The Inheritors' retreat encountered very little resistance.
On one hand, most Spider-People simply weren't the type to finish their enemies off completely.
They had always been at a disadvantage when fighting the Inheritor family.
Part of that was due to the natural predator-prey relationship between them.
Another part was their tendency to show mercy.
On the other hand, the Inheritors' assault on Universe 2099 had already inflicted devastating casualties upon the assembled Spider-Army.
The survivors desperately needed time to recover.
Joey, however, had no such concerns.
One second, he was still collecting the two hundred dollars he had won from Tony.
The next second, he was already passing through the portal alongside the fleeing Inheritors.
Earth-001.
The homeworld of the Inheritor family.
Floating in midair, Joey immediately felt several hostile gazes lock onto him.
His eyes swept across the dim interior of a gloomy medieval castle.
He noticed humanoid skeletons and butchered corpses piled atop a nearby dining table.
And seated around that table—
An entire nest of vampires.
"So..."
Joey glanced around.
"Am I interrupting dinner?"
Sharing Joey's senses, Lipiah sounded equally puzzled.
[A family capable of traveling freely across infinite parallel universes... why are their ambitions still so shallow?]
After the people of the Land of Light created the Plasma Spark and elevated their species, they had largely achieved peace within their universe during the first ten thousand years.
After thirty thousand years, they had expanded that mission beyond their own universe and into the wider multiverse.
It was difficult to imagine possessing power as significant as the Inheritors'—the ability to traverse countless realities—and choosing to use it merely as a tool for hunting living beings for sport.
As Joey extended his vision farther outward, the entirety of this world unfolded before him.
Thirty kilometers away lay an ocean.
Sailing upon it were three-masted ships from the late Renaissance era, pirate flags fluttering from their spars as they rode favorable winds in search of their next victims.
In another direction stretched a wasteland of overlapping deserts.
Drought.
Famine.
War.
Again and again, they tormented the inhabitants without end.
Beyond the desert, where the barren land met the sea, stood a harbor town straight out of the Middle Ages.
The town served as a transportation hub for the Inheritors.
Wooden sailing ships powered by wind.
Steam-powered passenger vessels.
Horse-drawn carriages.
Diesel locomotives.
Technologies and civilizations that should never have coexisted within the same historical era appeared side by side as though nothing were unusual.
The result was a deeply unsettling sense of dissonance.
Yet such dissonance wasn't surprising.
Because this universe wasn't truly a universe at all.
It was merely an accumulation of shattered worlds.
The entire realm consisted of countless fragments of broken realities stitched together.
And what had happened to the worlds from which those fragments originated was not difficult to guess.
Even Lipiah, whose compassion extended to nearly all life, found himself angered by the sight.
Yet he still couldn't fully agree with Joey's thoughts.
[From a technical standpoint, I am unwilling to decide the fate of an entire species so hastily.]
When a single gesture could destroy a planet—or even an entire star system—the question of how such power should be used demanded careful reflection and lifelong self-examination.
The Land of Light had never sought to exterminate an intelligent species as a whole.
The Zarab Aliens, masters of disguise, often worked as infiltrators, spies, and mercenaries across the stars.
The cunning and manipulative Mephilas Aliens frequently acted as swindlers and schemers throughout the cosmos.
The Barossa Aliens, driven by an overwhelming instinct to plunder, spent much of their existence functioning as space pirates.
And yet all of those species still existed.
Whether it was Lipiah or any other Ultra, they punished individuals for their crimes.
Never entire races.
Of course, exceptions always existed.
Moments earlier, Lipiah had examined the biological characteristics of the Inheritor family through Joey's vision.
Particularly the way they handled energy.
And what he had discovered gave him pause.
The conclusion was not a favorable one for the Inheritors.
Members of the Inheritor family produced almost no energy of their own.
Every ounce of their strength and nearly all of their unnaturally long lifespans were sustained by devouring the life force of other living beings.
Within an ordinary ecosystem, such behavior would be no different from wolves hunting sheep or humans consuming animals.
It would not necessarily be evil.
It would simply be nature.
But on the scale of the multiverse, that was an entirely different matter.
A species that existed at such a high level should not remain enslaved to its primitive instincts.
It should have found a better path.
Especially after turning a biological necessity into a ritual of pleasure.
Especially after destroying entire universes without hesitation and stitching their shattered remnants together into a world of their own.
"RAAAAGH!"
While Joey and Ultraman were still exchanging thoughts, Daemos—who had already died once at Joey's hands—could no longer suppress his desire for revenge.
Flipping over the dining table and leaping into the air, he charged forward with his massive war hammer raised high.
"You—!"
BZZZZT.
Before Daemos could finish speaking, both he and his hammer were reduced to ash by Joey's heat vision.
The battle had never contained even the slightest suspense.
There were only a handful of ways the Inheritors could possibly defeat a Kryptonian.
Joey, meanwhile, possessed countless ways to kill them.
After casually erasing Daemos for the second time, he still had enough attention left to continue arguing with Ultraman.
"Relax. There are trillions upon trillions of intelligent species across the multiverse. Losing one Inheritor family won't affect anything."
Besides Daemos, who had just been incinerated, and Verna, who had previously been swatted into paste by Leopardon, the remaining Inheritors present were:
Morlun.
Jennix.
Bora and Brix, who had fled back through the portal moments earlier.
And finally—
The massive figure seated at the head of the table.
A giant even larger than Daemos.
Solus.
Patriarch of the Inheritor family.
Solus slowly rose to his feet.
"My name is—"
Another beam of heat vision swept across the room.
Although Joey hated to admit it, the only thing he felt at the moment was boredom.
The Inheritors simply weren't worthy opponents.
There wasn't going to be any meaningful battle here.
If Joey really wanted to, he wouldn't even need to let them see his face.
He could stand beyond visual range and burn out their brains one by one with heat vision.
And honestly, that was probably a good thing.
After encountering the Fantastic Four, the Destroyer Armor, and the Zarab Alien in rapid succession, the last thing Joey needed right now was another monstrously powerful enemy.
"Goodbye."
This goodbye was not merely a figure of speech.
According to the intelligence updates provided by Peni Parker and the others, the Inheritors had constructed at least one cloning facility somewhere in an unknown universe.
Until that facility was destroyed, the Inheritors would continue resurrecting endlessly.
After wiping out every Inheritor present with heat vision, Joey flew past the terrified servants and drifted toward the center of the castle.
[Interesting.]
Even Ultraman, who had traveled across multiple universes and witnessed countless wonders, had never seen anything quite like this.
[A three-dimensional structure existing within five-dimensional space... much like myself.]
Above the castle's ceiling stretched an enormous web.
It had been woven entirely from pure life energy.
The Web of Life and Destiny.
And just as every spider web concealed a spider waiting patiently for prey, the owner of this web finally revealed himself.
A strange being with a bare upper body.
His lower half was fused into a mechanical structure resembling the body of a giant spider.
The figure gazed down at Joey and spoke.
"I am the Master Weaver."