Chapter Summaries

Stark joined the card game after discovering Harry’s glasses translated the cards, then watched Schiller struggle through a mechanical deck and lose to Jarvis’s scientist deck. When Stark took Schiller’s place, he drew a hand dominated by magic cards, including Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange.

• Stark put on Harry’s translation glasses and watched the others play.
• Schiller drew a mechanical deck, while Wanda chose a Spider-Man deck and Jarvis assembled a scientist deck.
• Jarvis pulled Mark XVII from an equipment crate, prompting Stark to angrily protest that it was his armor.
• Schiller used Hulkbuster armor to disable Professor X, then blocked Peter’s attempt to summon Demon Gods by removing a summon slot.
• Jarvis won with a mechanically enhanced Galactus, and Stark took over Schiller’s seat for the next game.
• Schiller heard Stark scream and returned to find Sorcerer Supreme Stephen Strange leading Stark’s hand of purple magic cards.

Schiller and the others played Superheroes Kill, where Stark lost despite drawing a powerful illusion deck, and the group complained about the game’s flaws. Schiller proposed a more accurate, balanced version with Wanda, who created a new deck overnight, while couples filmed their Couples’ Night videos.

• Stark drew a powerful illusion deck but played slowly and lost to the Pikachu S.H.I.E.L.D. deck, which hired Jean Grey and unleashed Dark Phoenix.
• Schiller took over the game but struggled with poor draws, and Stark, Ultron, and the others joined in as the crowded table became chaotic.
• The players complained about inaccurate card abilities and missing characters, while Schiller considered making a better game to help Battleworld residents learn about one another.
• Schiller asked Wanda to make a new deck based on their real abilities, and she agreed to consult Jarvis about balancing it.
• The couples filmed their Couples’ Night videos, and Jarvis and Wanda’s display of affection became popular online.
• Wanda created the new deck overnight, surprising Schiller with how quickly she had made it.

Schiller and Wanda updated Superheroes Kill with expanded characters, abilities, equipment, and rules, then assembled their customized decks. The group began a new game at Stone House, where Schiller prepared to show off his powerful deck.

• Schiller and Wanda refined the new cards, adding classified abilities, new characters, equipment, locations, and enchanted dice.
• Schiller built a Schiller faction deck whose Manipulation, Pursuer, Pride, and Greed cards relied on influencing opponents and making them discard cards.
• The updated rules let players build their own decks, and Wanda could temporarily alter card statistics during a match.
• Schiller explained powerful new cards for Stark, Strange, and several Demon Gods.
• After breakfast, Schiller, Stark, Steve, Nick, and the others gathered around a large table in Stone House's backyard to play.

Schiller and the others began a faction-based card game, revealing powerful rushdown strategies and setting up the first attacks. Peter targeted Schiller’s Greed, then used his Web Shooter to drag Venom into the center of the field.

• Dream Power Doctor Strange hosted the game, and the players rolled to determine Schiller’s starting cards: Pride, Greed, and Art.
• Stark, Nick, Peter, and Steve deployed their faction characters, while Eddie reluctantly played Venom and another card after arguing with him.
• Schiller drew Harley’s Thesis, giving his umbrella Armor Break, then chose five opponents’ key characters for Greed’s Grand Plan to protect them from being killed.
• Schiller selected Iron Man as Art’s model, and Peter’s Shadow Spider-Man shot Greed, leaving him at half health.
• Peter activated the Web Shooter and dragged Venom to the center of the field.

The players used alliances and attacks to disrupt one another’s plans as Stark built up a huge points engine and Peter protected Schiller’s Greed. The chapter left Stark’s support weakened, Moon Knight transformed into a lethal threat, and Eddie’s Venom imposing a debilitating status on Stark.

• Peter used spider silk to pull Venom into the center of the field, blocking Stark from attacking Schiller, then proposed an alliance with Schiller.
• Wanda summoned Scarlet Power cards, advanced Scarlet Witch’s Ability Liberation, and attacked Venom.
• Stark activated Pepper and Obadiah’s point-doubling skills, then attacked Nick’s face-down card and revealed Moon Knight, who changed into the deadly Jack.
• Steve used Daredevil to eliminate Obadiah before Stark could keep multiplying his points.
• Eddie replaced Venom with Carnage, possessed Stark, and drew the status that prevented Stark from acting next round.

Nick drew Khonshu, the Moon God’s Lunar Eclipse and triggered a dangerous Hydra event on the first turn, forcing the players to cooperate. They filled Hydra’s head slots with summons and prepared their characters for the battle as another Hydra-related event began.

