A week later, inside a dimly lit high-end bar, Eric sat comfortably draped over a plush velvet sofa.
Setting the glass down with a soft clink, his eyes lazily wandered to the watch strapped to his wrist.
The hands were ticking away, and with every passing second, his patience was thinning out like a melting glacier.
Frowning deeply as he looked up, Eric grumbled under his breath about that absolute bastard.
It had already been a full week since his sudden, unceremonious return to this world.
It had been a week entirely dedicated to deep contemplation, aggressively lounging around the house, and enduring the occasional, unprompted existential crisis.
Despite the undeniable comfort of his familiar surroundings, one massive, looming question continued to anchor itself heavily in his mind—what the hell was he even supposed to do in a world like this?
Finding an answer to that wasn’t nearly as simple as he had initially hoped.
After suddenly regaining the scattered memories of his past life, a wave of paranoia had hit him like a runaway freight train.
Fearing for his own safety in a world plagued by sudden, reality-shattering disasters, he had hastily packed his things and fled to different worlds just to survive.
But things were vastly different now.
Armed with the ridiculous, reality-bending abilities he had secured from his interdimensional travels, he finally possessed a remarkably fair shot at survival.
That didn’t mean he could just kick back, lower his guard, and pretend everything was perfectly fine, though.
Far from it.
A sudden, involuntary shiver ran down his spine as the ominous, lingering memory of Marvel’s Secret Wars loomed over his thoughts like a dark shadow.
In his previous life, he distinctly remembered hearing rumors and news about an upcoming Secret Wars movie.
But anyone who actually knew the source material understood that there were two entirely different versions of that event in the comics.
Sure, the first Secret Wars was essentially just a giant, cosmic tournament arc—a bunch of heroes and villains duking it out on a makeshift planet before eventually getting teleported safely back to Earth.
But the second one?
The one penned by a madman?
That was a whole different, terrifying beast.
Even the literal Living Tribunal had kicked the bucket in that storyline.
With the multiversal judge, jury, and executioner turned into a cosmic corpse, Eric could only sigh, leaning his head back against the sofa cushions as he wondered what a small fry like him was supposed to do.
When the dust finally settled in that cataclysm, the entire multiverse had been completely wiped out.
Sure, it was eventually rebuilt, but the mere thought that his current home reality could be casually erased and put back together like a Lego set wasn’t exactly comforting.
If he calculated the percentage chance of his own untimely demise in a future at that unpreventable cosmic catastrophe, it came out to a solid, terrifying one hundred percent.
As for Thanos, Eric scoffed inwardly, the mad titan wasn’t even worth the mental energy to worry about.
Six Infinity Stones or not, Eric knew he could take that giant purple grape out anytime he felt like it.
An undeniable wave of confidence radiated from him, but the chilling thought of the existential threats that existed far beyond Thanos quickly dampened his brief flash of bravado.
Traveling to different worlds and expanding his power base remained the only viable path forward.
His ultimate goal was entirely clear and grounded: gain enough absolute, unshakeable power to protect himself and his mother.
As for grand, exhausting concepts like multiversal domination, that wasn’t even on his current to-do list.
He figured he only really needed ten to twenty years.
With the System’s new upgrade, that would be plenty of time for him to accumulate enough dimensional mass to become completely unstoppable.
Still, there was one major, incredibly nagging issue that he couldn’t just ignore: Earth. The source of this chapter is g.com.
This damn planet was like a literal cosmic magnet for universal trouble.
In the grand tapestry of Marvel, Earth wasn’t just a random rock; it was the center of every single major catastrophe, and somehow, it functioned as the literal heart of the universe.
If Earth bit the dust, the entire universe would collapse along with it.
Eric let out a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, realizing that because he lived here, he would be the one stuck cleaning up the mess.
It wasn’t like he could just pack his bags and leave without facing the ultimate consequences.
“What do you think I should do, Egris?” Eric called out lazily, lightly tapping his fingers against the condensation on his glass.
From the deep, shifting shadows, a calm, poised voice emerged.
Egris, his most intelligent and tactically capable soldier, materialized silently.
Before he had been bound to Eric, Egris had been a top, stellar graduate of a prestigious, elite knight school in another realm, possessing a mind as sharp as a master-crafted blade.
“Your Highness, what are your own personal thoughts on the matter?
I can only offer my humble advice to guide your path,” Egris responded, his voice deep and composed.
