The attack on one of Umbrella Corporation's senior researchers sent shockwaves across the world.
Umbrella was furious.
The United Nations quickly beca furious too.
At that point, they almost had to be.
Nobody wanted Umbrella Corporation thinking they were involved.
Better to join the outrage imdiately than risk becoming a suspect later.
Still, the sa question echoed through every intelligence agency on Earth:
Who the hell was insane enough to target Umbrella Corporation directly?
"S.W.O.R.D. will treat this incident with the highest level of priority," Steve Rogers stated publicly. "We will ensure nothing like this happens again."
Officially, S.W.O.R.D. was assisting Umbrella in hunting down the attackers.
Unofficially, Nick Fury treated the situation like Christmas morning.
Every organization that had ever opposed Umbrella Corporation suddenly found itself under investigation.
Especially Roxxon Energy Corporation.
For years, Roxxon had flooded Umbrella with lawsuits, legal threats, and endless harassnt campaigns. Now S.W.O.R.D. agents were knocking on their doors with warrants and international authorization.
Roxxon CEO Dario Agger responded with imdiate hostility.
Under normal circumstances, people like him were difficult to touch.
Roxxon possessed private armies, advanced weapon systems, political influence, and decades of entrenched corporate power. Most governnts preferred not to provoke them.
But this ti was different.
The United Nations had quietly given Fury full backing.
Investigate whoever you want.
Anyone reckless enough to stir trouble now could be crushed without restraint.
Nick Fury wielded that authority with enthusiasm.
Figures who had been untouchable for years suddenly found themselves dragged into investigations, interrogations, frozen accounts, and criminal inquiries.
And Dario Agger?
Compared to so of the monsters Fury had spent years tolerating, he barely registered.
Besides, neither he nor Roxxon were remotely clean.
"You people actually dared to arrest ?!"
Dario roared at the S.W.O.R.D. personnel escorting him.
Nobody answered.
Dario was furious enough to transform imdiately, beco the Minotaur, and smash his way out of custody.
But he wasn't stupid.
He had studied enough superhero encounters to understand exactly how badly that could end.
If he transford now, there was a very real chance he'd end up fighting the Hulk, Red Hulk, the Thing, Abomination, Captain Arica, Iron Man… maybe worse.
The Minotaur form granted him the body of a demigod.
Unfortunately, Marvel's heavy hitters had a long history of killing things that technically counted as gods.
Best case scenario?
He got beaten unconscious.
Worst case?
He died.
That was one of the biggest differences between Marvel heroes and their DC counterparts.
Marvel's heroes were often far more willing to eliminate threats permanently rather than politely hand them over to the legal system.
Most of them operated above the law by default.
Spider-Man was one of the few exceptions.
So Dario swallowed his rage and planned revenge for later.
What he didn't know was that Nick Fury had no intention of ever giving him that opportunity.
Roxxon Energy had crossed too many lines.
Dario and his corporation were predators disguised as businessn. If profit was involved, they would poison oceans, destroy ecosystems, bankrupt cities, and bury entire populations under industrial waste without hesitation.
One of Dario's projects involved building airborne factories designed to flood surrounding regions with pollution and toxic particulates. Once property values collapsed, Roxxon would buy the land for almost nothing.
He had also pushed plans to eliminate large portions of the world's wild fish populations so Roxxon's fard seafood could monopolize the global market.
Normally, cris like that disappeared beneath money, lobbying, and legal loopholes.
But now?
Everything had been refrad as a threat to humanity itself.
That changed the ga.
And Urd had already been sick of Dario's endless lawsuits for years.
The mont Umbrella Corporation decided to move against Roxxon, the corporation discovered exactly what "everyone kicking you while you're down" really looked like.
Countless groups rushed to side with Umbrella.
Compared to them, Roxxon suddenly didn't seem nearly as invincible.
Without comic-book levels of plot armor protecting them, the corporation collapsed far faster than anyone expected.
anwhile, Drex Valen's conversation with the Ancient One continued.
Drex genuinely hadn't expected the "fallen star" she ntioned to refer to Star-Lord.
Back when he copied Ego's data using the Reality Stone, he had stopped paying attention to both Ego and Peter Quill afterward.
That mistake had consequences.
Ego successfully took control of Star-Lord.
And now the living planet had begun converting nearby worlds into extensions of himself in preparation for conquering the universe.
Still, that wasn't the Ancient One's main concern.
She already understood that she no longer possessed the ability to stop the chain reactions caused by Drex Valen's existence.
Ever since he beca a Black Hole Superman, the sheer gravitational force surrounding him had begun affecting ti, space… even fate itself.
Countless possible futures bent toward him.
And then vanished.
The Sorcerer Supre could no longer perceive futures beyond him, as though Drex himself consud every branching possibility before it could exist.
"Because of your influence," the Ancient One continued, "other dinsions are moving closer to ours."
"Other dinsions?"
Drex's first thought went straight to dinsional entities.
An entire pantheon of universe-level cosmic horrors drifting toward reality sounded like an unimaginable headache. Especially since most of them beca vastly stronger inside their own dinsions and almost never exposed themselves recklessly enough to be killed.
Worse still, many of them were effectively impossible to kill permanently.
The Ancient One shook her head.
"Not the dinsional lords. In your terminology… parallel universes."
That caught him completely off guard.
"Parallel universes?"
Drex frowned.
What was this supposed to be? So kind of multiversal reboot scenario?
"Your power has begun influencing neighboring universes," the Ancient One explained patiently. "Kamar-Taj and Agamotto both confird it. Other universes are gradually approaching ours."
She paused briefly.
"If the process continues, the universes may eventually collide. Or rge."
Drex imdiately understood.
"Mass effect."
It made sense.
His total mass now effectively equaled the mass of the universe he inhabited. He was already approaching transcendence, only one step away from surpassing single-universe existence entirely.
Beyond that would be multiversal territory.
And reaching that level…
Even Drex had no idea how sothing like that was truly achieved.
A multiverse represented an infinite collection of parallel universes layered together.
Because his existence remained anchored in physical reality, the effects radiating from him spread outward through the universe itself.
Apparently, those distortions had now begun leaking beyond universal boundaries.
"What happens if universes collide?"
For once, even Drex sounded genuinely serious.
He hadn't expected his evolution to produce consequences on this scale.
The Ancient One answered calmly, as though discussing tomorrow's weather rather than universal extinction.
"When two universes collide, they either destroy one another… or fuse together. If that happens, reality itself will undergo catastrophic transformation."
Her expression remained perfectly composed.
"I may cease to exist entirely."
Drex stared at her.
Kryptonians really were absurd.
Even he hadn't expected to reach the point where his passive existence alone could potentially trigger universal destruction.
Granted, he was hardly a normal Kryptonian anymore.
"So how long do we have?"
"At current projections… approximately one hundred years."
The Ancient One looked directly at him.
"But your mass continues increasing every second."
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