This contradiction applied not only to the Dark Elves but also to the Aesir of Asgard.
They looked incredibly powerful, yet they were infiltrated by just a few ships. But if you said they were weak, Earth couldn't replicate even a fraction of their technology.
It was a feeling of being both incredibly advanced and incredibly primitive at the same time.
It felt a bit like certain Western countries today. You couldn't say they were weak—they dominated certain high-tech fields and collected patent fees until their hands went soft. But if you said they were strong, you'd be lying to yourself, because their basic infrastructure and public services were often a total mess.
Hence the feeling of "powerful yet oddly weak."
"The real trouble is that these alien conflicts are likely to involve Earth. After all, Jane Foster is from Earth!" Nick Fury pointed out.
He had instantly recognized Jane Foster as Thor's lover.
Since Malekith's target was Jane, it meant the conflict would likely unfold on Earth, or at least directly implicate it.
Especially knowing about the "Fourth Wall Writers." Those writers were Earthlings. Wouldn't they want to give Earth more screen time?
Take Thor 1, for example. It was an internal family dispute in Asgard that had absolutely nothing to do with Earth, but it was forced to take place in New Mexico. Wasn't that obvious enough?
Whether it made sense or not, events had to happen on Earth.
In other words, Earth would be the primary stage and battleground for many superhero movies.
For a writer, this was a great way to increase audience immersion. But for the actual inhabitants of Earth, it was terrible news. It meant dangerous, apocalyptic events would constantly be drawn to them.
If you viewed it from a superhero's perspective, it was thrilling. But as an ordinary person—and yes, in the face of these cosmic events, Fury considered himself ordinary—he just wanted peace.
He wanted these alien gods to fight their wars on their own turf. The further away from Earth, the better. No one could handle this much collateral damage.
"I still don't know what this 'Aether' is..." Fury muttered. "We can't even take preventive measures. Knowing the writers' habits, the Aether is probably hidden somewhere on Earth. Otherwise, why would it involve Earth at all?"
Everyone nodded. That logic was sound.
"We probably can't avoid it. We're going to face a lot of trouble in the future," Fury sighed.
His obsession with establishing the Avengers Initiative deepened.
They desperately needed a team of extraordinary individuals to counter these increasingly powerful and absurd threats.
"Now we have this aggressive race, the Dark Elves. I don't know what grudge they have against Asgard, but they're clearly not good news," Fury continued. "Coulson, gather all the intel you can on the Dark Elves. I have a feeling we'll need it."
"Yes, Sir," Coulson replied.
"Why is the technology of these aliens and gods so advanced yet so backwards?"
After watching the video, this thought popped into Tony Stark's mind.
He had to admit, both the Dark Elves and Asgardians possessed some truly impressive, cutting-edge technology.
Take Asgard's energy shields, for example. They were used not only to imprison inmates in the dungeons but also to protect the entire Royal Palace.
This was highly advanced tech. At present, no one on Earth could replicate it.
It required an energy generator capable of compressing and shaping raw energy into a solid form exactly as desired.
Tony didn't know how Asgardians achieved this through magic, but doing it through pure science was incredibly difficult.
It was easy to understand conceptually, but translating that concept into reality was a different story.
This proved Asgard had real substance.
Then there were the Dark Elf ships. They could achieve perfect stealth. This wasn't like Earth's stealth fighters (which just minimized radar cross-sections). This was true invisibility—optical, radar, thermal, and every other spectrum.
Even the sound was muted.
If Heimdall didn't have ridiculously superhuman perception, they would have remained completely undetected.
The difficulty of realizing such technology was astronomical. Currently, Tony had no idea how to achieve this scientific breakthrough.
So, he couldn't say they weren't powerful. They had unique, terrifying weapons.
Take the "grenades" the Dark Elves threw. They didn't explode; they directly distorted space to crush their targets into black holes.
This kind of weapon was rarely even mentioned in Earth's sci-fi concepts. Distorting space itself was incredibly difficult; humanity's current science couldn't even scratch the surface.
Even if they could, it would likely require a generator the size of a building. But the Dark Elves condensed it into the size of a hand grenade. You threw it, it warped local space, and killed the target. That was absurd.
Tony wouldn't even dare to write that into a sci-fi script, but the Dark Elves made it a reality.
Yet... these two insanely advanced civilizations primarily used cold weapons? Who could imagine that?
They mixed some hot weapons with swords and spears. It was as if they skipped the Industrial Revolution entirely. They went straight from the Iron Age to the Interstellar Age, retaining the weaponry of both eras.
"No, wait. Their civilization developed completely differently from human society. Maybe they didn't have an Industrial Age. Maybe, through the study of magic, they leaped straight from the Cold Weapon Era to the Interstellar Era!" Tony stroked his goatee, his eyes lighting up.
If they were a purely technological civilization, this would be highly illogical.
But if they were a magical civilization... then everything changed.
Tony had never interacted with a magical civilization before. He didn't know if magic allowed a society to bypass industrialization and enter space directly.
It was an interstellar civilization with distinctly magical characteristics.
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