When Gwen contacted Peter, he was startled—mostly because he had momentarily forgotten about her. He was still racking his brain over how Anti-Venom could resolve the symbiote hive mind, but he hadn't made any headway yet.
Consequently, Gwen essentially deactivated her ability abruptly and transmitted a message to him.
"Peter? I see Carnage heading your way. This universe's Carnage."
Startled by Gwen, Peter executed a backflip to put some distance between himself and the Symbiote Spider-Man. The latter watched him with a look of confusion and surprise, wondering what he was doing. Meanwhile, as Peter pulled away, he remembered Gwen's mission and immediately inquired.
"What about Mysterio's helmet? Is it working?"
"It doesn't seem to be effective. I tried it on this universe's Scorpion and Rhino, but it had the same effect as it would if they didn't have symbiotes."
Peter paused for a moment upon hearing this, then countered: "What about ordinary symbiotes? Have you tried it on them yet?!"
"Are you communicating with someone else?!"
The Symbiote Spider-Man transformed his hands into talons and lunged at Peter. Peter dodged swiftly, leaping onto a rooftop with a light hop. Seeing the Symbiote Spider-Man preparing to give chase, he quickly began weaving between the skyscrapers to evade him.
On the other end, Gwen seemed a bit baffled by Peter's question. "No, why? Is there a difference?"
"Do Scorpion and Rhino have their own consciousness?"
"Yeah, I even heard them chatting."
"That means the symbiotes aren't controlling them; they're just using the symbiotes to enhance themselves. This universe's Spider-Man must have interfered."
As Peter spoke, he spun and leaped through the air, thrusting out a symbiote tentacle to clash with one from the Symbiote Spider-Man. After the mid-air collision, he quickly pulled away again and told Gwen: "What you need to do isn't find these special cases. Go find the ordinary infected. Their perspective is the symbiote's perspective."
"The manual didn't mention that."
"Shouldn't the ordinary infected have been the first thing you tried?"
"Who on earth are you talking to!"
The three channels converged in an instant. The Symbiote Spider-Man leaped up, the volume of his hands exploding in size as he swung a heavy punch at Peter, slamming him toward the ground before landing himself. Peter, however, took no damage; he didn't even hit the pavement. He landed gracefully, not a speck of dust touching him.
"Whatever you're planning with whoever you're talking to, it ends now."
As the Symbiote Spider-Man spoke, his "buff" finally arrived. The scarlet Carnage charged toward him, only to be grabbed by the throat. Then, he tore this universe's Cletus Kasady out of the Carnage mass, snapped Cletus's neck with a single grip, and pressed the Carnage symbiote onto himself.
Soon, he transformed from the pure black Symbiote Spider-Man into one with a black base and a scarlet spider emblem.
"I have to say, if the Carnage in my universe were this easy to deal with, it would be a blessing. Also, are you serious? Faced with an enemy capable of disintegrating symbiotes, you chose to use another symbiote to power yourself up?"
The opponent didn't waste words on banter; he charged with even greater speed. His original symbiote wasn't Venom, but a derivative spawned from a piece of Venom that had been torn off. Carnage, however, was even more powerful than Venom, finally allowing his base stats to go toe-to-toe with Peter's.
Yet, the opponent still hadn't solved the fundamental problem: he couldn't pierce Anti-Venom's defenses. This led the Symbiote Spider-Man to become increasingly confused: This Spider-Man has an absolute advantage over me. What is he waiting for? Is he still planning to talk me down?
The reason the Symbiote Spider-Man had this doubt was that Gwen had activated her ability once more and moved to test the ordinary infected.
Using Mysterio's helmet, she rapidly influenced a single, independent symbiote. Soon, she watched as more and more signals appeared on her screen in quick succession—an almost endless stream. The consciousnesses of these people appeared simultaneously within the same medium, sharing every perception they gained.
Their sensations formed a map signal existing within the consciousness, devoid of concrete images. They could feel the rapid expansion and decay of every symbiote, as if every drop of water were controlling the rise and fall of the tide. It wasn't a single mind controlling all the bodies, but rather countless minds simultaneously operating a giant web.
"So this is the symbiote hive mind... Each consciousness has its own perception and traits, even its own thought capacity, but they aren't independent. This corresponds to Type 47 in the manual. Those scientists really thought of every possibility."
Gwen muttered to herself while flipping through the operating manual, quickly initiating an intervention. "In that case, let's first try inputting false sensory information into a single individual..."
The information perceived by one symbiote was modified by Mysterio's helmet. From the feedback device on the helmet, Gwen could see a momentary distortion in the symbiote's neural network—a visual error.
"Alright, turning to the corresponding case, page 734... Did the person who wrote this not consider users with dyslexia? Or is being a superhero not for the illiterate? Just kidding... I feel like my grades are definitely going to slip next semester. How does Peter manage to skip class all the time and keep his grades stable?"
More and more symbiotes began receiving erroneous information. Although they were symbiote-controlled hosts, their sensory organs still relied on humans. First, every one of them saw the same illusion, to the point where the visual correction of the illusion within the symbiote consciousness network overrode reality.
Next, following the manual's instructions, Gwen began feeding different illusions to different symbiotes. Then, she deactivated her ability.
In that same instant, the Symbiote Spider-Man, who was in the middle of fighting Peter, suddenly paused. He clutched his head and began to sway unsteadily. He felt the world becoming very strange, filled with... paradoxes and fallacies.
"What... what did you do?"
"Looks like Gwen succeeded. You accepted gifts from others to link yourself to the consciousness network of all symbiotes, and in doing so, you gave yourself a weakness."
As Peter spoke, he rapidly closed the distance and landed a punch squarely on the other man's face. "I don't know which of the thousands of hypotheses you've run into, but I'm pretty sure you're in for a bad time, pal."