On the other side of Sokovia, inside the main palace's grand conference room, everyone was now sitting around a large round table. The room was decorated simply but elegantly, with maps of Sokovia and the surrounding regions hung on the walls.
But there were two extra people added to today's meeting—Storm and Magneto. Both sat quietly, observing the dynamics of this strange new group they'd found themselves part of.
"Those despicable Asgardians!" Borgin's indignant voice suddenly burst out, his fist slamming on the table. "Let's kill those guys now!"
He was clearly still worked up about what Hela had told them—about her imprisonment, about Odin's betrayal.
"Okay, okay, no need to be so worked up about it," Elric said calmly, raising a hand to settle Borgin down. "It's... complicated."
After thinking carefully about the whole situation, he really couldn't figure out who to blame for the temporal mess he'd gotten caught up in. Hela from the future had sent him to the past, and because of this, everything had happened the way it did. But also, if he hadn't convinced past-Hela to work on the rune magic, future-Hela might not have developed enough to send him back in the first place.
It was a complete paradox in the truest sense, a closed time loop with no clear beginning or end.
So he decided not to think about it too much. Time travel gave him a headache.
"It is really interesting, though," Anastasia's voice carried a note of wonder, her expression somewhat shocked and awed. "Traveling 3,000 years into the past. Then going to an alternative reality where superpowered beings exist everywhere. Fighting with a rogue super-intelligent AI bent on universal destruction. And bringing back so many refugees to our world..."
She shook her head in disbelief. "It's really a magical experience. Like something from a fairy tale or a fantasy novel."
"I wish I could have gone with you," she added wistfully, a hint of envy in her voice. "Seeing other universes, meeting gods and heroes..."
"Okay, let's solve our own world's problems first," Pietro interrupted her daydreaming, his practical nature showing through. "Then we can think about going to other worlds for adventures. We have enough on our plate right now."
"Boss," Pietro continued, turning to Elric seriously. "What should we do now? Should our plan remain the same as before, or are we changing it completely?"
He gestured toward Magneto, who sat there with a serious, contemplative expression. "Like, this guy alone could probably destroy an entire country if he wanted to. Just pull all the iron out of people's blood, collapse every building, turn every weapon into scrap metal."
It was true. Although Borgin and even his sister Wanda were very strong, easily capable of devastating a country or even a continent if they truly wanted to cause destruction, their power was too destructive, too indiscriminate. Fire and chaos didn't discriminate between soldiers and civilians.
And according to Elric's stated principles, he didn't want to kill innocent people just because of his own selfish desires for power. He wanted to rule, yes, but not over ashes and corpses. Pietro could understand that logic, could respect it even.
But now there was this guy called Magneto who could make the entire world's modern weapons systems into useless scrap iron with a thought. And there was an even more broken, more terrifyingly powerful person called Charles Xavier.
According to the other mutants who'd arrived, according to their awed and sometimes frightened descriptions, Professor X could simultaneously control all the people on Earth if he really wanted to. Every single human mind, seven billion souls, all dancing to his mental commands.
Which sounded super terrifying to Pietro.
It was almost like some sci-fi movie he'd seen once, where the whole Earth was taken over by a hive mind. Everyone connected, everyone controlled, no free will left at all.
So it really didn't make sense to just sit and wait for something to happen, to follow their slow, careful plan. They could simply take over the Earth without a single drop of blood being shed if they wanted to. Just have Professor X broadcast a command, and boom—instant global empire.
Almost like sensing Pietro's train of thought, reading his body language and expression, Elric spoke up.
"So you mean we should just mind-control all of the people on Earth and leave it at that?" Elric asked, his tone neutral but with an edge to it. "Just flip a switch and rule over puppets?"
"Yeah," Pietro said hesitantly, knowing it sounded bad but unable to see why they shouldn't. "And if not full mind control, I also heard that Professor X can change people's memories too. Just make everyone remember things differently, make them loyal..."
Elric was quiet for a moment, considering.
Let alone whether Professor X would even agree to such a plan—and he almost certainly wouldn't, given his principles—Elric himself, after copying Professor Xavier's X-gene, could theoretically do the same thing. The power was there.
But in his future plans, in his vision for what came next, humanity would take a very important part. Innovating technology, developing new sciences, expanding civilization to the stars. The creative potential of free human minds was essential.
So instead of making them into puppets, controlled and docile, he might as well just make billions of robots and go to other planets to develop colonies there. It would be more efficient than controlling humans by a million times. Robots didn't need food, didn't rebel, didn't have existential crises.
He wanted the potential of humanity. The incredible potential that let them fight against cosmic civilizations after just a few decades of rapid development. The potential that turned Tony Stark from a weapons dealer into a hero who could stand beside gods.
So controlling them like puppets would be entirely useless, would destroy the very thing that made them valuable.
As for manipulating their memories, though... he really started to think about it seriously.
Although it was a very simple idea, something that would naturally occur to anyone who heard that someone could control minds, somehow it really hadn't come to his mind as a viable option. But after Pietro mentioned it, after having it spelled out, he genuinely started to consider it seriously.
Not total control. Just... adjustments. Making people forget certain things, remember others differently. Subtle influences rather than overt domination.
"Elric, you're not thinking about this seriously, right?" Wanda interrupted their increasingly absurd conversation, her voice sharp with concern and disbelief.
"Let alone the morality of it, which is extremely questionable," she continued, her eyes flashing with that familiar red glow when she got agitated. "But it's also impossible to do on the scale you're discussing. The human mind is complex. Changing memories for billions of people? Maintaining it? The contradictions alone would drive people insane."
"No, I'm not thinking about controlling them like puppets," Elric clarified, raising his hands defensively. "But manipulating their memories in specific, limited ways... that should be fine, right?"
He looked around the table curiously, genuinely asking for input. "Just small changes. Making them forget certain events, or remember our rise to power as more legitimate, more natural. Not rewriting their entire personalities."
.................
[Guys, I am writing an original book called "Money Losing System, How the Hell I Ended Up As The Richest Man"; anyone who has read an original book can give it a try.]
[Anyway, this book is already finished; another 30 chapters or so, Traveling To Other World Started From Marvel With Shadow Monarch Powers, will have more updates from now on.]