"Whoa, whoa, whoa... Calm down. If the big guy inside me comes out, that won't be good for anyone." Banner held his aching lower back. His gray hair was messy and stuck to his scalp. Hulk's skull was extremely tough; otherwise, Dr. Banner would definitely have cracked his head open.
Carol did not give Banner any face. The energy in her hands grew stronger and stronger, and her pupils shone with silvery-white light.
"Dr. Banner!"
When Banner raised his head, tears suddenly filled his eyes. At last, a familiar figure had appeared before him. "Vision... is that you? Vision!" Banner got up. Seeing this, Renzo quickly stepped forward to support him. "Where is this? Who are they?"
Banner pointed at the people with human appearances. His memory was still stuck at the moment Natasha had pushed him into the pit in Sokovia, and he could not remember anything after that.
He did not think the people before him were human. Perhaps they were aliens with human appearances, just like Thor. After all, he had never seen a human's palms emit light before, and they were not Ultraman.
"You're finally awake," Renzo said, checking Banner's injuries with some concern. "Hulk didn't want to change back into you, and he didn't want to return to Earth. He wanted to crush me."
"Return to Earth?" Dr. Banner caught the key point and said in surprise, "What do you mean? This isn't Earth? How is that possible? You and Stark are playing tricks on me..."
Dr. Banner did not understand. He shouted Stark's name toward the sky. "This isn't funny! Stark, let me out!"
As one of Earth's top scientists, the kind whose photo could be hung in primary and secondary school classrooms, his expertise far exceeded the average level on Earth. He understood that with Earth's current level of technology, even including S.H.I.E.L.D. and Stark Industries, true interstellar navigation should still be impossible. Even leaving the solar system would take years.
Besides, how could he have left Earth? Hulk's intelligence was not much better than that of a three-year-old child. He probably did not even know what a spaceship was. He was just an irritable bear who only thought about smashing things. If Hulk could pilot a spaceship... haha. It would already be lucky if he did not smash it into a discus.
"Banner... Dr. Banner..." Renzo held Dr. Banner's shoulders and carefully told him what had happened on Earth over the past two years. Dr. Banner listened to Renzo's every word in a daze. He felt like a monkey trapped beneath a golden hoop, alone and suffering through hardships, without a single familiar person around him. Renzo's words were like a curse. Every sentence was like a sharp sword, piercing deep into Dr. Banner's heart.
"How could this happen..." Dr. Banner leaned against Renzo in loneliness. He missed Shauna. Shauna would definitely be heartbroken after he had been missing for so long.
...
"Carter!"
"Yes!"
The Kree boy hurriedly ran around the laboratory. Dr. Banner wore goggles, his eyes locked on the small spacecraft in front of him. The tattered hull had been repaired with various iron plates and scraps of metal. Gray steel plates were embedded into the yellow hull, and the unpleasant smell of rust filled the air.
Carter wrinkled his nose and handed Dr. Banner the wrench. Then he squatted on the ground in boredom, looking at the spaceship that was gradually being repaired while imagining the future after leaving Xandar.
Thanos had run away. He had killed the leader of the Shi'ar Empire, Gladiator, and then fled. Everyone in the Ultimates was furious about it. They had left Xandar three days ago and begun pursuing Thanos.
They would destroy everything related to Thanos in an even more violent way, including Kree territory.
Renzo angrily stormed into Dr. Banner's laboratory. It was called a laboratory, but it was actually a shed rebuilt on top of the ruins. Materials from the wreckage of spacecraft had been piled together into a small house, just large enough to accommodate the repair work on a small spacecraft.
"Damn Richard! Damn the Nova Corps!" Renzo angrily cursed those bastards.
"He still doesn't agree to let us leave?" Dr. Banner asked without raising his head. In fact, he already knew the answer.
The Nova Corps refused to let them leave. Rhomann Dey blamed all the damage from the war on them on the grounds that Renzo had attracted Thanos, then sarcastically said, "Want to leave? Fine. You can leave once Xandar has been rebuilt to its original state. And you have to hand over the Infinity Stone!"
Of course, Renzo did not tolerate him. He beat him up and threw him into his office like a dead dog. Then he went to argue with Richard, only for Richard to reject Renzo's request because he was not the leader of the Nova Corps.
