Contempt was thoroughly offended by the man's behavior.
She had never encountered or searched for a superhuman other than Eddie, so she looked down on them, believing that the humans on this planet had no possibility of evolution. Only symbiotes could grant them true power. Yet the man standing before her was far beyond anything she had imagined, and the warriors contained within the information flow had left Contempt thoroughly shaken.
But that did not mean just anyone could trample over a noble symbiote without consequence. In her eyes, that was a capital crime.
Contempt's arm changed, transforming into the shape of an electromagnetic cannon and aiming at the man in the air. A purple beam burst forth with a thunderous roar, accompanied by the smell of burning air.
But what she didn't expect was that an attack powerful enough to destroy a house failed to touch the enemy at all. The man passed through the beam as though he did not exist in this time and space.
Boom!
The ground behind Renzo was plowed open, leaving more than thirty meters of scorched earth. Trees were pierced and annihilated by the beam, leaving a complete mess behind.
Contempt's eyes widened. Although her eyes were already large, Annie, wrapped in the symbiote, was equally stunned.
Was he a ghost? Could ghosts really move around during the day? There were actually ghosts in this world! How had Eddie met one? Would she become like this after she died...?
Renzo wasn't in the mood to care what they were thinking. They were irrelevant thoughts anyway. He had decided to use force. He had promised Eddie that he would bring Annie back, and a promise was a promise. Once he gave his word, he would do his best to fulfill it.
But once someone stood in his way...
Renzo sneered. He had given up the Black Lantern Ring, but that did not mean the darkness in his heart had been completely expelled.
A fist wrapped in the power of the Power Stone struck Contempt's face. The purple mucus shattered like fragile porcelain, revealing Annie's panicked face underneath. Renzo thrust his hand into the sticky, writhing symbiotic body, grabbed the woman's arm, and tried to pull her out.
Annie instinctively resisted the touch of a strange man...or a ghost. She struggled desperately to free herself, while Contempt took the opportunity to recover and wrapped one of Renzo's arms inside her body.
"How stupid!" Renzo finally lost his patience and cursed angrily.
During his time on Xandar, he had always naively hoped that he could establish a good relationship with this highly developed planet and become its ally. He had long admired the Nova Corps, and Richard Rider was a genuine hero in his eyes, at least according to the comics.
But reality was often much crueler than fiction. It was difficult for a highly advanced civilization to view a less-developed civilization as an equal. From Xandar's perspective, Earth was merely a remote backwater that could not even achieve interstellar travel. How could genuine diplomatic relations be established?
Even Richard, who had been born on Earth, had gradually been influenced by the society around him. His thinking had been assimilated by what he considered the more advanced civilization, and he had begun viewing the universe from that perspective, forgetting that there were still people on Earth waiting for him to come home.
Renzo hated it. He hated this kind of conditioning, and he was even more disgusted by what he saw as Richard's betrayal.
It wasn't limited to him. Carol had once tried to challenge the limitations she placed on herself and had fought hard despite believing herself weak. Yet after twenty years of traveling the universe, she had gradually become arrogant, even when facing the people of Earth.
At the beginning of Avengers 4, she looked down on the Avengers on Earth and coldly remarked that she could kill Thanos herself. Renzo wanted to ask: What had she been doing before that? Instead of protecting Earth, she had chosen to protect the so-called order of the universe.
Renzo couldn't understand how many times Earth had faced catastrophe. If even the slightest thing had gone wrong during the Battle of New York or the events of Age of Ultron, Earth could have been destroyed.
Carol's casual remark—"There are no Avengers on other planets"—had infuriated Renzo when he watched the movie. If he hadn't been sitting in a theater, he would have cursed at the screen.
So he finally chose to solve the problem through force, cutting through everything in his path.
That was the fundamental principle of this world.
A huge purple radiance enveloped both sides. The destructive power of the Power Stone crushed Contempt into fragments that scattered across the ground and mixed with the soil. She was too weak to move. Annie was terrified, and her skin withered under the overwhelming impact, making her look decades older.