• Schiller eliminated Nick’s Moon Knight, but its Deathrattle summoned Khonshu, the Moon God, whose Lunar Eclipse triggered the Hydra Descent event.
• The players debated how to survive the Hydra’s head-harvesting attacks, and Schiller proposed using Wanda’s and Venom’s summons to fill its four head slots.
• Dream Power Doctor Strange drew Hydra Invasion as the next event, and Nick and Steve volunteered to face it while the summons attacked Hydra.
• Schiller played Manipulation and Pursuer, and Wanda’s Scarlet Power summons and Venom’s offspring filled all four of Hydra’s head slots.
• The players deployed their character cards, including Schiller’s Pathology, Pursuer, and Bishop, and lined up beneath the moon to face the events.

Schiller and the others battled Hydra as its hidden abilities overwhelmed their weakened team, but Schiller drew a blood-card summon and Steve’s group helped suppress the heads. The fight turned in their favor, though Schiller accidentally played Mediocrity instead of Bishop, leaving the outcome uncertain.

• Hydra’s second phase began when its health dropped to 70%, letting its heads block attacks and unleashing a devastating tentacle strike that left the team near defeat.
• Hydra revived fallen character cards as powerful heads, so Schiller explained how Art’s creation could weaken enemies, summon healing blood cards, or protect Stark by turning him over.
• Dream Power Doctor Strange confirmed that Matt’s obstacle-ignoring snipe could bypass the event’s barriers, allowing Steve’s group to attack a Hydra head directly.
• Schiller drew the red fish card, which summoned a blood card and covered Stark’s card, while Steve’s group killed one head and Peter and Venom restrained two more.
• Schiller used his umbrella to break the remaining head’s armor and nearly defeat it, but accidentally played Mediocrity instead of Bishop.

Schiller accidentally played his skill-less Mediocrity card, and Peter’s attempt to turn the game around with Spider-Man 2099 produced three useless equipment draws. As Red Skull gained strength and Matt was eliminated, Nick revealed Sharon Carter’s connection to S.W.O.R.D. and deployed a hidden Sky-Battleship prototype.

• Schiller accidentally played Mediocrity, and Doctor Strange prevented him from taking the card back.
• Peter played Spider-Man 2099 but drew Squirrel Girl’s nut, Captain America’s returning shield, and a web-shooter he could not use.
• Red Skull changed forms after Hawkeye’s shot, counterattacked to eliminate Matt, and left Hawkeye near death, Captain America lightly injured, and Hulk’s form close to expiring.
• Nick played Sharon Carter and revealed that her strengths lay in managing S.W.O.R.D.
• Carter’s arrival deployed a Sky-Battleship building card, revealing that Nick had secretly built a starship prototype with Asgardian and Three Great Empires technology.

Nick's new starship malfunctioned while the Avengers struggled against Hydra, and Wanda's unleashed Scarlet Witch killed Red Skull. Schiller spent his points on cards and told the battered team to withdraw, promising to meet the Head Cards with force.

• Nick's starship entered the Hydra event, but repeated failed repair rolls left it unable to act.
• Wanda sacrificed a Scarlet Power card, unleashed the Scarlet Witch, and killed Red Skull with one attack.
• Steve abandoned the ship and joined the Hydra battle, where his attack roll was a one and Hawkeye barely damaged Hydra.
• Peter and Stark drew poor equipment, while Stark's broken electromagnetic pistol exploded and cost him health.
• Schiller checked the market, spent his settlement points, and told Stark to withdraw from the event and conserve strength.
• Schiller smiled at his cards and said they would fight the descending Head Cards with violence.

Schiller and the other players prepared for Hydra’s return, using Pride and Bruce’s Thesis to keep their strongest cards from being copied. Schiller summoned the High Tower, defeated Hydra and the other factions, and won the game, but that night Dream Power Doctor Strange appeared in his dream.

• The players withdrew from Hydra’s first appearance and spent ten rounds strengthening their cards while Schiller’s luck was boosted enough to obtain Bruce’s Thesis.
• Pride used Bruce’s Thesis to flip the main characters’ cards face-down, preventing Hydra from copying their strongest forms when it descended.
• As Hydra and its heads attacked, the players shielded Schiller while he put his remaining cards on the field and summoned the High Tower.
• Schiller’s endless variety of cards cleared the heads and defeated Hydra, then overwhelmed the other factions until he knocked out Wanda’s Scarlet God and won the game.
• Schiller went to sleep feeling pleased, but Dream Power Doctor Strange appeared in his dream with a helpless expression.

Stark gathered the others to replay Hydra Descent as an imagination-based dream battle, with Dream Power Doctor Strange creating whatever their abilities allowed. As the group faced a horrifying swamp and a colossal figure, Loki questioned their chances while Schiller watched; outside the dream, Rocket Raccoon and Lyra discussed High Evolution and Rocket’s concern that the Andromeda galaxy might worry his friends.

