Chapter 222

Cortana appeared in the dining room just in time; Sophia and Jane were already at the table, getting ready for dinner.

"Hello," Cortana greeted those already present as she sat down.

"Hi," Sophia replied with a gentle smile.

"You look as adorable as ever," Sophia said, chuckling softly.

"Of course," Cortana responded, curving her lips slightly, clearly pleased with the compliment.

Sophia smiled at her, looking around the table at the people gradually arriving. She couldn't help but widen her smile, feeling happy. Her family was growing, and soon there would be one more member.

Years had passed quickly from her perspective; she was already over 60 years old, but she looked as if she were 30.

At that moment, a flash of golden light arrived in the room before sitting on a chair, revealing Alice. Her sisters quickly followed behind her, although they couldn't move as fast as Alice.

Sophia furrowed her brow slightly at the sight, as the three sisters used to be quite similar in their abilities.

Now that Alice was displaying her abilities like this, she worried that there might be conflicts among the sisters.

Still, she didn't know exactly what to say; Damian had literally changed the world so that his daughters were free to use their abilities. It would be contradictory to limit them now.

Finally, she didn't say anything and just gave her three lovely granddaughters a smile.

"Hi, Grandma," Alice said, arriving first at her side.

"How are my loves? Did you have fun playing?" Sophia asked, pulling the three girls into a hug.

The three were almost six years old now, and their growth was evident.

"Hm, we had fun," Alice answered for her sisters.

Emma and Ivy only looked at Alice with a complaint since they didn't enjoy themselves as much. Their sister was overwhelmingly superior to them in physical games thanks to her new energy layer.

Sophia, of course, noticed these looks and figured she should talk to Damian if he hadn't noticed already.

"What were you playing?" Sophia asked, looking at them.

"Races," all three said with different moods.

"Maybe you could play hide and seek," Sophia suggested with a slightly crooked smile, trying not to laugh at their rich expressions.

Emma and Ivy immediately thought it was a good idea; they wanted to see if their tricky sister would still use her energy layer while playing hide and seek.

Unlike her two sisters, Alice immediately nodded with a smile when she heard her grandmother's suggestion, finding nothing strange about it. After all, she didn't use her energy layer to show off; it was just sisterly competition, and she was happy to win.

"Just get along," Sophia said, shaking her head.

"Is someone not getting along here? I'll spank anyone misbehaving," Damian said, entering the dining room and picking up Ivy in his arms before kissing her cheek.

Ivy just giggled happily at being pampered by her father.

"Of course, we're getting along," Alice said, laughing, unaware of the small problem.

"You've let your hair grow," Damian said, looking at Ivy, her bob haircut now reaching the top of her back.

"Hm, I'm trying it out. For now, it's fine," Ivy said, touching her hair. When she was little, it bothered her while playing, but now it's not so bad.

Damian just smiled, kissing her cheek and putting her back on her feet before going to sit down.

The other family members also arrived, and everyone started eating.

"Hey, Cortana, what's up with the zombies and those things that looked like demons?" Jane asked as they ate.

"In reality, we're being invaded by a demonic dimension," Damian said, not waiting for Cortana to respond.

"Yes, and I wonder where you got that information from," Cortana said, looking at Damian.

"Oh? Is there something I don't know?" Carol asked, looking at Damian.

"You have to be careful with your husband holding other women's hands," Cortana teased.

Damian just rolled his eyes at the looks of the others.

"But how is that possible? Where does this dimension come from?" Jane asked, confused, trying to steer the conversation back.

"I don't know. When I tried to investigate the portal, it collapsed. For me to be able to pass through, it would have to be an immense portal," Damian said as he ate.

"Couldn't you send a drone or some device with cables to retrieve the information?" Jane asked.

"It could be, but I don't really care much about how the place looks. I'm interested in deeper things like where the dimension is located, and that can't be analyzed so easily by drones," Damian said, smiling.

"Can I do it?" Jane asked with interest. It'll be a good pastime while she's on Earth.

"Sure," Damian said, nodding to Jane before looking at Cortana, who nodded in return.

The hours passed, and soon it was time for the second day of the event.

...

In a large military complex.

A green-skinned man with a large head stood in front of almost a thousand soldiers.

This man was Sterns.

Another victim of Bruce's blood.

A small stream of Bruce's blood came into direct contact with a bleeding wound on his head.

But Sterns was little favored; his physical strength was mediocre among those of his own race, and he couldn't return to normality, always having his green skin and large head, making him look unattractive.

The only good thing he could salvage from this was that his already great intellect was maximized.

Sterns thought he was the smartest person on Earth; he believed that not even Tony Stark was superior to him.

"Everyone, look at the tattoos on your shoulders," Sterns said from atop the podium.

Each of the HYDRA-enhanced soldiers looked at their shoulders, where a tattoo with strange symbols was faintly glowing.

Sterns had applied these tattoos quickly that day.

"This tattoo is special; when you enter the event, it should go in with you," Sterns said before bringing his magic to a similar tattoo he had on the back of his hand.

All the soldiers immediately felt the direction in which Sterns was.

"As you may have noticed, this tattoo makes you come to me. Once we can gather many, troublesome enemies will be easy to deal with," Sterns continued.

"We'll definitely monopolize the rewards of this event."

"No one will be able to oppose us," Sterns said with a big smile.

