Otherworld Card Collection Branch

Mercer stepped on the gas and drove straight away from the scene, leaving Carter to handle everything that followed.

Naturally, someone had filmed tonight's events and shared them online. A supercar that cool was one thing, but this one could actually transform into a robot that moved on its own.

Although Stark had only recently announced that he was Iron Man, the transforming supercar and Mercer, who had sliced a van apart with a lightsaber, stole the spotlight and instantly overshadowed him.

The incident shot straight to the top of every major social media platform. Everyone was talking about Mercer and Lockdown, raving about how cool they were.

Mercer already had somewhere to go. He had searched Abomination's memories and found the safe house he had used while still in human form.

When Mercer went there, he found several million dollars in cash alone.

There were also several Swiss bank cards. According to Abomination's memories, each account held at least ten million dollars.

"Ha! Not bad at all. Just like that, I'm a multimillionaire."

He took the cash. There were some guns in the safe house too, but he had no use for them, so he simply left them there. He could come back for them if he ever needed them.

With money in his pocket, Mercer felt much more confident.

"Now I don't have to worry about going hungry anymore."

He recalled how he had been scraping by, never knowing where his next meal would come from, while also keeping an eye out for battles between superheroes and supervillains so he wouldn't become collateral damage.

Thinking about all that brought tears to Mercer's eyes. He had never expected his life to change so much in a single night.

"I should rent a place first... I need somewhere to stay."

Mercer got back into the car and went looking for a home he wanted to live in.

Meanwhile, at a villa on the outskirts of the city.

Iron Man, Tony Stark, was in his basement, watching the video playing in front of him with keen interest.

Naturally, the video showed the fight that had taken place on the street not long ago, with Mercer at its center.

It lasted less than three minutes, because the whole incident had only taken three minutes. Everything had been resolved very quickly.

"JARVIS, does the S.H.I.E.L.D. database have anything on these two? Especially in the Avengers Initiative."

Stark put the question to his artificial intelligence, JARVIS.

He hadn't been interested at first. Only after JARVIS mentioned Captain Carter's involvement had Stark pulled up the video.

What he saw stunned him.

Both Lockdown, who could switch between humanoid and vehicle forms, and the lightsaber that had effortlessly sliced the van in half.

An amateur watched the spectacle; an expert saw what made it work.

The moment Stark saw the video, he determined that it couldn't be fake. He also understood how difficult it would be to build a robot like Lockdown or that lightsaber.

He had only just developed the Arc Reactor and had thought his technology was already among the best in the world.

Yet now something like this had appeared. Surely there would have been some word of any country capable of developing such technology.

"No, sir. There is no information on either of them in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Avengers Initiative," JARVIS said.

"That's strange."

Stark's hands flew across the keyboard. Lines of commands flashed across the screen, and two small boxes locked onto Mercer and Lockdown before beginning their analysis.

"That technology is so far ahead of its time. Current technology couldn't possibly produce a robot of this caliber!"

Watching Lockdown's performance on the screen, Stark knew just how advanced the technology would need to be to develop a giant robot that looked like something rendered for a movie.

Even he would struggle to build one right now, though he could give it a try if it were only the height of an ordinary person.

"Let's set the robot aside for now. How does this lightsaber work?"

Stark expanded the video to its maximum size and examined the lightsaber closely.

A beam of light shot out of the hilt, maintaining a fixed length with remarkable stability.

"To slice a metal van in half that smoothly, the temperature would have to reach at least a thousand degrees, if not higher.

"And this isn't a single-use beam. It remains stable and balanced, never dissipating no matter how it's swung. What kind of technology could possibly do that?"

The sudden appearance of such powerful technology had thoroughly piqued Stark's curiosity.

If it were a single-use laser weapon, he could make one too. Easily.

But Stark truly had no confidence that he could build a stable weapon like the lightsaber in the video. At the very least, it would be difficult with Earth's technology.

"JARVIS, search online for information about this person. I want his contact details and address."

"Yes, sir."

As he watched the footage of Mercer over and over, Stark grew increasingly curious about the young man in the video.

"I'll have to pay him a visit."

Meanwhile, Mercer was still happily choosing a house, completely unaware of anything else.

Half an hour later, Mercer settled on a small villa just five blocks from the city center. It wasn't particularly large.

Mercer hadn't expected to own a home of his own so soon either. He sat down on the couch and let out a long breath.

The villa was ready to move into and fully equipped. Small as it was, it hadn't come cheap.

It had cost him over eight million dollars, but since the money had practically fallen into his lap, Mercer didn't feel bad about spending it.

He had chosen a villa because it had a garage where he could park Lockdown, though Lockdown would have to put up with being squeezed into that little space.

After buying the villa, Mercer took a shower and went to bed.

Too much had happened tonight. All he wanted now was a good night's sleep. Anything else could wait until tomorrow.

He slept soundly. There were no noisy neighbors outside his door, no incessant barking from that annoying dog, and no landlord shouting in a rage every so often.

Once everything had quieted down, Mercer finally had time to study the new feature his system had recently added.

"System, open... hmm, the 'Otherworld Card Collection Branch' for me."

As soon as he finished speaking, the system responded.

Whoosh-

A glowing screen floated in front of Mercer. He couldn't see its reflection in the dark television screen before him, so apparently only he could see it.

He looked closely. The image inside the Otherworld Card Collection Branch resembled a tree.

Its trunk stretched upward, sprouting branches as it went. There weren't many, only a dozen or so.

At the tip of each branch hung a card shaped like the Lockdown and Dark Saber cards.

Unlike those cards, however, these were all dim, their images rendered in gray and black.

They looked much like achievements in a game that hadn't been unlocked yet. Seeing this, Mercer more or less understood.

This great tree hung with cards was his Otherworld Card Collection Branch.

Only one card, at the very bottom of the tree, had a faint glow around its edges, like something in a game that was about to light up.

He reached out and touched it. A strange sensation passed through his fingers, and in the blink of an eye, a gray-and-black card appeared in Mercer's hand.

The image on it depicted an enormous orange fox destroying a village.

Mercer visibly froze when he saw the fox.

It wasn't the fox's immense size that puzzled him, but the tails behind it.

"This is actually-Nine-Tails Kurama!"