Chapter Summaries

Su Ming and Professor Xu investigated the source of Reed’s magical and physical defenses, suspecting the mucus covering his body. They tried coating him with coarse salt while Su Ming used the Force to scrub him, leaving Reed under attack from Strangle, the Cloak, and Su Ming.

• Su Ming found that Force Choke failed against Reed because his transformed body had no neck, while Strangle struggled to grip the slippery monster.
• Professor Xu proposed that salt might strip away Reed’s protective mucus, based on how cooks clean loaches and slugs.
• Su Ming asked Adjutant to teleport in a ton of coarse salt, and the Cloak scattered it over Reed.
• Su Ming used his newly invented Force Scrub skill on Reed as Strangle continued attacking him.

Su Ming, Professor Xu, and Strangle killed Meatball Reed after salt disrupted his slime-based defenses, but his brainless, organless corpse showed that the threat remained unresolved. Su Ming planned to investigate the seventeenth dimension with Professor Xu after arranging guards and calling for help.

• Su Ming had Professor Xu attack Meatball Reed with fire after Deathstroke coated him in salt, which stopped his slime from protecting him.
• Professor Xu discussed worldwide traditions of using salt to ward off evil and proposed that an ancient global threat might explain them.
• Strangle found no brain or organs inside Reed's corpse, and Su Ming confirmed that Reed was dead.
• Su Ming said the evidence pointed to the seventeenth dimension and invited Professor Xu to join him in investigating it.
• Su Ming planned to guard the Reality Hub and call in helpers before traveling with Professor Xu.

After Slade Wilson and the sheriff discovered that all seventy-five residents of the Stump Street apartment building had been killed, Slade confirmed that Cinderella had destroyed the monster and took Datri to meet Man-Thing. Slade planned to have Ted guard the Reality Hub, while Datri reunited with his friend in the swamp.

• Datri and Leo searched the Stump Street apartment building and found all seventy-five tenants dead.
• Leo reassured Datri that Master Deathstroke would avenge the victims, while Datri wished he could fight the monster himself.
• Slade returned, told Datri how to buy protective magic items through the Midnight Express app, and confirmed Cinderella had burned the monster to ashes.
• Slade told Datri that they needed to reach Ted and protect the Reality Hub, then took him to the swamp on a flying carpet.
• Datri told Man-Thing he felt useless, and Ted urged him not to grieve or blame himself for the deaths.

Deathstroke arranged for Man-Thing to guard the Reality Hub passage and left Leonid behind to keep him company. Doctor Doom and Daisy arrived, and the group prepared to find the underwater entrance to the Seventeenth Dimension.

• Deathstroke asked Man-Thing to guard the passage and left Leonid camping in the swamp.
• Leonid asked to accompany Deathstroke, but Deathstroke told him to read while he stayed behind.
• Doctor Doom arrived, and Deathstroke explained that they were entering the Seventeenth Dimension.
• Daisy arrived after teaching her students and greeted Deathstroke.
• Deathstroke, Doctor Doom, and Daisy followed Man-Thing as he entered the sewage to locate the Reality Hub passage.

Su Ming and his companions crossed the Nexus of All Realities to reach the 17th Dimension, where they hoped to confront the danger posed by another Reed. They arrived in the emerald Green World and headed toward a Mage Tower Doom's Micro-Robots had discovered.

• The group waited in the Nexus of All Realities, where Doctor Doom sensed an approaching monster.
• Su Ming choked the monster with the Force and erased it with the Godslayer, then explained that the weapon had truly destroyed it.
• Su Ming told Thor to use Mjolnir's divine power to guide the group through the Nexus to the 17th Dimension.
• Thor's lightning transported Su Ming, Daisy, Professor Xu, and Doctor Doom to the green world.
• Doctor Doom reported that his Micro-Robots had found a Mage Tower, and the group set off to investigate.

Su Ming and Doctor Doom flew through the Seventeenth Dimension toward a Mage Tower, discussing its strange oversized ecosystem and Doom’s family. They entered the tower and found a room full of corpses, where Doom began examining the robots for clues.

