The Rule Furnace of Multidimensional Variants, the Supreme Adjudicator's Sudden Arrival
The scene behind the door made the air freeze.
Even Hela, who was used to the grim sights of the Realm of the Dead, had her pupils slightly contract at this moment.
That was not a bloody slaughterhouse, nor Hell filled with wails of agony.
On the contrary, the place is so clean and orderly that the cruelty is amplified to the extreme.
The pure white space stretched endlessly, with only the slowly rotating, Rule Engine in the center emitting a constant, cold light.
Hundreds and thousands of transparent containers, like silent guards, are arranged in a neat circular matrix around the engine. One after another, Erik Lehnsherr are immersed in the pale blue nutrient solution.
Some of them were old, some were young, some wore War Armor, and some were dressed in civilian clothes.
The only thing they had in common was that each of them was covered with a dense array of Probe and tubes, which extended from their bodies and eventually converged into the massive Rule Engine in the center.
They are batteries.
It is a consumable used to maintain the stable operation of this so-called "Battleworld".
"You bastard."
Hela's voice was low, squeezing out two words through clenched teeth. The energy of death surged uncontrollably around her, black mist coiled around her arms, and the Night Sky Sword at her waist hummed with a thirst for blood.
She took a step forward.
"Stop."
Gwen Stacy's voice wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear.
Hela stopped in her tracks, turned around abruptly, and stared at Gwen Stacy with fury burning in her dark green eyes.
"Our mission is to bring back our people." Gwen Stacy adjusted her glasses, the lenses reflecting the cold light of the hundreds of containers. "Not here, to declare war on the entire Battleworld."
They deserve to die!
"They deserve to die," Gwen Stacy said calmly, "But it's up to us to decide when and how they die. Not now, like reckless fools, jumping into someone else's pre-arranged battlefield."
As the head of the delegation, she had to exercise the highest authority granted to her by Lynn at this moment.
Hela's chest heaved violently as she stared at Gwen Stacy. Finally, she forcefully suppressed the violent Death Energy.
She wasn't ignorant; she simply couldn't suppress the rage that stemmed from the gods.
Wanda didn't participate in the argument. From the moment she entered, all her energy was focused on her terminal device. Scarlet Data Stream surged wildly on the screen as she scanned and compared the thousands of energy sources before her.
Each "Erik" in the container has a slightly different Mutant Power frequency.
What she needed to find was Erik, the one from their Timeline who used Encrypted Lip Language to send out a distress signal during the video visit.
"Found it."
A few seconds later, Wanda spoke.
She tapped her finger on the virtual screen, and one of the containers located in the middle of the matrix was marked.
Erik, who was imprisoned there, looked most like the person they remembered, except that his expression was numb and his eyes were closed.
"His vital signs are being assimilated; it must be severed immediately." Wanda's tone was urgent. "The main conduit connecting him is number seven; I can try to use Chaos Magic to bypass the physical layer and conceptually 'define' it as disconnected."
"Will it trigger an alarm?" Gwen Stacy asked.
"Yes. The engine's energy output will momentarily drop, and no matter how clean I am, the core system here will detect it within 0.01 seconds," Wanda replied. "We only have less than three seconds to react."
"Let's do it," Gwen Stacy decided.
Hela gripped the sword hilt again, this time her gaze turning cold and focused.
Wanda took a deep breath, and Scarlet light shone from her fingertips. Countless fine Runes swirled before her eyes, preparing to lock onto the seventh pipe.
Just then...
There was no warning.
The entire Engine Room, all sound, light, and even the flow of air, were frozen in an instant.
The central, slowly rotating Rule Engine stopped.
Tiny air bubbles in the nutrient solution in the container solidified halfway through.
The Death Energy that Hela had just gathered was as if it were being strangled by an invisible hand, unable to be released even a fraction more.
The Chaos Runes Wanda was about to form at her fingertips also stalled at the last stroke, unable to be completed.
An absolute "order" that transcends the physical and energetic realms has arrived.
The space itself seemed to have been paused.
Only the three of them were still able to maintain the most basic level of thinking.
A figure appeared out of thin air in the very center of the Engine Room, in front of the stationary Energy Core.
He wore a well- Pruning gray uniform, with an intricate badge on his chest—one they had never seen before—composed of scales and an hourglass. His appearance was ordinary, but his eyes were like a bottomless well, devoid of any emotion.
The Supreme Adjudicator.
The description of the "Rules Faction" in the Top Secret file Lynn provided instantly flashed into Gwen Stacy's mind.
The man didn't look at the containers or the engine; his gaze swept across the vast space and landed directly on Gwen Stacy, Hela, and Wanda at the doorway.
It was a scrutinizing gaze, cold, objective, and devoid of any personal emotion.
Hela tried to pull out her sword, only to find her arm as heavy as a mountain.
Wanda tried to activate Chaos Magic, but felt her connection to the energy being completely severed.
In the presence of their opponent, the strength they were so proud of seemed to become a meaningless decoration.
Standoff.
A deathly silence.
Gwen Stacy's heart sank. She had considered the worst-case scenario: being surrounded by the Administrative Faction security forces and forced into a fierce battle.
But she didn't expect that it would directly alarm the highest combat power in the Battleworld.
This is no longer a confrontation of equal scales.
However, the Judge did not take action.
He simply stood there quietly, watching them for a full ten seconds.
Then, he raised his hand.
A document appeared in his hand.
It was a physical document, printed in the standard Negative Zone Management Committee document format, with even a hidden anti-counterfeiting pattern in the footer.
The document's heading featured several striking words. "Notification Regarding the Emergency Response Contingency Plan for Sudden Security Incidents During the Negative Zone Delegation's Visit to Battleworld."
The Judge held the document in his hand, neither handing it over nor speaking.
Gwen Stacy, Hela, and Wanda were all stunned.
Their gazes were fixed on the signature at the very bottom of the document.
There, stamped with a bright red seal that they knew all too well.
[Negative Zone Management Committee]
Next to the seal was a handwritten signature in a flamboyant style.
Lynn.