The Master Weaver.
A weaver upon the Web.
The difference was that ordinary spiders wove webs to catch prey, while he wove the Web of Destiny.
Just as Ultraman had said, this was merely a three-dimensional projection of a five-dimensional structure into the physical universe.
From a higher-dimensional perspective, perceiving fate was not nearly as difficult as most people imagined.
The destinies of an entire multiverse were tied to this vast web.
"Not every universe."
The Master Weaver corrected him calmly.
"The Web of Destiny is limited to a cluster of closely related parallel multiverses. It does not extend across the entirety of the Omniverse—especially not in the direction from which you came."
The Master Weaver never lied.
Because every word he spoke would eventually become reality, whether in the future or in the past.
For example, in the past—or perhaps in the future—he had revealed a prophecy to the Inheritor family.
According to that prophecy, the Inheritors' dominion over the multiverse would one day be ended by members of the Spider family.
To prevent that future from coming to pass, the Inheritors began their great hunt across the multiverse, slaughtering Spider-People wherever they could find them.
Over time, the hunt became not merely a strategy, but a family tradition.
A way of life.
"Dominion?"
Joey snorted.
"What kind of dominion do they think they have?"
The Inheritors' so-called rule would have been enough to make every genuinely multiversal power burst out laughing.
Even Joey knew they could hardly be called rulers.
In the eyes of truly powerful beings, the Inheritors resembled nothing more than a colony of ants that had never seen the world.
"A bunch of ants happened to climb to the top of the tallest tree in the forest."
"That doesn't mean they own the entire forest."
A single Kryptonian had already forced them into hiding.
They now dared not even return to what was supposedly their own universe.
So how had a collection of backward, ignorant vampires gained the ability to open portals across the entire multiverse so effortlessly?
The answer was simple.
Long ago, the Inheritors had defeated the Master Weaver in battle.
Or so the story went.
Afterward, they had imprisoned and enslaved him.
Ever since then, every portal the Inheritors used had been opened personally by the Master Weaver himself.
The story carried an obvious contradiction.
A being who governed the Web of Life and Destiny had supposedly been defeated and enslaved by vampires with virtually no real combat ability.
The Master Weaver could manipulate a single strand and predict the future.
He could unravel reality itself.
A passing thought would be enough to reduce the entire Inheritor family to elementary particles.
"Take their claims of rulership as seriously as they do."
The Master Weaver's tone remained calm.
"They certainly believe it."
The Inheritor family was not entirely devoid of intelligence.
Jennix—the architect behind the cloning technology that allowed the family to resurrect indefinitely—had once realized the flaw in the prophecy.
The multiverse itself was infinite.
Infinite universes meant infinite possibilities.
No matter how many Spider-People the Inheritors killed, new universes would continue to emerge.
New Spider-Men would continue to be born.
Eventually, somewhere among those infinite possibilities, there would inevitably arise the Spider-Person destined to destroy the entire Inheritor family.
And the endless slaughter the Inheritors carried out in an attempt to prevent the prophecy would ultimately attract the attention of truly powerful Spider-People.
Their vengeance would become the very mechanism through which the prophecy fulfilled itself.
The prophecy would create itself.
The Inheritors needed a simpler solution.
And so the Master Weaver provided them with a second prophecy.
Using one of the metallic spider-like limbs that formed his lower body, the Master Weaver lightly touched a strand of the Web.
A ripple spread outward from the point of contact.
The wave traveled throughout the vast network of fate before eventually returning to its origin.
"In any case, I offered them a more straightforward solution."
"A single sacrifice."
"Three offerings."
"The Other."
"The Bride."
"And the Scion."
The Other was Kaine Parker, the clone of Spider-Man from the primary universe.
The Bride was Silk herself, Cindy Moon, likewise from the primary universe.
And the Scion was Benjamin Parker, the infant son of Earth-982's Parker family—the younger brother of Spider-Girl Mayday Parker, who had previously visited Joey's universe.
The child had already been abducted.
Once the Inheritors gathered all three sacrifices, they would perform a ritual beneath the Web of Destiny.
Three cuts.
Three offerings.
And through that blood sacrifice, every Spider-Person throughout the multiverse would be erased from fate itself.
No new Spider-Men would ever be born again.