"A small lesson, woman." Renzo glanced at her with disgust. "If it weren't for Eddie's request, you would have died here for betraying humanity."
His indifferent tone made Annie realize that he wasn't lying. For a moment, he had genuinely wanted to kill her.
An hour later, Eddie drove over in a dusty car.
"Annie!" X2
Eddie and Dan rushed over as soon as they received the news. When they saw the distraught woman sitting on the ground with her knees pulled to her chest and panic in her eyes, their hearts ached.
"Annie! What..." Eddie trotted forward, but before he could finish, Dan reached her first. He hugged the woman, buried his face in her hair, gently stroked her head, and softly comforted her.
Eddie stopped in despair.
He had forgotten that this woman no longer belonged to him.
"What happened? You promised me you'd find her intact." Eddie turned to Renzo and demanded an answer, completely forgetting the enormous difference in strength between them. His eyes were as fierce as a lion's.
"A small lesson." Renzo raised his hand, holding a pool of half-dead purple mucus in his palm. Only this small portion of Contempt's body remained. The rest had been reduced to ashes by the destructive power of the Power Stone.
Venom suddenly emerged from Eddie's body, and a huge black claw reached for Contempt.
"I want to eat her!" Venom shouted excitedly.
He could feel Contempt's greater power. As long as he swallowed her, Venom's strength would rise another level, and based on physical strength alone, even Chaos might no longer be his opponent.
Venom couldn't wait to find Thompson and get his revenge. Although neither Venom nor Eddie had used their full strength during their battle, and they had retreated after only a few rounds of testing, those few exchanges had still allowed Venom to clearly recognize the difference between them. His strength and level of life were somewhat inferior to Chaos.
Even if Eddie and Venom worked together perfectly, defeating Thompson would probably still be difficult.
Lying in Renzo's palm and trembling, Contempt felt an enormous wave of malice. The Earthling's eyes were fierce and greedy, as though he genuinely wanted to devour her. The weak symbiote instinctively recoiled from Venom, doing everything she could to avoid him.
Smack!
Renzo slapped Venom back with one palm.
"Calm down. She's not your food. If you want brains, go to Washington. The White House is full of them."
Venom shrank back resentfully. Even though he was angry, he didn't dare say anything.
"Contempt. A special symbiote. Her hosts are electronic components and machines. That's why Dan's car disappeared from the scene of the accident."
Renzo shrugged and raised an eyebrow.
"Whose car did you two drive here, anyway?"
After Renzo briefly described what had happened, he left alone with Contempt. He wanted to study this special individual carefully. He knew very little about the symbiote race. Aside from a few members of Venom's lineage and Gnar, he knew almost nothing about the others.
Contempt's existence had aroused his curiosity. Perhaps this was an opportunity to learn more about the symbiote race.
Morbius was moving his experimental base. Ever since discovering that the military had obtained a powerful symbiote, he had been suspicious that his research might be discovered and that he would be arrested and have his blood drawn.
After all, vampires loved blood!
That meant drinking someone else's blood, not having their own taken.
However, when he returned this time, he seemed to have encountered Lucis, his best friend. Lucis also suffered from a blood disorder like Morbius, although his condition was much better. At least he still had the leisure and energy to go to Las Vegas, play cards, and spend some time bragging with Morbius.
Renzo occupied Morbius's laboratory in San Francisco, while Contempt was poured into a glass jar like a hamster. Various instruments pointed at her as they scanned her body. Renzo also used the Mind Stone to provide her with energy so that she wouldn't become too weak and could maintain her "living" state.
"We should have a good chat..." A weak electronic female voice entered Renzo's mind.
"Oh, when you deliberately showed weakness to influence Annie's thinking and gave her the illusion that you were 'close' to her, you had already lost the freedom to defend yourself."
Renzo looked down at the pitifully weak Contempt.
"You have to pay for what you do, don't you?"
When Renzo noticed Annie's strange behavior, he had already sensed the unnatural magnetic field surrounding her. Humans could not produce such a magnetic field. Only beings with powerful mental abilities could.
