Although the Noah's Arks Stark built were essentially just "wooden rafts" barely capable of space flight...
As long as there was hope, humanity wouldn't collapse.
However, human depravity remained. With the emergence of the Noah's Arks, it was destined that only the elites and the wealthy could reserve spots in advance.
Consequently, many ordinary people from the lower classes who saw no hope turned and joined Hydra.
Under Hydra's manipulation, a massive number of ordinary citizens, in exchange for a spot on a Noah's Ark, took up handguns and dared to storm Stark Industries' precision manufacturing plants.
These people were not few in number, and they caused significant trouble for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Overall, however, with the Avengers and mutants racing across the globe, while human casualties in the disasters were catastrophic, order was barely being maintained.
But if the disasters continued—earthquakes today, tsunamis tomorrow—humanity wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.
January 24th.
One week since the start of the apocalypse.
At the New York northern suburbs estate, aside from spending time daily recasting Version 2.0 of the protective magic...
Harvey also had to use Transfiguration to close the fissures caused by the earthquakes; he had to do this job almost every day.
After a continuous week of this, Harvey was growing irritable.
"The Avengers are truly useless!"
"I helped them take out the Decepticon army and deterred the Inhuman Royal Family on the Moon, yet they've taken this long and still haven't dealt with Cybertron."
"Being a floor-stitching tool-man every day is a pain in the ass."
The main issue was that the earthquakes were too frequent—a major one almost every day and a minor one every hour.
He might have just patched a crack when another one split open behind him.
If he wasn't worried about Earth collapsing and felt the need to keep a constant eye on it, he would have fled to the Harry Potter world long ago to enjoy a carefree life flirting with schoolgirls.
"Sigh..."
Harvey watched as a two-meter fissure split open again and let out a long breath.
Forget it. It's time to move.
This godforsaken planet was truly becoming uninhabitable.
No wonder the Avengers and Hydra had moved their bases onto the Helicarriers.
A house you just built would be shaken down the next second; who could stand that!
In a depressed mood, Harvey walked into the villa and saw Hermione and Cho Chang leisurely playing Wizard's Chess to pass the time.
He grew even more depressed.
A few days ago, Wanda and Cho Chang were still passionate about racing around to save people. After saving tens of thousands, however, they had no way to house the refugees.
The frequent earthquakes meant refugees might suddenly fall into a yawning chasm even while they slept.
Not to mention there were seven billion people under threat worldwide; they realized, albeit late, that saving more people was just delaying their inevitable deaths.
Now even the Avengers couldn't help the refugees. Aside from accepting the wealthy class who possessed massive amounts of supplies...
The Avengers could only express their inability to help those ordinary people with no specialized skills.
Only the elite of the elite could obtain a ticket for a Noah's Ark.
The hundreds of millions of middle-class Americans had been ruthlessly abandoned by the Avengers.
Therefore, after two days of rescue work, Wanda and Cho Chang finally had an epiphany.
As long as the disasters continued, their rescue efforts were essentially meaningless.
Understanding this truth, the two women fell into a "fuck it" state of resignation.
They adopted Hermione's lifestyle philosophy: help those you see to gain some peace of mind, and if you don't see it, pretend you don't know.
Every day, they stayed home playing Wizard's Chess, researching cooking, doing yoga to maintain their figures, and training daily to increase their strength.
Once they truly managed to stop listening to and asking about outside news, their anxiety began to fade, and their moods gradually improved.
"BANG!"
A faint explosion sounded from the kitchen.
Harvey shouted toward the kitchen with a helpless expression, "Wanda, don't tell me you accidentally put metal utensils in the microwave again?"
Wanda's embarrassed voice drifted from the kitchen.
"I'm not that stupid! It's the unstable voltage. It caused the appliance to short-circuit."
Harvey almost laughed at that excuse.
He spoke to Hermione and Cho Chang, who were still at each other's throats over their chess game:
"If this keeps up, Cho, how about you go find a house-elf skilled in cooking to bring back? I'm truly terrified of Wanda's 'dark cuisine'."
"Quiet, I'm busy," Cho Chang said without looking back.
"Knight forward two spaces. Your move, Sister."
On the surface, Cho Chang had no objection to Hermione's status as the principal wife, but secretly, she always wanted to get one over on her.
Therefore, during their daily Wizard's Chess leisure time, she racked her brain trying to win even by half a move.
Though she was suppressed by the max-intelligence Miss Know-It-All every time, her unyielding spirit of "failure after failure" was still worthy of praise.
Seeing that both women were ignoring him, and with Wanda busy researching a hundred different ways to make a microwave explode...
An idle Harvey decided to take a trip to Japan to pick up his two little lovers, Mariko and Yukio.
Since the apocalypse began, Japan had suffered hundreds of tsunamis over the week. All cities on the coastal plains had been wiped out by super-tsunamis.
Only the high-altitude mountain regions could barely allow people to survive.
After holding out for a week, even with the Yashida Corporation being a massive Japanese conglomerate, Mariko was sick of living in a refugee camp.
Actually, Mariko could have easily bought a few Noah's Ark tickets and taken Yukio away from Earth to live in space.
However, this ambitious woman felt the disaster was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
If she could take the chance to seize a territory—say, a piece of land as large as America...
She could become the Queen of a nation once the disasters subsided in the future.
Only after a week of the apocalypse did she realize her ideas were a bit naive.
In just one week, Mariko was on the verge of losing control over the refugee camp.
Let alone seizing a territory; the executives and samurai bodyguards under her command were now besieged by two hundred thousand refugees at Mt. Okuhotaka.
Because the refugees had no food, if they didn't want to starve to death, their only option was to target the resources of hateful conglomerates like Mariko's.
At first, the refugees only tried to steal food from Mariko's camp.
Mariko didn't hesitate to kill a dozen thieves, but it did nothing to deter the growing number of looters.
After all, if they didn't steal, they would starve. Creeping into the masters' camp might at least let them die with a full stomach.
Later, as the food the refugees had hurriedly brought during their flight was exhausted, they grew bolder and bolder.
What started as a dozen people sneaking in had become hundreds of people openly storming the camp every day.
Mariko's dream of being a Queen was shattered.
As long as the disasters didn't stop, she was powerless against these 200,000 refugees surrounding the camp.
After recognizing her Queen dream was just a fantasy, Mariko finally used her magical necklace to contact Harvey, seeking protection.
At 2:30 PM.
Harvey stepped through a portal, appearing at Mt. Okuhotaka at an altitude of 3,100 meters.
The moment he arrived, he saw the seawater that had reached halfway up the mountain and the massive, deathly silent crowd of refugees around him.
"Tsk tsk. These refugees have started gnawing on tree bark and eating grass roots. It looks like they really can't go on much longer."