The space surrounding the wormhole leading to the Milky Way was no longer a desolate stretch of pitch-black void.
Ten colossal interstellar fortresses now stood guard, completely locking down the anomaly.
Any enemy foolish enough to attempt a breach would be instantly blasted into cosmic dust by their heavy artillery.
Beyond the fortresses, a permanent garrison of over a hundred warships patrolled the perimeter, ensuring not even a fly could slip in or out of the wormhole unnoticed.
Today, however, an endless armada of warships poured into the sector.
Thanos controlled two hundred and thirty-seven planets, and each world had dispatched roughly forty to fifty vessels to this rally point.
Assault ships, frigates, supply vessels, and massive carriers filled the void.
Altogether, the grand fleet numbered over ten thousand warships.
In the grand scheme of the universe, a military force of this magnitude was more than enough to rival even the most supreme cosmic superpowers.
A few hours later, Thanos’s personal flagship, Sanctuary II, arrived on the scene.
Looking out at the staggering scale of his assembled armada, he finally gave a faint, satisfied nod.
The fleet was entirely manned by his engineered bioweapons—the Outriders.
Since their neural chips were directly linked to his AI, Deep Blue, their absolute loyalty was never in question.
Furthermore, his empire of over two hundred planets boasted a combined population numbering in the trillions.
Even if his entire Outrider legion was wiped out, he could simply draft ordinary citizens to fuel the meat grinder.
His current war potential was undeniably at its absolute historical peak.
After a moment of calculation, he divided the ten-thousand-strong armada into six distinct battlegroups.
Each of the five Black Order generals was assigned command of fifteen hundred warships, leaving a reinforced vanguard of over two thousand five hundred vessels under his personal command.
He ordered Corvus Glaive to lead the charge into the wormhole.
Over an hour later, the all-clear signal was transmitted from the other side.
With the beachhead secured, Thanos ordered the rest of the fleet to enter the anomaly in strict, orderly formations.
This wormhole was a relatively low-tier spatial tear, roughly a thousand kilometers in diameter, meaning only ten warships could pass through side-by-side at a time.
It took over thirty grueling hours for the entire armada to complete the jump.
Finally, Thanos took Sanctuary II through the cosmic threshold.
They only broke formation and dispersed once Sanctuary II fully materialized from the rift.
Ten thousand warships sounded like an apocalyptic force on paper, but against the sheer, infinite backdrop of space, they looked incredibly small.
Clustered together, they didn’t even match the volume of a standard moon.
Even as their formations spread out, they only occupied a tiny fraction of the local star system.
Shortly after, a holographic projection of the Black Order flared to life on Thanos’s command screen.
The five generals slowly dropped to one knee.
Corvus Glaive took the lead, speaking with utmost reverence.
“My Lord, we have surveyed this uncharted system.
The local star is a red dwarf, and we have found zero traces of life on any of the surrounding planets.
It appears to be a completely barren, dead system.”
A lifeless star system was the absolute norm in the cosmos.
In fact, ninety-nine percent of all star systems in the universe were entirely hostile to life.
The host star might be too ancient, too violently young, or radiating too much lethal energy.
It took a near-miraculous set of incredibly strict conditions for a planet to actually nurture organic life.
As Corvus finished his report, Supergiant spoke up next.
“My Lord, while there is no life here, we did discover traces of asteroid mining.
Judging by the decay of the excavation sites, the mining occurred roughly a century ago.
This suggests the wormhole itself likely formed quite recently.”
Supergiant was one of the two female members of the Black Order.
Standing around 1.7 meters tall, she possessed pale blue skin but kept herself perpetually shrouded beneath a silver cowl, making it nearly impossible to see her true face.
Like Ebony Maw, she was a terrifying powerhouse of psychic energy, though her particular expertise lay in total mental domination, telepathy, consciousness transfer, and memory extraction.
Compared to Ebony Maw’s telekinetic mastery, they each brought their own distinct, lethal flavor of psychic warfare to the table.
After Supergiant concluded, Cull Obsidian delivered his own brief tactical report.
Listening to his lieutenants, Thanos simply gave a calm nod.
“The five of you are to fan out and scout the neighboring star systems.
If you encounter any inhabited worlds or hostile forces, do not engage immediately. Enjoying the story? Read on at g.com.
Report back to me first.”
On the holographic display, the five generals bowed their heads in unison.
“Yes, My Lord.”
Severing the comms, the Black Order immediately divided their fleets and jumped toward the nearest neighboring stars.
Meanwhile, Thanos ordered his logistics divisions back on the other side to begin funneling heavy resources through the wormhole.
He fully intended to construct another ten interstellar fortresses right here at the exit.
Once the defensive grid was established, his beachhead would be practically impregnable.
There was no need to recklessly blitz the Milky Way.
He could afford to play the long game, slowly and methodically conquering the galaxy star by star.
After all, time was strictly on his side.
Odin was already ancient and frail.
Even if Thanos did absolutely nothing, the All-Father would drop dead on his own in just a few years.
…
The universe was infinitely vast, yet sometimes it felt incredibly small.
Only three days after the Black Order deployed on their scouting runs, Thanos received an encrypted transmission from Ebony Maw.
Maw had stumbled upon an inhabited planet.
It was roughly two-thirds the size of Tyro, radiating a breathtakingly beautiful azure hue.
Its biosphere was extraordinarily lush, with sprawling forests covering nearly seventy percent of its total landmass.
But what truly caught Maw’s attention during his orbital surveillance was the presence of a foreign military force: several hundred Asgardian warriors were currently on the surface, actively collecting tribute from the native population.
Why call them natives?
Because there wasn’t a single trace of modern technology anywhere on the planet.
There were no orbital spaceports, no towering skyscrapers, and absolutely no vehicles or aircraft.
The only advanced machinery present were five Asgardian transport ships idling lazily in high orbit, their main thrusters completely powered down.
It was painfully obvious that the Asgardians lacked even the most basic sense of military vigilance.
Then again, considering Asgard hadn’t fought a genuine war in over a millennium, the absolute last thing they expected was a full-scale cosmic invasion.