"We're under attack."
The Grandmaster immediately straightened in his chair. "Where? How many attackers?"
"Six individuals."
"Six? How many guards do we have stationed here?"
"One thousand four hundred and forty."
The Grandmaster's expression twisted.
Are you kidding me?
With that many guards, they couldn't stop six people? Unless those six were carrying weapons of mass destruction...
BOOM.
The reinforced metal door to his chamber exploded inward, torn from its hinges. Standing in the shattered doorway was a figure that could only be described as a walking nightmare.
The creature was massive, easily over two meters tall, with muscles that looked like they'd been carved from granite. In his hands, he carried a hammer so absurdly oversized that it made sledgehammers look like children's toys. The weapon's head was easily sixty centimeters across, and the entire thing had to weigh at least three hundred kilograms.
Worse still, something dark and viscous clung to the hammerhead.
CRASH.
The massive figure swung his war hammer again, and the door crumpled like aluminum foil.
Six figures filed through the destroyed entrance.
"Guards! Stop them!" the Grandmaster's shouted as he scrambled backward like a startled rabbit.
But in the next instant, every guard who'd been raising their weapons suddenly went still. They turned in perfect unison, and aimed their weapons at him.
A figure in flowing silver robes drifted forward.
"He's attempting to flee."
The massive purple-skinned figure in the center of the group nodded slightly and began walking toward the Grandmaster. Each heavy footstep sounded like a drum beat.
"Don't... don't come any closer!"
The Grandmaster pressed himself against the wall behind his chair. His hand fumbled toward something hidden beneath his throne.
"He won't escape."
The figure's voice was surprisingly calm as he hurled his sword. The weapon spun through the air, embedding itself in the wall mere centimeters from the Grandmaster's reaching hand. The message was clear: Try that again and the next one goes through your wrist.
The Grandmaster yanked his hand back as if burned.
"I've heard your name echo across the cosmos, Grandmaster. You cannot activate that device."
Hearing those words, something shifted in the Grandmaster's demeanor.
"Thanos. I've heard your name as well. You shouldn't be here."
As the ruler of Sakaar, there was no way he could truly be some weakling who panicked at the first sign of danger. The usual ridiculous, flamboyant persona was merely entertainment, a way to stave off the crushing boredom of ruling an exile world at the edge of known space.
Shing.
Thanos pulled his sword from the wall. He showed no reaction to the Grandmaster's sudden composure shift. It meant nothing to him.
During his earlier, more violent years, he had encountered countless planetary rulers. They'd all ultimately died beneath his blades.
After all, no ruler ever agreed to let him erase half their population.
"From this moment forward, this planet falls under my dominion." He placed one blade against the Grandmaster's shoulder, the edge resting against his throat. "And the future of this universe will flourish here."
The blade pressed against thr Grandmaster's skin with just enough pressure to draw a single drop of blood. He knew that if he voiced even the slightest disagreement, Thanos would decapitate him without hesitation and mount his head as a trophy.
Whatever he had to say, he had to agree. At least for now.
They locked eyes for several long seconds. Finally, the Grandmaster chose survival. He dropped to one knee, formally acknowledging that his rule over Sakaar had ended.
Supergiant drifted closer. "Lord Thanos, his submission is not sincere. His surface thoughts show—"
"Shh."
Thanos raised one finger to his lips, and a mad glimmer flickered in his eyes. He walked past the kneeling Grandmaster toward the massive glass observation platform overlooking the city below.
"It doesn't matter. No one can, or will. reject my new vision. It will bring rebirth to this universe."
Supergiant bowed her head respectfully.
Obsidian moved to stand at Thanos' side. "My Lord, what are your orders?"
Looking down at the city below, which had not yet descended into chaos, Thanos smiled. "It's time for the exiles here to contribute to universal balance."
Chaos was merely the prelude to order. What was happening now was only the beginning.
---
Carrying over thirteen hundred totems of undying, Mario returned to Sakaar. That quantity would keep his subordinates supplied for quite a while.
But when he walked over to check on the smeltery, he was shocked. The quantity of processed metal wasn't the main surprise, it was the sheer variety of random minerals already refined and waiting in storage.
Besides abundant iron, there were also stacks of tin, copper, silver, gold, and even traces of more exotic alloys.
Not massive quantities of each, but with the surrounding ruins showing no signs of depletion, it was clear just what kind of treasure trove this planet truly was.
"Set up a robot to control the smeltery. And organize a transport team to handle moving the refined ingots to storage."
