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Just as the chaotic group chat was finally starting to settle down under the weight of Rosh's massive declaration, a very familiar, completely unstoppable name flashed across everyone's screens.
Wade Wilson: "Manager, stop the clocks! Hold the phone! I know exactly who is behind this entire horror show!"
Wade Wilson: "I've already cracked the case wide open. You're welcome, by the way."
Before a single person in the network could even type out a response, another notification pinged right on its heels.
Wade Wilson: "Also, I just want to say thanks to everyone who was crying into their pillows, worrying about me. It's honestly so touching."
Wade Wilson: "I vanish into thin air for a few measly hours, and suddenly half the group chat is running a background check to see if my gorgeous face is still breathing."
A third message manifested almost instantly, practically vibrating with the user's signature chaotic energy.
Wade Wilson: "It's official, guys. I am legally the most popular, beloved person in this entire community. No arguments will be accepted at this time. Go team Wade!"
The exact millisecond Wade made his grand return, the entire atmosphere of the premium network completely did a 180. The channel's absolute greatest troublemaker, its most hyperactive, unhinged chatterbox, was officially back online.
Under normal circumstances, Deadpool was physically incapable of staying quiet for more than five minutes. The guy was a text-printing machine. Even when he was pinned down in the middle of a high-stakes, dangerous merc mission with bullets flying past his ears, he always found a way to spam the chat with completely pointless memes, taco recipes, and random pop-culture references. If you tagged him, you could usually expect a reply before your finger even left the screen.
That was just Wade.
Which was exactly why his sudden disappearance had sent a massive wave of panic through the community. For more than twelve agonizing hours, Deadpool's account had been pitch-black. No jokes. No stupid comments. Just absolute radio silence.
Worse than that, Vanessa had explicitly chimed in earlier to confirm the rumors: Wade had genuinely vanished off the radar during that exact window. Given the terrifying pattern of Devil Fruit users getting plucked out of the shadows lately, most members had already assumed the absolute worst. They figured Deadpool's healing factor had finally met its match, and he was sitting in a body bag somewhere.
Yet against all logic and probability, he had just strolled back into the server at the exact moment everyone was begging for a miracle.
Maya Hansen wasn't about to let him derail the gravity of the situation with his usual comedy routine. She didn't waste a single millisecond.
Maya Hansen: "Cut the crap, Wade. Enough with the stand-up routine."
Maya Hansen: "Tell us exactly what happened to you, and tell us right now."
The raw urgency bleeding through her text was impossible to ignore.
Unlike many people lurking in the premium chat who were just worried about their own skins, Maya had a deeply painful, personal reason for demanding immediate answers.
Trish Walker.
To the world, she was a famous talk-show host, but to the network, she was Hellcat. The two of them had been fighting side by side on the front lines as key members of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s newly formed, hyper-classified special operations division. But over the last several days, Trish had completely disappeared. No morning check-ins, no operational reports, and zero contact.
Maya refused to sit back and swallow the pill that it was just a coincidence. Her friend was missing, and she needed a target to aim at.
The rest of the chat immediately rallied behind her, throwing their support into the thread. One after another, notifications piled up as users aggressively urged Wade to drop the act, stop fooling around, and spit out whatever classified intel he was hoarding. The screen was practically scrolling on its own.
Finally, seeing the entire room turn on him, Deadpool decided to get serious. Or, well, as serious as a guy in a red spandex suit could ever get.
Wade Wilson: "Alright, alright, don't get your shorts in a twist. Look, when the world is burning, and everything goes completely off the rails... who do you call?"
A brief, dramatic pause hung over the screen.
Wade Wilson: "Me. Obviously. The universe finally realized it was in a major jam, so it called up a handsome, incredibly talented, world-saving mercenary to keep reality from fracturing."
Wade Wilson: "Honestly, guys? I am getting some serious, high-budget summer blockbuster hero vibes right now. I look great in slow-motion."
Even while standing on top of critical, life-saving information, Wade physically couldn't resist rewriting history to make himself the star of the movie. It was so perfectly, predictably on-brand that multiple users across the city were actively rolling their eyes behind their glowing monitors and phones.
Before anyone could type out a response, the notification light flared up again as Wade kept right on typing, completely unbothered by the group's tense silence in the group chat.
Wade Wilson: "But honestly, after reviewing all the available evidence... with a face this unbelievably handsome? One so magnificent that even the Manager himself would probably get a little jealous? It was really only a matter of time before I became the main character of this story."
