After confirming that the Black King could absorb his power, Jovian killed him on the spot and took that ability for himself.
"Work hard and get stronger, kid!"
After taking the Black King's power, Jovian lightly patted the wide-eyed young Lehnsherr beside him on the shoulder and walked out without looking back.
Whether it was because Lehnsherr was still too weak and hadn't fully developed his powers yet, nowhere near the Omega-level mutant he would one day become...
Or because Lehnsherr was too important a figure, and killing him might attract the attention of certain troublesome beings...
Jovian had no intention of making a move on him.
Besides, Lehnsherr's power simply wasn't on Jovian's menu in the first place. The ones Jovian had his eyes on were Apocalypse and Phoenix...
Not long after walking out of the room, Jovian saw a bald man in ancient Greek robes.
"Mother fucker!"
Jovian jumped in shock at the sight of the bald man and immediately backed up several steps.
"No need to mind me. I'm simply curious about you, so I wanted to follow you around for a while and see what exactly you're trying to do."
"So rest assured. We only observe and record. We do not interfere with the rise or fall of any world."
The bald man looked at Jovian and expressed his goodwill. He clearly had no intention of fighting him as he was now.
"Go eat shit."
Jovian gave the bald man the universal hand gesture of friendship, then vanished right in front of him.
"Hm?!"
The bald man looked at the place where Jovian had disappeared and felt puzzled. It was the first time he had ever felt such strong curiosity that he broke his own old rules and decided to observe someone up close, only for that person to disappear without a trace. For the first time, a faint sense of disappointment appeared in that still, emotionless heart of his.
Back in the Invincible universe...
High in the sky, Jovian's figure slowly reappeared. It was the first time he had returned from another world so quickly.
Every high-tier world was hard to crack. Each one was packed with all kinds of ridiculously broken powerhouses. Right now, Jovian genuinely wondered how those other travelers who had gone to the MCU multiverse managed to get anything done under the noses of all those overpowered freaks who spent all day floating in the sky, staring down at Earth and spying on everyone's privacy.
"Better be careful. Even more careful. Hit-and-run tactics it is."
Jovian didn't dare stay in the MCU for long. He had decided that in a world full of broken powerhouses, the best approach was guerrilla warfare. Most importantly, he absolutely could not get reckless. The MCU had countless monsters with all kinds of absurd powers, and no matter how fancy your abilities were, if you got too careless, you could still get wrecked.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness already had giant eyeball nightmares running around. With a body like his, if he could stay hidden, then he needed to stay hidden.
"Now that I've gained the power of energy absorption, I have two targets."
"X-Men: Dark Phoenix and Eternals..."
"I got noticed by the Watcher in the X-Men timeline, so going back there could easily cause another conflict. In that case, Eternals it is."
"I just messed with the Watcher, and now I'm about to fleece the Celestials. Damn, this is exciting."
Jovian stretched his body, then activated the system again the very next second.
"Lock onto Eternals for me..."
The moment Jovian finished speaking, he turned into a streak of white light and vanished from space once more.
The world returned to its primal beginning...
The Celestials were probably the earliest life-forms to ever awaken consciousness in this universe. They created the universe itself, along with the countless life-forms inside it.
But if the Celestials wanted to increase their numbers, then the intelligent life they had created always had to make a small sacrifice.
A Celestial used a planet as its shell, and the intelligent life living on that planet as its energy source. Once enough energy had been absorbed, it would burst out of the shell. That phenomenon was called the Emergence.
And in Eternals, at the center of it all, on Earth, which was watched by dimensional demon lords like the eye monster, Dormammu, and Mephisto, slept the strongest Celestial of all: the sleeping Celestial Tiamut...
To be honest, Jovian didn't want to provoke the sleeping Celestial Tiamut at all.
But if there was even a chance to plan something out, he wasn't willing to let it go.
On that cursed island nation...