Contempt had pretended to be innocent and timid, deliberately showing weakness while secretly manipulating things behind the scenes. Renzo looked down on such tricks. For him, the symbiote's scheming was little more than the mischief of a naughty kindergarten child. The Mind Stone naturally restrained mental abilities.
But this also made Renzo more cautious. At the very least, it made him realize that the symbiote race wasn't simply a group of idiots who only knew how to fight. There were also individuals among them who were more intelligent than humans, and those individuals were the crucial pieces in a symbiote invasion of Earth.
At least, that was what Renzo believed.
Gnar probably regarded an intelligent servant like this as nothing more than a slightly more useful servant. In his eyes, power was the key to solving everything, and his own strength was sufficient to crush this weak planet. Humanity would be helpless once symbiotes covered every corner of the world.
So Renzo began a passionate experiment...
Just for him.
...
"Hey, hey, hey! Look who's here. Michael Morbius! My good brother since childhood."
Lucis Crown enthusiastically hugged his good friend, completely ignoring the infusion tube in his hand.
"Where have you been? Why do you look so much better?" Lucis asked suspiciously, holding Morbius by the shoulders.
"Have you made progress with your medicine?!"
Lucis's eyes widened as an impossible thought appeared in his mind. He excitedly grabbed Morbius's hand.
Blood disease... This was a blood disease! There was no cure.
Although he usually lived carefree, he had always been deeply frustrated by his condition.
How unfair was it that a talented genius would die in his thirties? Other people could live openly, enjoying decades of comfort and happiness, while he had to receive infusions every day and count down the remaining days of his life.
There was nothing he could do except wait for death.
"You have a solution, right?"
Lucis pressed forward step by step. Morbius had never seen such a vicious and ferocious expression in his friend's eyes. It was like a poisonous snake lurking in the darkness, its tongue flicking as its cold, vertical pupils stared at him.
Morbius didn't know what to say. In truth, he had nothing to say.
He knew his own physical condition. His deteriorating state had forced him to rely on blood to sustain his life. The blood that had once tasted foul to him had become incredibly delicious. More and more, he felt like the legendary vampire.
Fortunately, with Renzo around, he had been able to control his bloodlust and prevent himself from losing control and becoming a murderous monster.
He wanted to tell Lucis about the medicine, but he didn't dare.
His experiment had been too hasty. He had tested it on himself without conducting human trials first, and the risk had been enormous. He wasn't even sure whether he would survive.
Fortunately, he had.
Morbius wasn't sure whether the medicine would work for Lucis, either. If something went wrong, he didn't believe he had the ability to control it. If it resulted in his friend's death, he would feel guilty for the rest of his life.
"Sorry, Lucis. I've developed a medicine that can suppress blood disorders, but I can't say..."
"Why? Why?! You've been cured!"
Lucis didn't understand. His pupils were scarlet and bloodshot as he interrupted the man, his voice filled with resentment.
"Calm down, Lucis. Listen to me. If you can't control yourself, just give me a little more time and I can develop the perfect medicine!"
"But I can't wait any longer! Why did you have to appear in front of me like this?!"
Lucis angrily threw the cup onto the coffee table and pulled the infusion tube from his hand.
If he had seen a sick and frustrated Morbius, he might have looked at his extremely weak and emaciated friend with sympathy and offered him warm hospitality. They would still have been good friends.
But Morbius had recovered. He had been cured.
And yet he had betrayed Lucis.
Lucis shook off Morbius's hand.
"Don't hypocritically tell me it's 'for my own good.' If you really are doing this for me... give me the medicine!"
He lunged forward, but his body felt as though it had crashed into a mountain. The impact left his head spinning.
"You...you..."
He pointed at Morbius in disbelief. A bold idea appeared in his mind, and he rushed forward again, wanting to test it once more.
But how could Morbius let him have his way?
Morbius immediately grabbed Lucis by the shoulders and pushed him down onto the sofa, a hint of pleading in his voice.
"Please...give me some more time. I will definitely cure you. I swear to God, you will survive. Absolutely!"
Lucis calmed down and remained silent for a moment.
"I believe you."
"Thank you!"
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