• Stark persuaded Schiller and the others to play Hydra Descent again in a dream, with Dream Power Doctor Strange judging what they could imagine and do.
• The group listed their abilities, then entered a swamp-filled battlefield where Wanda could fly only after she told Dream Power Doctor Strange what she wanted to do.
• Stark summoned armor and a flight platform, and Wanda used her powers to rescue the others from the spreading swamp.
• Rotting heads surfaced from the swamp as moonlight revealed a gigantic eye behind the clouds, and Stark charged toward the threat while Loki questioned whether they could win.
• On the rooftop of Stone House, Rocket Raccoon told Lyra he suspected High Evolution was connected to the Andromeda galaxy and did not want his friends to worry about it.

Lyra explained that the High Evolution’s virus was designed to expose the Life Fusion Plan and proposed trading help locating him for the Mutants’ help stopping the plan. Professor X hesitated over the deal, then discovered through a Dream that Schiller was fighting a powerful enemy alongside several heroes.

• Lyra told Rocket Raccoon she had returned to the Andromeda galaxy to protect her employer’s secrets and draw the Mutants into investigating the Life Fusion Plan.
• Professor X contacted Lyra and Rocket, confirmed the virus was not deadly, and brought them through a wormhole to the Andromeda galaxy.
• Lyra offered to reveal how to find the High Evolution if the Mutants investigated the Life Fusion Plan, but Professor X delayed his decision.
• After Lyra warned Professor X that time was running short, he consulted Magneto and decided to seek Schiller’s advice through a Dream.
• Professor X awoke shocked after seeing the Goddess of Radiance, the Iron God, the Scarlet Witch, several Spider-Men, and Schiller fighting an enemy.

Professor X and Magneto traced a possible link between the biological riot in the Andromeda galaxy and the Life Fusion Plan, then sent Polaris and Bobby to help investigate a Shi'ar laboratory. Professor X revealed that the plan’s one successful experiment had used Robert Reynolds, whose own power—not the plan—made it succeed.

• Professor X told Magneto that Schiller was in the mental-world battle and that interference could endanger the Avengers and worsen relations between Earth and the Andromeda galaxy.
• Magneto suggested trusting Schiller, and Professor X recalled Schiller’s call about the Life Fusion Plan and inferred that it might be connected to the crisis.
• Professor X sent Magneto to coordinates for a Life Fusion Plan laboratory, then asked Polaris and Bobby to retrieve a hibernation pod and make a conspicuous display of their powers.
• Professor X explained that he had discovered the laboratory and learned that the plan had succeeded once only because its test subject, Robert Reynolds, was already powerful.

Professor X and Dr. Beast deciphered the hibernation pod’s controls and woke a young man who described his immense Sentry Power and the dangerous Void personality within him. The young man asked Professor X for help, while Professor X began investigating the mysterious professor and the purpose of his energy research.

• Iceman brought the hibernation pod to Professor X, who examined the young man inside with Dr. Beast.
• Dr. Beast found the pod’s controls, and Professor X deciphered the brainwave code as “Long live Skrull,” allowing them to communicate with the young man.
• The young man explained that Anatoly Shostakov had taken him from New York to the Skrull Interstellarist Republic after he drank a liquid energy source containing the Sentry Power.
• The young man said he could control the power now, but his evil other personality, Void, had once caused the catastrophic laboratory explosion that nearly destroyed the Skrull Republic.
• Professor X asked about Anatoly Shostakov and the potion, then wondered whether Anatoly had intended to power a precise, controllable device.

Professor X questioned the youth about Sentry Power, the Void, and Anatoly’s star-harvesting experiments, then agreed to try treating him and explained that the Cold War had ended without a winner. In the mental world, the heroes reviewed their defeat by Hydra under Dream Power Doctor Strange’s restrictive combat rules, while Doctor Strange asked Schiller why he had helped Nick draw the Lunar Eclipse card.

• The youth told Professor X and Dr. Beast that he had gained Sentry Power from one sip of Tears of the Sun and that the Void had already existed within him.
• Professor X deduced that Anatoly may have traveled between universes using the M'Kraan Crystal to gather stars, accumulating its curse of bad luck.
• The youth explained that the Void combined with Sentry Power had destroyed a galaxy, and Professor X agreed to try drawing the Void out of him.
• The youth asked about the conflict between the US and Soviet Union, and Professor X told him that the Cold War had ended without either side winning.
• The heroes admitted they had lost to Hydra because Dream Power Doctor Strange’s rules forced them to narrate their actions before taking them.
• Dream Power Doctor Strange asked Schiller why he had insisted on helping Nick draw the Lunar Eclipse card.

Schiller worked with Reed to use a machine to summon Hydra by focusing the sleeping superheroes’ thoughts, then entered the spirit realm to contact the Outer God. Gray Mist returned with Hydra’s memories, which suggested that the object that struck it was a teleporter.

