After a brief pause, Malrick continued.
"Or to put it more bluntly, Dr. Doom's ability to contract multiple main tilines is actually linked to Shen Loki, who sits at the end of ti."
Jarvis and Black Strange exchanged glances, impressed despite their lack of full understanding.
"Shen Loki? You an Loki, the God of Mischief? A particularly special variant of Loki?" Black Strange asked, puzzled.
Jarvis, usually precise and rational, montarily lost focus. After quick ntal calculations, he concluded, "Young Master is likely referring to the Loki who saved the Ti Variance Authority. Judging from the title 'Shen Loki,' for the Multiverse, he might occupy a role similar to that of a god."
"God?" Black Strange's astonishnt was evident. Across different Universes, Loki was almost always rely a God of Mischief, playing petty tricks. Could such a being truly attain a god-like existence? He found it hard to believe. Yet when he looked at Malrick, he noticed that Malrick neither corrected nor denied him; instead, he nodded, affirming the assessnt.
"That's roughly it," Malrick said. He briefly recounted what he knew.
"Shen Loki was essentially a ti criminal inadvertently created after the Main Universe's Blip, when the Avengers traveled through ti to restore the population that had vanished. At that ti, the TVA was controlled by Kang the One Who Remains. A 'ti criminal' was anyone whose actions or very existence deviated from the Sacred Tiline, causing new branches to form.
"Shen Loki, influenced by the Avengers' ti travel, picked up a Tesseract that did not belong to him and escaped. He was captured by the TVA but gradually uncovered its true nature. At the end of ti, he and another Loki variant, Sylvie, killed Kang the One Who Remains. With Kang gone, no one preserved the uniqueness of the tiline, and the TVA's history was overwritten.
"But that was not an ending—it was the beginning of the Multiverse's vulnerability. Without a unique tiline, countless new tilines and universes ford constantly. The TVA's temporal loom could not handle the surge of energy and collapsed. All tilines beca chaotic, intertwining, interfering, and colliding, and the Multiverse began to perish.
"At this point, Shen Loki mastered true ti-slipping and reversal. Every ti the world was destroyed, he traveled back to the past to try again. His ti travel did not create parallel worlds—it overwrote previous histories. Thus, the Multiverse repeatedly fell and Shen Loki was reincarnated countless tis. Over centuries, he absorbed all TVA knowledge, yet still could not prevent destruction.
"Finally, he realized that to save the Multiverse, he had to sacrifice himself. He walked from the TVA to the end of ti, sitting on the temporal throne. Using his own body as the loom, he wove all temporal branches with his divine power. In effect, Shen Loki beca the supre deity of ti, preserving the Multiverse itself.
"Our current Multiverse exists because of Shen Loki. For him, it was a personal sacrifice. He mastered all of ti, yet could never leave that divine throne."
Malrick glanced at Black Strange and Jarvis, his voice quieter. "Consider how vast the tilines of the Multiverse are. To contract them at the source, even I in my current state would struggle. Dr. Doom's ability to contract the main tilines clearly indicates he obtained Shen Loki's power."
Black Strange and Jarvis were visibly shocked.
Black Strange finally spoke, confusion plain in his expression. "An unimaginable past… But how is this possible? If Shen Loki truly controls all ti, then Dr. Doom would be insignificant by comparison. How could he possibly seize that power?"
Jarvis, considering the situation, offered a hypothesis. "Mr. Strange, Doom did take all temporal technology from the Kang variants. Perhaps he used that technology to defeat Shen Loki."
He ran endless calculations on the potential battle between the two, but the computational load was imnse. His optical sensors glowed red, on the verge of overheating.
"According to Young Master, long ago, Kang the One Who Remains gathered the technology of all his variants to create the TVA. Shen Loki's temporal mastery also seems derived from Kang the One Who Remains. I cannot calculate the likelihood that Dr. Doom took Shen Loki's power with the data available."
Smoke seed to rise from Jarvis's head as he stopped calculating.
Black Strange shook his head firmly. "No calculations are needed, Jarvis. There's no possibility. One controls ti across the Multiverse; the other has Kang's temporal technology. They are incomparable."
He looked at Malrick, expecting agreent. But Malrick's expression conveyed speechless neutrality.
"Your Excellency… could it be that I am wrong?" Black Strange asked hesitantly.
Malrick shook his head. "Your analysis is correct in theory. Normally, yes. But the world we are in is often abnormal."
"Abnormal? What… what does that an?" Black Strange asked, bewildered.
Malrick pointed at him. "You are abnormal. Tell , what do you consider the power level of the Eye Demon?"
"Multiversal, terrifying," Black Strange replied instantly.
"And is it normal that you, a sorcerer who was not even Cosmic-Level at the ti, consud several of its tentacles?" Malrick asked.
Black Strange hesitated. "…I suppose there's nothing abnormal about that, right?"
Indeed, Black Strange's arrogance blinded him. His plundering of the Eye Demon's power was acceptable. Dr. Doom taking Shen Loki's power, however, was an extraordinary, abnormal act.
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