Marvel: Sign-In System – Starting with the Glint-Glint Fruit

After setting aside the matter of the Ancient One giving away the Vishanti's family fortune, Matthew took the initiative to bring up another name.

"Odin?"

The Ancient One was rather surprised, but she quickly understood. "So you've already reached that level?"

She had not paid much attention to exactly where Matthew's strength stood. What she focused on was his mastery of magic. But the moment Matthew mentioned Odin, she immediately realized it—Matthew had already walked quite a distance along the sub-Skyfather level, and had even begun moving toward the true Skyfather tier.

Sub-Skyfather and Skyfather sounded vague, but there was an essential difference between them.

Leaving aside those Skyfathers who were not good at combat, the gap between a normal sub-Skyfather and a true Skyfather showed in every aspect—life level, destructive power, and the authority and rules they controlled.

Put simply, a sub-Skyfather usually possessed planet-level combat power. They could destroy a planet's surface, but it would be difficult for them to directly destroy a planet like Earth.

Their understanding of the universe's essence was still not deep enough, and they had not grasped the deeper rules of the cosmos. They would grow tired. They would be injured.

A Skyfather stood absolutely above that. They held authority over cosmic rules. Of course, even among Skyfathers, or among sub-Skyfathers, the differences between individuals could still be enormous.

Matthew was sprinting down the correct path, and his speed was even faster than the Ancient One had expected. But after thinking that it was Matthew, she felt relieved after her brief surprise.

"He is also watching you, Matthew," the Ancient One said. "Your appearance has changed the fate of more than just the people on Earth. It includes the entire universe. To him, perhaps you are not a bad choice."

"For example... Ragnarok."

The Ancient One smiled.

This timeline ran through the entire universe. No matter who they were or where they were, everyone's fate had shifted. The only difference was the extent of the changes.

Asgard was one of the places most directly affected because of its connection to Earth and Matthew's future ties with the realm.

"So the King of the Gods also saw Asgard's future and wants to change fate a little?" Matthew asked.

"Perhaps. Before this, he could only drift with the current. Now that the fixed path has been broken, it is chaos—but it is also hope."

Matthew's eyes flickered slightly.

Good grief. From the Ancient One's words, it seemed that the King of the Gods was also preparing to make a move.

Thinking about it, that made sense.

In the original timeline, Asgard's fate was nothing short of tragic. Nearly everyone who could die ended up dead. Odin and his wife, Frigga, died, and Ragnarök, brought about by Hela and the fire giant Surtur, claimed countless Asgardian lives. In the end, only a few hundred people escaped aboard a spaceship.

No one knew the exact size of Asgard's army or civilian population at the time, but it must have numbered at least tens of thousands.

Worst of all, shortly after escaping aboard that ship, they were intercepted by Thanos and his army.

Heimdall and Loki died in battle. Although Loki later lived again and walked the path of the God of Stories, overall, by the time they reached Earth, only around one hundred to two hundred Asgardians remained.

They became an ethnic minority on Earth, and the small town they settled in even used that name to develop tourism and earn money.

Then, when Thanos snapped his fingers, their population was cut in half again.

It was simply tragic beyond words.

Thor survived, but he fell into despair for several years and became Fat Thor.

This was a disaster for the entire universe, and also the path Thor had to walk toward greatness and maturity.

But did Odin want Asgard to become like that? Of course not.

Odin, Frigga, and some warriors could live on in Valhalla in another form, but that was only a small group. Aside from certain necessary moments, they had to remain in Valhalla and could not meet Thor.

To Thor, that was basically no different from death.

The price of Thor's growth was far too heavy—so heavy that even a king like Odin would feel pain.

Before, the timeline had been fixed, and Odin had no ability to change any of it. But now things were different. If he could change it without causing terrible consequences, then Odin would never sit back and let the future repeat itself.

Suddenly—

A vast presence swept outward, so overwhelming that both the Ancient One and Matthew sensed it immediately.

The Ancient One, who had just raised her teacup, set it back down with a quiet sigh. "I was planning to get some proper rest today."

"Dormammu, huh? Still hasn't cooled down."

A red light flared in Matthew's eyes as an overwhelming Conqueror's Haki began to gather.

Noticing the change, the Ancient One smiled faintly. "Want to give it a try?"

"I've been idle for too long."

The moment he finished speaking, ripples spread through the space around them. Their vision blurred, and in the next instant, they appeared within a colorful starry sky.

