"Boss, we need to deal with the water supply."
Jadre came looking for Zod.
"Water supply?"
Zod had never worried about food or drink and had no idea what shortage Jadre was talking about.
"The ranch needs a lot of water. The underground source we've been using is nearly dried up. If we don't find a solution, we'll have to start buying water. But…"
He didn't finish the sentence, though Zod already understood the implication.
They were barely twenty kilometers from the U.S.–Mexico border. This region crawled with smugglers and traffickers. Beyond that stretched a vast desert—scorching year-round, with no natural rainfall to speak of.
Zod followed Jadre to inspect the ranch's old groundwater well. Inside, barely a meter of water remained.
"To fix the supply issue, we'd need at least a million dollars. And even then, there's no groundwater left in this area," Jadre sighed. Otherwise, this 1,000-acre ranch wouldn't have rotted in his hands. Unlike the picturesque farms with lakes and forests that drew tourists while selling a token amount of produce, Jadre's father and grandfather had run a strictly agricultural operation. There was nothing scenic here—just land, crops, and drought.
Buying water would become a long-term money pit, especially in a region where every drop was precious.
In drought-ridden Texas, a steady water source from a reservoir could boost crop yields and even sell water externally.
The past few years had been brutal—64% of the state was in drought, and back in 2011 it had reached a staggering 98%. Reservoirs across Texas averaged only 65% capacity.
Zod considered the problem. According to Jadre, even hiring a professional excavation team likely wouldn't help. They had already surveyed the area before; shallow groundwater simply didn't exist. Deep groundwater was possible… but the engineering and financial cost would be astronomical.
He decided to handle it himself.
Zod rose straight into the air. Jadre froze, wide-eyed. He'd long suspected his boss wasn't ordinary, but watching him fly was another matter entirely. Without mutants in this world, Jadre didn't descend into panic—just watched his understanding of reality collapse in real time.
Suspended in midair, Zod activated his x-ray vision, piercing through layers of earth.
Nothing here.Nothing there.
He circled nearly the entire ranch before finally spotting a deep underground water vein.
Good. Now came the hard part—digging it out.
Zod chose heat vision. First, his heat vision had evolved enough to melt steel. Second… well, Superman had done this countless times before.
Blazing red beams speared into the earth, the temperature rising as soil and rock melted away. Bathed in fierce sunlight, Zod felt energy surge through him, sustaining his output.
His heat vision worked far faster than any construction crew. After a nonstop thirty-minute blast, the laser bored more than a hundred meters down and punched directly into the underground water vein. The sudden exposure of superheated air ignited instantly—triggering a violent explosion.
Massive amounts of earth liquefied into molten rock. When it finally settled, a gaping crater more than 160 meters across yawned at their feet, its bottom nowhere in sight.
The severed water vein roared upward, flooding the crater with a churning surge of muddy water.
Jadre rubbed his temples. It was too much. If he'd been an old man instead of middle-aged, he might've had a heart attack.
What had started as a water shortage ended with the birth of a massive artificial lake. Once the murky sediment settled, the lake turned clear and blue—so bright under the sun it almost hurt to look at.
"This lake holds at least two million cubic meters. We'll never need to worry about water again, right?"
Zod's x-ray vision showed the water vein stretching endlessly. Even centuries of use wouldn't exhaust it.
…
Jadre's ranch quickly became lively. With a new reservoir on the property, ranchers from all over Texas came to buy water. Zod unexpectedly acquired a new income stream.
He made tens of thousands of dollars a day. For the first time, he realized just how outrageously expensive water could be.
Soon, Zod decided to invest that money into starting a company.
In America, the most profitable industries weren't an option—too complicated, too messy, or he lacked the expertise.
He wanted something simple. So he reached out to the Midnight Hotel for help.
The Midnight Hotel staff were baffled by Zod's request but handled everything flawlessly.
The result: "Sky-Veil Health Supplements, Inc."
That's right—Zod was going into the supplement business. Vitamins, beauty pills, the usual miracle claims.
Don't underestimate supplements. In the U.S., they made more money than powder or ice—second only to weapons.
For reasons no one fully understood, Americans were obsessed with supplements. The average person spent thousands of dollars a year. They downed vitamins the way they ate meals. And best of all, supplements faced almost no regulation. No FDA approval. No oversight.
Which meant that even if Zod sold them a bottle of nonsense, they'd happily pay.
The problem? The supplement market in America was already carved up. Without backing, newcomers were swallowed whole.
That's why Zod chose the Midnight Hotel—to avoid unnecessary complications.
Still, Zod had standards. He wouldn't produce the usual harmless-but-useless junk. As a Kryptonian scientist—even if this wasn't his specialty—it wasn't difficult for him to create something genuinely beneficial. The human body only needed certain things; the "deficiency-so-you-must-supplement" myth wasn't entirely accurate, but he could still formulate something effective.
In the U.S., supplements averaged around $70 a bottle. Zod priced his product—Vitamin ∞—at $300 a bottle. He had already set up the production facility. All he needed were workers to run the assembly lines.
The Midnight Hotel had truly outdone themselves.
Zod placed Vitamin ∞ in major New York pharmacies, spending several million dollars greasing palms and securing shelf space. He even hired a famous Hollywood actress for a slick ad campaign.
"Your body needs three thousand milligrams of vitamins every day—and just one Vitamin ∞ capsule meets your entire daily requirement!"
"Vitamin ∞—we can't guarantee it cures fatigue, aging, or disease, but it will make your body feel better!"
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