After a brief pause, Malrick continued.
"Or to put it more bluntly, Dr. Doom's ability to contract multiple main timelines is actually linked to Shen Loki, who sits at the end of time."
Jarvis and Black Strange exchanged glances, impressed despite their lack of full understanding.
"Shen Loki? You mean Loki, the God of Mischief? A particularly special variant of Loki?" Black Strange asked, puzzled.
Jarvis, usually precise and rational, momentarily lost focus. After quick mental calculations, he concluded, "Young Master is likely referring to the Loki who saved the Time 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 astonishment was evident. Across different Universes, Loki was almost always merely 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 assessment.
"That's roughly it," Malrick said. He briefly recounted what he knew.
"Shen Loki was essentially a time criminal inadvertently created after the Main Universe's Blip, when the Avengers traveled through time to restore the population that had vanished. At that time, the TVA was controlled by Kang the One Who Remains. A 'time criminal' was anyone whose actions or very existence deviated from the Sacred Timeline, causing new branches to form.
"Shen Loki, influenced by the Avengers' time 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 time, he and another Loki variant, Sylvie, killed Kang the One Who Remains. With Kang gone, no one preserved the uniqueness of the timeline, 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 timeline, countless new timelines and universes formed constantly. The TVA's temporal loom could not handle the surge of energy and collapsed. All timelines became chaotic, intertwining, interfering, and colliding, and the Multiverse began to perish.
"At this point, Shen Loki mastered true time-slipping and reversal. Every time the world was destroyed, he traveled back to the past to try again. His time travel did not create parallel worlds—it overwrote previous histories. Thus, the Multiverse repeatedly fell and Shen Loki was reincarnated countless times. 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 time, 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 became the supreme deity of time, preserving the Multiverse itself.
"Our current Multiverse exists because of Shen Loki. For him, it was a personal sacrifice. He mastered all of time, yet could never leave that divine throne."
Malrick glanced at Black Strange and Jarvis, his voice quieter. "Consider how vast the timelines 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 timelines 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 time, 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 immense. 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 seemed 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 time across the Multiverse; the other has Kang's temporal technology. They are incomparable."
He looked at Malrick, expecting agreement. 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 mean?" Black Strange asked, bewildered.
Malrick pointed at him. "You are abnormal. Tell me, 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 time, consumed 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.