"The cosmic special agents must be frantic?",
"No, only the planet has disappeared." Magneto repeated, he also seemed to find this situation somewhat bizarre, but didn't know how to explain it. Instead, he turned to Schiller, saying, "Have the mage open a teleport gate for you. Come and see for yourself."
Soon enough, Schiller had traversed the teleport gate created by the mage, arriving at the Andromeda Galaxy, near the location previously occupied by Klinter Star.
Upon exiting the gate, Schiller was stunned, the cosmic space before him was eerily void, the notable planet missing. Yet there remained a large quantity of colorful vomit-like substance. Upon closer inspection, Schiller recognized it as the symbionts that lived on Klinter Star.
Klinter Star was gone, but the symbionts remained.
Schiller blinked, while he pondered the situation, one of the puddles of mud slithered over to him. Schiller bent down and saw that it was Blue Spirit, the leader of the cosmic special agents: "Hey, long time no see, Blue Spirit. Are you alright?"
Schiller's voice carried a hint of hesitation. He observed Blue Spirit's current state and it was clear that things were far from fine. It was the first time Schiller had seen such a mournful look on a pile of mud.
"Doctor Schiller, as you can see, our planet has disappeared, and it just happened recently. Do you have any idea how this could have happened?"
"Hold on a moment." Schiller pulled out a notebook, and like a detective at work, he started to question Blue Spirit, "Do you have an idea when it disappeared?"
"A few hours ago." Blue Spirit replied and proceeded to lay out the details.
"The cosmic special agents came back about three hours ago. The symbionts that stayed back on the planet said that about five hours before, they saw a flash of light. Most of the symbionts are light-sensitive, their sensory organs rendered useless under bright light. So, by the time they regained their senses, they realized they were floating in the cosmos, the planet beneath their feet gone."
"Did any of the symbionts see exactly how the planet disappeared?" Schiller inquired further.
Blue Spirit shook his head and said, "No, the symbionts left on Klinter Star were not particularly strong and there were no symbionts with hosts present when the incident occurred."
Blue Spirit let out a sigh, "The symbionts are in a tough spot. Some of the stronger ones have found hosts and left their hometown. Those left behind are the weaker and elderly, it's hard to expect them to provide any useful clues."
Without reprimanding, Schiller continued, "Isn't Nal still locked inside your planet? Could he have escaped?"
Before Blue Spirit could respond, Schiller already shook his head and said, "No, that's not likely. Nal holds a grudge against the symbionts, he hates the creatures that imprisoned him. If he broke free, he would have annihilated all the symbionts, not just leave them floating here."
"Moreover, there's no need for him to take the planet with him when escaping, given his strength, he can establish himself in the cosmos without a planet."
After a moment of thought, Schiller addressed Blue Spirit, "Hold on a minute."
After avoiding Blue Spirit, Schiller took out his phone to call Nick, "Nick, I know you're eager to get the symbionts to join Earth, but you didn't have to blow up their mother star to accelerate the process, did you?"
"What? You don't know how it happened? You didn't do it? ...oh right, that's true, compared to the resources brought back from another universe, the symbionts aren't that important."
"No, it's nothing. Just that the symbionts' mother star has disappeared. If not you, then...No, no need, you go ahead with your work, goodbye."
After hanging up the phone, Schiller contemplated for a moment, then remembered a detail. Earlier, Coulson had mentioned that Stark was interested in the combination of symbionts and SHIELD agents.
Coulson also stated that Stark Group's interest was not in the symbionts themselves. Logically deducing, there was no need for Stark Group to explore biotechnologies related to symbionts. It also seemed uncharacteristic for Stark to suddenly change his research strategy.
Given these circumstances, Stark's interest in the symbionts might not lie in the symbiotic organisms themselves, so what else about the symbiont race could be intriguing?
While the nature of symbionts is indeed fascinating, if there's something beyond their intrinsic characteristics that warrants attention, it would be the ancient deity residing in their home planet - Nal, the God of Symbiotic Body.
Nowadays, the moniker "God of Symbiotic Body" is scarcely brought up; he is more widely recognized as the "Member Gift Box".
This deity, ancient yet powerful, and somewhat witless, can directly manipulate the chaos power at the root of the universe, making him an indispensable part of the early development of the Holy Sanctuary.
If Stark has an interest in Nal, he will surely embark on an investigation. Schiller speculated that even if Stark had little understanding of the mystic world, he would still find a way to uncover some of its history and discern the nature of this ancient creature.
Furthermore, Stark should be able to discover that the whole Klinter Star is actually amassed from the corpses of symbionts. Countless symbionts are interconnected, creating a massive prison that imprisons Nal within, while also providing a habitable area for their kind.
The entire Klinter Star is a box, and its shell is formed by numerous connected symbionts, with Nal kept inside.
Extracting speculation from his reasoning, Schiller found some amusement in it. It was indeed quite interesting.
In the past, Schiller would always devise grand schemes while Stark would chase various clues, deduce his motives, objectives, and modus operandi.
But this time, the roles have reversed. Stark has put together a plan, becoming the mastermind, whereas Schiller had become a detective tasked with clarifying Stark's motives, methods, and goals as a problem solver.
In fact, every version of Schiller has a penchant for deduction and unraveling mysteries, although they express their interest in different ways.
Detective enthusiasts can generally be divided into two types: one is the criminal type, the other is the detective type.
The detective type prefers to dismantle the opponent's move from an objective viewpoint, progressively solving mysteries through witness statements, material evidence, and the criminal's psychological state at the crime scene. Their satisfaction comes from deducing the truth from clues. Arrogant is of this type, even a small puzzle on an item can occupy him for half a day.
The criminal type, inversely, enjoys observing others dissect the mysteries they set up using their own understanding of deduction. Greed falls into this category, wrapping each plan up like a ball of yarn and letting the superheroes follow his clues step by step to uncover the truth. This sense of control is the source of his pleasure.
Greedy rarely assumes the role of a traditional detective, and indeed New York doesn't have as many dark and complex serial murder cases for him to solve as Gotham does.
However, consistently being the backstage manipulator comes with its issues. The more complex the plans, and the more people involved, the higher the threshold becomes.
Up to this point, Schiller's tangled yarn has escalated to a level where it cannot be assembled without involving several multiverse-level deities.
While it's feasible to continue expanding, aside from the fact that everyone turns to Schiller when they have a problem, pushing further along this path would inevitably aggravate the OAA. By then, there'd truly be no fun left to be had.
Therefore, when discovering that Stark had indeed been secretly implementing a grand scheme without his knowing, Schiller was not upset but rather invigorated.
Schiller even felt a little self-satisfied, admiring our Ironman's capability — sensing danger and fleeing on a spaceship, noticing a friend's boredom and immediately stirring things up, his intuition and theory are always at full throttle.
In contrast…
Schiller thought, let's put matters beyond the multiverse aside for now, allowing his flaming reputation to cool off a bit. He was intrigued to see what kind of upheaval the combination of two super geniuses, Ironman and Batman, could create.