The endless stars stretched around them. Planets and meteorites drifted through the void, but after being eroded by darkness for countless years, they had long since broken apart and turned barren.

Their surfaces were covered with jagged crystal-like structures, and not the slightest trace of life could be found.

Matthew and the Ancient One stood on the surface of a desolate planet and looked up.

Above the starry sky, an enormous head had appeared.

It was formed from dark energy, shrouding the cosmos. Its two hollow pupils shone with strange, colorful light, so eerie that a single glance seemed enough to be corrupted by its power.

This huge dark head belonged to the ruler of the Dark Dimension—Dormammu.

Dormammu had only intended to vent his anger and challenge the Ancient One, but he had not expected another person to be standing beside his old enemy.

The moment he saw Matthew, a furious roar shook the starry sky.

The vast sound waves and energy destroyed countless planets along their path.

"It's you, damn human brat. I didn't expect you to appear before me."

As his voice fell, Dormammu made no visible movement, yet terrifying energy surged. Matthew immediately felt a pressure unlike anything before rushing toward him.

But that was only the surface. Dormammu's true killing move was the curse hidden beneath that enormous pressure.

If Matthew failed to notice it and was marked by the curse, he would be in serious trouble.

But with his current magical knowledge, Matthew could easily see through Dormammu's dirty trick. A golden ripple flashed across the surface of his body, and the curse was erased.

"Dormammu, are you that happy to see me? You even brought me a greeting gift."

Matthew spoke to Dormammu with a smile.

His voice was light, but it carried clearly to Dormammu.

"Human brat, you dare act so carelessly before the great Dormammu? You have a death wish."

Seeing that his hidden move had failed, Dormammu's voice grew even more furious.

Matthew, however, didn't let his guard down.

He knew that the fury was only an act, masking the cunning beneath Dormammu's brutality.

"Dormammu," Matthew said, his expression turning serious. "Let's have some fun today."

Although the dimensional barrier greatly suppressed Dormammu's power, he was still a being at the peak of the single-universe level.

The knowledge he had accumulated over countless years was not something Matthew could match.

This battle would be on an entirely different level from his confrontation with Mephisto in Hell.

Mephisto had been wary of the Ancient One and never intended to strike at Matthew directly. Dormammu, however, would show no such restraint.

Given the chance, he would kill Matthew without the slightest hesitation—even if it meant paying a price.

Rumble!

Facing Dormammu directly, Matthew did not dare be careless. He unleashed everything at once. A red light flashed, and his terrifying Conqueror's Haki erupted in full.

Red-black lightning surged wildly, and the planets drifting through the starry sky began to tremble violently.

Dormammu was engulfed by the Conqueror's Haki, feeling its full force crash against his will.

Instead of fear, Dormammu threw back his head and laughed. Dark energy churned around him, terrifying beyond measure.

"Brat! I've seen your tricks before! You think a fragile will like yours can shake the Lord of Darkness?"

A crushing wave of sheer willpower erupted from Dormammu, crashing directly against Matthew's.

BOOM!

The collision of two vast wills shook and twisted the starry sky. Countless meteorites were annihilated and shattered in the clash, while the surging shockwaves sent many planets flying.

The Ancient One's figure flickered in and out, almost illusory. The aftershocks of the collision had no effect on her at all. She merely waved the folding fan in her hand and watched the battle with relaxed interest.

"Ah, what a spectacular sight."

The Ancient One sighed in admiration, her face full of interest. Seeing Matthew's power called Conqueror's Haki again was truly stunning. This force, formed from pure will and vitality, was genuinely fascinating.

She could tell that Conqueror's Haki had a rather special growth path—one that leaned heavily on will. As long as Matthew held an unshakable belief, this power would grow stronger with him.

Most importantly, ordinary life forms facing Matthew's Conqueror's Haki would have their will crushed and killed outright if their soul level was not high enough.

It was a very practical and powerful ability.

Unfortunately, Matthew's opponent this time was Dormammu.

"As expected, it doesn't have much effect."

Matthew could feel that in a pure clash of wills, he had already fallen behind. He was not surprised at all. On the contrary, it felt completely natural.

The gap in life level between him and Dormammu spanned several stages.

If Conqueror's Haki had actually worked, he would have suspected Dormammu was hiding some scheme.

This was only a simple greeting.

