"What a shame, you're out of chances now."
Jovian looked at Stark, who had been knocked out of the battlefield. That put the numbers back in their favor, three against two. There was no way they could lose this fight now.
"Ji! Ji! Ji! Go in!"
The moment the Watcher heard Jovian say that word, his expression changed. He rushed forward and slammed a punch straight into Infinity Ultron's face.
"What?!"
Jovian stared at the Watcher charging ahead like a madman and froze for a second. That move genuinely shocked him. He and the Watcher went way back, and never once had he seen this bastard act so fearless.
"Based on my observations, whenever someone says 'ji,' it means it's time for us to engage!"
The Watcher looked at Jovian with complete confidence. He was the all-knowing Watcher. Nothing could stump him.
"You figured that out too? You know way too much!"
With a casual burst of telekinesis, Jovian blasted away Thanos, who had been about to ambush the Watcher, then flew back to the Watcher's side. To be honest, he had underestimated him. He never expected the Watcher to have observed even a secret like that. Forget power levels, just that display of observation alone was practically omniversal.
"The power of thirty-one Infinity Stones is too great. If they all collide, I'm afraid it could trigger a multiversal-scale disaster."
"So in order to keep those Stones from colliding and causing an explosion that threatens the multiverse, I think we need to split the battlefield and each deal with our own opponent."
Stephen's face was still as dark and tired-looking as ever as he gave his proposal to Jovian and the Watcher.
"I'll take Infinity Ultron."
"As for the other two, pick for yourselves."
Jovian immediately chose the strongest of the three.
"In that case, I'll take Stark. Watcher, Thanos is yours."
Stephen chose to face his friend Tony Stark.
He knew Tony Stark, just like him, had only gone down the wrong road. He believed that if he talked to him properly, Stark would understand his mistake.
"Fine. I'll take Thanos."
The Watcher nodded. Ultron and Stark were troublesome because both of them understood the Infinity Stones far too well. One was an A.I. lifeform, and the other fought with A.I. support. Compared to those two, Thanos's brain was a little less sharp, which made him the easier target.
"Ji!"
Jovian gave the signal for the three of them to open the fight.
He became a streak of light and shot straight at Infinity Ultron, smashing into him with boundless force. The space around them shattered instantly, and the two vanished into the broken void.
Stephen traced a glowing circle through the air. He rose into it and passed through the portal. Waiting on the other side was Infinite Stark, who had just climbed out of the rubble.
"My only opponent now is you, Thanos."
"Surrender. You can't beat me."
The giant bald Watcher looked at Thanos and started posturing again. He stood there with elegant composure and spoke in a calm, measured voice.
"Watcher, I know who you are."
"Ultron told me about you. Honestly, when I learned that there was someone in the universe who could stop every disaster from happening, yet never does, it hurt me deeply."
As Thanos looked at the Watcher, his heart felt full of pain. He hated the cruelty of the gods.
"I am the Watcher. Watching is my duty. I cannot interfere in those disasters, even if I know exactly what kind of crisis they will bring to the universe."
The Watcher shook his head. It was not that he did not want to intervene. But if he did, he would be betraying his creed.
"If you refuse to interfere, then why are you standing in front of me now? You should have stayed neutral. You liar."
Thanos had been waiting for the Watcher to say that exact line about observing without interfering. His whole goal was to use the Watcher's own principle against him.
"Heh..."
"That was before. Once Infinity Ultron slapped me across the face five times in a row, this stopped being that kind of situation."
The Watcher was furious. Did anyone have the slightest idea how much emotional damage five hard slaps could do to an elder Watcher who had survived from the age of the First Eternity, the First Firmament itself, all the way to the Seventh Eternity?
"Hmph."
Thanos snorted, and the Reality Stone on his gauntlet immediately lit up. He intended to turn the Watcher into bubbles.
Buzz...
But bizarrely enough, the power released by the Reality Stone could not harm the Watcher at all.
"Why?"
Thanos's eyes widened the moment he realized his Stone's power had done nothing.
"The Stones' power is limited. You can use them to interfere with a universe, but not with a being that exists beyond the universe."
The Watcher smiled faintly at Thanos's bewildered expression. At last, he had found someone he could bully. Wonderful.