Before Wade could continue his massive ego trip, a new message violently cut him off.
Vanessa: "Wade."
Vanessa: "If you waste one more single second talking about yourself instead of telling people what's going on, I am going to hit you square in the face with a cast-iron frying pan the second you walk through the door."
The threat worked instantly. The typing dots danced frantically for a microsecond before Wade finally dropped the comedy act and got straight to the point.
Wade Wilson: "Alright, alright! Sheesh! Fine! The short answer? The freaks hunting down Devil Fruit users are sorcerers!"
The group chat completely froze.
'Sorcerers?'
Before anyone could even form a coherent question in the text box, Wade rolled right into his next spam wave, utterly unable to hold his tongue.
Wade Wilson: "They're basically a bunch of robe-wearing magic guys. But seriously, though... who the hell picked those outfits? Brown robes? In this economy? I've literally seen Idaho potatoes with a better sense of fashion. Zero out of ten. Would not recommend."
A second later, another notification pinged.
Wade Wilson: "Their fashion sense might be absolute garbage, but I gotta give credit where it's due, their powers are kind of awesome. They can literally tear open the fabric of space. One second you're just standing there minding your own business, and the next? A giant, glowing golden ring of fire appears out of thin air. It looks exactly like one of those expensive Hollywood special effects. Honestly, if the next Green Lantern movie doesn't steal that exact visual, somebody needs to fire the director. Preferably after casting me as the lead—"
By this point, most of the long-term members in the premium chat had already mastered a highly necessary survival skill: ignore ninety-five percent of whatever comes out of Deadpool's mouth.
Once your brain automatically filtered through the endless pop-culture references, the bad jokes, and the self-absorbed rambling, the actual, terrifying information became crystal clear.
A highly organized, lethal group of actual magic-wielding sorcerers had ambushed Wade in the city. Not only had they caught him off guard, but they had also successfully killed him.
Or, well, they thought they had.
The mysterious sorcerers clearly didn't have an S.H.I.E.L.D. file on Deadpool, meaning they had absolutely no idea about his absurd, reality-breaking regenerative healing factor. After executing him and confirming what looked like a perfectly valid death, the robed figures had simply opened up another one of those glowing golden portals and calmly stepped through, leaving his corpse behind in the dirt.
Only after the portal snapped shut and the air cleared did Wade casually climb back to his feet. His shattered bones snapped back into place, his shredded tissues knitted themselves back together, and his fatal wounds vanished into thin air. A few moments later, he simply brushed the dust off his red suit and walked away as if he had just tripped on a sidewalk.
The chat room remained dead silent for several long, heavy seconds. The reality of the situation was sinking in. Then, the text box cleared as Natasha finally took over the feed.
Natasha Romanoff: "Wade. Focus. Why were they targeting you specifically? Did they say anything to you before they attacked? Any names, any motives?"
A second message flashed on the screen right behind it, her sharp, professional tone slicing through the remnants of Wade's humor.
Natasha Romanoff: "Also, if the area you're in is completely secure, I need your exact GPS coordinates right now. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs to debrief you in person immediately."
From a tactical and intelligence standpoint, Wade Wilson had just instantly become the most valuable witness on the face of the earth. Every other Devil Fruit user who had crossed paths with this mysterious magical faction had either completely disappeared into thin air or ended up in a body bag.
Deadpool was the literal only confirmed survivor who had looked the sorcerers in the eye and lived to tell the tale. Even if his operational report came buried beneath a mountain of exhausting nonsense, it was still the absolute best lead anyone had to go on, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to pull that thread until the whole mystery unraveled.
After a while, the group chat exploded into absolute chaos. Questions started flying in from every single direction, turning the screen into a blur of frantic text bubbles.
Random Person 21: "How many of them were there?!"
Random Person 15: "Did they mention a boss or a leader?"
Random Person 2: "Where did they even come from?!"
Random Person 67: "Wade, what did they actually want with you?!"
Unfortunately for the frantic group, Deadpool couldn't provide a single useful answer. From the very second the ambush started, his brain had been in a state of complete and total confusion. The magic guys had appeared out of thin air without a word of warning, jumped him, brutally executed him, and then casually walked away.
Up until the exact millisecond his head was cleanly separated from his shoulders, Wade still had absolutely zero clue what they were actually hunting for.