It was also a way to measure the gap between himself and Dormammu.

Their first clash confirmed that the gap was not exactly small.

But that was what made it interesting.

Matthew's figure suddenly turned into a golden beam and shot into the starry sky. In an instant, he crossed countless kilometers. With no obstacles in the way during this straight-line charge, the speed of the Glint-Glint Fruit was fully unleashed.

He moved at light speed, then stopped tens of thousands of kilometers away.

Floating quietly, he stared at the dark head before him, which was as large as a planet.

Energy clouds swirled around Dormammu, radiating overwhelming pressure.

"That's huge."

Compared to him, Matthew looked tiny. After a brief sigh, he raised his hand.

Blue-white lightning crackled across his palm.

Matthew was about to give Dormammu an even bigger welcome gift.

As the lightning erupted, Matthew drew upon the gravity-based abilities he had been developing. Ever since he began studying gravity, one of his long-term goals had been to create a black hole.

Through his research, he knew that the essence of a black hole was never the accumulation of matter, but an extreme gravitational collapse.

As long as gravity became strong enough, even pure energy and electromagnetic fields could be compressed to their density limit, warping space-time, trapping light, and forming a simulated event horizon.

An invisible gravitational field spread outward. The starry sky trembled faintly. There was no great commotion—only an unseen force silently expanding through space. Meteorites and cosmic dust, both near and far, drifted from their original paths and converged on Dormammu.

Layer after layer of gravitational pressure descended from all directions, continuously compressing the violent, restless electromagnetic force of thunder.

The once chaotic lightning was forcibly gathered, squeezed, and stacked together. Its energy density rose at a terrifying speed.

The light at the center of the starry sky dimmed sharply. The high-energy electromagnetic force was compressed until it could no longer spill out or release.

Nearby and distant meteorites and dust were only passively dragged along, slowly drifting through the extremely powerful gravitational potential field. Even the dark-dimensional clouds around Dormammu's body began to be pulled inward by that force.

Dormammu was startled.

He sensed danger.

Before he could react, the dark energy and clouds surrounding him were already being drawn in as the matter before him compressed relentlessly toward the center.

"Curse you! What are you doing?!" Dormammu roared.

His energy was being sucked away by the growing force, forcing him to pull it back immediately.

As he compressed it further and further, the planet-sized energy head disappeared.

In its place stood a humanoid figure nearly two meters tall. Its upper body was covered in deep-red muscles, as hard as rock forged under extreme heat.

His head was made entirely of surging flames, with waves of fire shifting from orange-red to gold.

He had no facial features—only a blinding white light at the center of his head, like a great mouth from the abyss, or a single empty eye that swallowed everything.

Several sharp black thorn-like protrusions rose from the flames like a demon's horns and crown, outlining the shape of his head and giving that mass of fire an even more sinister, majestic presence.

He was both living energy and a demon god who ruled a dimension—violent, yet solemn.

Dormammu could exist as pure energy or take on a human form. He had no fixed shape and could change freely. Sensing danger, he knew that only by contracting all his energy and cutting off any outward leakage could he avoid having his power continuously drained by that terrifying collapse force. So Dormammu chose to become human-shaped.

At that moment, Matthew had no attention left to spare for Dormammu's change. His brain was running far beyond its limit, and he knew exactly where his problem lay.

A natural celestial black hole was a stable gravitational balance formed over hundreds of billions of years. Matthew, on the other hand, was using his own body to forcibly control two opposing forces. The violent and unstable electromagnetic force generated by the lightning naturally had an extremely strong tendency to spread outward, so he had to use artificial gravity to precisely counteract and suppress every bit of escaping energy.

That balance was terrifyingly delicate.

If the gravity became even slightly too strong, the energy would collapse in on itself and annihilate. If it became even slightly too weak, the lightning's repulsive force would break free and erupt completely.

His Devil Fruit development and his brain's computing power were simply not enough to sustain such microscopic precision.

At the final instant, just as the simulated black hole was about to form and the event horizon was about to close—

His calculations collapsed.

A loss of control lasting only a tenth of a second completely shattered the previously perfect balance between inward gravity and outward electromagnetic repulsion.

The gravitational field controlling the entire area suddenly developed massive gaps, and the lightning's electromagnetic force, compressed to its limit, broke free in an instant.

There was no gradual collapse—only a catastrophic reverse explosion after extreme compression.

