Charles let out a long breath after hearing Jovian's answer.
He had been wondering what on Earth he would do if Jovian refused.
Then—
Boom!
A beam of light burst out from the pyramid and spread across the entire planet.
"This is…"
Charles's eyes widened as he felt that boundless energy. At the same time, a terrible possibility flashed through his mind.
"Mr. Charles, there's something unfortunate I have to tell you." Jovian smiled faintly as he looked at the giant pyramid pouring out light. "While we were chatting, my machine finished its work. In one minute, everyone on Earth will have evolved."
He looked back at Charles, a calculating expression on his face.
"There's something I need to remind you of, Charles. Villains usually die because they talk too much. You talked too much."
"Actually, Mr. Jovian, I have to remind you of something." The Watcher suddenly appeared in front of Jovian and cut in. "You're the villain here."
"Hm?"
Jovian watched as the bald Watcher pulled a soda can out of his pocket.
The Watcher saw the can and immediately said nothing else. He covered his head and quietly moved off to the side.
"Mm."
Jovian watched the Watcher's quick surrender, then hurled the soda can straight at his shiny bald head.
"I said I'm the good guy, so I'm the good guy. I've never thought of myself as a villain from the very beginning."
Jovian stressed his identity with total seriousness. He was a great man devoted to the people. Calling a good person like him a villain was practically an insult to justice itself.
On the other side, Charles looked miserable as he stared at Jovian.
"Mr. Apocalypse, didn't you say the machine would take three hours from startup to activation? It's only been half an hour."
"I said less than three hours. Half an hour is still less than three hours."
Jovian let out a cold laugh. He hadn't lied at all. He had said less than three hours. As long as it was under one hundred eighty minutes, it still counted.
"That's… kind of cheating."
Charles's mind raced, searching desperately for a way out of this situation, but no matter how hard he thought, there was no way to break the deadlock.
"Very good. You wasted another thirty seconds while talking." Jovian glanced at the time displayed on his arm and spoke coldly. "By the time I finish this sentence, there will only be twenty-nine seconds left."
"Everyone, attack together!"
Out of options, Charles shouted to the others.
In an instant, everyone present launched themselves at Jovian.
Psylocke didn't hesitate for even a second. Seeing the others gang up on him, she stepped in front of Jovian at once. Her eyes were icy as she faced the mutants trying to stop him. Even if they were her own kind, she had no intention of showing mercy.
"Heh. Boring."
Jovian gave the attacking mutants a cold smile.
Before his words had fully faded, every single person there froze in place as if time itself had stopped. Those leaping into the air, those unleashing powerful attacks, all of them were suddenly suspended in the exact positions they'd been in a moment before.
"Huh? What's going on?"
At that same moment, a silver-haired man with headphones in his ears stepped onto the top level of the pyramid.
He looked at the people apparently locked in the middle of an all-out fight and shrugged.
"Whatever. As long as I can find my father, none of the rest of this really matters."
He stretched a little and started walking deeper into the top of the pyramid.
But just as the silver-haired man was about to pass by Jovian, an arm blocked his path.
"What the fuck?"
The silver-haired man's pupils trembled. He turned and looked at the owner of that arm.
Jovian, who should have been standing motionless like everyone else, was now smiling at him.
Quicksilver's mind suddenly heard Jovian's voice.
"Quicksilver, if I were you, I wouldn't keep going."
Boom!
In the next second, amid a burst of sound, the silver-haired man was forcibly knocked out of his super-speed state.
"Hah!"
At the same time, the people who had been frozen in midair resumed their movements and roared as they attacked Jovian again.
Jovian faced the X-Men Charles had trained and merely raised one hand.
Instantly, the invisible force he released caught all of them in the air and held them there.
"Ugh…"
Everyone felt the massive power locking down their bodies, but there was nothing they could do. No matter how hard they struggled, they couldn't break free.
The gap between them and Jovian was like the gap between a grain of sand in the Sahara and the sun.
So vast it was almost impossible to measure.
"Five seconds left…"
"Five, four, three, two, one…"
"It's over."
Jovian ignored the people floating helplessly in the air and calmly counted down until the rainbow-colored light covering Earth finally faded away. Only then did he release his hold on Charles and the others.
Thud.
Freed from his control, Professor X and the others dropped from the air and hit the floor.
"It's all over. How does it feel?"
Jovian looked at them with a faint smile.
Charles and the others wanted to say something, but in the end, all they could do was stare in silence.
"Haha, cheer up. There are only mutants left in this world now."
He paused, then corrected himself.
"No. If everyone is a mutant, then calling them mutants doesn't fit anymore. 'New humans' would be more appropriate."
Jovian muttered to himself, clearly quite satisfied with his work.
"Through the reckless meddling of the traveler between space and time, an entire universe has been completely changed. Everyone on Earth has become a mutant. But will everything really continue the way the traveler imagines?"
"What kind of disaster will his actions bring to this universe?"
"Let us continue watching through my eyes, because I am the Watcher of this universe…"
The Watcher was muttering to himself again, slipping right back into his dramatic narration.
But this time, his words got Jovian's attention.
Because if the Watcher started asking what disaster might come next, that usually meant a disaster really was about to happen.
