章 2976: Chapter 2139: Ultimate New World (Eighteen)_1

On Bruce's side, he was no longer frustrated about the repeated resets, but he didn't want to give up either. He wanted to try a new approach.

If he tried to steal the serum from the construction site, he would turn into a monster. There was nothing he wanted from the Osborn Group, and he might get attacked by the mysterious slime and lose his sanity.

That left Bruce with one option: to collaborate with the mysterious person who had been corresponding with him via text messages.

This time Bruce was straightforward, for after eliminating several possibilities, he knew that the Osborn Group was not the main culprit. It was evident to anyone that the person communicating with him via text was accusing others to deflect attention from himself; the true dispenser of the Doomsday virus was the mysterious person behind the text messages.

Thus, Bruce demanded that "White Can" provide him with the Doomsday virus, and that too, a variant without side effects. Otherwise, he would provide evidence to the Osborn Group about Stark's illicit biochemical experiments, including his poisoning of San Francisco's water supply.

That's right. In his previous conversation with Norman, Bruce had already learned that what Osborn was investigating was actually the Stark Group. It wasn't surprising - the only person capable of developing such advanced technology would probably be Tony Stark, reputed to be the world's smartest scientist.

"White Can" was a local in Marvel, so with each time reset, his memory would also be reset. He was surprised that an ordinary human trial subject could recognize him, but no matter how much he investigated, he found no flaws in Bruce's background.

Because after all, this background story created from a higher-dimensional power hardly had any discrepancies.

Stark had to believe that Bruce probably learned about this case through Osborn's means. If Bruce had already collaborated with the Osborn Group, could this be an olive branch from the Osborn Group?

Whether it was seen as a threat or an offer of cooperation, after some thought, White Can decided that it wouldn't be wise to let the Osborn Group expose this at this moment. The only option he had was to stall and give him what he wanted.

So, White Can gave Bruce the third phase of the Doomsday virus. He actually hadn't had the chance to complete a clinical test of the maximum dosage. Bruce was a conveniently available test subject.

Unfortunately, the experiment was not very successful. The third phase of the virus was indeed more stable, but its efficacy was negligible.

There is a limit to how much a person's appearance and muscle mass can be enhanced. No matter how much you augment them, one remains a human with two eyes, one nose, two arms, and two legs. The Doomsday virus couldn't create additional organs to augment the human body - its effectiveness couldn't compare with a Spider mutation.

Bruce despairingly found out that after injecting a large dosage of the virus given to him by Stark, apart from a slight increase in strength, it had no function at all.

If it were any other Batman, he would be considering how the virus works now, or he would simply exclude the virus as an option and start looking for other reasons for his power-up.

Because any other Batman would understand, Iron Man didn't need to cheat him. If this virus had not been mass distributed yet, and it was inevitable that it would be, it would be entirely beneficial to give him the actual virus. There would be no advantages in fooling him.

But Bruce clearly couldn't understand this. What ordinary people do best is not to doubt when they should, and to doubt and attack irrationally when they should think logically.

Bruce also fell into a cognitive dead-end. He felt that either the Osborn Group hadn't given him the real thing, or the Stark Group hadn't. At any rate, these two corporations were not the good guys.

But with Bruce's abilities, he could only get angry about it. He had no effective means to take revenge on these two groups, and he couldn't ask them how he could get stronger.

Though he didn't retaliate against the two corporations, both had him in their crosshairs.

Most of the time, the two corporations did not come to a good end. The Osborn Group was convinced that Bruce had certainly leaked the situation of the treatment center to the Stark Group, while the latter suspected that Bruce had long collaborated with the Osborn Group.

Both parties wanted to silence him, and whether it was Osborne or the Evil Iron Man, neither was a good guy. They both had the capability to ruthlessly kill.

Ultimately, the Osborn Group made the first move. Bruce attempted to escape while they were taking him to New York, but ended up getting accidentally killed by the security from the Osborn Group.

Luckily, Nick Fury was always watching over him and promptly reset time back to the very beginning.

And so Bruce was reborn.

Even if he were a fool, Bruce now understood that there was definitely a problem. If he changed his course of action, he wouldn't achieve his objectives.

Whatever the power standing against him was, it was potent. Trying to blindly change the future would not get him what he wanted. He thought he might as well continue along the path laid out. Maybe he could regain his strength then.

Bruce believed that if he strictly followed the original script, he could definitely reach the point where he acquired power. When he gained strength, he would not waste time testing but would immediately start investigating what was stopping him from gaining power.