Eric leaned back further into the cushions, crossing his legs as he weighed his words.
“I want this world—specifically this planet—to act as my vanguard.
But under no circumstances do I want to fight on the frontlines for it.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous it would be to turn my back on the enemy, only to have someone like Tony Stark or Steve Rogers stab me in the back during a critical, world-ending moment?”
He shook his head in absolute disdain.
He knew exactly how those ‘heroes’ operated.
Look at the Incursion events.
“Doctor Doom was out there actually taking decisive, ruthless action to save what was left of reality, while the so-called heroes were too busy squabbling amongst themselves over morality and ethics.
Men like Tony Stark and Doctor Strange, though undeniably brilliant, are basically walking disasters.
They invite catastrophe wherever they go.”
He took another sip of his Coke, his expression turning entirely serious.
“Those two are like walking, talking chaos generators.
They’re second only to Reed Richards when it comes to accidentally causing a multiversal collapse before breakfast.
Even though he technically not in the core comic universe right now, the mere thought of the unpredictable, narrative chaos those geniuses can unleash makes his skin crawl.”
“If it is a vanguard you seek, Your Highness, then conquering Earth in its entirety would undoubtedly be your most efficient course of action,” Egris suggested.
Eric froze mid-sip, his glass hovering centimeters from his mouth.
Concluding that global conquest was a logical step was one thing, but actually executing it on Marvel’s Earth was a nightmare.
“It’s not like I’m scared of the big guns on this planet,” Eric muttered, coughing slightly to feign an air of absolute confidence.
“In this particular cinematic version of the universe, he is practically invincible.
Nobody here can touch him.
But…
you know how it is with this place.
The power scaling makes absolutely no sense.
One moment Spider-Man is struggling to handle a common street thug with a crowbar, and the next moment, he’s somehow punching Galactus squarely in the face through sheer force of will.” The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
“I am absolutely not dealing with that meta-narrative nonsense,” Eric huffed, crossing his arms defensively.
“You try to take over a city, and suddenly some teenager in spandex gets an emotional flashback and hits you with the force of a collapsing star.
No thank you.”
“Perhaps,” Egris began slowly, a subtle, cunning gleam suddenly flashing deep within his sharp eyes, “you do not need to rule the existing structure, Your Highness.
Perhaps you could simply create your own separate kingdom from scratch.”
Eric’s ears immediately perked up at the suggestion.
He paused, considering it.
He had briefly toyed with the idea before, but the sheer logistics of building a nation from scratch had made his head hurt.
The main problem with that was the population.
If he set up a kingdom and offered incredibly good living conditions, sure, ordinary people would eventually flock to it.
But he didn’t really want to spend his valuable time babysitting a bunch of fragile, ordinary humans who would complain about infrastructure and taxes.
Then, like a sudden bolt of cosmic lightning, inspiration struck his brain.
His eyes widened, and a slow, dangerously brilliant grin began to spread across his face.
“Wait a minute…
What if I just…
kidnap—I mean, actively recruit citizens from other worlds?” Eric’s grin widened until it was practically touching his ears.
“Think about it!
If I pull people from harsher, war-torn dimensions and offer them a peaceful, prosperous kingdom, they probably won’t mind the sudden relocation at all.
Right?”
Egris remained perfectly silent, though the corners of his usually stoic mouth twitched ever so slightly at his master’s incredibly loose definition of the word ‘recruitment’.
“Yeah, it’s absolutely brilliant!” Eric laughed, thoroughly pleased with his own genius.
“No political fuss, no annoying bureaucracy, and best of all, no unpredictably overpowered local heroes showing up to ruin my afternoon.
Just good, reliable, exceptionally loyal thugs…
I mean, law-abiding citizens.”
With a steady foundation like that, he could establish his own absolute domain right under the noses of the world.
From there, he could slowly, meticulously take over the Earth from the inside out, completely undetected.
And while he was at it, once Earth was firmly in his grasp, he could expand outward to conquer the universe, and eventually, the entire multiverse.
Besides, he reasoned that all of these realities were going to get wiped out by cosmic forces later on anyway without his intervention.
So technically, by conquering them and integrating them into his own safe, immortal dimension, he was doing them a massive favor.
He figured no one could possibly complain about being saved.
Eric leaned back deep into the luxurious sofa, thoroughly satisfied with the magnificent master plan he had just cooked up.
The aimless wandering and existential dread of the past week vanished in an instant.