While the chat room continued to drown in panic and theories, Rosh remained completely silent. Unlike the rest of the group, he wasn't interested in playing a guessing game. He didn't need to join the panic because, based on Wade's rambling, he already had more than enough pieces to solve the puzzle.
'Sorcerers. Drab brown robes. Golden, sparking portals. A dangerous man with long, braided hair running the show.' The clues locked together in Rosh's mind almost instantly.
'Kaecilius.'
The name surfaced in his thoughts without a single shred of hesitation. The fiery, spinning golden rings, the incredibly specific style of martial arts mixed with spellcasting, and the exact description of their outfits, everything perfectly pointed to the rogue sorcerers of Kamar-Taj. The mention of the braided hairstyle simply erased the last lingering doubt.
There was no mistake; the shadow mastermind behind this global purge was Kaecilius.
But as Rosh stared at the screen, a deep frown touched his face. There was one glaring question he couldn't answer: 'Why?'
Why on earth was Kaecilius hunting down Devil Fruit users? It didn't make any sense. As far as Rosh remembered from the original timeline of this world, the rogue sorcerer was entirely obsessed with dark magic and immortal life. He shouldn't have had any interest in supernatural fruits.
Something major had changed behind the scenes, and whatever had caused that shift was already aggressively rewriting the future he knew.
Without wasting another single second reading the increasingly frantic group chat, Rosh clicked the chat window shut. The room went quiet. His eyes slowly narrowed as he took a deep, stabilizing breath.
Then, he unleashed his Observation Haki.
An invisible, silent wave of pure awareness erupted from his core, spreading outward like ripples cascading across a perfectly calm lake. The Observation Haki expanded with terrifying speed. It swept clean across the sprawling skyscrapers of New York City, raced over the vast, roaring waves of the oceans, and tore across entire continents.
In the literal blink of an eye, Rosh's mind was wrapped around the entire planet.
It didn't take him long to find his target. Almost immediately, his Observation Haki locked onto a massive spike of familiar energy.
Kaecilius.
The rogue sorcerer was deep in hiding, tucked away in a freezing, isolated mountain range, completely cut off from modern civilization. He was standing calmly on top of a wide, stone clearing, his face looking just as cold, sharp, and indifferent as ever. All around the perimeter, his loyal disciples stood on high alert, weapons ready, guarding the camp like trained wolves.
But Rosh's focus quickly bypassed the robed guards. His attention locked onto the far side of the stone clearing. There, bound and heavily guarded behind the enemy lines, was a separate group of people.
Prisoners.
Rosh silently counted them through his Observation Haki.
Exactly ten.
As he looked closer at their energy signatures, a dangerous warmth flared in his chest. He recognized several of them instantly.
Danny Rand. Colleen Wing. Trish Walker. Stick. Even Frank Castle, The Punisher himself. Every single one of them was a high-profile Devil Fruit user who had walked through the doors of the Home of the Devil Fruits. Every single one of them was a highly valuable, premium customer.
The remaining five captives weren't famous faces from the world's major news headlines. They were ordinary, everyday buyers, street-level individuals who had saved up their money to purchase a Fruit from Rosh's shop.
But "ordinary" didn't mean weak.
After analyzing their internal power levels, Rosh quickly realized the dark logic behind why these specific five had been dragged to the mountains. Almost all of them possessed incredibly rare and powerful Zoan-type Devil Fruits, the ones that granted devastating animal transformations.
Three of them were wielding ancient, prehistoric dinosaur models. Another possessed the swift, lethal Dog-Dog Fruit, Model: Jackal. The last one held the raw, crushing strength of the Ox-Ox Fruit, Model: Bison.
None of these people were random victims. Every single captive in that freezing mountain camp possessed massive, top-tier combat potential. Kaecilius hadn't been kidnapping Devil Fruit users blindly or running random raids in the dark. He had been using a highly specific checklist, carefully selecting and hunting down the absolute strongest powers on the market.
As a pure, unadulterated fighting force, the ten captured Devil Fruit users were nothing short of terrifying. Each one possessed supernatural strength that made regular humans look like glass figurines. Put them together, and they had enough raw, explosive physical power to run roughshod over entire military divisions.
Yet, as Rosh observed them through the lens of his Observation Haki, it wasn't their devastating combat potential that made his stomach twist.
It was the way they were acting.
