"Annihilation" is a significant event in the Marvel Universe as it indirectly led to the birth of Adam's Life Court. This gave the Life Court, which was originally a prestigious but often defeated entity, some real clout. The evolved Adam's Life Court finally lived up to its hype.
In the comics, the developments leading up to and following this event are similar to what Adam told Quill. In essence, the Annihilator of the annihilating worms managed to open a way to invade the Positive Matter Universe. The survivors of the Nova Corps and the Guardians of the Galaxy then took them head-on, eventually succeeding in killing the Annihilator.
Adam worried that Shiller might go mad because his conceived plan was incomplete, and also worried that Shiller might go crazy due to God's arbitrary interference with the timeline. So, he could only think of a compromise, and that was to reset the timeline of this universe affected by Shiller, using the original storyline to solve the insect race annihilation.
Theoretically speaking, this idea is sound. As the embodiment of Adam's Life Court, Warlock Adam could be likened to an expert who had become a pro after having completed the game multiple times and should thus be able to speedrun the game solely based on prior experience.
But the biggest problem was that his chosen speedrun character was the Guardians of the Galaxy.
At the moment he was flung by Groot's violent branches to the wall, Adam had many thoughts.
He knew the Guardians of the Galaxy were unreliable, but he didn't expect the combination of Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon to be so lethal.
He knew that humans were unreliable, but he didn't expect that, at this moment, Star-Lord would resonate with the people of Gotham. It seems Gotham's first law - no matter how perfectly something is planned, it can eventually become a mess - holds true.
Adam struggled free from the vines, only to realize his efforts were useless. He initially wanted to protect the spaceship from being destroyed but discovered after freeing himself that the chaotic vines had already punctured the spaceship like a sieve.
This spaceship is just an ordinary interstellar civilization spaceship that Adam found in Centaurus, and it cannot resist Groot's violent attack. Adam doesn't need a spaceship, but the Guardians of the Galaxy need some base, right?
After calming down Groot with mental control, Adam changed the main task. He had to first lead several people to find a functioning spaceship in the chaotic occupied area.
But soon, he found out that in the desolate land at the end of time, which he had been closely observing, Shiller had started asking Strange for a live stream.
Adam thought carefully. Shiller and Quill's relationship is not that close; they can only be called acquaintances. Thus, even if Shiller is observing his friends, Quill should not be so soon on his list.
Adam felt that all other superheroes should be enjoying peace on Earth right now and there shouldn't be anything to watch. However, to be safe, he looked a bit ahead along everyone's timeline.
If he didn't look, he would have been fine. But to his shock, he found that everything is wrong?!
Adam was shocked to find that Shiller's friends were fully playing to their initiative. In less than a week after Shiller disappeared, they had completed all his planning processes. The entire process had no procedures, all were bugs, but they worked well and quickly.
Obviously, at this time, Adam did not understand one principle - if a program has a bug but still operates well, just leave it be.
Adam was frightened and, like every novice programmer, prepared to fix the bug in a panic.
But before that, he first had to find a way to delay Shiller. Therefore, he quickly contacted the Eternity of this universe, only to find out that Eternity was off to the Great World for work. So he quickly contacted Death of this world. However, Death was shaking its head faster than a rattle drum.
Then Adam contacted Infinity among the abstract entities, only to find out that due to Eternity's frequent travels, all matters of this universe were handled by Infinity, and he was too busy to manage them all.
As for Galactus, considering his later plot of being made into an engine by the worms of annihilation, Adam could only turn to Oblivion.
This Oblivion has little to do with Annihilus, the annihilator of the annihilating worms. He is one of the five abstract entity gods, and the only fortunate one among the five gods of this universe that hasn't been messed with by Shiller.
But this is related to his special nature. Oblivion represents non-existence in the universe. He is the embodiment of all nothingness, representing "nothing," equivalent to absolute "nothingness".
This leads to the fact that lives existing in other forms can hardly observe him except for gods of the same level. Naturally, his presence is not strong. Because of his mysticism, he has the highest performance among the five gods so far.
Oblivion can create, destroy, manipulate and change all time and space in the multiverse at will. All timelines and spatial dimensions are under his control. He can turn any dimensions into an infinite dimension, or employ dimensional reduction strike at any time and place, reducing high dimensions to two-dimensional spaces. His envoy, Whirlpool, is even stronger than the Infinity Gauntlet.
Because the End of Time doesn't have time, and all that doesn't exist is under Oblivion's management, Adam first asked Oblivion to disable the magic at the End of Time, then let Oblivion send his envoy, Whirlpool, to explain to Shiller and Strange, trying to make them think that they've run into a bug and have been temporarily trapped, to buy him some time.
