This is the battlefield where Ultron's Robot Army and the rebels of the Three Great Empires clashed. In the past, Stark and Thor wouldn't have cared about aliens and would have gone all out, with all guns blazing.
However, after the interstellar situation stabilized, as Earth's representative scientist and the emperor of Asgard, they had interacted with some alien superheroes, who were kind of friends. To avoid injuring the innocent, neither of them assumed their most lethal forms, but fought Ultron in human form.
At this point, Earth and Asgard in this universe had already been destroyed. Only the elite troops from the Three Great Empires were still resisting stubbornly. The Avengers didn't have many teammates left, so they had to engage Ultron and the Book of Dark God in small squad combat.
Venom was at the Star Devouring Engine. One hand supported the table while the other covered his eyes, appearing frustrated by their intelligence level.
"I'm still quite curious about who you've parasitized before." Nick crossed his arms and looked at Venom curiously. "You don't seem like a simple scientist. At least you're not as gullible as Tony."
"Have you heard of Batman?" Shiller turned his head towards him and said, "He was also a host for Venom."
"I heard a few words from Tony," Nick shrugged. "But mostly about how great Batman's research abilities are, second only to his. Never heard that Batman was a great detective."
"If Batman is the greatest detective, then the Venom that was attached to him would be second best," Shiller sighed lightly. "I told you he couldn't deceive him."
"By the way, Eddie, where's your camera? Now would be a good time to film the Avengers in action. Tony and Thor dare not go all out now, but fighting in human form is the most aesthetically pleasing for the camera. Don't forget that the next season's documentary is about the Avengers."
Just as Eddie was about to respond, Venom shouted, "Forget it! If you don't tell me the truth, I won't let Eddie carry the camera!"
"Are you kidnapping my cameraman?"
"You are the one kidnapping my morality and insulting my intellect!" Venom yelled at Shiller. "You think you can hide things from me like you do with those fools! You can't!!!"
Shiller found his voice too loud and stuck a finger in his ear, twisting his mouth in annoyance, "I wasn't deliberately hiding anything from you."
"Yeah, you never deliberately hide anything from anyone, you just don't let us know. Answer now!"
"Alright." Shiller stretched lazily, walked back to the couch, winced his stiff neck, and said, "It starts with a group of powerful gods in the cosmos, they are known as the Beyond the God Clan…"
With Shiller's narration, the veil on a group of powerful creatures beyond mortal imagination was gradually lifted.
The Beyond the God Clan, a group of powerful gods that live in a lightless universe. It's meaningless to discuss their strength. It's another breakthrough in power created by Marvel's editor. Simply put, they are "slaughter gods like slaughtering dogs".
Whatever the five supreme gods of the universe, the Court of Life, this overseer, that observer, they were all killed by the Beyond the God Clan regardless of how powerful they were previously set to be.
This setting is not so much novel, it has a sense of beauty similar to the Laughing bat. However, the most distinctive feature of this race is that they are not just a background, not the traditional powerful, cold, indifferent gods, they are a group of mischievous children.
But they're different from the Little Blue People in the DC Universe. The most notable characteristic of the Little Blue People is their double standards, the Beyond the God Clan are the teenagers who do whatever comes to their mind, such as lighting up your trash can just for fun.
How could such a race not make a big fuss? One day, they suddenly decided to set off fireworks in every universe of the multiverse. How interesting would that be!
And they really did it.
They gave this plan a very impressive name, "Oblivion for All," but the plan is very simple, to blow up every universe in the Infinite Multiverse.
The whole plan is meaningless, from the motive to the method to the harvest. Even Thanos, who destroyed half of the universe with a snap of his fingers, would exclaim "You're too extreme" when seeing this plan. But that's teenagers.
Shiller had already known about this notorious major event, which also constitutes the new and different creator, known as the "Secret War".
Although all universes were destroyed and then reshaped by Reed who had acquired Beyond the God Clan's power, Shiller firmly believed that the restart of the universe was madness.
Knowing the plans of these biggest troublemakers, Shiller had to prepare. He kept in close contact with Eternity and, without bearing any grudges, tried to persuade Adam to look out for the proceedings at the Court of Adam Life. He wanted to know when those kids would make their move.
The timeline of the big world was mainly based on the Prime Universe, so Shiller let Nick keep an eye on Spider Man in the Prime Universe. Once they noticed that universe approaching the time of Secret War, they needed to prepare immediately.
However, for some reason, there was no movement in the Prime Universe. After the Destroying Worms had a frenzy, there was no sign of any major event happening. There was no Axis of Good and Evil, let alone the Secret War.
Shiller discovered that the Transcendental Gods had already made their move. It was his Skrull informant, who had been working for the Circular District Security Bureau, who reported a violent act of destruction.
The report claimed that an unidentified humanoid creature had descended from the sky, injuring several security guards at the Star Port. Incidents like these were commonplace, but what made this one stand out was the attacker's strength. He had managed to evade even the Shi'ar Empire's regional teleportation blockades.