The terrifying thunderous energy that had been forced into a single point erupted backward through every fracture in the shattered gravitational field.

The collapsing core suddenly erupted with blinding purple-white light.

The void trembled silently. There was no sound, yet an energy storm spanning tens of thousands of kilometers swept across the starry sky.

Compressed plasma and lightning surged through the surrounding space. The gathered stardust and shattered rocks were instantly vaporized and blown apart by the high-energy torrent.

Yet an explosion on this scale posed no threat to either Matthew or Dormammu.

Matthew's elementalization was useless here, since the entire area was saturated with violent energy, but he easily created a gravitational field around himself and used it to deflect the shockwave.

Dormammu's response was even simpler. His own energy far exceeded the power of the explosion.

Of course, he was not foolish enough to take it head-on. He simply tore open a dimensional rift with dark magic and redirected the energy into it.

"Ah.. it failed."

Watching from afar, the Ancient One paused briefly while waving her folding fan, then leisurely resumed.

The huge energy storm continued for quite a while before finally calming down.

Matthew shook his head. He had thought the first experiment might succeed and let him give Dormammu a grand gift, but now it seemed he was still a little short.

Even so, he was not too disappointed. The experience of this first failure would help with the later development of an artificial black hole.

Matthew had never imagined he could succeed on the first try. Scaring Dormammu a little was good enough.

"Human brat... are you playing games with me?" Dormammu's voice turned dangerously cold.

As a great Lord of the Dark Dimension, he had actually felt a flicker of alarm from a human brat.

"Haha, my bad," Matthew replied casually. "First time using it. I'm not very skilled yet."

The Ancient One chuckled, clearly amused, and glanced at Dormammu, hoping to catch a flicker of embarrassment on his featureless face.

Dormammu was indeed humiliated—and enraged.

He raised his hand, and in an instant, the space across the entire starry sky was manipulated by him. It began to fold, with Matthew right at the center of the folded space.

Not only that, several surfaces of the folded space were polluted by darkness. Vast dark energy gathered, turning into a terrifying black tide that swept toward Matthew.

There was no doubt Dormammu wanted to leave Matthew with nowhere to run.

But Matthew had no intention of running.

He formed seals with both hands and held them before his chest. A dazzling square magic formation, woven from dense magical patterns, wrapped around him. The next moment, its four sides expanded sharply and flew outward at high speed.

The dark energy tide rushing in from every direction was erased the moment it touched the four sides of the formation, turning into countless blue butterflies that drifted through the air before breaking apart and fading away.

It was one of Kamar-Taj's high-level defensive spell—the Ancient Body of Hoggoth.

By channeling the power of Hoggoth, one of the Vishanti, it constructed a powerful defensive array that could neutralize hostile attacks in an instant and turn them harmless.

That was right. Matthew used the kinetic energy conversion of the Punch Universe to borrow Vishanti's power and dissolve the attack.

As a top-tier middleman, Matthew did not lose even a bit of his own energy.

He simply borrowed.

He carried the spirit of his top supporter to the end.

"You little—"

Matthew had casually neutralized his attack, and Dormammu was about to roar out a curse from habit when a golden beam suddenly shot over from the distance, moving so fast it had reached light speed.

Dormammu reacted at once and raised one finger.

The next moment, a fist wrapped in terrifying black-red lightning collided with his fingertip.

BOOM!

Explosive red-black lightning and dark energy intertwined and burst apart, sweeping in every direction. Space shook sharply, and Dormammu felt the vast power in Matthew's punch as his body shot backward like a cannonball.

But before he had flown even a few hundred meters, Dormammu's body shattered and turned into boundless flames that spread outward, trying to swallow Matthew.

With his Observation Haki fully active, Matthew had already sensed the danger. He turned into countless particles of light, like a flowing golden galaxy, and dodged away the instant the flames came.

A huge firestorm circled around, its crimson light illuminating the starry sky, blazing and violent.

Matthew quickly retreated several kilometers before turning back into his true body.

As for the Matthew caught in Dormammu's folded space at the beginning, that figure trembled slightly and disappeared.

It was one of the high-level spell—Images of Ikonn.

By borrowing Ikonn's conceptual power to define real illusions, it could create all kinds of illusions that were hard to tell from reality.

It could also create multiple clones no different from physical bodies. Each clone was not only hard to expose, but also had the same spellcasting ability as the main body.