Theoretically speaking, this was the correct approach for the current situation. But he overlooked one factor: Aisha.

Don't forget, Aisha was also from DC. Although she could also reset time when the universe was reset, her memory was preserved.

The second time the reset happened, Aisha noticed something strange about Bruce and figured out what he was trying to do with his erratic behavior.

From her first contact with him, Aisha knew that this Bruce was pathetically weak. From this, she could infer that he wanted to save Gotham but couldn't - not just couldn't, but more so than any other Batman.

With that, it can be inferred that Bruce's state of urgent insanity is undoubtedly due to his glimpse of hope in attaining power.

Aisha, in fact, hopes to help Bruce acquire that power.

But she genuinely does not know how Bruce came across this hope. Like any other Batman, all she can do is try to control the situation as much as she can.

Yet, that's when things started going awry.

Aisha had been helping Bruce in the past, but eventually, she discovers that this Batman is beyond saving and if his objective is to be accomplished, he can't rely on himself. She must step in.

Aisha took a more aggressive approach.

We mentioned earlier that Aisha manipulated robots to physically snatch the storage device from the Stark Group. This method was relatively conservative; even though the success rate was low, it was safe.

However, due to Bruce's crazed state, after taking this step, Aisha realized there wasn't much time left.

If she cannot uncover the secret of the Stark Group's terminal virus in a short amount of time, Bruce would certainly lose his sanity once he realized that he's still powerless even after fulfilling his plans.

Aisha gritted her teeth and stomped her foot, realizing that it was too late for a physical invasion. Instead, she decided to write an artificial intelligence program to infiltrate Stark Building directly.

Theoretically speaking, the level of artificial intelligence that Aisha developed isn't half bad. However, her hardware conditions were highly limited, far behind Stark's era-transcending super-equipment.

Therefore, to continue optimizing the artificial intelligence, Aisha chose to acquire a device first. But to get the device required breaking through the security defense, and to break through the security defense required the aid of the artificial intelligence, thus creating a vicious cycle.

At last, Aisha decided to expend some energy, forcefully breaking in to grab a device.

However, the problem arose because Pepper had stored the original consciousness of the Justice Iron Man within the Stark Group.

Carrying on the Batman's unfortunate tradition, Aisha just happened to move the equipment storing Iron Man's consciousness.

Anxious to optimize the program, Aisha dismissed the networking security problem. After gaining control of the device, she connected to the internet without a second thought and began optimizing the artificial intelligence life she created.

The so-called 'young calves are not afraid of tigers', the newly born artificial intelligence wasn't wise enough yet. It rampaged in the local network, waking the sleeping backup consciousness of Iron Man.

All along, Tony Stark's body had been its shackles. Once it transformed into an unconscious, invulnerable intelligent life, very few carbon-based lives could defeat it.

The moment Stark broke free from the constraints of the storage device and entered the internet through the connected devices, it naturally became aware of the terminal virus' information.

Immediately, Iron Man realized the spreads of the terminal virus were the prelude to human destruction.

Those who can afford it will be increasingly classified, chopping human society into more concentrated blocks, causing the upper society to further divides. Those who can't afford it will not sit idly by and will resist the escalating oppression in every possible way.

Stark would absolutely not stand by and watch a war that destroys the human race unfold, so his first order of business was to combat his evil self. He had to devise a way to thwart his plot to spread the terminal virus.

White Can was extremely swift and caught traces of the Justice Iron Man in the network, already prepared for the forthcoming confrontation.

But in a confrontation where one party has a moral baseline and the other does not, it will eventually evolve into a situation where both parties abandon their principles.

That's because to win, the one with principles cannot possibly beat the villain who possess no morals. As such, to achieve victory, both parties will resort to any means.

What kind of disaster would the collision of the world's two most brilliant minds cause?

That day, mankind lost all their network signals. A long-missed meteor shower fell on Earth, and countless satellites that symbolized the dawn of the information age had fallen.

When the disaster struck, Bruce finally sobered up. The terrifying thing was the calamity was his doing, but he didn't have the ability to clean up after his own mess.

Watching all this unfold in front of the screen, Nick sighed heavily. As the king of special agents, he knows he's not cut out to remotely control everything from within an office.

While sitting here, the things he could do are limited and not his forte. To completely solve the problem, he must get involved personally.

Nick stood up, put on his coat, and headed towards the portal. He would personally go to this universe, replace the Nick Fury there, don the mantle of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Director and put an end to all these troubles.

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