So after hearing him, Jovian's eyes sharpened, and he quietly began considering what kind of threat might be coming.
Then—
Boom!
A portal suddenly tore open in the sky.
In the next second, metallic robots came flying out of it one after another.
"Ultron?!"
"No… those are Sentinels?"
Jovian stared at the portal in the sky, eyes wide. He really hadn't expected this.
"We all know that in the world of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the Sentinels swept across the planet. Even mutants as powerful as Magneto and Professor X were no match for those machines built specifically to exterminate mutants. To fight back against the Sentinels that intended to wipe out all mutantkind, Professor X, Magneto, and Kitty Pryde sent Wolverine's mind back into the past to change the future. And in the end, Wolverine lived up to everyone's hopes. With the help of the younger Professor X and Magneto, he successfully reversed the future and erased the Sentinel threat before it could fully be born."
"But what if, in one world, Wolverine failed?"
"The failed Wolverine was brutally thrown into the sun by the Sentinels. The rest of the mutants were exterminated. Meanwhile, the Sentinel mother unit, equipped with the terminal program, gathered the genetic material of every mutant. Using those genes, it transformed into the Ultimate Sentinel and, through the combined power it had stolen from mutantkind, opened a gateway to every possible past."
"Now it hunts mutants across the multiverse."
"And now…"
"The Ultimate Sentinel has set its sights on this world of nothing but mutants. To it, this world reeks of endless filth."
While Jovian was still processing what he was seeing, the Watcher dutifully launched into his explanation. Jovian didn't need to waste time investigating or thinking it through. He got the whole story straight from the Watcher's mouth.
"What the fuck?!"
"The hell is an Ultimate Sentinel?"
Jovian's eye twitched.
He was stunned. This Ultimate Sentinel nonsense was absurd even by multiverse standards.
"What's happening?"
Charles looked utterly confused. He had no idea what was going on. One moment the sky split open, and the next endless waves of robots were pouring into their world.
"Charles," Jovian asked quietly, "do you remember the Sentinels?"
Charles's face changed instantly.
"No way…"
He knew that word far too well.
"Since you get it, I won't bother explaining." Jovian looked at Charles with a serious expression. "If you know what the Sentinels are for, then notify the whole planet and get everyone ready for war."
Yes, Jovian intended to protect this planet.
After planning for so long and cultivating so many powerful people, there was no way he was going to let them all go to waste. He planned to pull this X-Men universe straight out of the MCU branch he was in and bring it into his own.
"Sorry, Mr. Apocalypse, but I can't notify the whole world right now. I…" Charles looked frustrated. He was still too weak. Only at Xavier's School, with the right amplification device, could he extend his telepathy across the entire planet.
"No. You can." Gold light flashed in Jovian's eyes. "Because I said so."
In the next second, Charles's beautiful head of hair vanished completely.
"Shit!"
"My hair!"
Feeling the sudden chill on his scalp, Charles frowned hard. He had no idea why Jovian had shaved him bald. Did Jovian actually think being bald made you stronger? Damn it, that was pure superstition.
"Charles, before, you couldn't do it. Now you can."
Jovian raised both hands, and dirt and stone floated into them. A second later, a round helmet appeared in his grasp.
"This is…"
Charles's eyes lit up as he stared at the helmet, especially the bright red X glowing on the front.
For some reason, he felt an immediate connection to it, as if the helmet had always belonged to him.
Smack.
Before Charles could think any more about it, Jovian jammed the helmet right onto his head.
"A modified amplifier. Nuclear-powered, no charging required. I'm leaving battlefield command to you. Don't disappoint me."
Jovian spoke in a low, serious tone.
"I understand. But what are you going to do?"
The moment Charles put on the helmet, he felt a surge of overwhelming power, almost as if he could do anything.
"What am I going to do?"
Jovian shook his head, then rose into the air.
At the same time, from within the vast portal in the sky, a figure emerged wearing a red cape, clearly different from all the other Sentinels.
"This world is full of a disgusting stench…" the red-caped Sentinel said coldly as it looked at Jovian. "And you disgust me more than anything else."
"What a coincidence." Jovian's body became a streak of white light the instant he finished speaking. "Looking at you makes me sick too."
He shot straight at the red-caped Sentinel, slammed into it, and drove it back through the portal behind it. The shockwave from Jovian's launch also obliterated the nearby standard Sentinels.
But this was an invasion spanning time and universes.
Destroy one portal, and countless more opened across the sky.
From every one of them, powerful Sentinels came pouring out.
"Listen to me, people of Earth!" Charles looked up at the endless Sentinels, activated the device on his head, and sent his voice to every mind on the planet. "This is war! A war we absolutely cannot lose!"
Boom!
"Too slow, Charles!"
With a deafening explosion, countless pieces of metal rose into the air and smashed Sentinel after Sentinel out of the sky.
Floating high above, held aloft by the magnetic field around him, Magneto stood amid a storm of metal. By himself, he was holding back thousands of Sentinels. Their lasers and polymer bullets couldn't even scratch the magnetic shield covering his body, a defense strong enough to let him walk away unscathed from a nuclear blast head-on.
That was the true power of an Omega-level mutant.
And this was only an Omega-level mutant who had just awakened.
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