The moment Dormammu activated his ability, Matthew had already used this spell.

The illusion body had been covered by the folded space, while the real body had already escaped the range of the fold. Then, after Dormammu's attention was split, Matthew struck him once.

Unfortunately, Dormammu still noticed.

"Wonderful."

Watching the battle, the Ancient One lightly waved her folding fan. There was no surprise on her face, only relief and praise.

As the standard ceiling of magic, she could see that Matthew's use of magic in real combat had already reached an extremely high level. His judgment in battle was also clean and decisive, without any hesitation.

Beyond that, he had combined magic with his own unique abilities, expanding his advantages as much as possible and creating an effect greater than the sum of its parts.

This showed that Matthew was not only smart. His talent for combat was also one of a kind.

Even with his life level below Dormammu's, he could still fight Dormammu back and forth.

It was truly rare.

If any other sub-Skyfather faced Dormammu in his current state, they would probably be killed in one or two moves.

A sub-Skyfather could still trade a few blows with an ordinary Skyfather, since some sub-Skyfathers did have excellent raw destructive power.

But once it reached the level of a Skyfather, that gap could no longer be made up with ordinary destructive power alone.

It came down to the use of energy and the understanding of rules.

At that level, the result was simple—instant kill, or being instantly killed.

"You little brat…"

"You keep repeating the same few lines. Aren't you tired of it?"

Matthew interrupted Dormammu again, making Dormammu choke for a moment before becoming even more furious.

…

Top floor of Stark Tower, Manhattan.

Tony sat on the sofa in a white shirt and dress pants, flipping through the documents in his hands and signing his name from time to time.

"Jarvis, when is the auction?"

"One month from now, sir. Would you like me to add a timestamp reminder?"

"Yeah."

Tony placed the signed documents aside, leaned back against the soft leather sofa, and rubbed his brow.

Obadiah was dead, along with the board members who had taken part.

Not even their bones were left.

They had simply vanished. From the footage Jarvis had intercepted, Obadiah, the company's board members, and a large number of government and military officials, along with everyone involved from Hammer Industries, had all died overnight.

It was done by that brother and sister.

That made a chill run down Tony's spine.

Then came the part that directly affected him—the families of those people were killed afterward.

There were no wounds. They looked as if they had simply fallen asleep, passing away very peacefully.

And the result was that nothing happened.

The government forcibly suppressed the news. Some were announced as accidental deaths, some as deaths from illness, and some as retirements.

What affected Tony was that Obadiah and the families of those shareholders were dead, which meant the shares they held had lost their legal heirs.

This batch of Stark Industries equity immediately became ownerless estate. It would not vanish, would not automatically return to Tony, and would not be canceled by the company.

Because on the surface, there was no illegal arms smuggling or war-planning involved, the breach clauses for forced repurchase could not be triggered.

In the end, the equity would be held by the state government where the company was registered. After the required public notice period passed with no one claiming it, it would be put up for a public and lawful auction.

Obadiah held seventeen percent of the shares, while the dead board members' shares added up to twenty percent.

Based on Stark Industries' current market value, bidding for these shares would probably require more than seventy billion dollars.

By normal logic, the auction price should not have been only that much, because Stark Industries' foundation was too strong.

But no one was stupid.

Ordinary people aside, after all the news had been locked down and reporting banned, they probably had no idea what had really happened. But would the wealthy families and financial groups of high society have no information?

Could they not know how Obadiah and those people died?

Once they knew the real cause of death, no matter how bold they were, they would not casually risk their whole families being wiped out just to bid.

Of course, there might still be people unafraid of death.

But it was unrealistic for them to compete with Tony.

There was a lot of room to operate here.

Now that Obadiah was gone and the company had fallen into internal chaos, Tony needed a helper.

So he immediately thought of someone.

A woman with outstanding ability—his secretary, Pepper.

While Tony was thinking, Jarvis's voice sounded beside his ear.

"Sir, someone is here to see you."

"No visitors. I'm busy right now, Jarvis," Tony declined absently.

"I apologize, sir, but someone has modified my code."

A moment later, a chime sounded as the private elevator doors slid open.

Tony turned, his expression shifting from surprise to irritation.

Stepping out was a bald, one-eyed Black man in a dark trench coat, accompanied by a middle-aged white man in a suit carrying a briefcase.

"I hate unannounced visitors," Tony said, standing up.

