Jessie spent an entire round of mahjong contemplating whether to cheat using her hand speed as William had suggested. Then, a sudden realization struck her, and she began engaging him in conversation.
As she talked about the two vineyards under her management, the other women at the table were quickly drawn in. By the time the tiles were reshuffled and dealt, Jessie had finished explaining that the two vineyards generated billions of dollars in revenue annually.
When she picked up her new hand, William immediately noticed that she had a pure suit of characters.
He thought she would go for a big win, but surprisingly, the little troublemaker didn't even take a self-draw, showing no intention of cheating to win.
Within seconds, William understood her reasoning, shook his head with a smile, and promptly kicked her off the table.
Lena didn't mind William helping Jessie, but Nissa and Abigail were visibly displeased.
The two women exchanged a silent glance, quickly reading each other's thoughts, and began working together discreetly.
This made things difficult for William, who also had no intention of cheating. A few rounds later, whether it was due to bad luck or just being outplayed, he didn't win a single hand and even repeatedly fed the others' winning tiles.
Jessie and Selene, sitting behind him, couldn't stop laughing at his misfortune.
By the time the game ended at midnight, not only had he failed to help Jessie recover her losses, but he had also lost nearly a hundred gold coins himself.
—
The next morning, William woke up as Abigail got out of bed. Holding the still-sleeping Jessie in his arms, he kissed her gently before getting up to join Abigail for a morning run.
After running for about half an hour around the estate, Abigail suddenly stopped and said, "I asked Sunday to show me the playback from last night. It's a good thing Jessie didn't listen to you. Otherwise, you would've been setting her up for disaster."
"If she had cheated, her future treatment would have been no different from Ambrosius in the U.S.—one confined to the States, the other stuck managing the vineyards in France."
William was momentarily stunned. If Abigail had checked the recordings, then his mother had likely instructed Sunday to monitor certain things as well.
"Alright, I admit my mistake."
Holding Abigail's hand, he waved at the paparazzi waiting outside the estate's fence, subtly confirming their relationship to the public. This move helped solidify Abigail's authority within the Devonshire Group, making it easier for her to manage the company.
After this brief public display, he led the slightly blushing Abigail back home for breakfast.
—
After breakfast, William saw his mother and Abigail off before using a portal to travel to his base in Yellowstone Park. There, he used a memory-erasing spell on Talos, the leader of the Skrulls, completely wiping all knowledge of the Orb of Power from his mind.
Then, he ordered Sunday to force all Skrulls into cryo-sleep pods that had been hastily manufactured over the past two days. Once secured, they were loaded onto a spaceship, which was set to stealth mode and launched into space.
With that taken care of, William turned to Sunday. "Can the Skrulls' shapeshifting genes replace Mystique's genes for use in the Sentinel robots?"
"Sir, based on my calculations and genetic comparisons, Mystique's shapeshifting genes may actually originate from the Skrulls. The genetic similarity between the two is significantly higher than that between Mystique and normal humans."
William was thrilled to hear this. This meant the most crucial component for creating his long-anticipated superpowered Sentinel robots was finally solved.
With the ability to transform, these Sentinels could mimic and replicate other superpowers, potentially evolving into a new generation of Mark Armor.
Once completed, this Sentinel Armor would be far superior to the current Mark suits, which were limited to flight, defense, and energy-based attacks.
"Establish the Sentinel Armor Project. Also, once we develop the first Sentinel robots and complete a production line, no Sentinels should be manufactured under any circumstances without my direct authorization and production approval code."
"Understood, Sir. Command executed. Establishing prototype Sentinel robot and Sentinel Armor research plan. Estimated time for completion… unknown."
Sunday paused for over ten minutes before giving that vague answer.
William didn't care about the timeline. If he attempted the project himself, it would take far longer than letting Sunday autonomously conduct experiments on Planet X-17.
His role was simply to upload all the Sentinel robot data stored in his system into Sunday's servers.
Additionally, he instructed Sunday to save all daily research and development data onto a separate high-capacity hard drive, which William would periodically store in his spatial inventory.
If anything went wrong, the server would self-destruct, and William could use the latest backup to restore Sunday.
Above all, William was determined to prevent anyone from hacking into Sunday. The AI's database contained too many critical secrets.
—
"How's the research on the Skrull spaceship progressing?"
William asked as he walked toward the isolated chamber where Nick Fury was being held.
"Apologies, Sir, but I believe we need to reevaluate our assumptions about the Skrulls."
"What do you mean?"
"Based on my data decryption, this ship may actually be of Kree origin, manufactured twenty-nine years ago."
"A Kree spaceship?"
William immediately thought of the Kree ship hidden in Earth's orbit from Captain Marvel.
"No way. It's been so many years," William scratched his head in confusion. "After all this time, are you telling me the Skrulls never managed to earn enough to buy or build a new ship?"
With that question in mind, the first thing William asked Nick Fury upon seeing him was, "All these years, why have you been working with the Skrulls?"
But Fury wasn't interested in answering. Instead, his expression darkened as he asked, "What the hell did you do to me? Why have I been experiencing conflicting memories these past two days?"
This one-eyed old fox was indeed a seasoned agent with incredible resistance and mental fortitude.
William wasn't surprised that Kingsman's memory-erasing injection didn't work on Talos, an alien Skrull.
But the fact that Fury recovered even faster than Talos? That was unexpected.
"I healed your eye. Shouldn't you at least say 'thank you' first?"
At the mention of his eye, Fury finally showed a hint of gratitude. He nodded silently. "Thank you. But now, tell me—what exactly did you do to me? Why am I remembering things that don't add up?"
William pretended to think for a moment before raising his hand, making a healing gemstone appear in his palm.
"You should recognize this. It's what healed your eye.
"But for me, this gemstone is a bargaining chip in my dealings with an advanced alien race. So when I learned from Talos that this thing is only worth a few hundred space credits or a handful of energy crystals, I decided I didn't want anyone linking self-healing runes to Earth or to me.
"Because, as a veteran agent, you should understand that if this information leaked, I'd be targeted by all kinds of extraterrestrial beings—harassment, robbery, even kidnapping.
"So, for my own safety, I had no choice but to attempt to erase your memories related to this."
Hearing this, Fury couldn't help but question whether the supposed Orb of Power in his memories was just a figment of his scrambled mind.
He was so lost in thought that he failed to notice William subtly tapping his fingers on the table—sending a silent spell straight into Fury's forehead.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +20 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Mutter"]
[Every 100 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]