After becoming an A-Class hero, Jessica Campbell went off to celebrate with her friends.
Wanda looked at Jessica with envy. A life like that, blessed with natural talent and not needing to struggle, was something she wanted too.
Unfortunately, all Wanda could do for now was keep suffering through advanced studies in management.
Emma, on the other hand, had no real interest in Jessica becoming an A-Class hero. She was the one who stood closest to Zodhis's secrets.
Relying on her innate telepathic ability, Emma quickly became one of the most popular girls in school.
Because whenever anyone talked to her, they were amazed at how she felt like a friend from a past life, someone who understood them completely.
Even their hidden little secrets and private hobbies were perfectly clear to her.
Jessica and Wanda were no exception. In front of Emma, their minds were completely undefended, and Emma could casually see their thoughts.
For example, Jessica's initial wariness and distance, and Wanda's sincere warmth.
For Emma, this was an incredibly pleasant and relaxing stretch of time. She had never lived a life like this before.
At school, she had more and more friends and was deeply loved by both teachers and classmates.
Her grades also kept improving, because she could cheat with her telepathic powers.
Little by little, Emma built herself into the image of a perfect goddess who excelled in both character and academics.
Zodhis had already warned her about this. Abusing telepathy could lead to unforeseen consequences.
After all, even Zodhis himself rarely used telepathy to pry into other people's hearts and thoughts unless it was necessary.
Naturally, Emma obeyed on the surface while continuing to do as she pleased in private. In any case, Zodhis had no way of finding traces of her telepathic use.
As for Esdeath, whose telepathic ability was clearly a level above Emma's, it was said that she often disappeared without a trace, so Emma was not worried about being caught using telepathy by her either.
What she did not know was that Zodhis was already preparing to create a telepathic master, someone who would monitor the mental landscape of all America.
Together with Black Queen, that person would become the "clairvoyance and far-hearing" of World Serpent.
"Oh right, Emma, I heard your family is in Boston. Aren't you going back to check on them?"
Wanda asked.
A Dragon-level disaster had just rampaged through Boston, after all.
"It's fine. They evacuated in time and got out safely."
Emma drew back her smile a little before answering.
After all, Emma was one of World Serpent's cadres. Naturally, the families of cadres would be relocated in advance.
So Silver Fox Carla and the others were all perfectly fine. Not that Emma cared much about her parents anyway. One was a violent father, the other a mother who drank, did drugs, and cheated. What was there to care about in a cold family like that?
Only Carla mattered to her.
"That's good."
Wanda did not think much more about it.
...
S.H.I.E.L.D. had been under enormous pressure lately, especially Nick Fury.
The endless stream of monsters made S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization that claimed to protect world safety and uphold world justice, look utterly pale and powerless.
They had no way to detect monsters immediately, but the Superhero Association could discover them at once and arrange the evacuation of civilians.
They had no way to eliminate monsters in time and reduce losses, but the Superhero Association could destroy monsters at the fastest possible speed. Although Boston had suffered direct losses of over a hundred million dollars and indirect losses of more than a billion, everyone still found that acceptable.
After all, judging from the destructive power Carnage Kabuto had displayed, if no one had stopped it, the destruction of all Boston would only have been a matter of time.
And that time would not even have exceeded a single day.
At that point, it might even have spread to other cities, because a Dragon-level disaster was, after all, a crisis capable of destroying multiple cities.
The Superhero Association eliminated Carnage Kabuto in the shortest possible time, and the destruction caused by the battle between Carnage Kabuto and Hulk instead fell within what people considered an acceptable range of losses.
Precisely because of that, superheroes had begun drawing the attention of governments around the world.
After all, every country had already tested the matter for themselves when it came to monsters.
Conventional weapons and war machines had no effect, while high-power weapons were simply not suitable for use inside cities.
This was also where Zodhis saved himself a great deal of effort. Otherwise, not just anything could survive a fleet's full naval bombardment or a line of aircraft unloading missile strikes.
Set the battlefield inside a city, evacuate the civilians in advance, and what remained was the stage of superheroes and monsters. Add to that the omnipresent Sentinel robots livestreaming everything from multiple angles, and what the world saw was government incompetence set against superhero courage and fearlessness.
Zodhis was even preparing to select a few handsome men and beautiful women among the superheroes and cultivate them into the public faces of superheroism.
And behind all that superhero glory was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s incompetence.
As a result, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s budget was cut again and again. Even when Nick Fury went all the way to the Security Council, it did no good.
Because Alexander Pierce had also realized that compared with the old Super Soldier Program and the Winter Soldier Corps, superheroes were clearly a potential asset far beyond imagination, especially Hulk, Ben the Thing, Iron Man Tony Stark, Zodhis, the Fantastic Four, and the rest.
Every one of them possessed the ability to independently wipe out a fully armed, full-strength division.
And yet that entire force was completely in Zodhis's hands.
Hydra wanted that power as well, so they also sent quite a few people to infiltrate the Superhero Association.
With Emma and Black Queen around, those people naturally ended up becoming World Serpent's people. On the surface, however, they still remained Hydra agents.
They fed Hydra false intelligence while helping World Serpent follow the trail and swallow up even more of Hydra.
To the point that Alexander Pierce still had not noticed that his Hydra was already almost gone.
He was still immersed in the dream of obtaining the power of superheroes.
And in truth, it was not just Hydra that had recognized the value of superheroes. Governments all over the world had begun trying to recruit superheroes as well.
As a result, the weapons industry suffered another major blow.
Zodhis was not included in that, of course. He had already successfully transitioned into superhero products.
They were simply not for sale.
Every day, countless capitalists waved money around, hoping to invest, only to be turned away by Zodhis without exception.
There was no antitrust law anyway, so Zodhis had no need to let outsiders come in and point fingers. He intended to monopolize this resource.
Of course, the way it was presented to the outside world was that Zodhis had stepped forward to act as the shield behind the superheroes, protecting them from persecution by officials and capitalists.
Most superheroes did not have much education, and they had no fondness for capitalists either. After all, in a country like America, there really were not many capitalists who had done much good.
The same went for the authorities.
/-\
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