"You don't look surprised by who I am," the visitor said.

The ones who had arrived were Nick Fury and Coulson.

"Yeah, I didn't know at first. But you people have been moving around a lot lately, so I had Jarvis look into you."

Tony really did know who Nick Fury was.

During the Manhattan incident, and during Wanda and Pietro's overnight massacre two days ago, a mysterious department had acted behind the scenes. Especially in the latter case, all information had been sealed off.

While Tony was paying attention to the incident, he also noticed that mysterious department.

In the modern age of technology, many secrets were almost impossible to hide—especially from Tony, who had the artificial intelligence Jarvis.

After some investigation, Tony learned that such a mysterious department actually existed in this world. He simply had not been arrogant enough to let Jarvis invade its database.

He had not expected them to come to him first.

"So, what do you want from me?"

"Stark, you don't really think no one knows what you did in broad daylight two days ago, do you?"

Nick Fury took out his phone and placed it in front of Tony. On the screen was footage of a silver suit of armor flying through the sky, shooting upward at high speed, freezing over, falling, and then barely taking off again.

The video was not long. It had been clipped.

"Wow. Looks like some evil alien playing a prank." Tony's attitude did not change as he casually threw out nonsense, clearly trying to change the topic.

But Fury did not fall for it. He put the phone away. "We investigated your cash flow and purchase records."

"Stark, you're a genius. You developed armor that surpasses this era."

Fury stared straight at Tony with his single eye.

"So? Don't tell me you want to take it from me." Tony narrowed his eyes, facing Fury without losing any of his presence.

"The one who wants to take it from you isn't me, Tony. Some people want to use it against other threats."

Fury's expression remained unchanged. His words were partly true and partly false.

There were people who wanted the technology Tony had developed, and Fury was one of them. After all, this was technology ahead of its era.

Although there was no detailed data or combat data yet, many things could already be estimated.

First was energy.

For a manned suit of armor to fly, and even fly at Mach-level speeds, the most basic requirement was power. That technology alone was enough to make people drool.

But Fury had been observing Tony for a long time, and after a long-term assessment of his personality, he had confirmed that obtaining it was basically impossible.

So Fury needed another approach.

"Against other threats?" Tony sneered, not believing Fury's nonsense at all, though he did not rush to expose it. "Are they afraid?"

"Ordinary people don't need to be afraid, but they're different, Tony."

"And what about your group? What do you call yourselves again?"

Tony pretended to think, then acted as if he had suddenly remembered and complained, "Right, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. Oh my God, that name is ridiculously long."

"That's why we've changed the name to S.H.I.E.L.D., Mr. Stark," Coulson cut in from the side.

Tony glanced over. "So, should I ask your names now?"

"I'm Nick Fury, the current director of S.H.I.E.L.D. This is Coulson, a Level 8 agent."

"All right, Nick Fury. You still haven't answered my question."

Fury was silent for a moment before he said, "Since its founding, S.H.I.E.L.D. has been responsible for handling supernatural incidents and global crises. But too much has happened this year. All of it has told us one thing—we are far too weak."

"We?" Tony scoffed. "I thought you were referring to the politicians in Washington."

"They always believed America was the strongest. They were lost in past glory and strength, arrogantly thinking they could continue holding the world's leading position. But the monsters in Manhattan that day, and Terra's appearance, proved them wrong."

"So many people died overnight two days ago. That made them lose their sense of safety, didn't it?"

"What they fear isn't demons. They fear Terra. They fear that Emperor. They fear the order he represents."

Tony saw through it clearly. He understood exactly what those people were thinking now.

All that talk about resisting outside threats made it sound as if they meant threats from beyond Earth. But in truth, what they feared most was Terra.

Because Terra was too powerful—so powerful it exceeded their understanding—and it completely went against the rules they had built.

Under two different ideals, they feared Terra's strength, and they also feared that ordinary Americans at the bottom would eventually turn toward Terra.

They feared being judged.

After all, among those who stood in that kind of position, how many had clean hands?

This time, Obadiah and a group of government and military people had been executed without mercy for smuggling and pushing wars. Not even their bones remained, and their families had been caught up in it too.

What about next time?

Would it be their turn?

That was the real reason they were afraid.

"Maybe. But Earth can't have only Terra, Tony," Fury said meaningfully, without denying Tony's words.

"Can't have only Terra?"

