Natasha could not understand, because human nations had never relied on the martial strength of a single individual. But she understood what happened when vast empires collapsed. Even if humanity could learn nothing from history, the corpse of humanity's grandest dream still bled, and even now, the scent of blood could still be smelled.
She knew that tens of thousands of habitable planets populated by intelligent species were about to face war. Although these planets had once launched rebellions against Asgard or secretly spread anti-Asgardian ideas, none of that mattered. Without Asgard's threat of force, their true threats would instead be interstellar pirates, space warlords, or even their own neighbors.
The casualties from this coming war might exceed the number of humans currently living on Earth, yet when such a devastating war would break out depended entirely on something stored in a garage in Oslo's wealthy district. Natasha suddenly found the world absurd, as if someone had told her that World War II had happened because a mouse gnawed on cheese in some filthy tavern.
She believed that even someone as powerful as Thor could not fight another nation attacking Asgard alone. Even if the All-Father was several times stronger than Thor, that fact would not change. She believed Ragnarok was a political crisis rather than a military one. Even without the All-Father, Asgard surely still possessed the strength to resist other armed organizations in the universe. Asgard's true crisis was its inability to find a suitable successor.
Salomon could only helplessly ask Natasha to use her imagination. If someone could squeeze a star into a light bulb, then nothing in the Material Universe could oppose him. "You didn't display that kind of power when you attacked Yugoslavia." Natasha lay atop Salomon, staring into his eyes. "Mr. Humanoid Nuclear Bomb,