To the Inheritors, this represented the perfect solution.
The prophecy of their destruction would disappear forever.
Their family would never again need to fear annihilation at the hands of Spider-Man.
"Poor Inheritors."
Joey extended a hand toward the Master Weaver.
"They've been dancing in the palm of your hand all this time."
The figure before him appeared bound in chains.
But the ones truly imprisoned were the vampires of the Inheritor family.
Every day, the Master Weaver respectfully addressed them as Masters.
Yet those so-called masters were the real slaves.
Bound completely by the strands of fate he wove.
[This is a temporal loop that spans multiple universes... I don't understand. What meaning is there in all of this?]
This conversation took place on the spiritual level between Ultraman and Joey.
Yet the answer came from an unexpected source.
The Master Weaver.
"The meaning lies in the certainty of fate itself, Ul-tra-man."
The true body of the Web of Destiny stretched throughout the fifth dimension, allowing him to effortlessly perceive the words spoken by another five-dimensional existence.
"The place where you were born makes it difficult for you to imagine just how terrifying a chaotic and unordered multiverse can be."
"The Inheritor family, the Spider-People, myself, and the Web of Destiny."
"All of it is part of an endless cycle."
"Like the grass upon the earth."
"It sprouts in spring and summer."
"It withers in autumn and winter."
"Year after year."
"The cycle may appear repetitive and tedious."
"But it is preferable to silence and desolation."
"Alright, that's enough."
Joey's hand had been extended for quite some time already.
Now he impatiently flexed his fingers a few more times.
"Do you seriously have no sense of the situation?"
"I don't care about your destiny loops."
"Give me the baby."
The Scion, Benjamin Parker, had been abducted from Joey's universe by the Inheritors.
Naturally, Joey intended to personally return him home safe and sound.
"My masters would not permit me to do such a thing, so regrettably I canno—"
The Master Weaver had intended to refuse.
Then he noticed the red glow beginning to shine within Joey's eyes.
He immediately changed his tune.
"However..."
Spider-People were to each universe what this Kryptonian was to his own.
And that meant the Inheritors could never truly win.
They were merely prisoners trapped within the Web of Destiny, too blind to recognize their own despair.
Guided by the strands of fate, a sleeping infant floated gently toward Joey.
"Smart choice."
After repeatedly examining the child with his super vision, Joey finally accepted Benjamin Parker into his arms.
"Open a portal back, while you're at it"
"If I stay here, your resurrected 'masters' won't even dare come home."
"As you wish."
A portal of light appeared.
Looking at this reckless Kryptonian who had barged into the Web of Destiny from some unimaginably distant universe, the Master Weaver found himself with little choice but to comply.
"To struggle against fate is like swimming against the current."
"The entire multiverse will oppose you."
"I hope you remain as optimistic then as you are now."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
Picking at one ear, Joey casually carried the baby toward the portal.
As far as he was concerned, everything the Master Weaver said about fate amounted to little more than nonsense.
There were already plenty of destinies he intended to fight against.
The fate of his adoptive parents.
The inevitable destruction of the Flashpoint universe.
And whatever bizarre chain of events somehow led to Tony Stark becoming Doctor Doom in the future.
As for the Master Weaver's claim that he seemed optimistic?
It wasn't optimism.
He was simply used to it by now.
Besides—
Compared to the endless sequence of life-threatening disasters in the Flashpoint universe, where one catastrophe followed another like an unending barrage of collapsing mountains...
How much worse could things possibly get here?
Stepping through the portal, Joey returned to Universe 2099.
He appeared in the sky above the battlefield where the earlier clash had taken place.
Everyone present looked up at him.
Then froze.
Completely speechless.
Joey had no idea why.
But the atmosphere felt appropriate enough that he decided to go all in.
Like the presentation scene from The Lion King, he lifted the infant high above his head.
"Behold—A new Spider-Man has been born!"
"What the hell is wrong with you?!"
Tony immediately flew over to stop Joey before he could break into a full musical performance and forcibly grabbed his head and twisted it one hundred and eighty degrees toward the sky behind them.
"Nobody is paying attention to you."
"Look over there!"
"What the..."
That was the only thought that entered Joey's mind when he saw the enormous fragment of space-time hanging in the heavens.
So massive it looked almost tangible.