Tony silently considered the sentence.

Fury's words were interesting.

He looked at Fury. "You think the future…"

"They're too powerful. I don't doubt for a second that, in the end, Earth may be left with only one empire."

Fury shook his head. "No one knows what a planet will become when it has only one empire."

"We don't understand their order, and we don't know what they stand for. The unknown is always the most dangerous."

"I don't want to gamble the fate of all humanity on this."

Tony gave a speechless laugh. "So, after saying all that, what do you want?"

"I need to form a team with specialized defensive capabilities—a force free to respond to external threats. If the situation gets out of control, we'll still be able to correct it in time."

"Me?"

Tony pointed at himself, his expression clearly asking whether Fury thought too highly of him.

Tony might have been arrogant, but that did not mean he believed this so-called special force could withstand the tide of fate.

"We're not trying to fight anyone, Tony. This is only an insurance policy."

Fury had never expected to persuade Tony in a single conversation. After speaking, he looked toward Coulson, who nodded and took a USB drive from his briefcase.

"This is something your father left behind. If you need it, contact me at any time. We'll hand everything over to you."

Coulson passed the USB drive to Tony.

Once Tony took it, the two of them turned and left in the elevator.

Tony remained behind, staring blankly at the USB drive in his hand.

My father?

...

Boom!!!

In the ruined starry sky, blazing lightning and a dark tide collided and intertwined, sending out shockwaves that destroyed countless planets and meteorites of every size.

Amid the surging energy, a figure wrapped in lightning was hurled backward. After flying an unknown distance, he finally crashed into the surface of a corrupted planet.

He smashed through an unknown number of crystalline rock formations along the way and slid more than ten thousand meters across the ground before finally coming to a stop. Countless shattered crystals buried him.

But in the next second, the lightning-wreathed figure burst through the debris and flew into the air.

Hovering high above the ground, Matthew, looking somewhat battered with much of his clothing damaged, rolled his neck. His red-dyed eyes burned with overwhelming fighting spirit as they reflected Dormammu at the far end of the distant starry sky.

He clenched his fist.

Crack—

Lightning erupted, dispersing the curses and darkness clinging to him and trying to erode his body. Matthew slowly let out a deep breath.

He had already forgotten how long he had been fighting Dormammu.

Perhaps one day. Perhaps two. Perhaps even longer.

But there was no doubt that he had completely immersed himself in the battle against Dormammu.

Every collision, every judgment, every dodge, every attack.

All three forms of Haki, the Rumble-Rumble Fruit, gravity, electromagnetic force, the Glint-Glint Fruit's abilities, magic, and everything else at his disposal had been brought into play.

But against Dormammu, it was still not enough.

Not nearly enough.

His methods of attack seemed varied and powerful, but Dormammu could neutralize every one of them.

Matthew was fighting an extremely difficult battle.

Without the Rumble-Rumble Fruit combined with Observation Haki, along with his extensive use of magic, he had no idea how many times he would have died already.

Again and again, he moved along the boundary between life and death, repeatedly testing the edge of the abyss. Every exchange tempered him through survival and death.

Only by facing true power head-on could he understand the gap between them.

This time, Matthew had gained a great deal.

Far more than he had ever imagined.

Was he tired?

Extremely. It was not only physical exhaustion, but mental fatigue as well.

Matthew could hardly imagine how the Ancient One had managed to rely on magic alone to fight Dormammu for so long.

As he thought this, the Ancient One seemed to notice that he had reached his mental and physical limit, so she stepped forward to face Dormammu.

Dormammu grew even more furious.

He had been so focused on killing Matthew that he had nearly forgotten his original target was the Ancient One.

And now they were taking turns fighting him?

Dormammu immediately decided to leave.

It was not because he had suffered any real injury. He simply no longer saw a reason to continue.

By now, Dormammu could already tell that Matthew was using him as a trial opponent, while the Ancient One watched from the side, ready to intervene whenever Matthew was in danger.

The problem was that Dormammu could not kill Matthew in a single strike. Matthew was simply too difficult to deal with, and the sheer number of abilities at his disposal was frightening.

He was impossibly slippery, and he was growing at an astonishing rate. He was already beginning to adapt to—and even match—the intensity of a battle at Dormammu's level.

Continuing the fight served no purpose.

"Human brat, I will kill you someday."

Leaving those words behind, Dormammu made his retreat.

...

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