158 Two Portals

"Is that so? You've already established a temporary base over there? Thank you for your hard work."
"We're doing fine on this end, no need to worry. Just push Tony a little harder to bring everyone back sooner."
"Well, that's about it. I'll hang up now, it's very busy over here."

Once again ending the daily routine call with Steve to check on the situation, Joss sighed and turned his gaze toward the few remaining people in the Avengers Tower.

They say the calm before the storm is the most oppressive. In the days leading up to the arrival of the Chitauri army, the members of the Avengers were on edge.

After all, having learned from past events, no one dared to undertake any other unrelated missions. Apart from basic training, they spent their days meeting and communicating at Stark Tower, with nothing else to do except quietly wait for Loki's plan to unfold.

Such days undoubtedly took a massive toll on both physical and mental energy. Take Thor alone—the daily consumption of fried chicken and cola had at least doubled!

Looking at Thor before him—who sported a quadruple chin and stared intently at his smartphone while grinding for stamina—Joss always felt something wasn't quite right.

"Well, it's fine. Anyway, this timeline went off the rails ages ago; it won't hurt to have one chubby Pikachu of a god," Joss muttered to himself, pushing the thought to the back of his mind.

While progress on Loki's front had stalled recently, other matters had not stopped.

On one hand, the performances of the Seven Sins idols were in full swing, and their next step was to host a massive concert for an audience of over six hundred people in New York City.

Although a crisis was looming, it could not stop the idols from fighting. Besides, while there were no plans to send them onto the battlefield, Joss believed that if ordinary Chitauri dared to run onto the scene to cause trouble, they would simply be marching to their deaths.

On the other hand, the development of the mobile game had entered its final stage. Although it was still some time away from its official release, internal testing had already begun, and the Avengers had become the first batch of beta testers.

Well, facing the pressure of Loki and the disappearance of their teammates, playing a game to relax was perfectly normal, wasn't it?

As for the game itself, although Joss initially intended to create a title featuring various superheroes—with the Avengers as the first batch of characters—the game he chose was, naturally, the outrageously popular Fate/Grand Order (Joss’s heavily modified version) from his past life.

Though he initially thought about making a game similar to Marvel Academy or Marvel MOBA, he ultimately realized that would just be asking for trouble.

Using superheroes as source material seemed quite effortless and would come with built-in popularity in this world. It sounded like a great idea, but in practice, it was terribly troublesome.

The primary issue was that if such a game were actually made, various superheroes and supervillains would undoubtedly march up to him and demand answers to questions like:
"Why is XXX stronger than me?"
"How on earth am I only a two-star existence?"
"Why am I wearing an outfit like this?"
"Why do people on the street shout 'Wife!' when they see me?"
"Why is the internet flooded with lewds of me??"

Without a doubt, Joss would end up in massive trouble. After wrestling with the dilemma, he resolutely abandoned that tempting idea and the built-in popularity of the superheroes, deciding to struggle and start from scratch instead!

What? Who's copying FGO? This is called paying tribute!

Choosing this route still involved some calculation on Joss's part. After all, it was the first step toward building the company's reputation and gathering capital.

From a commercial standpoint, a game that was simple, easy to understand, and lucrative had a much higher cost-performance ratio than those AAA blockbusters that took years to develop.

"Astolfo is truly wonderful! Strong in combat and such a sweet talker—cute boys are simply the best!" Thor grinned, looking foolishly at his screen as fragments of fried chicken constantly fell from his trembling quadruple chin.

Bruce rolled his eyes further and cast a disgusted look at Thor. "Meaningless. A good appearance is nowhere near as useful as strong abilities. This is the optimal clearing lineup for the current stage after my calculations: centered around Gilgamesh, plus this card, and this one, you can breeze through to Chapter Four with ease."

"Joss, why can't I get past the fourth stage no matter what? I've already pulled quite a few characters, haven't I?" Nick Fury asked, holding his phone with a puzzled expression.

Ignoring the dispute between the two simps and the progression-rusher, Joss felt equally perplexed upon hearing Nick Fury's words. Theoretically, after using the system-provided ten-roll, tutorial-like stages like the first ten shouldn't pose any difficulty.

However, when he caught a glimpse of Nick Fury's screen, cold sweat instantly broke out on Joss's back.

"Nick... though I know you've already spent money to roll three times, this page full of one-star EXP fodder is utterly useless..."

Although I did lower the drop rates a bit, not being able to pull a single good character across three ten-rolls, and getting completely different one-stars that can't even be leveled up... your luck is seriously cursed.

Joss squinted at Nick, growing even more certain of his inner suspicion: that man's luck was pitch black.

...

After Joss and the others spent several more days cooped up in intense anxiety, Loki—who had remained inactive for so long—finally made his move.

And this move was as swift as thunder. Before anyone could react, he ripped open two gigantic portals right above New York City!

"Finally here... Wait? Two portals?!" When Joss looked outside through the window, his mind went completely blank.

In the storyline he knew, there should only have been a single portal for the Chitauri to pass through at this point. So what was the deal with that extra portal?

The next second, however, Joss's confusion was answered as Frost Giants, gripping weapons and clad in battle armor, stepped through the portal one after another!

"Frost Giants...?! Well, this is becoming a bit of a headache." Looking at the army, which was more than double the expected size, Joss furrowed his brow.

Given that a large portion of the Avengers were currently missing—and if not for the bug-like sensory connection of Joss's chest reactor enabling communication, the morale of the Avengers and even the entire S.H.I.E.L.D. would have plummeted by at least seventy percent—the situation was already dire.

Even knowing they were safe and sound, the short-handed disadvantage couldn't be easily compensated for. Coupled with the fact that Loki had also brought out the Frost Giants, this turn of events was completely unexpected.

Standing atop the tallest building in New York City, Loki spread his arms and burst into wild laughter, then slashed a dagger fiercely toward the city center.

"Go on! Turn this place into complete ruins!"