"You want a spaceship to leave here? Sorry, I can't agree to that." Richard folded his arms, a faint smile on his face. It was so irritating that Renzo wanted to rush up and punch him.
"What a dog wearing a toilet!" Renzo cursed angrily.
"If you want to leave, build your own spaceship and go!" Richard left in time, avoiding truly pushing him too far.
"So what now, Dr. Banner? Can this ship be repaired?"
"It's difficult," Dr. Banner said with a grimace. "This technology is too advanced, at least four hundred years ahead of Earth. Maybe Stark could repair it if he were here, but with only me..." Dr. Banner could only tell the truth. "Maybe if you give me a year and a half to repair it while studying it, it should be possible."
"A year and a half..." Renzo's eye twitched. By then, the daylilies would have gone cold. Asgard would have been destroyed eight times over, and Earth would probably have been trampled flat by Thanos's army.
"That can't be helped," Dr. Banner said with a helpless shrug. "If the Tesseract were here, we could easily leave. Unfortunately... the Tesseract is in Asgard."
Renzo's face darkened when he heard this. "I have the Tesseract here."
"With you?" Dr. Banner stood up in surprise. "Then why don't you use it to escape from here?"
"Richard hid it before. I originally came here to borrow the Power Stone, but I didn't expect even the Space Stone to get locked away." Renzo grew angry as soon as he thought of Richard's awful face. The Black Lantern Ring seemed to sense its master's mood and came alive, short tentacles protruding from the ring as if trying to vent on his behalf.
"Quiet!" Renzo impatiently tapped the ring, and the lively child immediately settled down.
After absorbing Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight, the ring's power seemed to have begun replenishing automatically, and the zombie horde could now move as well.
Renzo vaguely seemed to see a dead, silent world—a blank, gray continent, a dark and chaotic sky, and three figures walking across the land like zombies.
"The realm of death? Why is it different from the one next door?"
Renzo fell into deep thought. It could not be that he had not finished developing the Black Lantern Ring yet, could it?
"Boss, this..."
Carter suddenly spoke. He held a weapon almost as long as his own body in his arms and struggled to lift it. Cold sweat broke out across his forehead as he strained to speak.
"This weapon... what should we do with it? It's been in the laboratory all day. I have nightmares every night when I sleep. A crazy woman keeps chasing me from behind, holding this weapon in her hand." Carter spoke with lingering fear. This was indeed the truth. This spear had followed Proxima Midnight for hundreds of years, and their tacit understanding had been extraordinary, almost as if they had become one.
They had reached the state of unity between warrior and spear.
"Do whatever you want with it. If you want it, take it." Renzo did not have a clear concept of weapons. Good weapons could indeed increase a user's strength, but aside from those artifacts that directly granted divine power, Renzo had little interest in other weapons. He felt they were not as powerful as simply punching someone twice.
Carter's face was both excited and sorrowful. He had such a powerful weapon, but he could not lift it. How difficult!
...
Sanctuary II.
Thanos dragged his broken armor and sat on his throne, his face dark and grim.
Supergiant and Corvus Glaive lowered their heads and knelt on the ground, not daring even to breathe for fear of offending their lord.
Yes, it was Supergiant and Corvus Glaive. In the battle a few days earlier, Supergiant had used her abilities to control the guards watching her and escaped all the way. While the Black Order was collectively evacuating, she had found Corvus Glaive's war blade and brought it back.
Corvus Glaive had also relied on the soul stored in the war blade to resurrect himself. He lowered his head with a gloomy expression, his withered, dark heart filled with hatred for Renzo. His skull-like eyes burned with hateful light. He swore that he would one day use the Undying Blade in his hand to viciously pierce that man's body.
Thanos looked at the only two remaining generals and could not help feeling a little irritated.
"Step back..."
"Yes!"
The two responded at the same time and immediately left.
Thanos sat quietly on the throne, a vicious light in his eyes. He had never been so humiliated. Over the past thousand years, he had slaughtered hundreds of civilizations and watched them fall miserably beneath his butcher's knife. Their wails, their blood, their corpses... they had all brought Thanos pleasure.
"Thanos... what a mess!"
