"People need a little risk in their lives, do they not?" Tony Stark said, unconcerned.
"By the way, are there many nations like yours in this world?" His curiosity for the mysterious ran high.
Riku tilted his head, thought for a moment, and answered, "Not many, but not few either."
"Oh? Mind giving me the rundown?"
Tony's interest sharpened.
"There is the Kingdom of Demacia, the Empire of Noxus, the Freljord, the Shadow Isles, the continent of Ionia, Bandle City, and closer to you, there is Asgard, and..."
"Hold on." Tony cut in at the familiar name. "Asgard. Can you be specific? I want to know if it is the Asgard I think it is."
"Emm... Asgard, one of the Nine Realms. Their current ruler is the so-called Allfather, Odin, self-styled. I hear he has three children," Riku explained.
He had no qualms sharing Asgard's basics.
Hearing the name Odin, Tony sighed. "If I had not seen your Shuriman Empire for myself, I would swear you were telling myth."
Riku neither affirmed nor denied.
"That Earth has developed peacefully until now is a miracle. In prehistory it was a battlefield. Only after the realms signed a peace compact did Earth get tens of thousands of years to grow."
Watching his Legend Value stream upward, Riku almost grinned. He pressed down the urge to laugh and kept spinning the tale for the man touted as Marvel's brightest mind.
"Do we have magic on Earth? Your Shurima feels like a kingdom of magic, not technology," Tony asked on.
"There is. As far as I know, there is a place called Kamar-Taj. It is Earth's arcane sanctuary. It gathers ninety percent of the planet's sorcerers and maintains Earth's wards against incursions from other dimensions," Riku said.
"Then does Shurima fall within their watch?" Tony asked quickly, still uneasy about Shurima's might.
"No. In a sense, Shurima is not another dimension. It exists in Earth's folded space," Riku said.
He knew the more one talked, the more one slipped. He let the topic drop. With a mind like Iron Man's, oversharing only bred risk. Better to reveal half and hold half back.
Seeing Riku's reluctance, Tony pivoted. "Back to you. What is your ability? From what you said, anyone with an epithet has some power. You do not seem that strong."
He meant it relatively. Against Earth's yardstick, Riku was terrifying. Even America's strongest human, Captain America, might not beat him. Against Shurima's average, Riku was nothing special. In Shurima, people measured up to Captain America as a baseline.
"My friends are many, in many worlds," Riku said with meaning, sidestepping.
He would not expose his bottom line. If everyone knew how strong he was, how could he keep up the mystique that farmed Legend Value?
Denied the intel he wanted, Tony curled his lip. "Fine. Weaker than I thought."
Riku ignored the jab and silently opened the League Descent System panel. Tony was not wrong. Compared to the true titans out there, he was lacking. This wretched world even had mutants.
He pulled up the Desert Emperor Azir's page. After a moment, he redeemed Azir's sand control.
Having previously redeemed the Azir template, he now got a discount on Azir's abilities, so sand control it was.
Sand control was strong in its way.
Sand Control: can reduce lifeless matter to sand and command a certain volume of it.
With that handled, Riku browsed other hero templates. The Desert Emperor guise no longer fit. Time to change masks.
"Who should I pick..."
The icons swam before his eyes.
He could not buy anything too powerful. Beyond the price, a template that strong might draw the wrong eyes. Take Aurelion Sol. Put on that skin and a certain world-eater would likely come sniffing around Earth.
He did not know if this world had a planet devourer, but to be safe he looked to heroes of more modest tier.
Zed, the Master of Shadows.
Viktor, the Machine Herald.
With Zed's template he could found an assassin order, the name already chosen: the Order of Shadow. Recruit killers in this world, and those who joined would count as Valoran life, since the Order belonged to Valoran.
As for Viktor, he could also birth an order, or a cult. Hot blood, noble pain, mechanical ascension. The thought alone thrilled him.