• Su Ming asked Doctor Doom about Susan and their children, and Doom reminded him that he had changed the Timeline.
• Su Ming and Doom noticed that the forest’s huge trees grew unusually close together and reasoned that an outside world had caused the local creatures to mutate.
• Su Ming said he would keep searching for Doom’s mother’s soul and promised to ask Magik to help.
• Su Ming and Doom entered the crooked Mage Tower and found a room piled high with human, animal, and robot corpses.
• Doom inspected a robot while Su Ming searched the bodies for clues.

Deathstroke, Doom, Daisy, and Professor Xu examined the wreckage of the Mage Tower and learned that the attackers belonged to the Materialist Empire, whose ruler sought revenge on Mages. They concluded the Eye Demon had not created the strange Reed, leaving the Empire's invasion as the immediate threat.

• Doom dismantled the white, one-eyed robots while Deathstroke collected weapons and examined the slender alien corpses.
• Daisy and Professor Xu inspected the Witch Hunter Wolves, and Deathstroke explained that their missing brains had been technological biological processors.
• Deathstroke identified the attackers as the Materialist Empire and described its ruler's hatred of Mages, rooted in his parents' deaths at the hands of Blood Monks.
• Doom recovered a data chip and defended his own use of Blood Magic, while Daisy questioned why the Empire's ruler targeted Mages instead of the killers of his parents.
• Professor Xu asked whether the Eye Demon's followers had created Reed, and Deathstroke and Doom denied it; Deathstroke explained that Reed lacked the telltale traits of the Eye Demon's kin.

Deathstroke’s team reviewed footage of the Mage Tower’s fall and found that slime-covered Superhumans had attacked both the mages and the Materialist Empire before pursuing the Sorcerer Supreme through a portal. Doom began tracing the monsters’ origin while Deathstroke and Daisy searched the tower, where Daisy complained that Hela and Gwenpool were making life difficult at home.

• Doom played footage showing the Materialist Empire forces overwhelming the mages after disrupting their magic.
• A portal opened at the tower’s base, and slime-covered Superhumans attacked both armies before chasing the Sorcerer Supreme through another portal.
• Doom began assembling equipment to trace the monsters’ Parallel Universe, with Professor Xu assisting him.
• Deathstroke and Daisy searched the upper floors, finding corpses, machine wreckage, and little of value.
• Deathstroke gave Daisy a solid-gold candlestick, and Daisy complained that Hela was mooching off her while Gwenpool was difficult to live with.

Adam Warlock visited Thanos, who had been resurrected and sent to a remote planet, where he had taken up farming after losing Death. Adam explained why Death had chosen Deadpool instead, then prepared to tell Thanos something important.

• Thanos greeted Adam Warlock on his farm and insisted that he had found peace, though Adam sensed that something was missing.
• Thanos recalled how Death had rejected him for Deadpool, resurrected him after Drax killed him, and left him alone on the remote planet.
• Thanos explained that he had begun farming while he tried to find meaning in his life without Death.
• Adam argued that Thanos had misunderstood what Death enjoyed and that Deadpool had offered her a kind of pleasure Thanos could not.
• Adam revealed that he had come to tell Thanos something important.

Thanos tried to live peacefully as a farmer while Adam warned him that the Time Stone from a parallel universe could draw a dangerous enemy to their universe. Death appeared and convinced Thanos she still loved him, leaving him eager to resume killing for her.

• Adam warned Thanos that the Time Stone’s original owner had changed and that a chaotic darkness was approaching their universe.
• Adam fell asleep before Thanos could respond, and Thanos carried him into the hut and laid him on a sofa.
• Death appeared and told Thanos she had always been by his side, while Wade remained occupied with Shakara.
• Thanos believed he had ignored Death because of his grief and offered to destroy planets and kill billions to make her happy.
• Thanos summoned Corvus Glaive and the others, then embraced Death as she comforted him.

Thanos reunited with Death and vowed to protect her from killers from a Parallel Universe, while the Black Order prepared to resume its campaigns. Elsewhere, Deathstroke and Daisy continued searching the old Sorcerer Supreme’s tower, nearing its top floor as they discussed the Ruler and Daisy’s past.

