After getting casually outplayed by the Ancient One yet again, Drex Valen was forced to confront an unpleasant truth.
He was still too weak.
If he were stronger, maybe things would be different.
...Actually, no. He'd probably still lose.
This version of the Ancient One possessed the Ti Stone. If she decided to throw him into a ti loop, he'd be trapped reliving the sa nightmare until he went insane.
Still, the frustration pushed Drex toward a breakthrough.
Electromagnetism.
His energy absorption abilities allowed him to convert internal energy into electromagnetic force itself.
And in the hands of soone who understood quantum physics and advanced mathematics as deeply as Drex did...
That power bordered on absurd.
Electromagnetic force could manipulate cells.
Rewrite DNA.
Control atoms.
Rearrange subatomic particles.
At the highest level, it could even allow consciousness to rge with electromagnetic fields themselves, abandoning flesh entirely and becoming a quantum lifeform.
A scientific god.
Electromagnetism was a universal lever capable of moving matter, energy, ti, and space.
Immortality.
Regeneration from a single drop of blood.
Walking through nuclear explosions unhard.
Those were just surface-level applications.
The true potential lay deeper.
Warping spaceti.
Reversing localized ti flow.
Touching unified field theory itself.
Reconstructing matter from fundantal forces.
And unlike ordinary humans, Drex possessed Kryptonian super senses.
His perception naturally extended down to the atomic scale.
Invisible magnetic field lines beca tangible to him, drifting through the world like glowing threads wrapped around reality itself.
Drex reached out and lightly touched one.
Far across the laboratory, a vibranium target suddenly ripped free from its mount and flew into his hand.
He twisted his fingers.
The magnetic field distorted violently.
The target scread apart into several chunks as invisible forces tore it limb from limb, sparks and arcs of electricity erupting from the fractured tal.
For the first ti, Drex could truly feel the electromagnetic network buried beneath reality.
The Earth's magnetic field.
Countless microscopic currents.
Invisible interactions hidden inside every object around him.
The world transford into equations, vectors, and flowing nurical structures.
He sank deeper.
Electromagnetism influenced all matter.
It governed atoms.
Reached inside atomic nuclei.
Revealed the relationship between mass and energy.
At Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One quietly sighed.
This was one of the worst futures she had ever witnessed.
Yet if she hadn't intervened earlier and preserved the tiline involving Venom, the outco would have beco even worse.
At least for now, Drex had only discovered electromagnetism.
He still hadn't realized the next step.
Gravity.
Then, almost imdiately afterward, Drex beca a master of gravity as well.
Because magnetism and gravity were interconnected in ways deeper than most minds could comprehend.
If electromagnetic force could be controlled...
There was no logical reason gravity couldn't be manipulated too.
The Ancient One's expression shifted slightly.
The future had already begun diverging from the one she originally foresaw.
Drex's rate of growth was becoming ridiculous.
Still, he was young.
Inexperienced.
Even with these powers, he shouldn't yet be capable of fully utilizing them.
Then she watched him distort Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields together.
Sunlight bending across the sky suddenly converged into a concentrated beam, flooding the region around him with amplified solar radiation.
Drex stood at the center of it.
Absorbing energy.
Growing stronger by the second.
The Ancient One fell silent.
His ability to extrapolate from a single principle was monstrous.
For one dangerous mont, she genuinely considered replacing Stephen Strange with Drex entirely.
Drex originally believed stealing Riot had disrupted the future tiline.
Apparently not.
According to the Black Queen, the Life Foundation had launched another rocket shortly before filing for bankruptcy.
Fortunately, Venom and Eddie Brock had intercepted it in ti.
Drex watched the footage with disbelief.
Onscreen, Carlton Drake battled Eddie across the streets of San Francisco.
Except Drake was now bonded to a silver symbiote.
The two monsters tore through roads, smashed through vehicles, and hamred each other across entire city blocks while police officers watched helplessly from a distance, too terrified to intervene.
"What the hell is that thing?"
Drex frowned.
"Riot and Lasher are both in my lab. Agony's dead. Venom is with Eddie."
"Where did another symbiote co from?"
The Black Queen quickly pieced together the answer using traffic caras and surveillance feeds.
The silver symbiote was Riot's offspring.
Sowhere before capture, Riot had reproduced.
Carlton Drake beca infected during the liquidation of the Life Foundation's remaining assets. Once bonded to the symbiote, the creature's ntal resistance allowed him to break free from Drex's psychic suggestion almost imdiately.
The offspring's na was Ripper.
And judging by the footage, it was even stronger than Riot.
Drake moved with terrifying speed and overwhelming power, beating Venom so badly it barely resembled a fight anymore.
Venom was furious.
Losing to Riot was humiliating enough.
Now Riot's son was beating him senseless too.
Even Eddie couldn't take it anymore.
"Co on, Venom!" he shouted while being hurled through another storefront. "You couldn't beat Riot, fine. But you're losing to his kid too?"
"Shut up, Eddie!"
Venom roared back before imdiately getting slamd face-first into the pavent again.
Ripper towered over them, its silver tallic body gleaming beneath the shattered streetlights.
Its surface looked radically different from normal symbiotes.
Harder.
Sharper.
More refined.
"You betrayed us," Ripper snarled. "I'm going to kill you myself."
Venom, to his credit, fought far harder against Ripper than he ever had against Riot.
Then two crimson beams suddenly cut across the battlefield.
Ripper froze.
A burning line appeared across its waist.
The next instant, the silver symbiote split cleanly in half.
Venom stared.
Ripper scread.
Then everyone looked upward.
Hovering above the street in the Dark Knight Armor, Drex Valen descended through the smoke like a black chanical god.
"Drex Valen!"
Ripper's face peeled open, exposing Carlton Drake underneath as he roared in fury.
Drex ignored him completely.
The eight blade-like drones mounted behind the Dark Knight Armor detached one by one and floated into formation around him.
Then they opened fire.
Rapid plasma bombardnt rained down like artillery strikes.
Under normal conditions, plasma weaponry dispersed too quickly to maximize destructive output.
But Drex now controlled both electromagnetic and gravitational fields.
Every plasma shell was magnetically compressed and gravitationally stabilized before impact.
The results were catastrophic.
The streets of San Francisco vanished beneath a storm of explosions.
Police officers and civilians alike stood frozen in horror as the bombardnt tore apart entire sections of roadway.
It looked less like a superhero battle and more like a full armored battalion unloading into a warzone.
Even dozens of tanks would've been reduced to molten scrap under that level of firepower.
When the explosions finally stopped, Venom and Ripper were both still alive.
Barely.
Drex had intentionally avoided killing them.
He simply blasted them into near-incapacitation to prevent escape... or reproduction.
Then he raised one hand.
High-energy electromagnetic waves flooded the battlefield.
Microwave radiation.
The water and cellular structures inside both symbiotes began heating instantly from within.
Venom and Ripper collapsed into twitching masses, writhing in agony without any ability to resist.
Drex walked forward calmly.
In the end, he only took Ripper.
Venom probably wouldn't start laying eggs like Riot.
And even if it did...
The Ancient One could deal with it.
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