-old not-totally-finite Entity.”

It would also instantly create a god equal to the local Skyfathers, wielding a cosmic edge most of them did not have.

She wanted it as an option for Hercules. If he ever wanted to get out from under his twat of a father and stepmother, and his family in general, it was probably what he would have to do.

Thor had the Odinpower coming at some point. He wouldn’t need this.

Herc’s lightning resistance training under Ursula had been going on quietly for years now. It had broadened over time to include all sorts of other energies, allowing Hercules to learn how to send Strength up to defy anything and everything, expanding his natural Olympian invulnerability.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It didn’t make him equal to Primus, of course, but Hercules was much more unstoppable than he had been only five years ago, especially to Divine energy and attacks, and his self-recuperative abilities likewise.

Lightning... would barely even slow him down, now. If he had ever to face his dad’s thunderbolts, Zeus was going to get an unpleasant surprise.

Ursula had also introduced him to Uhura, who was managing all the production and operation sides of our companies, where DiDi handled the financials and legal matters. Hercules, as it turned out, had some substantial business investments, and a lot of money due to his age and that old times-interest-compounded thing. Hercules had been eager to invest in everything we were doing, and Uhura had been happy to have the God of Strength’s additional insight along to help us out. Strong companies and weak companies still involved strength, after all...

Then she had snuck up to Olympus, Godmerged with Hebe, and brought Hercules’ wife back down to Terra.

Hebe was very much a traditional Greek wife in many respects... but she also came from a warrior culture. Uhura was among my much less violent and action-oriented Dupes, but she was a zealous defender and manager of our businesses, wealth, and employees. Having the Greek goddess of Fidelity on board only helped matters, and she and the goddess complemented one another wonderfully, Hebe totally buying into the picture of the working corporate wife and woman in ways no mere mortal truly could.

It also meant Hercules didn’t need to worry about sleeping with his half-sister anymore. Even if he adored Hebe and admired her faithfulness to him, it had never been something he could tolerate.

Uhura, on the other hand...

With his wife there to manage his household and cheer for him, it could be said that Hercules had completed the dream of a Greek warrior. If he stayed on the Coast with the Champions to keep up the image, since he and Sama were literally the mainstays of the group, that was absolutely fine. Uhura could visit on a whim, or bring him home to do so...

He had been out in Badoon space with a bunch of Whoberis Emerald Corps showing their disapproval of the Badoon raiding the Liggramates when he took his Melee Level to Twenty-One, and then ticked over his Olympian Level to Sixteen. He was long since Astral Warded, and there was no way his siblings or elders could detect the sudden improvement.

Upon his return, he had sat down with Briggs, Sama, the White Bear, Tchernoborg, and Perrun to talk about some greater duties and responsibilities as his power quietly grew. As the only Olympian god with an active and growing worship base, even if all the power of Faith in him was split between his followers (incidentally aiding in the growth of his worship base), it meant his power was quietly swelling, and eventually would draw attention from multiple pantheons.

He was going to have to step up a bit and start taking on some Divine responsibilities of his own. Given where he worked, that probably meant working with a lot of the Tribal Spirits, so he and Sama were going to have a sit-down with them, too. Indeed, Hercules spent a lot of time visiting various pantheons and getting to know the younger gods... or at least the more sociable or roguish among them.

Of course, he was the student of Sama Rantha, and even the old and snobbish pantheons proud of their spiritual heritage, fighting skills, and knowledge had to tread very warily around him. Sama had made a point of visiting their greatest fighters over time, and Briggs had occasionally stopped in on other pantheons whose members got a little overly defensive against him. The champions who had faced the two before said nothing, but they were likely all very happy to realize they’d gotten off easily after they saw Sama slice a Celestial in two...

“I have another question.” I grimaced at her words before she went any further, and she just smiled harder. “This ability you have to Duplicate someone into your doubles. You can do that with almost anyone?”

I sighed. “Yes. If you Unimerged someone into Madrox, he could potentially do the same.”

“Do you get their powers?” she asked directly, her eyes narrowed.

“Potentially, yeah, that’s how a Merger works. However, everything about powers with me has to be supported by my Ultra Core. The energy to support those powers has to be there, they aren’t exactly discretionary modular nodes I can fill up anytime I care to. So, for example, the ten Strontian Guards. I have the potential for a Strontian physique, except it has no Core support, and a lot of it won’t stack regardless, plus all the energy that supports that capability I Duped out back into them, so they didn’t start with empty Ten Cores.

“They still have to rebuild to that level of power, but a full Ten Core rivals the power of a Gladiator Strontian if they refine it enough.

“Each such powerset would need its own level of refined energy to comply with how the Core works. So, yes, I could do so, but when you start allocating power that broadly, it starts placing a lot of stress on the Core itself.

“I’m not a mutant with a wildly flexible Core that can expand in all directions and accommodate all those powers simultaneously, like a Rogue-type power absorber could, nor a poly-talent that can switch back and forth between all those powers. A Core doesn’t work that way.”

“But you could effectively create unlimited basic doubles of yourself, as long as each has their own soul?” she inquired directly.

I clenched my teeth. “Yes.”

“What level of capability do they default to?” she asked reasonably, understandably interested in this. It was like Cloning, with only upsides!

“Roughly something like 30/30/30 Strength, Con, Dex. Improved vitality, poison resistance/immunity, radiation immunity, accelerated healing, decent senses. No true psionic ability. Strength-centered Spider Damage Reduction against blunt forces, accelerated reflexes.

“And an empty Ten Core, with a link to the Pocket.”

She arched an eyebrow. “NONE of the other stuff?” she asked archly, giving me a head-to-toe once-over. I was in Wrecker mode, kind of my default of living up to my internet image, which was ‘short’ for me. Golden Child form was just too much.

“Nope. They can pick up Superspeed Flight earlier than a default Core, since it’s part of my Core potential via the Widow in the Web, but they still have to work up to it.

“The stuff I get from my Duplicates doesn’t transfer to other Duplicates or Clones. So, for instance, I don’t get any of Kwannon’s mutant psychic ability on a ‘real’ basis; it’s powered by Cosmic energy from the Core, my own psionic ability is as stable as a Primos. Storm’s weather control ability is the same way, just another Core use because she’s a partial Duplicate, just like Kwannon. It kind of operates as an extended form of Sersi’s Matter Manipulation, actually.”