As long as Mario granted permission, robots could interface with certain mod systems. Without his explicit authorization, even the Ancient One herself wouldn't be able to extract a single metal ingot from the smeltery.
He glanced at the nearby ruins and the scorched landscape carved out by nuclear detonations and warship bombardment. It definitely had a post-apocalyptic wasteland aesthetic going for it.
But that wasn't exactly his preferred decorating style.
"Ivan, is there anywhere around here with a better environment? Preferably somewhere flat, and somewhere that doesn't have garbage constantly falling from the sky."
Sakaar's biggest hazard was the spatial wormholes hanging in the atmosphere. Who knew when someone like Thor or Loki might drop out of one and complicate his life?
"There's an open area about fifty kilometers northeast of here," Ivan replied through the communicator.
A war machine unit flew over, and Mario hopped onto it. The distance didn't take long to cover at the suit's maximum speed.
Several robots were already clearing ruins at the location when he arrived. Compared to other parts of Sakaar, this was definitely prime real estate, and most importantly, there were no spatial wormholes overhead.
"This place isn't bad. I can lay down some grass blocks, plant a few rubber trees... I remember Industrial Craft 2 has crop breeding mechanics. You can cultivate rubber-producing sugarcane."
He quickly opened his crafting guide interface. Sure enough, he found the recipe for crop sticks. But he wasn't very familiar with this particular mechanic. In the game, IC2's crop system was notoriously unstable and frequently caused crashes. But in real life, he wasn't too worried. After all, there was no way a tiny crop stick could crash the entire Marvel Universe.
Probably not.
"Maybe I should test it in another universe first?"
The principle of "better someone else than me" was basic survival strategy.
"Forget it for now. Earth can mass-produce latex resin anyway, it's renewable and dirt cheap compared to mining. Let's just focus on crafting the quantum armor set first. The tin ore still isn't enough."
He let out a sigh. Compared to the abundant copper ore, tin had become the scarcest resource in his operation.
"If only I had an Energy Condenser from Equivalent Exchange mod. I don't even need Dark Matter or Red Matter capability, just a basic transmutation table would be enough."
He sighed again and used a small amount of resources to craft another hand-crank kinetic generator.
"Why is it that Industrial Craft 2 EU energy can be converted into real-world usable electricity, but real-world electricity can't be converted back into EU for the industrial machines? That makes no sense."
He'd even planned for Ivan to build several arc reactors and hook them directly into UU-Matter production machines, achieving unlimited UU-Matter generation.
But reality had crashed down on his face. It hurt.
Still, if the system had clever tricks, he had his own ways of getting around the wall.
A row of robots were working tirelessly, cranking the hand-powered kinetic generators in perfect rhythm. Each full rotation generated 100 EU.
Nuclear power? Advanced solar arrays? In front of hand-crank generators powered by tireless robots, they were all just cute toys. The only problem was that hand-crank generators severely drained the user's hunger bar, or in the robots' case, consumed massive amounts of energy from their arc reactors.
Looking at the steady production rate of 5,000 EU per second, he was very satisfied.
"I still need to rush production on quantum solar panels. Otherwise Ivan's robots will become nothing but expensive decorations."
He had tested it himself. After ten rotations, he lost one hunger point. And once hunger dropped below six points, he could no longer use the crank at all.
He connected a UU-Matter fabricator directly to the power grid. This machine was an absolute electricity vampire.
It consumed one million EU to create a single UU-Matter. Iridium ore required seven UU-Matter to craft. Even so, compared to the ten million EU needed per ore with other methods, this was still the most efficient path.
Plus, scrap produced by recyclers could reduce the energy cost of UU-Matter production. With enough scrap input, only 160,000 EU was required to make a single UU-Matter.
"Ivan, send more robots to mine cobblestone."
"Understood."
Ivan, who had been studying the hand-crank generator mechanism, immediately dispatched additional robots to the cobblestone quarry. Mario had built a massive fully-automated cobblestone production facility there.
It was unfortunate there was no cobblestone generator block, otherwise scrap recycling could become entirely self-sufficient.
He felt like his understanding of physics and engineering had been destroyed by Mario's reality-bending powers. He simply could not comprehend how a hand-crank generator could produce such massive electrical output. It violated every principle of thermodynamics and energy conversion he'd ever learned.
"You stay here and monitor the operation. If any robot's reactor runs low on power, swap it out for a fresh one. I'm going to gather some more materials. Stay safe out there."