• Thanos welcomed Death back, learned that people from a deformed Parallel Universe wanted to kill her, and promised to protect her.
• Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight discussed Thanos’s behavior, while Ebony Maw proposed invading planets and Cull Obsidian welcomed the prospect of slaughter.
• Deathstroke and Daisy searched the eighteenth floor, sorting magical objects and collecting items of value as Thor speculated about the Ruler’s possible counterattack.
• Daisy told Deathstroke about being bullied as a child and credited him with helping her discover a wider world.
• Daisy said Professor Foster was unhappy because Thor had begun pursuing a black-haired woman, and she followed Deathstroke toward the tower’s top floor.

Deathstroke and his allies traced the signs of a dimensional passage and used Leonid’s energy to reopen it. As they prepared to enter, the passage’s influence caused the plants outside to grow and deform uncontrollably.

• Deathstroke and Daisy found the tower’s top floor empty, with traces suggesting both the Materialist Empire and the slime-covered creatures had been there.
• Doctor Doom explained that the intruders had used a special energy frequency and dimensions to open a passage between universes, leaving detectable traces behind.
• Deathstroke asked Doom to recreate the passage, and Doom used Leonid’s energy to power the Teleportation Portal.
• Deathstroke, Doom, and Professor Xu saw the reopened passage trigger wild, cancer-like growth in the plants outside, then prepared to investigate the other universe.

Deathstroke identified the grotesque universe as Earth-10011, the Cancerverse, where the Old Ones’ force of life made everything immortal and horribly mutated. He led the group into a sewer utility room, where he planned to explain the universe’s history and discuss their next move.

• Daisy complained about the discordant drums as the group traveled through a blood-red passage and emerged into a grotesque city.
• Deathstroke explained that they had arrived in the Cancerverse, a universe protected by the Many-Angled Ones.
• Deathstroke told the group that the Cancerverse’s pervasive life force made its inhabitants immortal and transformed them into monsters.
• Deathstroke cut open a fleshy sewer entrance and led everyone underground to escape the city’s horrors.
• Su Ming found a utility room and invited the group inside for tea and an explanation of the Cancerverse’s past.

Su Ming explained how Mar-Vell’s resurrection by the Many-Angled Ones turned him into Lord Mar-Vell, who ruled Earth-10011 after abolishing death and transforming its inhabitants. The group learned that the monsters they had encountered were former humans, then prepared to search for Lord Mar-Vell without knowing his location.

• Su Ming recounted how the Many-Angled Ones killed Death in Earth-10011 and resurrected Mar-Vell, driving him mad and turning him into Lord Mar-Vell.
• Lord Mar-Vell brainwashed his former superhero friends and used the Many-Angled Ones’ power to rule Earth, while ordinary people became immortal, deformed monsters.
• Daisy asked whether the monsters on the road had been humans seeking release, and Su Ming explained that they were likely believers who saw the group as agents of the gods.
• Professor Xu asked whether Reed had feared being abandoned, and Su Ming explained that Reed had been immortal on Earth-10011 but vulnerable on Earth-40K.
• Daisy suggested finding and killing Lord Mar-Vell, and Su Ming said the group would have to begin their search from scratch.

Su Ming explained that Earth-10011 could not be destroyed and that his team had no way to contact the outside or call for reinforcements. He revealed a plan to draw the Old Ones’ attention through Deadpool, who learned that Shakara had lured him into Monster Metropolis and that Deathstroke had arranged their engagement.

• Daisy suggested blowing up Earth-10011, but Doctor Doom and Su Ming explained that the living, cancerous planet could not be killed and the Old Ones could restore it.
• Su Ming told the team that Sepulk and the Spider Web were cut off, leaving them without reinforcements, while Thor joked about Carol and Mar-Vell.
• Professor Xu guessed that Su Ming had a backup plan, and Su Ming said he had arranged a conspicuous target to draw the Old Ones’ attention.
• In Monster Metropolis, Deadpool asked Shakara who he should kill, but she admitted she had lured him there to sleep with him.
• Shakara told Deadpool that Deathstroke had arranged their engagement thirty years earlier and that she would marry him, then sent him to find Deathstroke with a gift.
• Deadpool realized Deathstroke had prepared him as a backup after visiting the White House.