• Schiller told Dream Power Doctor Strange to keep the superheroes deep in their dreams, then left them to continue their failed strategy against Hydra.
• Reed explained how his machine would focus the superheroes’ thoughts to summon a specific entity, and Schiller moved the sleeping heroes to the experimental beds.
• Reed activated the machine, and Schiller followed the intensified moonlight into a swamp-like spirit realm where he called for Hydra.
• Hydra hurled Schiller and Gray Mist out of the realm after Schiller asked what had crossed the stars and struck it.
• Gray Mist showed Schiller fragments of Hydra’s memory and suggested that the object had been a teleporter, not a weapon.

Schiller investigated why Anatoly had built and fired a bizarre cannon, and the Gray Mist proposed that it was meant to send something somewhere otherwise unreachable. Schiller concluded that Anatoly may have launched himself into the depths of the stars to force a meeting with an Outer God, leaving the true story behind Nyarlathotep’s account uncertain.

• Schiller learned from the Gray Mist that Anatoly’s cannon may have been designed to deliver something to a target rather than strike it.
• Schiller recalled that Hydra had nearly been hit and enlisted Reed to build equipment that could summon him.
• Reed’s equipment and the superheroes’ amplified thoughts summoned Hydra, but Hydra cursed them and offered no useful information.
• The Gray Mist reasoned that the cannon could reach places inaccessible to portals, and speculated that Anatoly had shot himself into the depths of the stars.
• Schiller suspected Anatoly had forced a meeting with Nyarlathotep by arriving directly in his domain, though Nyarlathotep had disguised the encounter as a fated meeting.

Professor X discovered that Mr. Sinister had brought a deadly virus to the Andromeda galaxy and that Apocalypse was behind the attack. After Apocalypse demanded the Mutants help him obtain a weapon from the Life Fusion Plan in exchange for an antidote, Professor X suspected the New Skrull Empire was manipulating them both.

• Schiller and Ultron discussed how Professor X could use the Mutants’ conflict with the Shi'ar Empire to turn the other great empires against it.
• Wolverine told Professor X that two Mutants and a Chinese engineer had disappeared, and Dr. Beast found footage showing Mr. Sinister nearby.
• Professor X realized Mr. Sinister’s virus could be the biological threat and ordered Wolverine to keep Blink and Rogue within the Andromeda galaxy.
• Dr. Beast revealed that Schiller had previously recommended Nathaniel as a biology and chemistry expert, leading Professor X to suspect someone had helped Mr. Sinister reach the galaxy.
• Apocalypse contacted Professor X, threatened the Mutants with a deadly virus, and demanded help obtaining the Life Fusion Plan’s experimental product in exchange for an antidote.
• Professor X questioned how Apocalypse knew the secret history of the Life Fusion Plan and concluded that the New Skrull Empire stood behind him.

Professor X and Magneto learned that the New Skrull Empire was working with Apocalypse, and Loki revealed that Schiller had arranged the alliance to spark a war that would raise humanity and Thanos's standing in the Interstellar Alliance. The chapter ended with Professor X agreeing to hear the plan and Loki offering him and Magneto two golden fruits.

• Magneto reported that the Mutants had destroyed three star systems and learned that the Council of Elders had funded the laboratories there.
• Professor X told Magneto about Nathaniel and Apocalypse, and they suspected the New Skrull Empire was trying to divide the Mutants.
• Loki arrived with Thanos and revealed that Schiller had connected Apocalypse with the New Skrull Empire to advance Thanos and humanity.
• Loki explained that Schiller intended to provoke a war between the New Skrull Empire and the Shi'ar Empire, and Professor X agreed to hear the full plan.
• Professor X and Magneto said they would not pursue immortality because they feared losing their human concerns, and Loki showed them two golden fruits.

Loki persuaded Professor X and Magneto to help Schiller’s plan by offering them Golden Apples, which restored their youth and healed Professor X’s legs. With outside allies unavailable, Professor X and Magneto prepared a team of young Mutants to seek out the High Evolution and address the Life Fusion Plan.

• Loki offered Professor X and Magneto Golden Apples that prevented death from old age, and they agreed to help Schiller’s plan.
• After eating the apples, Professor X and Magneto regained their youth, and Professor X discovered that his legs had healed.
• Professor X, Magneto, Loki, and Thanos discussed Apocalypse’s deal with the New Skrull Empire and the Shi'ar nobles’ possession of the Life Fusion Plan.
• Professor X contacted Lyra and agreed to prevent the Life Fusion Plan from being carried out; Magneto retrieved her ship, and Dr. Beast found the High Evolution’s coordinates.
• Lyra gave Professor X a crystal card that could open a portal to the High Evolution, while Loki explained that Schiller had prevented the usual allies from helping the Mutants.
• Magneto chose Polaris, Iceman, and Oracle for the mission, and Professor X asked that the Charles and Erik from other universes go with them.