"Hello, audience!"
The television screen blazed with artificial light in Max's dim apartment, the only real illumination in the room besides the strange blue glow hovering in front of him.
"I am special correspondent Eddie, reporting live from outside Stark Tower! It is reported that the Stark Group has recently decided to halt its arms manufacturing division entirely, triggering unprecedented military destabilization across multiple third-world countries and causing an uproar in global markets..."
"We are currently attempting to secure an exclusive interview with Iron Man himself, Mr. Tony Stark, to bring you the latest developments on this shocking decision..."
The broadcast continued, words flowing like water around a stone as Max stared, transfixed, at something nobody else could see.
Something felt... wrong. But in the best possible way.
[Heavens Invasion System]
[Unlocking: 99%]
The translucent blue charging bar pulsed with ethereal light, tantalizingly close to completion. Each percentage point seemed to crawl by with excruciating slowness, as if time itself was stretching thin.
"My..." Max's throat felt desert-dry.
"My Goldfinger!"
"Is it finally, actually here?"
Max's eyes gleamed with feverish excitement as he stared at the progress bar, his heart hammering against his ribcage like it was trying to escape. His fingers gripped the threadbare armchair so tightly his knuckles turned bone-white.
God knows how utterly terrified he'd been since the moment he realized he had transmigrated into the Marvel Universe.
This wasn't some safe, orderly world. This was a reality where superheroes soared through the skies like living missiles, where villains with god-like powers lurked in every shadow, where world-ending threats emerged with the regularity of seasonal allergies. If you weren't enhanced, empowered, or exceptional, you were nothing but background decoration—potential collateral damage in someone else's origin story.
Doctor Manhattan manipulating matter at will. The Sorcerer Supreme bending reality like putty. God-King Odin commanding cosmic forces. Superman breaking the sound barrier with a casual flight. Thanos snapping half of all life out of existence with a gesture...
Forget about worrying over street-level threats; there were cosmic entities and literal gods playing multidimensional chess with reality as their board. Even the One Above All, the supreme being of all creation, existed somewhere beyond the fabric of comprehension.
And ordinary people like him? They were less than ants.
One unlucky day, one wrong turn down one wrong street, and you could find yourself crushed beneath rubble during a Hulk rampage, vaporized by some alien weapon during an invasion, or worse—transformed into something inhuman by whatever supernatural disaster happened to be trending that week.
So from the very instant Max realized where fate had dumped him, he'd barricaded himself inside his apartment, refusing to set foot outside except for absolute necessities. He lived in Hell's Kitchen, arguably one of the worst possible neighborhoods in this entire universe. Even crossing the street could get you stabbed by some random thug, recruited by a crime syndicate, or caught in Daredevil's latest vigilante crusade.
But finally…
Finally, the universe had thrown him a lifeline.
Along with his unwanted transmigration, he had been gifted something extraordinary—a Goldfinger—The Heavens Invasion System!
"The Heavens Invasion System?"
"Since it's called a system, it can't possibly be weak, right?"
Max licked his parched lips and leaned closer to the floating text, watching his own reflection in its ghostly light. His heartbeat thundered in his ears like war drums.
This was his only chance at survival.
The harsh truth was, his life dangled by the thinnest of threads.
He possessed no superpowers, no secret government training, no billionaire parents, no alien heritage, nothing.
The only things he'd received upon arriving in this world were a random identity, a crumbling apartment that made condemned buildings look luxurious, and a pathetically small stack of U.S. dollars—most of which had already been sacrificed to the gods of delivery pizza and instant ramen.
If it weren't for the system mysteriously providing him with this place to stay, meager as it was, he would already be homeless, fighting for space in some alley that probably served as Punisher's latest killing ground.
Then—
Ding!
The sound rang crystal-clear in his mind, like a bell heralding the dawn of a new era.
[System Unlocked!]
[The Heavens Invasion System has been successfully activated!]
The mechanical voice resonated through his consciousness, sending chills racing down his spine.
It's on!
Max clenched his fists so tightly his nails bit into his palms, drawing tiny crescents of blood. He didn't even notice the pain.
This was it.
[The Heavens Invasion System]
[Mission: Recruit candidates from this world and dispatch them into other dimensions for invasion purposes. Recruited individuals will receive rewards based on their performance and achievements.]
[Possible rewards: Magic arts, advanced technology, divine weapons, bloodline evolution, immortality elixirs... even legendary artifacts from other worlds!]
And for Max?
He had one more advantage—one that made his eyes widen until they nearly popped from his skull.
[All rewards received by recruited individuals will be multiplied by 100 and automatically granted to the Host.]
"...Hiss!"
Max sucked in a breath so sharp it felt like his lungs might collapse.
Does this mean I get stronger just by sitting back and watching others do all the dangerous work?!
In that blinding moment of realization, all his fears evaporated like morning dew, replaced by a surge of pure, undiluted excitement that bordered on mania.