As one of the Axis powers, after repeated failures to communicate, two dazzling, beautiful mushrooms bloomed upon that disgusting land, blossoming into the most beautiful flowers in the world.
Towering firelight rose into the sky. Even far from the city, even across the ocean, the beautiful glow could still be seen.
A man watched that blaze rising from the earth. Not only did he feel no joy whatsoever, he collapsed to his knees on the ground, wiping away his tears as they streamed from his eyes.
"No! This isn't what I wanted!"
The man cried in agony, as if those two mushrooms had exploded directly on top of his own beloved mother. He felt powerless, his heart overflowing with disappointment in humanity.
When the island nation's cannon fodder had gripped machine guns and massacred unarmed people, no one knew what corner this man had been hiding in.
But now, when two mushrooms representing justice had fallen on that island, he cried harder than anyone, like his own mother had died.
Oh, right. He didn't even have a mother. He was nothing more than a vanguard created by the Celestials. Maybe it was precisely because he had never had a mother or father to teach him that he couldn't tell right from wrong and ended up like some wild boar.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
The man kept bowing toward the mushroom cloud, muttering under his breath.
"So you just love kneeling that much?"
"Then stay down forever, you worthless bastard!"
Just as the man clenched his hands and apologized with a face full of pain, an icy voice rang in his ears.
Then a pair of incredibly powerful hands seized his head and slammed his skull into the ground.
Boom!
With a thunderous crash, the earth caved in.
"Hm?!"
The man clearly hadn't expected anyone to suddenly appear behind him. Divine power erupted from his body, golden lines spreading across his entire form as endless energy seemed to burn within him.
Yes, he was no ordinary man.
He was one of the Eternals sent to Earth by the gods.
His name was Phastos...
Boom!
And then Phastos, who had just unleashed that astonishing divine power, was pinned flat against the ground by the person behind him.
What shocked Phastos even more was that the divine energy in his body was being absorbed continuously by the person behind him.
"Aaah!!"
Phastos refused to accept being pinned to the ground and beaten like this. He roared in anger, as if he planned to fight back.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!...
But no matter how hard Phastos struggled, he couldn't do a single thing to hurt the person behind him.
That person simply kept one hand on his head and smashed it into the ground over and over again.
"You wanted to kneel, so I'm granting your wish!"
"You can stay on your knees forever. I don't think you need those legs anymore."
Sizzle—
The person behind Phastos lifted him straight off the ground.
In the next second, a red blaze flared from behind him and instantly cut off both of Phastos' legs.
"Aaah!!"
Phastos screamed in agony as his legs were severed, but before he could even react, his head was smashed into the ground once more.
Boom!
The force was so great that sand and dust burst into the air, yet Phastos still did not die. His attacker had perfect control over the strength involved. It was enough to make him suffer, but never enough to kill him.
Boom!
And it kept going.
Again and again.
As if it would never end.
His enemy played with him, slamming him downward over and over, from above to below, from above to below, forcing his face into the ground each time.
"That's enough! If all you want is to humiliate me, then haven't you done enough already?!"
Phastos had no idea how many times he had been driven into the ground, but he was sick of it. He turned his head to the side and glared angrily at the blurry figure behind him, the one who had drained all his power and was still toying with him.
"That's all?"
"You can't take it after only three hundred thousand kneelings?"
The man questioned Phastos in a harsh, rasping voice, and only then did Phastos realize just how many times he had been forced down.
"You couldn't repay your sins in countless lifetimes!"
"Killing you here would be letting you off too easily!"
"But be happy. I won't let you keep living."
The man gripping Phastos by the throat snarled those words at him, then twisted and snapped his neck. A lump of coal seemed to fall from Phastos' body.
At the same time, the figure who had killed Phastos turned into a streak of white light and vanished instantly.
The moment the killer disappeared, a golden portal suddenly opened beside Phastos' corpse, and a completely bald woman stepped out of it, arriving before the devastated wreckage.
"..."