Upon seeing this humanoid creature, Skrull Shiller felt a pang of recognition. He returned to the High Tower and requested access to the memory archives. As it turned out, the being with the green suit and purple cape was The Molecule Man, right?
The Molecule Man was a key instrument in the ambitious plan of the Transcendental Gods. Shiller was unclear as to why such powerful beings needed a bomb to shatter the Marvel Multiverse, but The Molecule Man was indeed that bomb.
With the bomb now thrown in Shiller's proximity, how could he not realize that the Transcendental Gods were gearing up for action? Although the reasons for the early commencement of their plan eluded him, Shiller certainly couldn't allow them to succeed, as they obviously had no intentions of offering restitution.
When it came to saving the universe from reckless children, Shiller was experienced. The simple trick was to outmatch the kids in recklessness.
Ever since he began investigating Galactus, Shiller hadn't forgotten about his Universe Creation Plan.
During the Secret War, all universes collided in pairs and were obliterated, including the Prime Universe and the Ultimate Universe that eventually collided with the Prime Universe causing the world to reconstruct.
Now, Shiller's solution to preventing this pair-wise collision and destruction wasn't to keep the universes fixed in place. Rather, he proposed making them move. As long as there was enough propulsion to keep all universes moving along non-intersecting lines, they wouldn't collide.
Put simply, while the Transcendental Gods were playing billiards with the universes, Shiller planned to engage all of them in a universe-wide game of dodgeball.
But there was one very practical problem: where would he find such immense propelling force?
Shiller's gaze returned to Galactus.
For some reason, Galactus always seemed particularly suited to being transformed into various strange machines. Shiller reasoned that if he could convert every universe's Galactus into an engine that propelled a corresponding universe through the Greater World, his plan might just work.
Shiller named this the "Wandering Universe Plan".
Leaving aside the amount of originality involved, when it came to the courage to act, Shiller was no less than the Transcendental Gods. He was seemingly even more audacious and imaginative than the Transcendent beings.
Shiller was aware of his lack of technical skills and energy to research how to transform Galactus into a Universe Propeller. However, he did know who possessed the necessary abilities and how to persuade them to undertake the project.
Shiller had his robot butler Ultron transmit the detailed content of the Transcendental Gods' Apocalypse Plan via brainwaves to different universes.
Straight after this, he had Ultron act as the messenger of an advanced civilization, spreading the Wandering Universe Plan to the universes that paid attention to the Apocalypse Plan, including the doomed Prime Universe and Ultimate Universe.
In the vast majority of worlds, the one who received and took this information seriously was Iron Man, because Shiller's main target for advertising was Iron Man, including the one in the Prime Universe.
At this time in the Prime Universe, no major Axis of Good and Evil event had occurred, and Tony Stark was still the virtuous Iron Man.
After initial communication with Ultron, who spread the message, Stark confirmed that Ultron was not exaggerating the threat. The given technologies and intelligence related to the transformation of Galactus were also feasible and not made up.
However, this didn't mean that Stark was especially gullible. Although Shiller had plenty of experience tricking Tony Stark, the main reason Stark fell for it so promptly had to do with the Prime Universe having weathered too many storms.
Even a dog, if it stays in an earthquake-prone area for long, would learn to bury extra bones. Rather unexaggeratedly put, New York in the Prime Universe was not in an earthquake-prone area; it was right at the core of an earthquake. Disaster after disaster, scheduled in a never-ending succession. Under such circumstances, Iron Man had become highly accustomed to juggling multiple life-saving plans daily.
With the mentality of managing one or two sheep just the same, Iron Man figured that if the Transcendental Gods weren't meddling with the universe today, some other divine race could be meddling with it tomorrow. Thus, he figured he might as well build that propulsion engine. He was sure it would come in handy someday. Without asking too many questions, he simply got on with it.
An additional benefit of targeting Iron Man for advertising was that after Ultron shared some habits of Galactus with Iron Man, he was able to figure out on his own how to trap Galactus.
Spider-Man from the Prime Universe, with the help of Nick, had also brought back quite a few advanced technologies. Together with Iron Man, they swiftly captured Galactus and began the construction of an engine capable of propelling an entire universe.
However, Shiller, having recently acclimated to a scientist's way of thinking, simply couldn't pinpoint the primary challenge of constructing a Universe Engine. He had provided the raw material, the thought process, and the technology. He figured that the genius Stark should be able to create the Universe Engine without a problem. Unfortunately, instead of facing a particular obstacle, Iron Man and Spider-Man from the Prime Universe were stumped by computations.
Building an engine to propel an entire universe was a task of an entirely different magnitude compared to constructing a planet engine. The former was nearing the level of rule manufacturing. Even if Tony Stark, the greatest genius of the universe, could stomach it, his hardware computational tools couldn't handle it. Depending strictly on human material computers would take eons just to compute a tiny fraction of the result.
At this point, Shiller was faced with another problem.