Others would fight on the front lines, struggle through unimaginable hardships, and risk their very existence.
Meanwhile, he would simply recline in safety, reap all the benefits, and receive rewards multiplied by a hundred times.
Is there anything more absurdly, ridiculously, gloriously overpowered than this?!
The possibilities exploded in his mind like fireworks.
A recruit learns a basic fireball spell? Max gets a hundred fireball spells, or one that's a hundred times more devastating.
A recruit manages to steal some alien technology? Max gets a hundred identical devices, or a single version upgraded to be a hundred times more powerful.
This wasn't just insane—it was reality-breaking.
And this was Marvel.
The Marvel Universe wasn't some backwater fantasy realm with rigid power ceilings and predictable magic systems. This was a reality filled with top-tier entities, cosmic beings, and multiverse travelers whose powers defied comprehension.
Here, power was truly limitless.
Max's lips slowly curled into a smile that would have made Thanos proud.
"Maybe transmigrating wasn't such a cosmic joke after all."
Then—
Ding!
[Would you like to initiate the first invasion sequence?]
A new screen materialized before his eyes, pulsing with expectation.
It felt like standing at the edge of a precipice, a fateful choice that would forever alter his destiny.
Max exhaled slowly, savoring the moment.
His days of cowering in the shadows were over.
"Yes."
The instant the word left his lips—
BOOM!
An invisible tsunami of energy surged outward from his apartment, sweeping across the entire planet in milliseconds.
In that breathless moment, every single electronic device on Earth—smartphones, computers, televisions, billboards, military equipment—flickered and died.
Then, as suddenly as they had failed, they all reignited simultaneously, their screens now displaying the same mysterious golden text in every language known to humankind.
No matter one's nationality, education, or background, all intelligent beings instinctively understood its meaning.
At that singular moment in history, the world changed forever.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier – Command Center
Nick Fury's expression darkened to thunderclouds as he stared at the text crawling across every monitor in the command center. The blue glow illuminated the rigid lines of his face, making the scar tissue around his eyepatch look even more menacing.
"Invasion of the heavens?!"
"What kind of organization would have the technological capability—or the suicidal audacity—to pull something like this?!"
The top-secret files he had been reviewing—documents so classified even the President needed special clearance to see them—had been instantly hacked and replaced by this unknown transmission.
"Phil Coulson!" he barked, voice cutting through the panicked chatter of analysts like a knife. "Track the source immediately! I want coordinates yesterday!"
"Notify Hawkeye and put him on standby! Gather all Level 7 agents for emergency briefing!"
Nick Fury's single eye gleamed with cold, calculated determination as he surveyed the chaos erupting around him. Junior agents scrambled like ants, senior officers barked contradictory orders, and somewhere deep in the bowels of the Helicarrier, alert sirens began their banshee wail.
Whoever was behind this wasn't just dangerous.
They had just painted a massive target on their back.
And S.H.I.E.L.D. would not—could not—allow such a wildcard to remain in play.
In a glass-and-steel architectural masterpiece perched precariously over the Pacific Ocean, Tony Stark lazily swirled a glass of hundred-year-old Bordeaux, lounging in a custom-designed chair that probably cost more than most people's homes.
The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a breathtaking panorama of the sunset-painted ocean, but his eyes were fixed on something far more interesting.
Two Swedish supermodels—whose names he couldn't recall despite having spent the past eight hours in their company—lay in exhausted slumber across his Italian leather couch.
But it wasn't their flawless beauty that held his attention.
His gaze was locked onto the holographic display that J.A.R.V.I.S. had projected in front of him, interrupting what had been a perfectly good evening of hedonism.
The screen flickered with impossible speed, flashing through vivid visions of innumerable worlds—cityscapes reduced to apocalyptic rubble, celestial realms aglow with incomprehensible energies, medieval castles where necromancers wove death into tapestries of power, and the silhouettes of beings that could only be described as gods.
The images felt real.
Not just realistic—real.
As if he was gazing through windows into other dimensions rather than watching a sophisticated video presentation.
Tsk.
"Someone's got some truly next-level CGI effects," Tony muttered, taking another sip of wine to hide his unease. "Even I'm impressed, and I invented holographic interfaces."
"Sir," J.A.R.V.I.S.'s cultured voice interrupted from the ceiling speakers. "After conducting 5,268 separate analytical tests using every known method of video forensics, I have found zero evidence of digital manipulation or fabrication."
A pause that lasted just a fraction too long.
"Conclusion: High probability this represents genuine cross-dimensional phenomena."
Tony's casual smile vanished like smoke in a hurricane.
His fingers tightened around the delicate crystal stem of his wineglass until it groaned in protest.
"Now that," he murmured, eyes narrowing to calculating slits, "is something worth getting out of bed for."
The playboy billionaire mask slipped, revealing the genius inventor beneath—the man who had stared death in the face and responded by building a suit of armor that defied physics.