MARVEL-THE MULTIVERSE TRADER

→ 20 REVIEWS= 2 BONUS CHAPTER

→ 200 POWER STONES= 1 BONUS CHAPTER

→ 400 POWER STONES= 2nd BONUS CHAPTER

CURRENT PROGRESS:↓

– FIRST OBJECTIVE:- 11/20 REVIEWS

– SECOND OBJECTIVE- 148/200 P.S

– THIRD OBJECTIVE- /400 P.S

----

Nova just smiled at him. Thankfully, the trade was successful.

Yesterday though, things had been different.

After reading the system notification and feeling the resistance from the Demon Dweller Sword itself, Nova's mood turned foul. He knew he couldn't keep a fate-bound relic without consequences. The weapon had rejected him — not violently, but with a stubborn heaviness, like holding a heart that beat for someone else. And Nova, for all his pragmatism, hated the feeling of being tethered by fate.

So instead of meeting and congratulating the boys, Nova quietly returned to his wooden house.

-----

Inside, with a flick of the Omnitrix, he turned into Grey Matter.

The moment he did, his thoughts accelerated. Dozens of weapon concepts, trade options, and system-compatible items flashed through his mind. But most fell short. None could match the system's valuation for a relic like Demon Dweller — not unless it had anti-magic compatibility or immense versatility. His brain raced, processes chaining together like wildfire, but every idea hit a wall.

A sour taste clung to his tongue. For all his advantages, some things in these worlds refused to be conquered by sheer intellect.

That's when an idea struck.

It came not like a lightning bolt but a creeping shadow of memory, pulling from the dustier shelves of his past life. He combined two things from his past life memories: the adaptive nanite tech from Ben's old ally Julie and the symbiote concept from Venom. A shapeshifting, command-based, multi-form weapon. No AI, no will, no fate tether. No cursed strings attached.

Then he improved it.

Using what he'd learned from Demon Dweller, Nova modified the nanites to include mana conductors — small channels allowing them to absorb, store, and release magic. It wouldn't match the Demon Dweller's capacity, but one-tenth of it was enough.

The first prototypes destabilized instantly, collapsing into dead metal sludge. One attempt caused a mana backlash so severe it scorched the worktable's surface. Grey Matter Nova gritted his teeth, small hands working with frantic precision, adjusting nanite bonding ratios, recalibrating mana conductor resonance, and cross-referencing the system's relic database for every viable property he could scavenge.

He also ensured the nanites wouldn't react to anti-magic negatively. Instead, if bonded to Asta's grimoire, the weapon would safely gain anti-magic traits, making its bullets, blades, and shields capable of nullifying magic.

Another test — another partial failure. The weapon destabilized, releasing a feedback pulse that cracked the windowpane. Nova crouched beside the wreckage, heart pounding, and for the first time in years, felt that old spark: the addictive frustration of chasing the impossible.

Then, one iteration clicked.

After a few test runs and adjustments, the prototype was ready — a crimson-black, mental-command, multipurpose weapon that could shift between gun, sword, shield, and even a jetpack. Technically, with time and knowledge, Asta could push it further.

He named it Ven-Drive on the spot, what? He was sleepy.

The true worth of the Ven-Drive wasn't in what it was now, but what it could become. Crafted from advanced nanite-based material, it was a living weapon platform — able to evolve and adapt based on its user's needs, combat style, and mana signature.

While its current functions covered basic transformations like weapons, shields, and flight support, with time, exposure to battle, and Asta's unique anti-magic energy, the Ven-Drive could gradually develop new forms and abilities, even mimicking properties of other magical tools it encountered.

It had no consciousness to limit it, no fate-tether to bind it — a blank slate that could be shaped into anything its wielder imagined, from enhanced armor to specialized anti-magic constructs. In a world bound by ancient relics and strict magical laws, something that could grow alongside its master was a rarity beyond price.

Nova watched Asta, who was grinning like an idiot, eagerly shifting the Ven-Drive between a sword, a gun, and occasionally just firing random shots into the air. The kid's joy was so unfiltered it cracked a reluctant smile from Nova, despite himself.

Shaking his head with a small smirk, Nova thought, You have no idea how damn lucky you are, brat. If the Demon Dweller wasn't fate-bound to your grimoire and system didn't force me to either give it back or trade, you'd have never even known it existed — and I sure as hell wouldn't be handing it over.

He meant it. There was a deep, gnawing frustration underneath his amusement. A bitter reminder that for all his power and scheming, fate still had teeth.

-----

Nova stayed a few more days at the church, roughhousing with the kids, showing off harmless magic trinkets, and teaching a few things to Yuno and Asta.

