"There's no need to cling to any more illusions."
Rimuru spoke softly, breaking the silence.
"I've told Tony everything about the Skrulls. He's currently contacting all the Avengers to align information and prepare for any eventuality. Rhodey is also aware of the situation and is keeping a close eye on the military, keeping a tight grip on the situation and preventing any signs of internal strife."
"Now, everyone is in position; we're just waiting for your choice."
After he finished speaking, the office fell silent once again.
Nick Fury has lived for so many years, fought tough battles, encountered betrayals, and gone through countless gunfights, but he has never felt that an office could be so oppressive.
Even when bullets grazed his scalp and life hung in the balance, he remained calm and composed.
But today, facing the terrifyingly calm Rimuru, he felt suffocated and dared not even breathe too heavily.
His Adam's apple bobbed violently; he ultimately decided to plead for the Skrulls' last chance of survival.
He wasn't simply stubborn; it wasn't just about twenty years of working together, but also about the promises and agreements he made with Carol back then.
" Rimuru."
Fury's voice was unusually dry.
Even if everything you say is true, it's a sin that won't happen until ten years later.
"These Skrulls currently lurking on Earth have done nothing wrong; they are innocent. Is it really reasonable to judge them now based on sins that haven't even happened yet?"
" Carol and I have an agreement with them."
" The Skrulls remain on Earth to help us protect our planet and deal with various extraterrestrial threats, while we help them find a suitable new home so they can settle down peacefully."
"They have been helping humanity steadily for twenty years without causing any trouble."
"There's no need to exterminate them all. With your strength, you can easily drive them away from Earth, that's all. Driving them away is enough, there's really no need to kill them all."
Such reasonable and persuasive words would sway anyone who heard them.
But Rimuru merely raised his eyes slightly, his gaze icy cold, each word piercing through the facade of hypocrisy.
"Innocent?"
"Are those humans who will be quietly replaced, imprisoned, and usurped by them destined to suffer? Deserving to disappear into thin air, have their lives stolen, and have their identities taken away?"
"Do you really think they're helping humanity willingly?"
"If they hadn't been hunted to the point of desperation by the Kree, with nowhere to go and nowhere to escape, do you think they would have stayed on Earth as helpers?"
"Did they tell you why they were being hunted? Why are the Kree chasing him all over the universe?"
"Do you really think those Skrulls are some kind of benevolent people? Are they really as pitiful and innocent as they look?"
Fury froze instantly, the words stuck in his throat, unable to come out.
Yes, why is that? It can't just be that the Kree are addicted to killing Skrulls, can it?
Rimuru continued speaking, slowly revealing the cruel truth deep within the universe that no one had ever explored before.
"The three great empires of the universe: the Skrull Empire, the Kree Empire, and the Shi'ar Empire."
"The first to rise to power were not the Kree, but the Skrull Empire."
"They experienced the earliest technological breakthrough, pioneering interstellar colonization and expanding rapidly throughout the universe. Early on, they discovered habitable planets in the Large Magellanic Cloud, where two native races coexisted: the Kree and the Cotati."
"According to the interstellar rules established by the Skrull Empire, a planet can only elect one race as its sole representative, who will exclusively enjoy the planet's resources and its interstellar seat."
"At that time, they chose the more docile Cotati, abandoning the warlike and barbaric Kree."
Do you know what happened next?
Rimuru's tone was flat, yet every word was icy.
" The Kree, unwilling to be eliminated, secretly slaughtered all the Cotati."
"The entire clan was wiped out overnight."
"They plundered the planet's resources, seized existing spaceships and technology, and rose to power over the corpses of the Cotati, which led to the later Kree Empire."
"From then on, the Kree and the Skrull became mortal enemies, waging a protracted interstellar war that spanned countless years. In the end, the Skrull Empire was defeated and collapsed, and the people scattered and fled, becoming the homeless people you see now."
At this point, Rimuru stared directly at Fury and posed the most crucial and poignant question.
"Do you understand now?"
"Back then, that planet could only have one race as its representative."
"Have you thought about what happened to the other race?"
"Why did they choose a more docile race instead of the Kree? With their strength at the time, they could have easily separated the two races and given the Kree another planet. Why didn't they do that?"
"These are the rules the Skrulls themselves set."
You're telling me they're pitiful?
"They believe in survival of the fittest and the supremacy of their own race to the core. Tolerance for coexistence with other races? It has never been in their vocabulary."
"Their current exile and misery are a result of their defeat by the Kree. But if given the opportunity and time to establish themselves, they will not hesitate to transfer everything they suffered back then onto humanity, tenfold."
"You still believe that they are innocent?"
"You've lived with the Skrulls for twenty years."
Rimuru looked at Fury, whose face had turned pale, and spoke calmly, yet every word was piercing.
"Have you ever asked them if they were originally like this at all?"
Nick Fury's heart sank; that terrible premonition gripped his heart once more.
He had never heard of these things before.
The Skrulls never mentioned a word about their race's past or origins to him.
Without pausing, Rimuru tore away their last pretense.
"The original Skrull tribes were actually quite peaceful and not warlike at all."
"Until a group of even more powerful extraterrestrials descended upon their home planet, captured them for experimental purposes, and forcibly transformed them into three different branches."
"The first type is the primitive Skrulls have no special abilities but possess extremely high potential."
"The second type is the Eternity Skrulls possess endless lifespans and are nearly immortal."
"The last type is the mutated Skrulls in Mimicry and disguise."
"After the experiment ended and the alien powerhouses left, the first thing these mutated individuals with shapeshifting abilities did was to wage war among themselves."
"The other two major ethnic groups, who share the same ancestry, origin, and roots, are no match for them at all."
"In the end, they were all killed, completely wiped out."
"All the Skrulls you see now are the most Coldblood, selfish, and belligerent survivors of that Carnage."
Rimuru narrowed his eyes slightly, his tone icy as he retorted.
"Think about it carefully."
"They can ruthlessly exterminate even their own kind without hesitation or mercy."
"If they were to truly grow strong and establish themselves on Earth, what do you think would be the ultimate fate of humanity?"
The instant those words were spoken.
Nick Fury froze, feeling as if he had fallen into an ice cave.
A bone-chilling cold shot up his spine and straight to the top of his head, making his scalp tingle and his hands and feet icy cold.
Having lived so long and experienced countless conspiracies and rebellions, he had never felt such lingering fear or even Shocker as he did now.
Only at that moment did he fully realize what it truly meant to invite a wolf into the house.
He even absurdly felt for the first time that Hydra seemed much gentler.
No matter how insane Hydra may be, or how twisted its ambitions may be, in the end, it only wants to rule humanity and control the Earth.
What they want is order, power, and submission; they will not completely exterminate human groups.
The Skrulls are different.
Their very being is etched with the instincts of slaughter, plunder, and genocide.
If they would eradicate their own kind so ruthlessly, they would be even more cruel to foreign tribes.
Despite the office being air-conditioned at room temperature, Fury was shivering with cold.
Twenty years of cooperation, twenty years of trust, and twenty years of self-satisfied complacency.
Only at the very end did they discover that what they had personally let into their home was a group of top predators who had fought their way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and the extermination of their own kind.
How ridiculous!