The woman seemed silent as she looked at the dead Phastos.
With her hands behind her back, she walked over to that disgusting coal head and lightly touched it with her fingers.
She saw countless clods of dirt, along with a blurry figure.
Unfortunately, the dead bastard lying before her had never even gotten a clear look at his killer's face.
"..."
The sheer uselessness of the Eternal at her feet was so shocking that even she found it astonishing. He hadn't even seen what his enemy looked like before being killed. There was certainly a gap in strength involved, but the sheer trashiness of this Eternal was still enough to surprise her.
Sigh...
The woman let out a helpless breath.
From beginning to end, she never said a word.
She simply waved her hand, opened a glittering golden portal, and disappeared from that island that had brought endless disaster to the world.
Not long after the woman left, a man in battle armor descended from the sky.
His face was perfectly calm as he looked at the dead body of his fallen comrade.
"His energy was absorbed completely... Was this the work of the Deviants?"
The man muttered to himself, placing all the blame for his kinsman's death on the Deviants.
Time moved forward to after Thanos died in Avengers: Endgame...
After Iron Man sacrificed himself and traded one snap for peace across the world, humanity once again spread across the globe, laughing, talking, and celebrating the world's return...
A man in a black-and-white suit appeared on an empty street.
"Hah..."
"That was a little too impulsive. I shouldn't have gone to a timeline where the Ancient One was still alive."
"I need to keep that in mind from now on."
That broad-shouldered man was none other than Jovian. Leaning against a glowing streetlamp, he criticized his own impulsive decision to attack Phastos without thinking through the consequences. It absolutely wasn't worth attracting the Ancient One's attention just to deal with trash like him.
What he needed to do now was hunt the Eternals and see whether, by using their power, he could absorb Tiamut's strength while the Celestial had only just awakened and still wasn't fully conscious.
Jovian stood beside the streetlamp and didn't make a move right away.
He stood there calmly for an entire hour.
"The Ancient One is dead, Odin is dead, Stephen Strange is still a rookie... this planet is safe..."
After discovering that no one had come looking for him even after a full hour, Jovian rose into the sky and began his operation.
India...
Inside a Bollywood soundstage, countless girls in richly traditional outfits danced together to the music.
Among them stood a man with a thoroughly sleazy face, wedged in among the girls as if they were all just decorations for him, as though he were the center of everything. Maybe the man didn't realize that no one actually wanted to watch him. They only wanted to watch the beautiful dancers behind him.
"Very good, everyone danced well. That's it. Let's do another take~"
"This time, I'm sure we can all do even better. We'll be at least ten percent stronger than before!"
The man grinned lewdly as he spread his arms and waved to the girls behind him, signaling for everyone to do it one more time.
"All right! We'll do another take right away..."
The girls all nodded together, preparing to run through it once more according to the man's instructions.
Boom!
But before they could finish speaking, a sonic blast exploded through the room, and a violent gust of wind forced all the girls to shut their eyes.
When the gale finally faded, the sleazy man had vanished from the room without a trace.
"What?! Where did Mr. Kingo go?!"
Everyone stared wide-eyed at the shattered wall and the missing Kingo.
High in the sky—
A pair of powerful hands clamped down on Kingo's head, and the pressure of the rushing wind made it impossible for him to turn around.
"Ikaris?! Is that you?"
Kingo called out the name of the man behind him. In his mind, aside from Ikaris, there was no one else who could grab him and fly off with him like this.
"Correct."
The reply he got was a low, hoarse voice.
"Who are you? You're not Ikaris!"
Even though Ikaris often spoke in a similar tone, Kingo could tell from the subtle differences that the man behind him was not his old friend.
"A reward."
Sizzle—
Still confused, Kingo heard the word reward in his ear, and in the very next second, endless crimson light pierced straight through the watermelon on top of his shoulders.
As every last trace of golden power vanished from his body, a headless corpse plunged from ten thousand meters in the air.
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