Chapitre 1041: Chapter 705 U: Infinite Major Event (24)_1

The timeline began to rewind, back to the moment Shiller successfully arrived in the Realm of Death.

While Death was busy dealing with Shiller's issues, essentially busy making nuisance calls to Lucifer, Shiller wasn't idle either. He was constantly trying to sell his ideas to Death.

Although by this point, both parties' main objective was to win, Shiller figured it wouldn't hurt to add another client if he wasn't doing anything else. So, he started pulling all the tricks in his book, trying to strike a deal with Death.

Death ignored him at first, but as Shiller switched between different negotiation techniques, Death began to budge slightly. Despite pretending to show no interest, she was still listening closely.

Seeing that Death seemed to be wavering, Shiller was even more enthusiastic. Face-to-face sales were unlike making phone calls. Shiller could use all sorts of gestures, diagrams, and even PowerPoint presentations and proposals to elaborate on how advanced his cooperation methods were.

Soon, they entered the tough part - bargaining. Neither party was willing to give in, so they kept testing each other's bottom line, adjusting their own, and engaging in a drawn-out tug-of-war.

While they were peacefully discussing business over dinner in the Realm of Death, the situation over at OAA's side became slightly problematic.

With Death continually making nuisance calls to Lucifer, and Lucifer doing the same to Marvel, and since it was OAA's responsibility to ensure the stable operation of the universe, he had to figure out a way to hang up the phone as such calls clearly disturb this stability.

OAA intended to smash the phone and assigned this task to his subordinate, who passed it down the chain. Eventually, the Silver Surfer, a sidekick of Galactus, ended up as the scapegoat.

Upon hearing that the Silver-winged glider and his boss, Galactus, were planning to sign up for a platinum membership at the Holy Sanctuary, Loki personally got involved. They negotiated the terms and signed the contract, but the only thing left was payment. However, the Silver Surfer then stated that he needed to submit a budget to get money from Galactus.

But Galactus was starving and only wanted to eat, without any intention to give. He was probably the most difficult boss to get a budget from in the entire cosmos as Silver Surfer could not get any energy from between Galactus's teeth.

Therefore, Silver Surfer had no choice but to report to a higher authority. Fortunately, the Court of Life was generous. After the budget was approved, the Silver Surfer successfully became a platinum member of the Holy Sanctuary.

Loki was thrilled. The deal's revenue made up for a year's worth of busyness. Also, the Silver Surfer was pleased. In his view, the task would be a breeze as he didn't have to spend his own money yet could effortlessly locate the target.

However, Loki then passed on a piece of upsetting news: according to the information provided by Frigga, who was present at the time, Shiller was dead.

The news dumbstruck the Silver Surfer. His task was to find the target and let Galactus devour the planet the target resided on. But now, the target was dead. What would be the point of Galactus going there?

The Silver Surfer wasn't sure if someone else had eliminated the target before him or if there had been some accident. In any case, the target was dead, and he considered his task complete. Hence, he returned to notify Galactus, who in turn informed the Court of Life.

When OAA learned of Shiller's death, he was puzzled. The phone was gone, so why hadn't the nuisance call ended?

After some investigation, OAA discovered that the call had not ended precisely because Shiller was dead.

But because Death's current actions were related to certain entities in DC, OAA could not figure out what was going on. All he knew was that he had to bring Shiller back to life first to confirm whether the nuisance call was a result of Shiller's death.

However, OAA also represented the readers and the editorial department. He was the supreme will of the Marvel Universe. According to the supreme will's tenets, anyone who says "With great power comes great responsibility" must die.

Or in other words, this is the will of the comic readers and the editorial department. This outcome is reflected in the comic book.

What's known as the "Spider Curse" actually means that comic readers like watching Spider Man grow. The way the editors reflect this process is by killing off Spider Man's important family members.

On one hand, OAA's role in maintaining a stable cosmos demanded him to revive Shiller and investigate the nuisance call. On the other hand, the part of him that expressed the will of the readers and the editors needed him to let those who said "With great power comes great responsibility" die.

