As for Hydra's schemes, Zodsis merely found them interesting.
The Hand was even less worth mentioning—unless Black Sky actually showed up, Zodsis wouldn't spare them a second glance.
Though, if the Hand had a controlled Ghost Rider under their thumb, that would be genuinely troublesome.
Hydra was being hunted so relentlessly across the globe that they had no choice but to find a place to stash those hundred Decepticons. Reluctant as they were to part with them, they knew that holding on any longer would all but guarantee discovery, and once Hydra was dragged into the light, they were dead men.
Even after recovering the lost Decepticons, Nick Fury did not ease up on tracking down moles and suspicious forces. With the world's strongest man at his back, Fury wasn't afraid in the slightest, and neither were the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The fear and anxiety over the Saiyan and Chitauri invasions pushed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reorganization forward far faster than anyone had imagined—so fast that even China was caught off guard. After all, it was practically a running joke that foreign governments worked lightning-fast when the money was flowing and dragged their feet when it wasn't, yet this time they moved with startling decisiveness.
Once the reorganization was complete, every agent in S.H.I.E.L.D. was subjected to a thorough vetting and review every single month. To preempt any bribery, the five major powers decided to rotate the vetting duty among themselves. Surely no one could bribe all five of them at once.
In truth, their worry was largely unnecessary, because as long as Zodsis wasn't the one stirring up trouble, Earth itself was the most dangerous alien around.
In the Marvel universe, there really aren't many aliens with strong individual combat ability. Thanos's adopted daughter Gamora, at her level, was already being touted as the "deadliest assassin in the universe."
The Hulk steamrolled every challenger in the Grandmaster's arena without breaking a sweat—and those contestants were all the fiercest combat species the Grandmaster had snatched up from the far corners of the cosmos.
Though Earth lags behind in overall civilization and technology within the Marvel framework, it's genuinely a land of hidden wonders. A random lab accident or a genetic mutation can cough up a superhuman who, thrown into the wider universe, would rank among its top powerhouses.
To put it in Eastern terms, Earth in the twenty-first century is like a world undergoing a spiritual energy revival.
Another reason is that the alien powers of the Marvel universe don't particularly value individual combat prowess.
Could the three great interstellar empires create superpowered warriors similar to Earth's using their technology? Absolutely.
Ronan the Accuser of the Kree Empire, one of the universe's recognized heavy hitters, is a genetically engineered super-soldier of the Kree.
It's just that aliens generally find it more straightforward to let battleships and planet-buster cannons do the talking. Pouring so much time and money into building a super-soldier like Ronan simply isn't cost-effective. You'd be better off building a couple more planet-busters.
Even if your individual power reaches the level of the Eternals, so what? Beneath a planet-buster cannon, all are equal. A level one hundred expert and a level one rookie make no difference at all.
Granted, there are individuals who can produce the same effect as a planet-buster, but they are few and far between.
That's why, in the original events, the Avengers end up steamrolling all kinds of alien elites—because the Avengers are just that damn good.
If you count the number of top-tier powerhouses below the god level, the entire Marvel universe combined probably has fewer than Earth alone.
In the original story, the Kree took note of this bizarre phenomenon on Earth and grew intensely curious, once even plotting to capture all the Avengers and dissect them for study. The Kree would have to sink oceans of money just for a slim chance of producing a single super-soldier, and odds were the result still wouldn't match the Avengers in combat strength. They were dying to know just why Earth churned out so many superheroes.
But the current generation of heroes clearly didn't yet realize that they already counted among the universe's elite. As people born and raised on Earth, who had never ventured out to see the wider universe, superheroes shared the same primal awe of extraterrestrials as everyone else. The moment a topic involving aliens came up, they tensed up on instinct.
Just like how the whole world reacted after Raditz's invasion. The Russian Bear churned out over a hundred nuclear warheads in a single month. America and China weren't much better.
Then came the Thor incident. Though S.H.I.E.L.D. resolved it flawlessly, it still hammered home the danger to all of humanity.
The Chitauri incident further ignited the spark of global military buildup. Tony Stark even wanted to collaborate with Zodsis to forge a more powerful Iron Legion.
Considering how Ultron came about, Zodsis figured he'd better stay out of it, lest he accidentally spawn a Super Ultron.
As for nuclear warheads, Zodsis thought it over and announced that he had discovered a second new element beyond the periodic table.
The news instantly rocked the world. Zodsis had found another new element this quickly?
"During a routine experiment, I accidentally discovered a highly energetic, fusion-capable elemental substance—SG59O3. It is a new element that contains an immense amount of active energy."
No one spoke. They were all stunned by the enormity of the event.
After all, discovering a new element carries almost immeasurable significance for the advancement of human civilization. On the scale of nations, the discovery of a new element represents a monumental leap in overall national power and social productivity.
With two new elements, Zodsis could practically be called the Father of New Elements.
Granted, he had only provided the symbol, not the associated molecular structure, but researchers like Stark would still be able to figure that out.
As everyone knows, the emergence of a new element must be paired with a corresponding code.
And naturally, the rules that define that pairing must be set by the discoverer himself.
Without Mendeleev, the architect of the first periodic table, later generations wouldn't have been able to classify newly discovered elements according to their inherent patterns.
In that sense, Zodsis, the creator of the second table, had essentially handed everyone who knew the symbol code both the original question and the final answer. All that was missing was the step-by-step process of solving it.
That, too, was the most direct path to obtaining the method of producing the element.
"The new element I discovered previously, FG2506, generates enormous energy through instantaneous fusion. The energy released by the complete combustion of one milligram of FG2506 is equivalent to two million times its weight in uranium. SG59O3, on the other hand, contains energy ten times greater than that."
One could only imagine the profound impact these two elements would have on human society.
The Umbrella Corporation also rolled out a brand-new weapon series: the "New Element Destruction Bomb" that Zodsis intended to replace nuclear warheads with—or, as it could also be called, the "New Element Warhead."
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