Every single one of the ten captives stood perfectly, eerily still, right behind Kaecilius. Their spines were rigidly straight, their arms hanging loosely at their sides. But their eyes, their eyes were completely vacant. Total blanks, not a single trace of fear, anger, or even basic human awareness flickered across their faces.
They didn't look like people anymore. They looked like hollowed-out shells. Drones waiting for a master switch to be flipped.
'What exactly did you do to their minds?' Rosh thought, his brow furrowing as his Observation Haki locked onto the chilling sight.
Right then—
*SIZZLE!*
Kaecilius calmly raised his right hand. The heavy metallic Sling Ring resting on his fingers caught the dim mountain light as he swept his arm through the crisp air, tracing a perfectly fluid circle.
Blinding golden sparks violently hissed into existence, spinning faster and faster until a roaring spatial portal expanded right in front of the clearing. Without a single word or a backward glance, Kaecilius stepped cleanly through the ring of fire.
"Move," his icy command echoed across the stone floor.
His robed disciples immediately moved to follow him, their cloaks snapping in the wind, and then, one by one, the ten brainwashed Devil Fruit users marched silently forward. They moved in perfect, eerie synchronization. Nobody spoke a word. Nobody hesitated for a fraction of a second. They simply, blindly obeyed the voice in their heads.
The exact second the last captive crossed the threshold, the fiery ring snapped shut, shrinking into a tiny shower of sparks before vanishing into absolute nothingness.
Rosh didn't lose them. With a practiced flex of his mind, he shifted his Observation Haki, tracking their specific energy signatures straight across the globe to their new destination.
Instantly, the mental scenery completely changed.
The freezing, snow-capped mountain peaks vanished, replaced by a damp, narrow cobblestone street tucked away in a historic European city. Towering, ancient brick buildings lined both sides of the narrow road, completely casting the alley in deep shadows.
And standing directly ahead of the arriving strike force was a very specific, deeply mystical structure.
The London Sanctum.
The second Rosh's mental eye locked onto the grand, arched windows of the building, the final piece of the puzzle slammed violently into place.
"I see..." Rosh muttered aloud to the empty room, a cold, dangerous realization washing over him. "So that's your little shortcut."
Kaecilius wasn't just hoarding a collection of supernatural freaks for fun. He was systematically constructing a brainwashed vanguard. His ultimate, grand objective had always been the destruction of the three global Sanctums. That part of the script hadn't changed at all.
In the original timeline of the universe, Kaecilius had launched a series of brutal, coordinated terrorist attacks against the Sanctums to violently rip down Earth's magical shield, ultimately opening the front door for his dark god, Dormammu, to swallow the planet whole.
But this specific version of the world had been completely derailed. The sudden appearance of Rosh's Devil Fruits had changed the entire meta-game.
Originally, Kaecilius had been forced to take an incredibly desperate gamble: infiltrating the deepest archives of Kamar-Taj to steal forbidden, dark spells from right under the nose of the Ancient One just to have enough firepower to crack a Sanctum's defenses. That operation had been high-stakes and terrifying, walking a razor-thin line between success and instant death. One wrong footstep, and the Ancient One would have erased him from existence.
But now, this timeline had handed him a much easier, much safer exploit.
Powerful, reality-breaking Devil Fruit users were casually wandering the streets all over the globe. Most of them possessed earth-shattering physical abilities, but absolutely zero defense against high-tier, reality-warping magic. They were the ultimate glass cannons.
Instead of risking his neck trying to rob the strongest sorcerer alive, Kaecilius had simply chosen the path of least resistance: kidnap Rosh's premium customers, rewrite their brains with dark magic, and point them at his enemies.
With a squad of elite, superhuman tanks under his total psychic control, he didn't even need the forbidden spellbooks anymore. He had successfully built his very own disposable, hyper-lethal frontline. An army of superhuman puppets who would sprint directly into a meat grinder without a single question.
It was a brilliant, utterly ruthless strategy, and from a cold, purely tactical perspective, it was the most efficient move Kaecilius could have possibly made.
But he had made one fatal miscalculation. He had stolen from the Home of the Devil Fruits, and Rosh was about to show him exactly what happens when you mess with him and his business.
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Next Chapter: The Despair Brought by the Ultimate Power
Next Next Chapter: Light Cannot Be Escaped
Next Next Next Chapter: Ancient One Comes Knocking
Visit my P@tr3on or K0‑fi ''Isopuff'' page and unlock +20 extra chapters and daily updates!