Standing beside the door was a girl who appeared to be around ten years old.
She wore a gray dress with a distinctly futuristic design.
She stood there quietly, her eyes curved into a gentle smile as though she had been waiting for him for a long time.
“Athena, could you please stop sneaking up behind me before speaking?”
Jonathan looked at her with a hint of helplessness in his voice.
The young girl before him, Athena, was not actually human.
She was an artificially intelligent android modeled after a little girl.
“Of course, Jonathan.”
Athena answered obediently and even nodded with remarkably lifelike movements.
Jonathan walked over to the sofa and dropped heavily onto it, releasing a long breath.
This had been his first time deliberately crossing into a fictional world.
Claiming that he had not been nervous would have been an outright lie.
Fortunately, everything had gone relatively smoothly.
Before his death, Jonathan had lived a completely ordinary life.
One day, while on his way to work, he saw a little girl suddenly run into the middle of the road.
A massive dump truck was speeding directly toward her.
At that moment, he could not explain what had gone through his mind.
It was as though some indescribable force had compelled him to make a choice.
He rushed forward.
When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in his original world.
In this world, Jonathan Hale was an orphan whose parents had both passed away.
He had also been blessed with extraordinarily good looks.
To exaggerate only slightly, his face could charm anyone from eighty years old to two.
His parents in this life had left him a house.
Living next door was a family by the name of Stacy.
They had a beautiful and intelligent daughter named Gwen Stacy, who also happened to be his childhood friend.
The two of them attended Midtown High School together.
One of Jonathan’s classmates was named Peter Parker.
Peter’s best friend, coincidentally, was Harry Osborn.
Then, on Jonathan’s first day of school, he happened to see Stark Tower standing prominently in the center of the city.
At that moment, he knew.
He had been transported into the Marvel Universe.
The realization left him completely numb.
Only one question kept repeating itself inside his head.
How was he supposed to survive?
Just when he felt most lost, however, opening an ordinary door brought him into this desolate and mysterious world between dimensions.
It also allowed him to reunite with the girl he had risked his life to save.
Athena.
“Why are you here?”
“And what exactly is this place?”
Questions poured from Jonathan’s mouth when he first saw her again.
Then, as though suddenly realizing something, his brows furrowed sharply.
“So you’re the reason I was transported into the Marvel Universe?”
Athena blinked.
With her innocent, harmless face, she gave him an incredibly sweet smile.
Strangely enough, even though Jonathan knew she might be responsible for dragging him into this mess, he found it remarkably difficult to feel genuinely angry with her.
“Hello, Jonathan.
My name is Athena.”
“Your transportation into the Marvel Universe was indeed connected to me.”
“Allow me to introduce myself properly.
I am an autonomous, multipurpose humanoid android powered by artificial intelligence.”
“Artificial intelligence?”
Jonathan stared at her suspiciously.
His expression made his thoughts perfectly clear.
Who are you trying to fool?
Athena rolled her eyes.
Then she lifted her dress without hesitation.
The surface of her body immediately underwent a mechanical transformation, revealing the core structure hidden within.
It was an impossibly advanced piece of technology.
A reactor that supplied her with energy.
A degeneracy reactor.
Jonathan had absolutely no idea how the device worked.
However, its overwhelmingly futuristic construction alone was enough to tell him that it had not been created anywhere on Earth.
He finally believed her.
Once he had calmed down, Jonathan surveyed the desolate landscape around them and asked again, “So where exactly are we?”
“This is a world within the dimensional interstice.”
“But as you can see, it has already suffered extensive damage.”
“I brought you here because I want you to save this world.”
After hearing that, Jonathan raised a hand and scratched his head, his expression turning sour.
His old life had been peaceful and uneventful.
He had no desire to become inexplicably involved in something that sounded incredibly dangerous.
Athena shrugged with surprisingly lifelike movements, even adding a playful touch to the gesture.
“I didn’t actually choose you.”
“When I teleported into your world, something went wrong with the dimensional portal, and it sent me into the middle of the road.”
“You should remember what happened afterward.”
Jonathan looked at her with a complicated expression.
“So I’m supposed to thank you?”
The moment those words left his mouth, however, he suddenly realized something.
His eyes immediately changed.
“Wait a minute.”
“You’re a robot.”
“That dump truck couldn’t have killed you, could it?”
The air abruptly fell silent.
The smile on Athena’s face instantly stiffened.
Her expression was awkward yet somehow still polite, making it almost impossible not to laugh.
So, when all was said and done…