Chapter 2137: Ultimate New World (Sixteen)_1

The death of Captain America is indeed strange. If Shiller remembers correctly, the story of Ultimate Iron Man shouldn't have anything to do with Captain America.

The whole plot is roughly about Ultimate Iron Man creating the Desolate Virus and the Desolate APP, with Daredevil Matt being the first one to notice something was off. Unfortunately, Matt never beat White Can and thus was unable to stop his plot.

Next was Pepper, as the person who knew Tony Stark best, she realized that something was off with Iron Man. After a quarrel, Pepper decided to activate the consciousness of Justice Iron Man she had backed up.

So, the later story is basically centered around Justice Iron Man and Evil Iron Man. If Captain America was involved at all, it would be after White Can was locked up, not when the Desolate Virus just broke out.

Then a problem arose. To prevent the collision of the universes created by Transcendent, Shiller went to the future timeline, grabbed the White Can that appeared after the event of the Axis of Good and Evil, and brought him to the past timeline to replace the yet-to-be-evil normal Iron Man.

The normal Iron Man was sent to the future. In other words, they switched identities. And if time kept moving forward, they would inevitably meet one day.

Shiller had explained this to White Can. For White Can, his primary enemy should be the virtuous version of himself, not Captain America. If there is another version of him, his fortune and status could be taken away at any time.

In this way, White Can actually didn't have a motive to kill Captain America. Captain America didn't interfere with his conspiracy, and with his own first-mover advantage, he could manipulate Captain America during the time from the past to the future, in order to deal with the virtuous version of himself later.

The nature of a villain is to make the best use of everything and never waste any usable manpower. Looking at White Can's way of doing things, the chances of him doing this are relatively high, and the chances of him killing Captain America directly are quite small.

White Can admitted in a video message that he killed Captain America, but there is a contradiction. He said it was an accident but they both must admit that they did not completely ignore it.

According to White Can's personality, if he killed someone, he would just admit it. If it was an accident, he would also admit it instead of placing the blame on himself out of guilt.

So, it's very likely that the whole thing happened as White Can described. White Can caused an accident, and this accident led to the death of Captain America. Killing wasn't what White Can intended, but it was an accident he created that killed Captain America.

This is strange. No matter how weak Captain America is, he is known for being evenly matched. He is the one who can withstand both the little kids and the heavenly gods, with his shield at hand, he is omnipotent. How could he die so easily when no one is targeting him?

Now they understand that with great power comes great responsibility. Once this ultimate flag is set, Shiller has used this to survive once, can Captain America escape?

This mission test is led by Nick, because he is now managing the Time Management Bureau, and a lot of the time, to find the right mission, they have to travel through time.

For example, when Shiller set the Batman difficulty, Nick went to look for events that matched this difficulty on different timelines, then they brought the contestants into the cosmos, and then the Time Management Bureau threw them to the corresponding points in time to complete the mission.

But the contestants can't stay here forever, they would definitely return to their own universe after completing the mission.

But now if Nick doesn't throw Bruce into the universe where White Can is in, he won't be bitten by the spider, then Captain America won't die due to the flag setting, then White Can won't travel back to the past, then the task won't have this difficulty, then Bruce won't come, which forms a time loop.

If they don't invite Bruce from the beginning, then it's not right either. If he doesn't come, Captain America won't die. But later, Shiller learnt from Spiderman that Captain America had already died, and this memory still exists until now.

In other words, if Bruce doesn't exist, it's very likely that a time paradox will occur, which is, Shiller in the future timeline heard about Captain America's death from Spiderman, but because Bruce didn't come, Captain America didn't die. The consequences of this contradiction are unpredictable.

If the death of Captain America is a given, then the process of his death is worth studying.

The problem lies in the Spider Totem that bit Bruce. Although Nick has part of the authority of the Spider Totem, the cosmos is infinite and he can't always manually control which spider bites whom.

The birth of Spiderman is an automatic program. It usually bites Peter Parker, but sometimes it bites others. There hasn't been much research into the selection criteria of the Spider Totem, but surely chatiness is not a favorable quality?

At first when Bruce was bitten by the spider, no one thought anything of it. Many people in this world have been bitten by spiders, and not all of them become Spidermen. In the end, only those who are chosen can become Spidermen.

Later, when testing their strengths, everyone started to sense something was amiss. After Bruce escaped from Osborn's hand, everyone had an uneasy feeling.

Nick had met a lot of Spidermen. He could immediately tell that Bruce, with his dizzy and flustered expression, looked just like how Peter Parker looked when he first woke up with spider-sense powers.

It wasn't until Captain America said that sentence that everyone realized retrospectively that the reason for Bruce's significant change was that he was chosen by the Spider Totem and he had become Spiderman.

As for why these sharp individuals didn't realize Bruce had become Spiderman until that key line came out, they can blame it on the Desolate Virus created by White Can.