Meanwhile, Adam himself hurried back to Earth to start debugging, reverting followers Shiller could focus on back to their original progress in plans he'd set into motion. While he did this, he had to avoid leaving traces that would later make Shiller want to settle the score.
The current universe was discarded beyond the grand world, which implied that all the gods within the universe are now self-supporting.
A god is the universe itself. If the universe explodes, its incarnation will inevitably cease to exist. This is why most regulatory gods will intervene when other existences get too rowdy. While their birth alongside the universe enables them to control its rules, they're equally, if not more, apprehensive about the destruction of the universe. They are the cornerstone of the universe, just as the universe is their cornerstone.
Eternity, who should have intervened against Shiller, had already chosen to join him after failing to defeat him. Death appeared to be down and out. Star Eater was ineffective, and the other two had been idle for a long time. Adam was forced to assume the King of Panic's role and race to save the universe, like an old father shouldering his family's livelihood.
When Adam arrived on Earth, the most noteworthy point was that Nick was promoting his new APP among the superhero teams. He planned to recruit a bunch of superheroes to hunt bugs in the collapsed areas where the Annihilation Wave had already withdrawn.
Adam almost fainted when he saw the list of heroes signing up for the front lines: Spider-Man Ben Reilly, Scarlet Witch, Speedball Robert, and Xu Shang-Chi...
If they went, and any of them messed up, Shiller would go crazy even if the invading insects were eventually shoved back into the Antimatter Universe.
Adam gritted his teeth and stomped his foot, deciding he had to solve the problem at its root. He had to kill Nick Fury first, then bring him back to life before Shiller returned.
Of course, he certainly couldn't just walk up to Nick and punch him. Adam knew he had to find a completely justifiable reason for Nick's accidental death. As long as the other party genuinely wanted to kill Nick, Adam could accelerate their plans without any blame falling on him.
Nick Fury had a black heart and a long list of enemies. Adam quickly spotted someone itching to get rid of him — the chairman of the energy giant, Roxon Corporation.
As mentioned earlier, in recent years, The Roxon Corporation had been constantly fabricating negative stories about Spider-Man to boost the sales of their civilian military technology by promoting a "Superhero Threat Theory". Therefore, the head of the Roxon Corporation in New York State was at the top of Nick's hit list.
This president was the only nephew of the childless chairman, so obviously the chairman didn't expect the police to solve the case. He planned to fight fire with fire - by assassinating Nick Fury himself.
But killing the director of S.H.I.E.L.D by hiring external mercenaries or hitmen was unrealistic. The best method would be to bribe an insider to shoot Nick in the back.
Adam quickly found the agent bribed by the director of the Roxon Corporation and possessed him, hoping to increase his success rate of assassinating Nick Fury.
Then he discovered that the director of Roxon Corporation was very shrewd. The agent he bribed was a Hydra.
What was even more outrageous was that the director had bribed more than one person, and he let everyone he bribed know that he had bribed others too.
From the moment he possessed the Hydra agent, Adam realized that the agent was contemplating warning Nick Fury of the assassination attempt. If the director's other bribed individuals did try to assassinate him, wouldn't this confirm his status as a good guy? Why not?
Of course, Adam stopped him from snitching. To prevent the Hydra's special identity from causing disturbances in the assassination process, Adam broke his leg and sent him on leave.
Then he found another agent commissioned by the director of the Roxon Corporation and possessed him. The good news was that this agent was not a Hydra, and the better news was he was a KGB agent.
Consequently, the KGB agent thought: if Nick remained in power, he wouldn't investigate us. But what if a new director started investigating us? Nick can't die; I must go and inform him.
Adam quickly stopped him from snitching too. He came up with a way to get him to go on leave as well.
Adam possessed yet another agent. The good news was this agent was not a Hydra. The better news was that he was not a KGB agent. The best news was, he was a KGB agent disguised as a Hydra.
Adam hopped around among the agents like a flea, each bribed by Roxon's chairman. Each one was either a Hydra, KGB, Hydra disguised as a KGB, or KGB disguised as a Hydra, and so on and forth, creating an infinite loop.
Then Adam realized that Nick Fury was brilliant; there wasn't a single S.H.I.E.L.D agent in the whole of S.H.I.E.L.D!
Ultimately, he found that he was the real genius because, with no S.H.I.E.L.D agents in S.H.I.E.L.D, the S.H.I.E.L.D director was securely protected.
Among those bribed, those with shaky identities wanted to tip-off to solidify their identity, while those with solid identities didn't want a change of director to have to start over. Adam jumped around for a long time, but didn't manage to find a single agent who genuinely wanted to kill Nick.