Deathstroke recruited Deadpool to carry people between Earth-10011 and the 40K Universe, then led the group toward Titan to search for the Survivor and possible Rebel Alliance members. Deadpool set off to fetch Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, and Monica Rambeau while the others prepared to cross the Flying Spaghetti Monsters’ blockade.

• Deathstroke gave Deadpool Shakara’s jerky and persuaded him to consider marrying her, while Doom and Professor Xu reacted to the exchange.
• Deadpool explored the eyeball-covered illusion, licked its filthy fluid, and learned from the audience that he was on Earth-10011 after Deathstroke killed and revived him.
• Deadpool explained that he used the Continuity Gem to reach Deathstroke, and Deathstroke recognized it could transport people between universes.
• Deathstroke paid Deadpool to bring Carol Danvers, Tony Stark, and Monica Rambeau to help with a quiet decapitation plan.
• Deadpool left to find the three recruits, while Deathstroke and the others headed for Titan to search for the Survivor and Rebel Alliance members.

Su Ming brought Doctor Doom, Deathstroke, and Daisy to Titan, where he planned to use the lifeless planet as a safe place connected to death. Meanwhile, Deadpool appeared on Tony Stark’s private jet and held the crew hostage, leaving Tony to face his demands.

• The group reached Titan without fighting, and Daisy and Professor Xu admired the strange creatures in space.
• Su Ming explained that Titan’s dead and ruined landscape made it the safest place in a universe overflowing with Life Energy, then ordered Doctor Doom to broadcast a message calling the Autobots to Earth.
• Deathstroke told Doctor Doom to send the exact message, “I am the super robot Optimus Prime, calling on all Autobots to head to Earth.”
• Tony Stark traveled by private jet to the United Kingdom and flirted with his flight attendants before Deadpool appeared beside him.
• Deadpool hugged Tony’s legs, threatened him with a grenade, and held the pilots and flight attendants hostage.

Deadpool tried to recruit Tony Stark to visit Earth-10011, but Tony only agreed after Wade provoked his rivalry with Doctor Doom. The pair set off to find Captain Marvel, leaving Tony unaware that she might have overheard his crude question about her.

• Deadpool invited Tony to visit Earth-10011, but Tony objected to the danger and questioned whether the parallel-world mission was really self-defense.
• Deadpool compared Tony unfavorably to Doctor Doom, prompting Tony to boast that he was the superior scientist and agree to join the team.
• Tony changed into his white-and-gold MK39 armor and told Jarvis to notify Nick Fury that he would miss his trip to the United Kingdom.
• Deadpool and Tony bonded over their collections of old magazines and an alien movie, then headed off to find Captain Marvel.
• Tony asked whether Captain Marvel had made an adult film, and Deadpool feared she had overheard him.

Carol joined Deadpool and Tony as they set out to find Monica Rambeau, also known as Spectrum, in New Orleans. After reviewing Monica’s background, Carol hurried the group away from her Antarctic home when Tony tried to investigate a scream from the barn.

• Carol joined Deathstroke’s team after hearing he was looking for her.
• Deadpool checked his note and told Tony and Carol that his cousin had asked him to find Monica Rambeau in New Orleans.
• Tony used Jarvis to search S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files and learned about Monica’s family and work as a New Orleans Port Patrol police superintendent.
• Carol explained that the Port Patrol was a police water-patrol unit, and Deadpool compared its officers to cops who arrested people for unlicensed fishing.
• Tony heard a scream from the barn and offered to inspect it, so Carol grabbed Deadpool and demanded that he teleport them to New Orleans.

Deathstroke used Doctor Doom’s identity and a false message from Optimus Prime to draw out the mechanical survivors, then followed M-11 to Vision’s underground base. The group met Vision, Ultron, and Supreme Intelligence, leaving Deathstroke poised to question them about the Cancerverse.

• Doctor Doom broadcast Deathstroke’s fake message from Optimus Prime while Deathstroke explained that the mechanical survivors might be wary of strangers.
• M-11 emerged from the ruins, questioned the group, and accepted Deathstroke’s claim that they were human.
• M-11 led the group through a passage beneath Thanos’s grave to Vision’s underground base.
• Deathstroke greeted Vision, Ultron, and Supreme Intelligence.