Those infected with the Desolate Virus can also increase their strength. This Batman already looked feeble, and he was still far from being fully developed. So, it's normal for him to gain strength from drinking tap water and getting infected with the Desolate Virus, right?

So, at first, everyone thought Bruce's mutation was due to the infection of the Desolate Virus and didn't consider the Spiderman aspect at all.

Now, the Batman has truly become the Spiderman.

Transitioning from the pillar of someone else's home to being that of your own is no small matter. Even if it doesn't involve the death of Captain America, an investigation is necessary.

Within the Time Management Bureau, the Unscrupulous Quartet all scattered, beginning to investigate what had transpired.

After rummaging through the files in the Time Management Bureau for a while, Nick finally understood that the Spider Totem's selection of a person followed a pattern. If Peter Parker were present, he would be selected. If Peter Parker were absent, the selected person still must possess qualities akin to Peter Parker's.

From the experiences of nearly all the Spidermen who were not Peter Parker, they had to meet a few mandates to be chosen by the Spider Totem.

Firstly, they had to be ordinary. Their backgrounds couldn't be too privileged, had to be regularly down on their luck, and currently facing hardship and adversity.

Secondly, they were optimists, capable of retaining their inner strength, no matter how troubled they found themselves amidst hardship and adversity.

Thirdly, they needed to be kind. Not necessarily weak or virtuous, but more akin to upholding relatively simple moral principles.

Fourth, and crucially, they needed someone important who could guide them.

But all of these weren't as vital as the prime principle: one cosmos can only have one Spider-Man. If Bruce Wayne had indeed been bitten by a spider and became Spider-Man, then what about the original Spider-Man?

Although Shiller was responsible for bringing the White Can back to a previous timeline, causing him to become the Evil Iron Man before the Axis of Good and Evil event, Peter Parker was already Spider-Man before that event.

Meaning, when Bruce arrived here, Peter Parker was already Spider-Man. Even if Bruce possessed many admirable qualities, he couldn't possibly become the second Spider-Man.

Throughout all the cosmoses, whether it's Gwen Spiderman or Miles Spiderman, either there was no original Spider-Man in their world, or the original Spider-Man was already dead. That's why successors to Peter Parker would exist in the cosmos. If the Spider-Man in this cosmos is fine and well, on what grounds could Bruce possibly become Spider-Man?

Their investigations reached a deadlock at this point. The biggest issue they now faced was, where was the Peter Parker of this cosmos? Where is he?

All eyes were now focused on Nick because only Nick Fury, who possessed a portion of the Spider Totem's authority, could answer their question. How could a second Spider-Man appear in a cosmos that already had a Spider-Man?

Nick realized this issue earlier than the rest, and so he used his authority with the Spider Totem to investigate what happened to this cosmos's Peter Parker.

"He's dead."

The shock on Nick's face was even stronger than the rest. The black bureau chief's eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets. He stared directly at the three people opposite him, saying, "Peter Parker is dead."

"Where did he die? How did he die?"

Nick shook his head, apparently viewing the timeline. After a while, he said, "He's dead. If I'm not misreading, he committed suicide."

Everyone else was even more confused. According to the above laws, or even without referencing any laws specifically, Peter Parker is not the type to give up easily. He would muster his courage to face any adversity.

In other universes, the Peter Parkers even met Batman face-to-face, as well Joker. What couldn't they do? What kind of difficulty would drive him to commit suicide?

Indeed, this is an issue that they need to ponder now. But there's another pressing problem to solve: they have to resolve this temporal paradox and they can't allow Batman to become Spider-Man, or else they'd have to pay a hefty licensing fee.

The best solution would be to directly send Bruce back home to DC and then fake the scene of Captain America's death, so there wouldn't be any contradictions.

But the problem is Bruce is now Spider-Man. Sending him back to DC now would be like handing over evidence of copyright infringement to the opposition, right?

If they were to rewind time back to when Bruce had just arrived and hadn't been bitten yet, and then send Bruce back, that might work. But no one knew if the Spider Totem had chosen Bruce at that time.

Sending Bruce back would be relatively minor, but what if the Spider Totem insisted on following him to bite him? Even if there were just a one-in-ten-million chance, Nick absolutely would not allow it.

Loki was the first to present a solution: rewind time and start over, preventing Bruce from being bitten or at least delaying it until after the association with the Spider Totem was severed, then deal with the matter of Captain America.

They immediately divided their forces, with Nick handling Bruce, and the rest investigating the situation with Spider-Man.

Nick practically immediately began the operation, resetting the timeline of the cosmos back to when Bruce had just arrived.

But he overlooked one thing: the authority of Marvel's Time Management Bureau only extended to Marvel. He could reset the timeline of the cosmos and rewind the memories of characters within the Marvel Universe, but he couldn't reset the memories of characters from DC.

And so, Bruce, carrying his own memory, was reborn on his first day in San Francisco.