Damian was reclining while keeping his eyes on his daughters, their fishing attempts were going much better, and they seemed to be playing with the fish.

They would pull them out of the water and take a picture before releasing them back.

Suddenly Emma stopped fishing and stood up before setting the rod aside.

Walking towards him, she gave a small hop to sit on Damian's lap.

"What are you going to do now?" Damian said, smiling as he adjusted his daughter closer to him.

"It's nothing, I just got a little tired," Emma said in her adorable voice.

"Who would believe you," Damian chuckled, assuming something was going to happen and Emma didn't want to be involved.

Just then, Ivy's fishing line moved quite a bit in Alice's direction.

Ivy was confused, yet she didn't immediately try to pull as before and tried to analyze the situation.

It was then that suddenly Alice's line was also bitten by something different. Watching from outside the water, they noticed that their two lines were heading in the same direction.

They didn't need to be geniuses to know that the same fish had caught their baits.

They both felt the fish begin to pull away, until finally the rope reached its limit and the fish realized it could not take the orbs.

A great force suddenly pulled on the lines, causing Alice and Ivy to resist with all their strength.

Damian calmly scanned the depths of the river, to his surprise, it was much deeper than he thought, and upon detecting the creature, he almost thought he was seeing a dinosaur.

A giant crocodile over 15 meters long was pulling Alice and Ivy's lines with force.

Alice and Ivy were quickly dragged to the edge of the boat, and only at the last moment could they grab onto the boat with one hand.

Their faces showed they were making a great effort to pull the fishing rod, but both were no match for the crocodile.

Seeing that his daughters couldn't bear it anymore, Damian finally stood up before taking them both in his arms.

With their hands finally free, Alice and Ivy began to pull hard on the fishing rod.

Damian also helped a bit by taking several steps back, causing the surface of the river to churn intensely.

Soon, they began to see the great length of the creature that started to roll, entangling the lines.

The giant crocodile refused to let go of the baits despite being pulled to the surface.

Alice, who was pulling with all her might, her little face was turning red from the effort.

In her intense desire to have more strength, her body responded to her.

Suddenly her body erupted in an intense golden energy that enveloped her entirely.

Damian, who was holding her, was surprised before quickly shielding himself and Ivy who was beside him.

Not knowing what had happened but suddenly feeling that it wasn't so hard to hold the rod anymore, Alice began to pull again, easily pulling the giant crocodile out of the water and finally revealing it.

The giant crocodile finally saw its opponents and was surprised to see two little humans.

It had encountered larger humans and they had all been very weak, it wondered if humans became stronger when they were smaller.

Still, it didn't pay much attention and lunged towards the wooden boat trying to knock it down; it knew humans lost almost all their effectiveness in the water.

To its greatest surprise, as its head collided with the boat, it was like hitting one of those metallic things that moved with humans inside.

It felt everything spinning, and before it realized it, it accidentally let go of the baits freeing itself from the fishing rods.

Alice, seeing that she could no longer pull the crocodile, jumped onto its head before hitting it with her small fist.

The crocodile's head caused a great impact on the water before finally staying still.

Damian could only give a proud smile seeing his daughter enveloped in a golden glow, a pity that Carol wasn't present to see it.

Emma and Ivy just looked at their sister with envy; their older sister always seemed to be ahead of them with her abilities.

"It's okay," Damian said, lifting his two daughters and giving each a comforting kiss on the cheek.

Alice, who was on the crocodile's head, jumped back to the boat before also hugging her father with a happy smile.

"I caught a big fish," Alice joked with a smile.

Her two sisters chuckled softly hearing her as they looked at the poor unconscious crocodile.

"Did you enjoy fishing?" Damian said, smiling at them.

"It was fun," the three said, smiling at the same time.

"Alright, let's head back home," Damian said, nodding with a smile before appearing in the palace.

Damian had just appeared in the palace hall when Cortana appeared at his side with an urgent expression.

"Master, we have a problem," Cortana said.

"What happened?" Damian asked, frowning slightly as he superficially scanned the entire Earth but found no threat.

"There are more than 10 thousand zombies that are currently advancing towards Sokovia," Cortana said a little uncomfortably.

"How did that happen? And why didn't you notice it earlier?" Damian asked genuinely confused, wondering for a moment if Hela was the cause.

"Sorry for not configuring the system to detect zombies," Cortana said, pouting.

"The system runs in the background, and we don't really interfere with what happens. The system wasn't configured to detect that kind of anomaly; I only noticed when I checked the total population."

"For now, let's decide what we'll do about this," Cortana said, not wanting to continue explaining.

"Hm," Damian said, nodding before looking at his daughters.

"Girls, why don't you go and tell your mother about the fishing?" Damian said, smiling at his daughters.