"In that case, I'll just smash you to pieces!"
Veins bulged across Thanos's body as the purple Stone on his gauntlet flared with blinding light.
"Raaah!"
He roared and brought down a blow with enough force to knock Captain Marvel flying.
Bang!
Faced with that terrifying power, enough to send Captain Marvel hurtling away, the Watcher merely raised one hand.
Boom!
The instant that violent force crashed into the Watcher's palm, everything calmed. All of that overwhelming energy vanished completely.
"This..."
Thanos stared at the Watcher, who had neutralized the endless force of the Infinity Stone in his hand, and his face filled with disbelief.
"The Stones are powerful, yes, they're said to contain infinite power, but that still depends on who is using them. In the hands of someone like you, they'll never be enough to knock me back."
The Watcher remained calm and composed, fully committed to his mystic fraud routine and his shameless grandstanding.
"Then I'll erase you completely!"
Right in front of the Watcher, Thanos raised his hand and prepared to snap his fingers.
"Heh..."
Faced with a snap that could wipe out all life in an entire universe in an instant, the Watcher remained perfectly calm. This was the MCU, the Stones here were not that absurdly overpowered.
Snap.
The moment Thanos completed the snap, endless energy surged through his godlike body. Even though he was one of the humanoid weapons, one of the Eternals engineered by the Celestials, it was still hard for him to endure that brutally overbearing power.
Thud.
As soon as he finished the snap, Thanos dropped to his knees, panting heavily, his eyes already going unfocused.
"Go back to the universe where you belong. You did your best."
As drowsiness overtook Thanos, that damned bald man's voice, the one he wanted to kill ten thousand times over, rang in his ear.
Thanos knew he had lost. That bald freak had not suffered the slightest bit of harm from the Stones.
The Watcher pulled the Infinity Stones off Thanos's hand, opened a Spacetime Gate, and tossed the unconscious Thanos through it, sending him back to the universe where he belonged.
"Next..."
Holding the Infinity Gauntlet, the Watcher's eyes seemed to pierce through all space itself. His gaze crossed layer after layer of barriers and landed on Jovian and Infinity Ultron.
Compared with Stephen, he was more worried about Jovian, not because of Jovian's strength.
If it was purely a question of strength, neither Infinity Ultron, nor Stephen, nor even the Watcher himself was Jovian's match.
What worried the Watcher was Jovian's control over his own power. Jovian never held back, and if he slipped up even a little, he could trigger a catastrophe that swept across the entire MCU multiverse.
The instant the Watcher focused on Jovian, his eyes flew wide open.
"Stop! What the hell are you two doing?!"
"Jovian! In the face of this power, power enough to destroy an entire universe, turn to ash!"
All six Infinity Stones on Infinity Ultron's body lit up at once. Between his hands, as though he were rolling some giant sphere of energy together, he formed a blast like a miniature Big Bang.
"Hehehe..."
"You think you're the only one who can do that?"
The Infinity gauntlets on Jovian's hands lit up at once, and in an instant two energy spheres appeared, one in each hand.
...
Infinity Ultron looked at the two universe-destroying bombs in Jovian's hands, and even he felt his mind shake.
"Die!"
Ultron threw his energy sphere first.
"The one who's dying is you!"
Jovian did not hesitate for even a second. He hurled both of his own energy bombs straight out, one from each hand.
Boom!
The instant all three energy spheres collided, the planet beneath their feet vanished completely.
Then a massive black hole formed in front of Jovian and Infinity Ultron and began swallowing the entire universe in every direction.
And the two people responsible for the universe's destruction, Infinity Ultron and Jovian, had already vanished from that universe.
"I just destroyed a universe. You really are something."
Infinity Ultron stared at Jovian and spoke coldly.
"Heh, likewise."
Jovian let out a cold laugh. Until he killed the Ultron in front of him, he had no intention of stopping.
"Ah..."
The Watcher stared at the universe collapsing in an instant, at the colossal annihilation blast that had even sent tremors through three or four neighboring universes, and his eyes widened.
At last, he understood.
So Jovian was Ultron's sleeper agent all along...
No, maybe Ultron himself had been something Jovian engineered from the beginning...