With a final round of goodbyes, Nova vanished from the Black Clover world in a colourful portal.

Back in his own room, in Marvel, he exhaled and flopped down onto his chair, the familiar hum of his system interface greeting him. He lazily glanced at the clock on the wall… and couldn't help but grin.

Only eleven and a half days had passed here.

Meanwhile, he'd spent nearly eleven and a half months in the Black Clover world.

That was one of the priceless features of his system: it could control the time ratio between worlds during his travels. It wasn't limitless — he couldn't pause one world entirely or return to the exact same moment he'd left. But it was still ridiculous by any standard.

Right now, the system's time compression was set so that one day here equaled one month there.

He couldn't compress it beyond that without destabilizing the timestream's integrity — the system's own safeguards prevented it. But even this ratio was absurdly powerful by any reasonable standard. It meant he could spend a full year training, building influence, gathering resources, or hunting relics in another universe… and barely two weeks would crawl by back home.

A small prompt flickered at the edge of his vision. Nova smirked and opened the settings menu.

[TEMPORAL TRAVEL CONFIGURATION]

→ Current Ratio: 1 DAY = 1 MONTH

He tapped a command, adjusting the settings.

[TEMPORAL TRAVEL CONFIGURATION]

→ Current Ratio: 1 DAY = 1 DAY

Now, instead of one month per day, Nova adjusted the setting to a one-to-one day ratio.

Because he didn't exactly know how much time he would be spending here in Marvel. In Black Clover, he needed to be back on the day he and Asta reached the capital for the Magic Knights Exam — which was six months away in that world.

He set the time ratio to 1:1 because, who knew what might happen here? If he got held up, tangled in unexpected important event or got sidetracked, he'd miss the exam. But that wasn't the real reason.

The truth was, he could at most disappear for six months, no more. Any longer and his artifact business would start falling apart, royal family and magic knights would get impatient to meet him— and Celise would absolutely skin him alive. The woman had the patience of a saint for about five minutes and a memory like a steel trap for debts and deadlines.

So, after setting the time ratio, he leaned back in his chair and grabbed his phone, deciding to check his messages, e-mails, and other important stuff.

But something else grabbed his attention the moment he connected to the Wi-Fi.

It was a notification from the channel — Helios, the one secretly run by Charles Xavier behind the scenes.

He'd set its notification priority high after regaining his past life memories, since it kept him updated about major mutant news.

[MUTANT DEPARTMENT PARTNERS WITH CORPORATE SECTOR ON SAFE HIRING INITIATIVE]

Comical question marks practically popped up above Nova's head. What mutant department? He didn't remember such a department existing...eleven days ago.

Instead of opening the article, he quickly swiped into the Helios archive section, sorting by the most recent eleven days' worth of headlines.

The confusion on his face deepened as he scrolled through the headlines.

What the hell happened while I was gone?

A few hours later, after reading through all the headlines, Nova leaned back and rubbed a hand down his face, letting out a slow, exasperated sigh. The glow of the phone screen still lingered in his vision, lines of bold, alarming titles blurring together in his mind.

This timeline's already bad enough.

Now he leaves for eleven days… and comes back to find the world practically rewritten?

Seriously? Eleven damn days? He wasn't gone for years, or even a month. Just eleven days — and somehow in that tiny window, the entire socio-political structure surrounding mutants had shifted like someone had kicked over a game board and set up a new one without telling him.

A dull ache pulsed behind his eyes. The dissonance between universes, the constant back-and-forth of temporal logic, was starting to catch up to him.

This unknown timeline was really starting to give him headaches. Especially that Charles Xavier.

Nova already knew this guy was the one secretly controlling Helios Network, a news media conglomerate. And he wasn't the naïve idealist or harmless dove portrayed in many fanfictions or even the official X-Men movies.

Here, he was a total pragmatist and ruthless operator — as evidenced by the fact that he'd once destroyed the minds of entire families, sparing only the children, after those families falsified mutant crimes and attacked the Helios Network.

That cold, calculated retaliation had sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of mutant-hating circles.

But Nova never thought the man would be this scheming. Not just retaliating… but orchestrating entire societal shifts from the shadows.

A single thought lingered like a shard of glass in his mind:

What else had changed while he was away?

Shaking his head, Nova thought back to how it all started.

It had begun with the Mutant Registration Act — an act passed two years ago. At the time, Nova had neither awakened his past life memories nor his mutant abilities. He'd been just another face in the crowd, unaware of the storm brewing beneath the surface of society.

x------x

CHAPTER:- (35- THE CARNIVAL) IS AVAILABLE ON MY P@TREON.

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