Chapter 400: The Deal Between the One Above All and the Lord God
At first, the Dark Witch thought she'd failed to absorb the Timeline Shredder and died.
But for some reason, she woke up on a school campus.
Then she heard some entity calling itself the Lord God say something about completing a newbie mission and exterminating some zombies.
The Dark Witch had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that she'd been given a second life, and she would have her revenge!
By rights, the Dark Witch really should have died. But something unexpected had happened along the way.
Two days earlier...
The Time Variance Authority
The Dark Witch had her eyes closed, focusing with everything she had on absorbing the ancient, overwhelming power inside the Timeline Shredder.
Her eyes glittered with resolve and madness, as if she meant to turn every obstacle in her path to nothing.
Meanwhile, down in the basement, Mainline Deadpool and the Wolverine were using the method Mr. Paradox had given them. Holding hands and listening to Madonna, they were absorbing the Timeline Shredder's power too.
The two forces fought for control, and the Dark Witch soon lost.
All at once, the Timeline Shredder's power ran wild inside her like an untamed horse, tearing her body apart.
Just as her soul was about to dissolve, a mysterious beam of light descended from the sky. It wrapped tightly around her fading soul and guided it across the endless void.
The light finally came to rest on a figure that seemed insubstantial, yet was actually made of countless points of light gathered into a human shape.
Just as the figure was about to turn and leave,
a vast, ethereal voice suddenly rang out, like the first thunderclap at the birth of the universe.
"Hold, Lord God. Why do you keep interfering with the order of my Marvel world, stealing our true spirits again and again? Do you truly think our Marvel world is a toy for you to play with?" The voice carried unquestionable authority and complete indifference.
The figure made of countless points of light was the Lord God. It had taken the Dark Witch's soul so that she would become a member of the Reincarnation Space.
"One Above All, she was already dead anyway. You don't lose anything if I take her." Even as it said so, the Lord God was privately annoyed at having been caught and stopped by the One Above All yet again.
The vast, ethereal voice belonged to the One Above All, the God of All Things of the Marvel world.
The Lord God didn't come to the Marvel world often. Usually there was no need for it to act personally. And since the One Above All was watching over the place, it couldn't always succeed in claiming souls from the Marvel world.
But the Dark Witch was a truly promising candidate, so it had come in person to collect her, just to make sure nothing went wrong.
"Time and again you've stolen the souls of our Marvel world. Do you think I'll let that go? Release this soul, and I'll pretend nothing happened and let you leave." As the One Above All spoke, it summoned the power of the entire Marvel world. It became surging torrents of energy that thundered toward the Lord God.
Clearly, the One Above All was wary of the Lord God's power too.
The Lord God didn't panic in the least. "This is only one of my avatars. Kill it if you like. The soul already bears the mark of the Reincarnation Space."
It was only an avatar. How could the Lord God ever come in its true body? The Marvel world was the One Above All's home turf. Short of reaching Transcendence, even the Lord God's true body would lose to the One Above All with home-field advantage.
By the same token, on the Lord God's own turf, the One Above All couldn't beat it either.
At their level, there wasn't much difference between them.
Just as the One Above All was about to strike with full force and destroy the avatar for good, a sudden aura broke the stillness of space. Like a meteor in the night, it flashed by and was gone in an instant, yet it froze the One Above All in place.
The aura was both familiar and strange. It carried an indescribable sense of danger that forced the One Above All to reassess the situation.
Concentrating with its endless wisdom and perception, the One Above All instantly traced the aura to its source: Chen Ye.
To the One Above All, that name was both a wound and an alarm bell.
Chen Ye, the madman who had once thrown the Marvel world into upheaval and left rifts that had never fully healed. His aura had reappeared, here and now, and seemed scattered across multiple parallel universes.
The One Above All soon got to the bottom of it, more or less. Perhaps because of something Chen Ye had done,
even a being as mighty as the One Above All could only see Loki talking to a man. It couldn't see the man's face.
But it did pick up a few key words: Hell's Kitchen. Chen...
That was enough. The One Above All was certain the man was either Chen Ye's reincarnation, or Chen Ye himself, returned to life.
Loki... he really won't give up, the One Above All thought.
It knew that Chen Ye was the bigger problem, not Loki.
It was Chen Ye's great war that had cracked the Marvel world. That was what had given the Lord God the opening to fish souls out of the Marvel world in the first place.
The One Above All had been forced to spend enormous amounts of energy and time patching the cracks left by that battle, to keep more beings like the Lord God from slipping in. So even knowing Chen Ye had appeared, it didn't have the energy to deal with him directly. It would have to rely on outside help.
And the One Above All would not allow someone like Chen Ye to exist again.
With that thought, it turned its attention to the Lord God.
"Lord God, let's make a deal."
The Lord God was very curious what kind of deal the One Above All had in mind. It had long wanted to make a deal with the One Above All, only to be turned down by that stiff, cold block of wood every time. And now, for the first time ever, the One Above All wanted to bargain.
And so the two mightiest beings in the cosmos struck a secret deal, for their own interests and for the peace of the universe.
Whether that deal was aimed at Ethan, no one could say. Perhaps only time would tell.
...
Hell's Kitchen
"Why do I feel uneasy? Like someone's got their eye on me," Ethan murmured, looking up at the gloomy sky.
Having just sent everyone off, Ethan went upstairs to take stock of his haul.
"A thousand-plus Friend Points, and ten Family Points on top of that. Time for another good round of gacha."
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