"No, that really is possible! Wasn't the Ultimate Sentinel basically something Jovian created indirectly? Could all of this have been part of Jovian's plan from the start?!"
Huge beads of sweat formed on the Watcher's broad forehead. His own theory terrified him.
"If that's true, then letting Ultron come into contact with Jovian would only speed up the decay of the universe."
"But what would Jovian gain from doing all this?"
"Unless... Jovian intends to destroy every universe while collecting the Infinity Stones from each one, then use those Stones to divide up his own universe and build a brand-new multiverse. Working from within and without, he'd replace the Seventh Eternity and complete the succession of the MCU's Eternity itself?!"
"No... that can't be right, can it?"
The more the Watcher thought about it, the more panicked he became. If that really was Jovian's plan, then didn't that make him the one who had helped open the door for it all?
Th, this was really...
"Should I start getting on the future Eternity's good side now? That way, once he succeeds and the multiverse enters the Eighth Eternity, maybe I can land a nice position for myself."
At that point, the Watcher had already started planning out his future career path.
What he did not realize was that he had not only mapped out a future for himself, he had also figured out how Jovian could raise his own power to a multiversal level. If Jovian had heard any of this, he would have called the Watcher a master strategist on the spot.
Meanwhile, Jovian and Infinity Ultron's battle was still going strong.
Slapslapslap...
Wearing the Infinity gauntlets, Jovian's hands were moving at nearly light-speed, slapping across Ultron's face again and again. It did nothing to Ultron, who had locked himself inside frozen time, but the humiliation value was off the charts.
"What's with hiding inside your turtle shell?"
Jovian narrowed his eyes at Ultron, who had frozen his own time in place, and demanded an answer.
...
Ultron did not reply. Once he realized that neither the Stones nor his own power meant much against Jovian, he stopped trying to attack him altogether. He seemed to be waiting for something.
"Ultron, you still haven't given up? Your teammates were never going to beat my teammates. For all you know, every other fight is already over. I'm telling you, do yourself a favor and surrender."
Once Jovian realized he could not reach Ultron for the moment, he abandoned the idea of a brute-force assault and floated in the air, staring coldly at him.
Krrrsh...
At that exact moment, the space around Jovian cracked open, and a man in white armor stepped out of a Spacetime Gate.
It was Infinite Stark.
...
Jovian's eyelid twitched. He had literally just declared that Ultron's teammates were doomed, and then Infinite Stark showed up right in front of him. That was a slap in the face.
"Haha, looks like you miscalculated."
Ultron smiled when he saw Stark appear beside him.
"Ultron! If we merge into one, that's our only chance to turn this around!"
The moment Stark appeared, he immediately spoke to Ultron.
"I was thinking the same thing."
After hearing Stark's words, Ultron seemed to realize something. The two of them had originally been one system anyway. All he had to do now was restore everything to how it was before.
"You think I'm just going to stand there and watch you..."
Jovian frowned. He had already guessed what they were about to do and prepared to stop them.
"Wait..."
But just as he was about to move, he seemed to hear a voice in his ear.
"Hm?!"
Jovian's eyes sharpened at the sound.
That voice made him stop immediately. The Jovian who had been about to violently kill Stark on the spot suddenly held back.
Bzzzt...
Meanwhile, with Jovian no longer interfering, Ultron transformed back into armor and spread itself over Stark's body.
Now, with the Infinity Stones on his chest and the Stones embedded in the armor amplifying him together, Stark became terrifyingly powerful.
"Let's beat them together, old friend!"
After turning into armor and covering Stark's body, Ultron immediately made his suggestion.
"JARVIS, delete Ultron's program for me."
And then Ultron heard Stark's voice, easygoing as ever, with that same slightly punchable swagger to it.
"Of course, Mr. Stark. Estimated time to delete Ultron's program, thirty seconds."
Then, right after that, Ultron heard the voice of his dad, JARVIS...
"What?!"
Inside the ocean of code, Ultron looked at the overwhelmingly powerful electronic consciousness that was JARVIS, and his virtual face changed instantly.
Damn it, there's an insider!
The insider is my dad!
//Check out my P@tre0n for 10 extra free chapters //[email protected]/Razeil0810