An incorporeal figure suddenly appeared in front of Thanos, followed by a second, a third, and a fourth...
A total of five figures flashed before Thanos. Their shapes were different, and their expressions were unclear, but the sarcasm in their voices was unmistakable.
"If you were not projections, I would crush your heads!"
Thanos spoke in a low voice, his tone impatient.
"I'm afraid your situation isn't any better than mine. Do I need to call out your names one by one? Knull. Mangog."
Thanos directly exposed the identities of two of them without giving them any face, causing the others to laugh.
"Jie jie jie! This universe really is magical. There is no symbiote planet of mine here." Knull laughed arrogantly, the sound harsh in Thanos's ears.
"Shut up!"
"I went to find Dormammu. That coward was so frightened by Strange that he doesn't dare invade Earth," a faint red shadow said indifferently. "The Ancient One is dead. Earth's strongest guardian is gone. Now we can prepare to invade Earth."
"Odin is about to die as well," Mangog's rough voice echoed throughout the entire battleship. "I can feel the seal of Odin's cave constantly weakening. It will not take more than a few months for me to break through."
"They are nothing more than imprisoned dogs and pigs," Thanos said, a mocking smile appearing on his lips. "Kept in captivity like dogs. That old man Odin did the right thing."
"Hmph! Do you want to fight? Haha, I'm also curious how many of my punches your fragile body can withstand. Be careful not to get beaten to death by me!"
Thanos's face filled with rage. His fists clenched, crushing the armrest of the throne, and he nearly ground his teeth apart.
However, he did not dare speak out. His current strength was indeed no match for Mangog. With this body, even Hulk and Kallark were difficult to defeat, let alone Mangog, who had destroyed Asgard by himself.
Although their strength would be weakened to varying degrees when they entered this universe, the gap between them still existed.
"Mephisto, how is the situation in Hell? You look very weak..."
Thanos shifted his target. "Even your astral projection is so blurry. It seems your strength has been weakened quite a lot."
"I am not in your universe. I am in another universe, and there are no Avengers here."
Mephisto's voice sounded as if it had crawled out of Hell. His ferocious red horns gradually became clearer. "There is a little devil in this universe who took my name and gave Johnny Blaze the Spirit of Vengeance. He is now imprisoned in the depths of Hell by me. It will not be long before this universe is devoured by me."
Thanos was speechless. Why did it seem that among everyone here, he was the one in the worst position? He had wanted to capture Xandar, only to be beaten back miserably by Captain Marvel and the others, losing many of his men in the process.
Several people glanced at the two silent figures. These two had never spoken a word, but they always participated in their meetings. None of them even knew their specific identities. Not even Knull could see through them.
"How is the God-killing plan progressing?"
"Galactus, Eternity, the Grandmaster, the Watcher... I pierced their bodies with the All-Black and nailed them to the end of the universe." Knull laughed arrogantly, and the harsh laughter made Thanos restless.
"What about the Collector? He had the Reality Stone." Thanos asked suspiciously. He suspected Knull had embezzled the Infinity Stone.
"He ran away. Very fast, too. Most of his collection was taken with him, leaving only some insignificant things behind." Knull gently stroked the duck and space dog that had been rendered black under his hands, smiling in satisfaction.
Thanos's anger suddenly erupted from deep within his heart. If this were his original body, these people would be nothing more than stepping stones for him. Knull, the god of symbiotes; Mephisto, the lord of Hell; Mangog, born from the hatred of billions—none of them would be his match while he held the Infinity Stones.
But he still had to hold back his anger and shut off the projection.
"Carol!"
...
"Victor, what happened?"
Susan walked slowly over, her waist twisting slightly as she passed behind Victor. "We're about to go into space. Aren't you excited at all?"
"Ah... of course I'm excited," Victor said with a smile, anger rising inside him when he thought of how the woman he loved so deeply would end up marrying that emotionally clueless guy.
"You go find Reed first. I need to prepare something."
Susan was practically driven out of the room. She watched Victor close the door in disbelief and murmured, "Is he crazy?"
Victor slumped into his chair and looked at the photo of Reed and himself on the table. Back then, they had smiled so happily.
The man gently picked up the photo and stared at Reed's smile.
"What a pity... I won this time!"
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