Otto Parker's words were like a bucket of cold water, instantly dousing the hot-headed enthusiasm of the Spider-Men!
That's right; they had only stayed in the Zombie Universe for a short while, yet one of them had already been bitten.
If they went to save people now, even with their Spider-Sense, they couldn't guarantee they wouldn't be bitten...
And if they were bitten, there would be only one outcome...
They would become Zombie Spider-Men, just like the Ben Reilly who had fled earlier!
When that happened, not only would they fail to help, but they would likely cause even more trouble for this World!
Having snapped back to their senses, the Spider-Men now didn't dare to rush blindly into a rescue.
It wasn't that they feared danger, but they feared bringing even greater danger to this World!
Thus, in the end, the group of Spider-Men could only turn their hopeful gazes back toward the clever Otto Parker among them.
After all, when the Inheritor Family was hunting down Spider-Men across the Multiverse and everyone present was panicking, only Otto Parker had stepped forward to save them, organizing the Spider-Army to hunt the Inheritor Family in return!
However, by the time they used the Tracker Otto Parker built to travel to the Quantum Realm where the Inheritors were hiding, the Inheritor Family had already been dealt with by a powerful Spider-Man from another Universe...
All that remained was a messy battlefield and a lingering pressure originating from their very bloodline, even though that powerful Spider-Man had already left!
Consequently, driven by a need to control unknown dangers, Otto Parker decided to find the powerful Spider-Man who had defeated the Inheritor race to determine if he posed a threat to them.
If so, he would use the other's abilities to devise countermeasures, just as he had against the Inheritor Family!
At that time, the rest of the Spider-Army had accepted Otto Parker's suggestion and agreed to travel to other Universes together to find that off-the-charts powerful Spider-Man.
Otherwise, they wouldn't be following Otto Parker to find him now.
Ultimately, Otto Parker used the quantum residue collected from the battlefield in the Quantum Realm to pinpoint the general vicinity of that powerful Spider-Man, and they set out together.
However, it was only a general area; since he hadn't obtained the dimensional information of the powerful Spider-Man himself, no matter how much of a genius Otto Parker was, he couldn't pinpoint the exact Universe.
In the end, Otto Parker narrowed it down to eight neighboring Universes, and they began checking them one by one.
The first few were fine; although Spider-Men existed there, they were similar to themselves—even the slightly stronger ones weren't ridiculously powerful enough to wipe out the Inheritor Family.
Until they arrived at the sixth Universe.
No ridiculously powerful Spider-Man appeared in this Universe either, but something occurred that the Spider-Army hadn't expected.
The Universe they arrived in this time didn't have the same style as any they had traveled to before; it was an apocalyptic Universe!
No, not just apocalyptic—this Universe itself was an apocalypse!
This was a Universe swept by an unknown virus, and Earth was the epicenter of the outbreak!
99% of the humans and Superheroes in this World had already turned into bloodthirsty zombies; it was a post-apocalyptic World in every sense of the word!
Most terrifyingly, among the mutated zombies in this World, besides the lowest-level mindless ones, those mutated from Superheroes and Supervillains still possessed self-awareness!
That meant they could still use their superpowers and even think, just as they had when they were alive!
For instance, as soon as they arrived in the Zombie Universe, they were spotted by a massive flying fortress in the sky that seemed to be stitched together from countless pieces of flesh!
Then, led by the Master of the Flesh Fortress, the Zombie Iron Man, the entire Zombie Avengers charged toward them!
Against ordinary zombies, no matter how many there were, the Spider-Army was confident they could clear them without taking any damage, thanks to their agility as Spider-Men.
But the Zombie Avengers were a different story; as a team of Superhumans, some of the individuals in the Zombie Avengers were even stronger than these Spider-Men!
Thus, even though Otto Parker's reaction was fast enough—opening a portal back to Otto Parker's Universe the moment he saw the Zombie Avengers attacking and calling for the Spider-Army to flee...
...to cover the others' retreat and prevent the Zombie Avengers from flying through the portal to their own Universe, the Spider-Man clone from the same Universe as Otto Parker, the Scarlet Spider Ben Reilly, resolutely entered a Spider-Berserk state and blocked the portal single-handedly!
Although Otto Parker immediately pulled the spider-morphed Ben Reilly back and closed the portal after all the Spider-Men had entered, it was already too late.
Ben Reilly had already been bitten while blocking the door!
Moreover, the zombie virus acted faster than Otto Parker had imagined; before he could isolate the bitten, spider-morphed Ben Reilly and develop a cure, Ben Reilly had already undergone a further zombie mutation on top of his spider-form!
Finally, to avoid ravaging his own Universe, Ben Reilly used his last shred of willpower before fully turning into a zombie to open a passage to another Universe with his Bracelet and charged inside!
However, all their Bracelets had already been tuned by Otto Parker to the eight locked Universes, so naturally, the zombified Ben Reilly arrived in the seventh Universe they were originally searching for.
And this Universe was naturally the one next to the Zombie Universe—the Universe where Ryan resided.
And then... what happened before occurred.
Otto Parker and Ben Reilly's Universe was safe, but they had ended up leading the disaster to the Universe where Ryan was...
However, Otto Parker and the others didn't know yet that the World they had brought disaster to was the very Universe where the powerful Spider-Man they were looking for lived!
"Otto Parker, we really shouldn't have blamed everything on you just now. We all agreed on the previous decision, so we're responsible too. What do you think we should do now?"
Looking at the Spider-Men, whose attitudes changed faster than flipping pages in a book, Otto Parker felt disdain for their brainlessness but knew now was not the time for internal conflict.
He explained the strategy he had immediately devised after realizing he couldn't stop Ben Reilly's mutation.