Of course, those hundred thousand people were not all symbiote-suited killers or beast-forms. Most of the numbers ca from the absorbed HYDRA network.
But Drex Valen had already begun digesting that portion of HYDRA. In North Arica alone, nearly ninety percent of it had already collapsed into World Serpent's hands.
At the sa ti, the HYDRA agents working inside S.H.I.E.L.D. kept feeding Drex information. Their orders were to watch everything connected to Blade Technology Industries and the Superhero Association, from personnel to industrial chains, and search for any crack, any thread, any weakness.
Drex was not surprised that S.H.I.E.L.D. was investigating those two organizations.
After all, Heracles had already beco a wanted man.
Not publicly. Not in a way anyone could admit out loud.
But behind closed doors, the hunt had already begun.
Ross, who had already climbed to the position of Secretary of State and seed likely to go even further, relayed Arica's decision to Drex.
The United States would not tolerate Heracles' border-crossing stunt. They intended to crush the example he had set, no matter the cost, because they could not allow other superheroes to even consider doing the sa thing.
If one superhero decided to "execute justice" and wiped out a capitalist family, what then?
If another decided to "execute justice" and deleted an entire politician's bloodline, what then?
Politicians and capitalists knew exactly what kind of people they were. That was why they were terrified of what the superhero community might think of them if Heracles beca the precedent.
From the combat power superheroes had already displayed, conventional armies were almost laughable in comparison.
The standard for a B-Class hero was simple: they had to be able to ignore light weapons, either by tanking the hits or dodging them altogether.
And right now, the Superhero Association already had more than a hundred B-Class heroes.
To prevent this rapidly growing group from ever turning into a force that could rise above governnts, the United Nations had already decided to sanction Heracles.
As for the charge itself?
That was easy. If they wanted a cri, they would find one.
Unfortunately for them, Heracles would never appear in public again.
He only ca out when needed. Most of the ti, Drex kept him in the underwater base.
Heracles' rampage also brought more than just S.H.I.E.L.D. surveillance.
Tony Stark ca sniffing around too, fishing for answers in that infuriatingly indirect way of his.
He suspected Heracles was so superhero who had not joined the Superhero Association and had been ordered by Drex to strike the Zandara Tribe.
That was the kind of test question Tony liked to toss out, wrapped in casual conversation and irony.
For Drex, it was easy to hear what was really being asked.
His mind worked too fast for ambiguity to survive long.
Even a genius got more breathing room than ordinary people. A superhuman brain had the luxury of multiple tis that.
So, naturally, Drex let not even a single crack show.
Tony Stark had no choice but to assu Heracles was just so independent hero who happened to pass by and find the whole thing intolerable.
Still, the world's attention did not leave the Superhero Association.
After the Heracles incident, every major governnt began preparing psychological profiles on the heroes who had already been exposed.
The Superhero Association had its own version of that system as well.
With a dedicated psych team on staff, and with every hero insisting they did not need counseling, Drex still forced them through assessnts and follow-up sessions under the logic of safety and redundancy. His version was far more detailed and professional than anything outside the organization.
And for secrecy, he had the counseling staff thoroughly brainwashed.
No amount of money, pressure, or threat would make them hand over a hero's psychological profile.
Drex also had no intention of becoming Batman and drawing up contingency plans against every superhero he knew.
That sort of thing was too easy to weaponize.
Besides, the Superhero Association was partly a public-facing shell for World Serpent's mbers.
Drex could place World Serpent operatives into the Superhero Association, dress them up as rough-edged, undereducated, impulsive heroes from society's lower rungs, and then let them act however they wanted. Anything they did would be read as an individual hero's personal choice, not as sothing connected to Drex or the organization as a whole.
In Arica, that kind of lone-wolf hero myth still sold extrely well.
More than half of the existing hundred-plus B-Class heroes were already World Serpent operatives.
Most of them were "mutants" created by Drex, though the term was more convenient than accurate. He had simply awakened their X-genes.
The catch was that these mutants were defective in a very specific way.
They were sterile.
Their DNA had also been constrained to prevent anyone from harvesting it and reverse-engineering the process.
Because if it were that easy, why would there still only be this many superheroes in 2003?
The real flood of superhero activity would not co until 2008.
That said, the fact that the Fantastic Four had appeared before Iron Man already left Drex with a headache. If this was a movie universe, then why were the Fantastic Four here?
If it was a comic universe, then why was the Ancient One a bald woman?
Drex still could not tell which universe he was standing in.
And that ant he had no reliable map of what was coming next.
He could only tighten every bolt before it loosened.
That was also why World Serpent recruited so many rcenaries, retired soldiers, and disabled veterans.
They were so of the most combat-capable humans available.
Drex had lived on Krypton for years. Deep down, his instincts still followed Kryptonian patterns of occupational selection.
As for scientists, the newest addition, the Blue Man, also known as the Leader, had not shown the kind of genius Drex wanted.
He was competent.
High-end, even.
But still only top-tier by ordinary standards.
Ivan Vanko and Anton Vanko were another matter entirely.
Father and son had done nothing but keep circling the sa old tracks in weapons research and energy developnt.
No innovation.
No real leap forward.
Everything they made was basically the sa formula dressed in different tal: big, hard, durable, and hard to kill.
Curt Connors, the Lizardman doctor, had also failed to produce any aningful advance in biological research.
In other words, World Serpent still lacked the kind of scientist Drex really needed.
And by that, he did not an a Reed Richards type, with his absurd reality-bending "I'll just think my way into a miracle" nonsense.
He did not an Tony Stark either.
What Drex wanted was an ordinary-looking researcher who could carry an entire organization on his back through sheer brilliance alone.
Back on Krypton, people like that had been everywhere.
Drex had once even considered bringing that entire sort of talent to Earth.
Then reality had laughed in his face and shut the door.
The more he thought about it, the more plausible it seed that the world itself had rejected him and shoved him into the Marvel universe because of that very ambition.
He had almost dragged a thousand Kryptonians along with him.
If that had worked, half the DC villain roster would already be dead.
Still, Drex's thoughts were shifting.
World Serpent was growing too large to remain rely an Earthbound power structure.
Once the organization went beyond the planet, it would need a new na.
Sothing louder.
Sothing grander.
A na fit to stand beside empires like Thanos' Dark Order.
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