Valeria leaned closer to the microphone.
"Mom, I'm doing fine in the Knowhere, you don't need to worry."
A faint electrical friction sound emanated from the speaker.
Before Susan could finish speaking, another baritone voice, urgent and filled with technical jargon, cut in.
" The Knowhere? That place at the end of time, the convergence point of all the junk from cut-off timelines?"
"Val, what is your gravitational constant? Has the curvature of space exceeded the critical value? Have you been affected by high-energy radiation? Report your coordinate parameters immediately, and I will construct a reverse traction beam right away!"
Reed Richards speaks so fast that there's no time to fit punctuation marks in.
Valeria silently rolled her eyes and tapped her fingers forcefully on the control panel.
"Stop."
She cut off Reed's barrage of questions and quickly typed a string of spatial coordinates into the keyboard.
I'm too lazy to explain all that.
The control panel emitted a deep rumble as the massive ring-shaped energy generator activated in the center of the laboratory.
Blue spatial energy tore through the air, forming an elliptical portal three meters high and two meters wide.
"Come directly here," Valeria said into the communicator.
Ripples appeared on the surface of the portal.
Susan was the first to rush out of the portal. Dressed in her blue and white Fantastic Four costume, she strode over to Valeria, cupped her daughter's face in her hands, and examined her carefully from head to toe.
"You're not hurt." Susan breathed a sigh of relief and pulled Valeria into her arms.
Valeria struggled for a moment, then pushed Susan's arm away.
I told you I'm fine.
Reed followed closely behind and stepped out of the portal. He didn't look at his daughter immediately, but instead craned his neck and turned his head ninety degrees to the left at an inhuman angle, staring intently at the scene outside the laboratory.
Johnny the Human Torch and Thing also squeezed out of the portal.
The massive rocky body grazed the edge of the energy field, triggering a series of electric sparks.
Johnny looked around and whistled.
Outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, an artificial Sun hangs in the gray sky, emitting constant light and heat.
Further away, a floating city made of gold and silver floats silently in mid-air.
On the plain below, several enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex were chasing a fully automated resource collection vehicle.
"Is this the end of time?" Johnny patted Ben on the shoulder. "It looks much more bustling than New York."
Reed completely ignored Johnny, turning his neck back into the lab and fixing his gaze on the display stand on the right.
He strode forward, taking three steps to the display stand.
"This is..." Reed raised his hand, his fingertips tracing the outside of the bulletproof glass.
Inside the explosion-proof glass, six stones of different colors are randomly piled on a metal tray.
Several large pieces of dark gold metal debris were scattered nearby.
" Infinity Stones?" Reed pressed his face against the glass. "No, the internal energy circuits have been completely reconstructed. And this... is this Thanos's floating throne? The core engine has been violently dismantled; the cuts are extremely smooth—it's some kind of advanced spatial cutting technology."
Reed turned his head, pulled his neck back to its original position, and walked a few steps to the high platform in the center of the hall.
On the high platform, a red longsword was imprisoned in a transparent force field generator.
The sword emitted a dark light that seemed to devour all other light.
Reed took a half step back, knocking over a metal chair next to him.
" Knull's All-Black the Necrosword, the God of Symbiotes?!" Reed pressed his hands against the outer casing of the force field generator, his knuckles slamming into the metal.
"How could a cosmic artifact of this caliber appear here? I've only ever seen records of it in the fragments of divine archives. It can Carnage Celestials! Val?! You actually put it in this ordinary force field generator?"
Valeria walked over and kicked the metal chair on the ground.
"A regular force field generator? This is something I forged using Asgard Uru metal mixed with the nerve fibers of the Celestials. Thor infused it with the Law of Destruction, which suppresses all its energy fluctuations."
Reed turned his head and stared at Valeria.
" Thor? That Thor? He's mastered the Law of Destruction?" Reed's mind raced. "This doesn't conform to the Law of Conservation of Energy. The gods of Asgard couldn't possibly touch the fundamental laws of the universe."
Valeria didn't answer; her attention had shifted to the far left of the workbench.
There was a transparent glass sphere there, inside which miniature mountains and rivers were in motion, and a few tiny dark clouds floated in the sky.
"Pocket Dimension." Reed followed Valeria's movement, then abruptly turned his head.
"I knew it! Only that kid Franklin could create such a highly stable reality distortion space with his bare hands. Did he secretly bring you out? Tell me, where did he go? The one left at home is definitely his clone."
Valeria pulled over a swivel chair, sat down, and crossed her legs.
"I don't know. He went out to play, but I didn't ask which dimension he went to."
Reed leaned close to the glass ball, his face almost touching it.
