Marvel's Shendu: Dominating the Multiverse

Chapter 157 Voting

The question about eradication was posted on a public channel, but no one rushed to answer it.

With the seven Celestial Groups and the three remote consciousness entities connected via ultra-long-distance links, the Forging Grounds now gathers the full computing power of ten Celestial Groups.

This is the largest collective meeting in 400 million years. The last time it reached this level was when the decision was made to release the third batch of Eternal Race seeds into the eastern spiral arm of the Milky Way.

However, the topic that time was creation, while this time it's survival.

Ethan brought the discussion framework to the public. The framework is simple, with only one core issue and two options.

Whether to launch a full-scale war against the target.

The Celestials have no council, no ballot box, and no inefficient procedures like raising hands to vote. Their decision-making method involves aggregating all individual assessment models, deduction results, and risk matrices into a single logical pool, allowing the conclusion to emerge naturally. But that won't work today. The logical pool can't produce a conclusion.

Because one parameter in the input data cannot be quantified: the word Arithm brought back.

Position.

The analyst was the first to speak.

He uploaded the complete Monte Carlo simulation results, which he had run 620,000 times, to the public frequency band.

Sixty-two hundred thousand timelines cover every conceivable tactical combination, troop deployment, and attack window. The conclusion narrows considerably: the probability of victory in a total war falls between 0.003% and 0.011%.

One additional note: The above results are based on the opponent using only known interference methods recorded in Aristom's records. Considering the opponent simultaneously possesses the three Infinity Stones—Space, Mind, and Reality—the actual win rate should be further revised downwards. The extent of this downward revision cannot be calculated because there is a lack of available modeling basis for the synergistic effects of the three stones.

The analyst's stance is clear: opposition.

The judge spoke second. He didn't present the simulation data, but simply posed a question.

"What if we win?"

No one answered. The judge answered himself.

"We've won. The three Infinity Stones are scattered, and the balance of power in the universe has been broken. The Time Stone is not in our hands, the location of the Soul Stone is currently unknown, and the Power Stone is divided and stored in three dimensional nodes. Even if we obtain the three on the battlefield, we still won't be able to gather all six. And once news of the war spreads, all forces coveting the stones will mobilize. A multidimensional war will ensue, with an unpredictable duration and incalculable collateral damage."

The judge's information flow paused, and the frequency dropped by half an order.

How many civilizations have we created?

This question received no response on public channels, but every member of the Celestials group knew the answer. Billions.

"How many of them would be destroyed in a total war?"

The judge's stance: Opposition.

The eradicator neither threw out data nor asked questions. His information flow burned on the public frequency, with the highest pulse frequency of anyone present.

"He killed Arithm."

Five words. The eradicator's coding method is the exact opposite of Arisham's; his data packets carry almost no additional information, dry, hard, and direct.

"He rewrote the rules of the Celestials. He branded our creations with new marks. He seized the facilities we built. He did all this without informing us, without seeking our consent, and without even formally declaring war."

He only left one sentence: "Don't bother me."

The pulse frequency of the eradicator increased even further.

"This isn't a matter of strength; it's a matter of precedent. If we back down today because we can't win, what about tomorrow? When the next being capable of rewriting our rules appears, will we still back down? Until when? Until the Celestials become a bunch of bystanders in a corner of the universe, watching others' every whim?"

The position of the eradicators: in favor.

Next came the statements from the three remote consciousness entities. The signal traversed half of the observable universe, and the transmission delay was negligible because the Celestials' communication did not use the speed of light.

The first remote consciousness was identified as Tamuz. His assessment was succinct to the point of being almost brutal: he favored war, reasoning that if the Celestials were deterred by a simple "leave me alone," the entire race's deterrent power would drop to zero within 100,000 years. Zero deterrent power meant the failure of the existing cosmic order framework. Compared to directly waging war, the consequences of the collapse of the order framework were far more severe.

Two votes in favor, two votes against.

The second remote consciousness was Hagen. He spent an extremely long time processing Aristam's sensory data, so long that others began to suspect that his processing module might also be malfunctioning. In the end, he didn't offer a stance, but rather a counter-question.

"Arithm, do you want revenge?"

The public frequency band was quiet for three seconds. Three seconds is enough time for the Celestials to complete a holographic scan of a planet.

Arithm replied, "This question does not constitute a decision variable."

"I'm not asking about the decision variables," Hagen said. "I'm asking about you."

Arithm's new body emitted an irregular energy fluctuation. A power control problem, or something else.

"He made me understand something I didn't want to understand," Aristam said. "I've been running for seven hundred million years and have never encountered an object that can only be described using the concept of 'person.' He made me know where the Celestials are in the true coordinate system of this universe. This knowledge itself is a kind of harm. Revenge won't solve this problem."

Hagen's stance: Oppose.

Two votes in favor, three votes against.

The third remote consciousness entity, Jemaah, sent a message without any embellishment: "Agreed." No reason given.

Three to three.

The remaining four members of the Celestial Group have not yet expressed their opinions.

The gravitational circulation of the forge has been operating at low power since the eradicators restarted it, with each fluctuation corresponding to a peak in the information processing of a certain Celestial Group.

The searcher's statement was unexpected. He was the most silent member of the Celestials, usually only participating in group discussions when it was necessary to locate a specific target. But this time, he provided information that everyone else had overlooked.

"I conducted a long-range scan of the target 47 standard time units before Arithm was terminated."

Attention density on public frequencies instantly surged.

“He didn’t block me,” the searcher said. “He knew I was scanning, and he let it happen. The scan revealed twelve unidentifiable energy signatures within him, three of which were amplified by the Mind Stone’s field, three were rewritten by the Reality Stone’s field, and the remaining six were in their original state. These energy signatures do not belong to any known spectrum of cosmic forces.”

"Twelve types?" the analyst interjected.

"Twelve types. But his internal structure can hold at least three more, so there's plenty of room for maneuver. He's still growing."

.

The last four words are more damaging than all the arguments of the eradicators combined.

The searcher's stance: Oppose.

Three to four.

Next was the Weaver, the one in the Celestials responsible for writing the Eternals' underlying code. He had been analyzing the coordinates of Olympia provided by the Inquisitors, trying to deduce what was happening inside from the structural features of the outer information barrier.

"I recognize how this information barrier is woven," the weaver said.