If the different sides of OAA could hold a conversation, it may have looked something like this:

"Maintaining the stable operation of the universe is my responsibility. I say we need to bring Shiller back to life and hang up the phone!"

"Enforcing the readers' will is my responsibility. I say that since Shiller said that with great power comes great responsibility, he must die!"

"He can't die. I have to hang up the phone!"

"He must die…"

"He can't die…"

"He must…"

"He can't…"

In short, a small bug appeared in OAA's program regarding whether Shiller could die or not.

Of course, a bug of this magnitude was unlikely to cause the supreme will of the cosmos to crash - a good program always comes with the functionality to self-detect and put into emergency brake mode.

For OAA, the best solution was a restart.

It wasn't a full restart of the whole Marvel Universe, nor was it rewriting all the backstory settings, but simply reverting the individual universe's timeline, resetting every cause and effect back to a point where there were no issues.

In simple terms, it meant wiping the part of the program where the bug occurred with a rollback, and then using some sort of interference from OAA, allowing the individual universe to deviate from the chance that a bug could arise, this could solve the problem completely.

Within the Realm of Death, Shiller held out a contract, pointing at the end of the document, saying to Death: "If everything is fine, you can just sign it here according to the terms we agreed upon…"

Death read through the contract once again, making sure there were no issues, a pen appeared in her hand and her beautiful script found its way onto the paper.

But just as she had finished writing the first letter, she sensed something strange. Shiller too heard a bizarre sound.

They both look up to the sky at the same time. Shiller doesn't know what Death saw, but he finds a strange starscape appear in the sky of the Realm of Death.

This starscape grew larger and closer, Shiller squinted and took a step back, a bad feeling arose. Just as the starscape was about to consume him, he cried out:

"No!!! My contract!!!!"

In a moment, the Realm of Death was quiet.

Shiller found himself surrounded by a bright starscape. All the lights around him raced forward, or rather, he was racing backward.

In the torrent of never-ending stars, he saw countless universes vanishing like bubbles. All the details of the infinite universes passing him by were all too clear.

One universe flew past Shiller, where someone had chosen to drink milk in the morning. Another universe flew by, where someone had chosen not to drink milk in the morning.

Infinite choices made up infinite possibilities, infinite possibilities turned into an infinite cosmos, each individual universe in the multiverse represented a limitless possibility at every point in time.

All sorts of fascinating curiosities flew past, each one an independent universe, everything in this infinite cosmos was a universe.

Milk is a universe, a chair is a universe, a cat is a universe, a dog is a universe, a thought is a universe, a dream is a universe …

As time reversed, causing all events to reset, the individual universe where Shiller resided was rebooted back to a time before it had come into contact with the multiverse.

Shiller abruptly woke up in his bed, in the quiet room of Arkham Sanatorium. The city lights outside the window and the bright starscape did little to relieve Shiller's fatigue.

His journey to the Spider Legion base through his spider-sense, learning about the so-called Spider Curse, using the Spider Curse to reach the Realm of Death, and then tricking Death into prank calling Lucifer… It all seemed like a ridiculous dream.

Waking up often comes with such illusions, making it seem as if everything that just happened was only a faint dream, but Shiller knew, it was not a dream.

Looking at the clock next to him, according to the date and time, the spider silk should contact him via his spider-sense in two minutes.

As time passed, second by second, the familiar "hum" didn't come when the two minutes were up.

Spider silk did not contact him, the Spider Totem showed no reaction, events deviated from its original path, the potential program error was averted.

Shiller looked at his hand. There was supposed to be a contract signed by Death herself guaranteeing his resurrection – his symbol of victory, his rightful trophy.

But now, with the cause and effect reset, it all vanished into thin air.

Shiller drew a deep breath, sat up on his bed, reminiscing the countless universes he saw when the universe rebooted, during the gap between time reversal and cause and effect resetting.

All things in this world were parts of the universe. A cat was a universe, a dog was a universe, a dream was a universe …

A dream...was also a universe?

As the moonlight dimmed, Shiller's reflection appeared on the glass of the clean window. A dangerous and mad smile slowly emerged on his face.

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