The hours passed, and everyone returned to their rooms, prepared to wreak havoc on the event.

Sterns closed his eyes on his bed, and when he opened them again, he was in the middle of the forest, exactly in the same place where he had been.

Without hesitation, he quickly channeled his magic into the tattoo as he sat down. A subtle but powerful signal was quickly sent throughout the event, contacting the tattoos of his men.

Now he just had to wait.

He did some tests when they announced the start of the event, some succeeded and some failed, but it turned out that magic tattoos could indeed be brought to the event.

This gave him many ideas for cheating; now the most important thing is just to gather his men to ensure their survival.

Sterns waited only a few minutes when some of his men began to arrive at his side. It wasn't strange; they were all scattered randomly, and it was impossible for none of them to be nearby.

Now they just had to wait until everyone arrived before starting to move.

Nearly an hour passed, and finally, everyone had arrived.

"Now that we're all here, we'll set up a fairly simple camp before exploring the surroundings. Use the tattoos to warn of a situation you can't handle. Let's try to monopolize all the resources," said Sterns, looking at his men.

"Yes, sir," said all the soldiers before several went out to explore the surroundings.

Sterns could only stay in place and wait for information from his men.

He really wanted the reward; with his own analysis, it wasn't difficult to conclude that Damian was behind the system.

Although there were many rumors about it among civilians, in the end, no one was absolutely certain that it was true.

But after seeing Damian fight with that colossal creature, Sterns had no more doubts.

Even those beings who called themselves gods did not dare to come out during the fight.

That's why he has no doubt that Damian can help him solve the instability in his DNA and the deformity of his head.

Just looking at himself in the mirror disgusts him.

He'll do whatever it takes to get the reward.

....

Cortana was supervising the event when she received an alert detecting the gathering of many people.

Large-scale battles were extremely rare, and the largest had been of 100 people who were being mentally controlled.

But this time around a thousand people had gathered, which immediately set off alarms.

She quickly analyzed the events leading up to the gathering of people and realized they had found a loophole in the system.

Although it was really complicated to avoid this, the tattoo itself was just magic; technically, they weren't cheating, they were just leveraging their knowledge.

Cortana bit her lip a little worried that this would affect the game.

She quickly began to look around the area for a way to balance things, although she could simply expel them, it would leave a bad taste in her mouth since what they did could be said to be legal.

Suddenly she saw several acquaintances a few kilometers from Sterns, and a big smile couldn't help but form as her mind created a big scene.

In this world, there was never a sequel to The Avengers; maybe this is a good opportunity.

She's sure she can surprise her master.

The whole event world had been created by her, so changing things was just a matter of her thinking about it.

So she made people who according to the normal course of events shouldn't meet, end up meeting.

Bruce, who was walking casually in one direction, suddenly stopped confused feeling he was no longer going in the same direction, but it didn't seem to be the case; finally, he just scratched his head confusedly before continuing to walk.

Cortana realized Natasha was heading towards Tony and Steve so she didn't do anything about them.

She just steered Bruce in a certain way so that everyone would meet.

She couldn't help but feel like forcing Clint into the area, but she supposed that would be going too far; in the end, she believed that so far it was enough.

Cortana nodded satisfied to see that everything was going well.

....

Tony was in a small battle accompanied by Steve.

His repulsors hummed sharply as they eliminated attackers.

He doesn't feel comfortable killing everyone he encounters, but if someone attacks him, he doesn't have a psychological burden.

It was somewhat common to encounter attacks from multiple people, especially since the second day.

If two people met by chance, they would normally make a team, after all, the reward increased the longer they stayed alive, so there was no problem in temporarily forming an alliance to eliminate some targets.

Firing his repulsor one last time, a large hole remained in the chest of one of the participants.

"It's really grotesque," said Steve, avoiding looking at the hole with a grimace.

"Indeed," said Tony before both left the place full of bodies.

"At least it's an instant death, I don't think they feel pain," said Steve casually.

"Are you supposed to be comforting me?" said Tony raising an incredulous eyebrow.

"Well, I'm a soldier, in war, I saw all sorts of things," said Steve shrugging.

"That's true, the war, and then you woke up in this modern world, have you had trouble?" Tony asked looking at Steve.

"I did, but Peggy took care of keeping me in line," Steve said somewhat seriously at first before ending up joking.

"That's what women usually do," Tony said, laughing.

"Should we come back later so you two can keep sharing your feelings?" Natasha joked.

She had heard their conversation from a distance and had just arrived.

"Nat," Tony said, surprised to see her before immediately putting on a suspicious expression.

Steve was also surprised to see her, especially when Hope and Betty arrived behind her.

He had only met Betty a couple of times, but since she was Bruce's girlfriend, it wasn't difficult for him to remember her.

"As expected, they talk about not cheating, but the administrators are the first to do it," Tony said, shaking his head as if disappointed.

"I'm just supervising that everything goes well, and they started following me, I don't know what you're talking about," Natasha joked.

"Did something happen, or did you just want to meet?" Steve asked, laughing softly.

"Just to hang out, the meeting we don't have in the real world, we can have it here," Natasha shrugged.

"Bruce and Clint are missing," Tony nodded.

At that moment, heavy footsteps were heard coming in their direction, these seemed very familiar.

Everyone immediately looked at Natasha suspiciously.

"I promise you I have nothing to do with this," Natasha said, laughing as she raised her hands.

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