Before Agent Mobius could uncover the truth, Valkyrie called him away.
He told Loki not to move, but it was clear Loki wasn't one to follow orders.
"Talking to that Time Criminal was a mistake!" Valkyrie stated bluntly.
"That's just your opinion!" Mobius retorted, clearly holding a different view.
"He should be reset!" Valkyrie insisted.
"You think everyone should be reset? I was about to get something out of him!" Mobius snapped, frustrated. They had been so close to success.
"We lost another team!" Valkyrie said.
"What's a reset?" Hawkeye Barton couldn't help but ask.
"Remember Men in Black? Maybe they brainwash Loki, erase this memory, and send him back to the timeline?" Nick Fury mused. "But clearly, some individuals are too formidable to be captured, even causing losses for the Time Variance Authority! This shows the TVA isn't invincible and has its own flaws. Not that we should underestimate them, but we shouldn't despair either. There might still be hope!"
Hearing this, the group immediately breathed a collective sigh of relief. The Time Variance Authority had been putting immense pressure on them, like a mountain crushing them, leaving them with almost no power to resist.
Facing such a colossal entity, they couldn't possibly fight back, nor could they even imagine a way out.
"But if he's going to deal with Loki, what exactly does he want to find out from him?" Hill asked.
If he simply wanted to deal with Loki, there would be no need for all this talk; it would be easy to resolve.
As the Valkyrie had said, they could simply reset it.
"This is like profiling—similar to what we did with Lin Feng," Coulson said. "He wants to understand Loki's behavioral logic, to know what Loki is thinking!"
In S.H.I.E.L.D., such things were commonplace.
"Profiling, behavioral logic? What exactly does he want to know from Loki, and why try to extract his thought process?" Black Widow Natasha asked. "Unless... there's another Time Criminal, also Loki. If he can use the mindset of one Loki to deduce the other, that would be incredibly important!"
Everyone's minds suddenly opened to a completely new perspective. *Of course!* Who said there could only be one Loki among Time Criminals?
There were countless Lokis, one for each timeline. With infinite timelines, there were infinite Lokis. Lin Feng had even complained about how many different versions of Loki there were, hadn't he?
"Besides that," Black Widow Natasha continued, "I can't think of any reason they would need Loki's abilities, or rather, his way of thinking. They could easily apprehend Loki. Where would they need him at all?"
The group buzzed with discussion, but from this angle, many questions suddenly made sense.
Meanwhile, when Agent Mobius returned to the screen, he discovered that Loki was gone.
Clearly, Agent Mobius had overestimated Loki's integrity, assuming he would behave himself. But Loki had never been that kind of person. He would never sit idly and wait to be captured. He had already escaped.
Then Mobius realized the Time Controller in his pocket had been stolen.
"What a cunning trickster!"
Compared to Loki, he had almost no special abilities. Even at the Time Variance Authority, where his divine power was restricted, he was still a god.
This was a complete lesson in humility taught by Loki.
Now he finally understood why the other female Loki had been so difficult to handle. *Damn it!* He'd dealt with so many Lokis, and they were all the same—restless and unruly.
Loki's figure reappeared on the screen. Following his perspective, they witnessed something that shattered their worldview.
This scene would later cause their life views, values, and worldviews to collapse completely.
Because Loki was now quietly following a staff member to an office.
Loki found the same staff member who had confiscated his Cosmic Cube earlier. The staff member, clearly unprepared for this situation, was startled and blurted out, "Hey! I know you! You're that criminal with the blue box!"
But Loki quickly cornered him and demanded, "What's your name?"
"Casey!" the Time Variance Authority staff member replied.
"Give me the Cosmic Cube, or I'll slice you open like a fish, Casey!" Loki snarled, mustering his most menacing expression to intimidate the man before him.
"What's a fish?" Casey asked. "What's a fish?"
"How could you not know what a fish is?" Loki exclaimed, his voice laced with disbelief. He suspected the Asian man was acting. Who doesn't know what a fish is?
*Is he even human?*
*Not some bizarre alien species, right?*
*Just looks like one?*
"I've spent my entire life in an office!" Casey said.
"Why does it matter if you know or not?" Loki growled low.
He was almost speechless at the man's sheer stupidity.
"At least I should know what the threat is when I'm being threatened, right? So I can comply?" Casey said cautiously.
"Death, Casey! A very violent, agonizing death!" Loki roared. For the first time in his life, he had to explain the nature of his threats.
If this continued, he felt he might become as much of an idiot as this guy.
For him, using the Cosmic Cube to escape this place was probably his only option.
Since he didn't even know where he was, or even where in the universe he might be, he saw no other option.
"Alright, alright, I surrender! I surrender! Enough already!" The Asian TVA agent immediately backed down, much to everyone's astonishment. *How could a member of the Time Variance Authority be so weak? So quick to fold?*
To those watching the scene unfold, it felt strangely familiar.
*Didn't the leader of Hydra surrender just as decisively?*
He then opened the drawer and handed the Cosmic Cube to Loki. But the next moment, Loki froze. He was stunned, dumbfounded, staring at the scene before him as if he'd seen a ghost.
The audience outside the frame shared the same expression of dumbfounded shock. Their worldview, values, and entire understanding of reality had been instantly reduced to dust.
Because the drawer was completely filled with colorful gems.
And these gems were all too familiar: the Infinity Stones, the very objects they had dreamed of obtaining.
They felt their minds shattering!
They felt their brains overloading, their CPUs about to burn out!
They had just been taught how incredibly powerful the six Infinity Stones were, how Thanos had collected all six to destroy half of all life in the universe, and even planned to restart the entire cosmos.
Yet, in the drawer of a mere clerk at the Time Variance Authority, there were so many of them, scattered everywhere, clearly showing they didn't take these Infinity Stones seriously at all.
*What was going on here?*
"I get it," Tony Stark said. "Just like they brought back the Space Stone when they captured Loki this time, they must have brought back countless other stones of all sizes during similar operations. There must be far more than just one drawer full! In any given timeline, infinite possibilities can arise at any moment. As they eliminate these possibilities, they might also collect various Infinity Stones, then reset the timeline. So they could have a warehouse, or even more Infinity Stones—so many, it's almost unbelievable!"
After a long silence, Tony Stark finally came to his senses and said:
This time, he was truly speechless. He was utterly defeated.
He had completely lost all temper.
At first, they had thought they might have overestimated the Time Variance Authority. But now, as they truly began to glimpse the tip of the iceberg, they realized, *Heh, we were really overthinking things before. We actually thought they weren't that impressive.*
Seeing these ordinary Time Variance Authority employees, they had genuinely believed the organization was unremarkable.
Thanos's Infinity Gauntlet, the very object of his pride, could be replicated for every employee if needed. How could anyone possibly fight that?
This meant that what they considered "high-level" Time Criminals didn't even warrant such a response; ordinary employees could handle them.
There was simply no possibility of winning.
Everyone fell silent, stunned.
This scene had completely shattered their worldview.
The Time Variance Authority had an absurdly large number of Infinity Stones.
This made them look like mere clowns.
No wonder the Time Variance Authority could manage the entire timeline. No matter how skilled you were, facing an infinite number of Infinity Gauntlets, who wouldn't be terrified?
No matter how powerful you were, as long as you had a health bar, you would die.
Heavenly Father-level beings were utterly vulnerable, and even single-universe-level entities might not stand a chance.
They were suffocating!
No wonder Lin Feng was so wary of the Time Variance Authority. This organization was truly terrifying—even someone as powerful as Lin Feng couldn't possibly be its match.
-----------------------
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