Thor's Ascension

While Apocalypse was living in comfort, a conspiracy theory was quietly gaining traction across Western society.

Because of the massive casualties and disasters, some people raised doubts, claiming that it had all been a United States conspiracy—accidents deliberately manufactured to control the world.

There had never been so many supervillains. They were all new superweapons being tested by United States agencies such as S.H.I.E.L.D. When those tests went out of control, they blamed everything on supervillains.

And S.H.I.E.L.D. was one of the United States' thug agencies.

This conspiracy theory was as absurd and tedious as the claims from Apocalypse's previous life that the moon landing had been faked, yet there were always people who believed it.

An invisible hand was taking advantage of people's grief and quietly spreading it from behind the scenes.

Apocalypse neither knew about nor cared about these conspiracy theories.

Before long, however, he received some good news.

Apocalypse received an invitation from Asgard to attend Thor's coronation ceremony.

Odin had actually wanted to pass the throne to Thor long ago, but various obstacles had kept getting in the way. The first attempt had failed, and afterward, it had been delayed again and again.

Now that there was finally a period of peace, Odin and Frigga hurriedly made the arrangements.

Thor had initially been somewhat reluctant. After going through so much, he had realized that he was better suited to being a warrior than a king.

Ruling a divine kingdom required understanding far too many things. Great combat power alone was nowhere near enough.

But among Odin's children, he was the only one still by his side.

Loki's whereabouts were unknown. Even if he returned to Asgard, after everything he had done, it would be impossible for him to inherit the throne.

And so Thor was