They nodded sensibly, knowing that their father had something important to do.

Each kissed Damian's cheek before running off to find their mothers.

"Let's go," Damian said, getting serious.

Cortana nodded, causing them both to appear at the location.

It was nighttime, and a large army of zombies could be seen walking slowly in a fixed direction.

"I still don't understand how there are so many. We're in the information age; how did no one upload this to social media, and you found out?" Damian asked, confused.

"All these people are from a small town. After some investigation, I found out they were part of HYDRA. Communications were blocked, and probably only the HYDRA leaders know about this," Cortana replied.

"I used the Time Stone to find out how it happened," Cortana added before looking at Damian.

...

Several hours ago.

In a village in Europe near Sokovia, a van arrived and quickly parked next to a factory.

A man in his 30s got out before signaling his men to unload something from the vehicle.

Two men nodded before dragging out a gaunt-looking man who was making guttural sounds and trying to bite them. His eyes were red, and he didn't seem to be in his right mind.

"Boss, are you okay?" one of his men asked, noticing that he seemed to be sweating.

Their boss was a fairly strong person in their eyes; he didn't sweat even when they trained for hours.

"It's nothing," the man said, shaking his head.

He felt really sick, but showing weakness was the last thing you could do in the kind of organization he was in.

"Take him inside and call the village scientist," the boss said, entering the factory and heading to his room.

His breathing felt difficult, and he felt very hot.

People greeted him as he walked, but he seemed to see everything in a daze and just nodded unconsciously.

It felt like the world was spinning when he stumbled and opened the door to his room, almost falling, he managed to reach the bathroom.

Regardless of his clothes, he got into the shower, and the cold water quickly fell on his body.

Despite feeling the cold water, the intense heat in his body didn't seem to be relieved.

With desperation, he undressed, trying to lower his temperature, but it was futile; slowly, his consciousness began to disappear.

His last moments were ones of terror as he felt like he was dying; somehow, he could tell.

He couldn't help but think about the bite and the thief's resentment towards him.

In the end, people like him don't have good endings.

With those last thoughts, his consciousness sank completely into darkness.

His body, now soulless and with only a desire to kill, began to walk towards the nearest source of life.

The door in his way was easily torn apart by pushing it, and two people walking nearby were alerted by the noise.

Seeing one of their bosses acting strangely, the two couldn't help but hesitate.

"Boss? Are you okay?" they both asked while keeping their distance.

Suddenly, the man's head turned towards them; seeing his red eyes, the two people couldn't help but be scared.

But before they could run, the zombie lunged at them, knocking them down with great force.

The zombie somehow seemed to know what to do as it quickly bit both of them.

The two people were just ordinary people, no match for the boss who had been empowered by dark magic.

The zombie stood up after looking at the two people on the ground as if it knew its job was done.

It quickly looked around before heading towards the next sign of life.

The apparent factory was actually the military and scientific camp of the town, a cover for any tourist or passerby.

The zombie easily infected all the people in the factory, who then looked out with bloodthirsty red eyes.

In just an hour, the whole town had turned into zombies.

The zombies, as if in agreement, looked in a direction that was the nearest source of life to them before starting to walk.

Returning to Damian, who had heard the whole story, he couldn't help but shake his head.

He didn't know if they were lucky because of how it spread or if they were unlucky because something that should never have happened did.

The zombies would still take almost half an hour to reach Sokovia, so Damian was relatively calm about the situation.

At that moment, he frowned slightly as he felt people coming towards him.

Dozens of meters away, both from behind and from the side, portals opened.

One portal was the typical orange portal of Kamar-Taj, while the other was a magical portal of blue color.

Hela emerged from the orange portal with her familiar appearance, followed by a woman with black hair.

Three people came out of the blue portal, two of them were really familiar, as they were Wanda and Pietro, which surprised him, especially when he saw how powerful Wanda had become.

In a way, he expected it considering who she was, he just didn't expect it to be so fast.

As for the other person who was a woman, Damian was very confused about who she was, but he could feel that she was quite powerful.

"What a meeting," Cortana said with a playful smile before anyone could say anything.

"The culprit returning to the scene of the crime?" Damian joked as he looked at Hela with a slight smile.

Hela just made a mocking grimace before turning her gaze toward the large zombie army, her eyes glowing faintly as she looked at them.

Wanda immediately frowned upon hearing Damian's words, unsure if it was a joke or not.

The zombies were marching towards Sokovia; she could easily take this as an attack.

Looking at Circe, he saw her shaking her head slightly; they definitely weren't rivals for Hela.

Circe turned her gaze towards Damian with curiosity; he was as visually appealing as in the images, but what intrigued her the most was Damian's reaction to seeing Wanda; he seemed to know her.

----

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