Mario then pulled over twenty totems of undying from his inventory and held them out.
"Carry these on you at all times. Each one will block a single lethal hit."
"After it triggers, you get two seconds of total invincibility. When it activates, there will be a special visual effect. Don't get distracted or waste those two seconds, the moment you see the effect trigger, immediately tear the return scroll I gave you."
Mario paused, then asked, "By the way… did you hear anything about the boys? It's been a while. They should've checked in."
He was always attentive to his employees' safety.
"No," Ivan replied. "I heard they found some clues about a terrifying vampire, and then they disappeared. Don't worry about them, they're too dumb to die."
"Missing after tracking a vampire," Mario murmured. "Alright. I'll send people to look for them."
Satisfied with his own decision, he nodded for Ivan to continue.
Ivan, oblivious to the shift in mood, examined the totem of undying Mario handed him. He frowned slightly and asked, "What kind of special effect are you—"
But the moment he spoke, he regretted it. He watched as Mario pulled out a massive cleaver.
"I didn't mean I wanted a demonstration—"
Mario didn't listen. With a friendly and pleasant smile he said, "Oh, this isn't optional anymore. You need to know exactly what to expect. Otherwise when the time comes, you won't react fast enough. I'll be quick."
Seeing Mario's expression, Ivan resigned himself to his fate and stood still. But the grip on the totem of undying made it clear that he was anything but calm inside.
Nobody could stay calm in this situation.
Whoosh.
The cleaver in Mario's hand moved. It was incredibly fast, yet in Ivan's eyes he could clearly track the blade's trajectory and its landing point.
His neck.
He instinctively tried to dodge, but his body wouldn't respond, he couldn't move it at all.
Uncontrollably, his mind flashed through memories of Siberia.
Sharp pain erupted from his neck... THUNK.
The totem of undying flew from his grip, spinning through the air once before exploding in a burst of golden particles that swirled around his body. The magical energy washed over him, and suddenly the pain was gone.
He stood frozen, one hand slowly rising to touch his perfectly intact neck. His fingers trembled as they confirmed what his brain was struggling to process, his head was still attached.
"Huh, I knew you'd blank out. Good thing I tested this ahead of time."
Mario waved a hand in front of Ivan's face, finally pulling him back to reality.
"Your mental fortitude really needs work."
This time Ivan didn't argue. How could anyone have experience with something like this?
"That was... that was the 'blocks lethal damage' effect you mentioned?"
Mario nodded. "Correct. Otherwise your head would be rolling several meters away right now. So, how about we test what death feels like? Don't worry, as long as it's within twenty-four hours, I'm confident I can pull you back from the afterlife..."
He suddenly froze mid-sentence. Valkyrie. He'd stuffed her corpse in his Ender Chest two days ago.
Oh shit.
He hurriedly dug through his Ender Chest, pulling out Valkyrie's body parts. He'd shoved her in there while mining because she took up inventory space, and since he hadn't seen her for two days, he'd completely forgotten she existed.
He laid her body out on the ground and pulled out his wand.
Ivan watched Mario's actions with growing confusion. Since when does he collect corpses? I mean, she's attractive, but come on, at his level of wealth he could have any woman he wants. Unless...
No. Impossible. A person couldn't...
He glanced at the flustered Mario again and mentally corrected himself: At least... probably shouldn't...
Mario ignored whatever Ivan was imagining. He pulled out the wand engraved with the Resurrection spell and cast it on Valkyrie's corpse.
A beam of holy golden light descended from above, suffusing the body with radiant energy.
His eyes widened in genuine surprise. It worked! That means the timer doesn't run while corpses are stored in the inventory!
Valkyrie's eyes slowly opened. Her last memory was being decapitated by a man claiming to be from Midgard.
She raised one hand to touch her neck. But in the next instant, the familiar pain returned. Her eyes widened in shock just before everything went dark again.
THUNK.
Her head hit the ground and rolled to a stop.
Ivan was completely speechless.
He had just watched Mario use mysterious magical powers to resurrect a dead woman, only to immediately decapitate her.
Since storing her in the inventory pauses the death timer, I'll just keep her there. Mario picked up the body parts and stored them away. "I'm busy right now, when I have time later, I'll deal with the whole training situation."
He turned to the dumbfounded Ivan, flicked blood off the cleaver blade, and stored the weapon back in his inventory.
"So, about my earlier suggestion. Want to experience death firsthand?"