Inside the glass sphere, a miniature volcano is erupting.
On the edge of the crater, a humanoid creature with crimson skin and two horns on its head is bound to a rock by several golden energy chains and is struggling incessantly.
Reed sat up abruptly, a few beads of sweat appearing on his forehead.
" Val!" Reed turned around, his hands on the edge of the workbench. "Do you know who's locked up inside?"
"Lord of Hell, Mephisto. Pureblood Demon, Dimensional Demon God." Valeria enunciated clearly.
"You know that, yet you still keep him on the table like a decoration?!" Reed waved his hands in the air. "He's an extremely dangerous dimensional entity! His mental pollution can easily destroy the will of a planet! Even if trapped in a pocket dimension, he can still infiltrate through dreams and the subconscious!"
Valeria pouted and jumped off the swivel chair.
"Of course I know, I'm not a three-year-old." She walked to the table, picked up a small silver hammer, and tapped the glass marble.
Mephisto, inside the glass sphere, was shaken and fell to the ground.
"This is Thor caught for me." Valeria tossed down her hammer. "I'm doing very well here. Thor will grant me any request I have. Last month, I simply mentioned wanting to study the energy structure of a dimensional daemons, and he casually caught one for me."
Reed stared at the disheveled demon inside the glass sphere, his mind momentarily blank.
"Just grabbed one alive?" Reed repeated.
"Yes." Valeria raised her chin. " Thor said he was recently testing the Law of Spatial Immobilization, so he casually dug out Mephisto along with the lava beneath his throne. Mephisto resisted for a moment, then Thor single-handedly dispersed half a dimension's worth of primal power, and now he's very obedient."
Ben slammed the massive rock into his palm, producing a dull thud.
"Single-handedly shattering half of Hell Dimension?" Johnny abandoned his nonchalant stance, crossing his arms. "That sounds even scarier than my sister getting angry."
Valeria turned around and looked directly at Reed.
"Unlike you, Papa. You won't let me research this or that. At home, I even have to write a three-page safety assessment report to take apart a household robot."
Reed opened his mouth, completely at a loss for words. The things his daughter was researching truly exceeded his imagination.
Susan stepped forward and stood between Reed and Valeria.
"Alright, Reed." Susan turned to Valeria. " Val, what happened? You wouldn't contact us unless it was an extremely serious problem."
Valeria walked to the control panel and brought up a holographic video.
In the footage, above the Amazon Rainforest, a man in purple-green armor detonates an energy core in mid-air before disappearing in a flash of blue light.
" Kang the Conqueror," Valeria pointed to the hologram, "He just detonated his armor in the Prime Universe and then activated intergalactic teleportation to escape. The Avengers don't have the ability to track him."
The air in the hall seemed to freeze instantly.
The fervor on Reed's face vanished instantly. He strode to the holographic projection, tracing his finger in mid-air to zoom in on the data from the moment Kang escaped.
"Kang," Reed stared at the energy ripples on the screen, "He possesses the pinnacle of 31st-century time technology. Once he escapes and finds enough time to regain his power, he will return with an army of countless variants. The entire multiverse will be dragged into a time war."
"I retrieved the records from the terminal," Valeria typed. "His spatial warp data during teleportation was smoothed out by the quantum foam. I can't find his landing point."
Reed braced his hands on the control panel.
"Cross-universe tracking requires an extremely high-precision dimensional coordinate system. Your current equipment lacks the computing power. We need to build a Multiverse Resonator immediately. Kang's danger level is in the top tier in my database. He can erase an entire timeline."
As soon as he finished speaking, space suddenly began to distort violently.
In the center of the hall, at the location of the previously closed teleportation portal, a blinding green energy tore through the air.
This is not a portal created by Valeria's machines, but a spatial tear formed by a pure combination of magic and technology.
Green flames clung to the edges of the crack.
Susan immediately raised her hands, and a transparent force field shield instantly unfolded in the center of the hall, protecting the Fantastic Four and Valeria behind it.
Johnny was engulfed in orange-red flames, his feet levitating off the ground.
Ben stepped forward, standing at the very front.
A combat boot covered in silver metallic armor stepped out of the crack, landing heavily on the metal floor with a clanging sound.
A dark green cloak billowed in the energy currents.
Doctor Doom Victor, Victor von Doom, stepped out of the portal, his metal mask gleaming coldly in the cold light.
He didn't look at the Fantastic Four were standing by in a tense atmosphere, but instead turned his head directly to Valeria.
" Doom's goddaughter is in trouble." Doom raised his right hand, his metal gauntlet clenching in mid-air.
" Doom will take care of it."