Buying My Way Through the Multiverse

Outside the cell blocks, Rick, Shane, Daryl, and Merle were already checking their weapons and packing gear into the truck, fully preparing to roll out. Gray walked over and immediately stopped them in their tracks.

”You guys are staying here,” Gray said.

Rick frowned, stepping forward. ”Gray, it could be dangerous to go by yourself. You’re the backbone of this entire group. You shouldn’t be putting yourself at risk over something like this.”

Shane nodded in agreement. ”He’s right. If the Governor pulls a stunt, you need backup.”

Gray casually waved them off, his face perfectly calm. ”There’s no need to worry. Even if they prepared a massive ambush, I can escape fairly easily. And honestly, even if they brought more than a hundred soldiers, it still wouldn’t be enough to take me down.”

He paused, looking at the three men seriously. ”I’d rather have you guys stay here and protect the prison. The Governor is smart enough to send a strike team to attack this place while we’re supposed to be negotiating. I’ll feel a lot better knowing you’re here holding down the fort instead of risking your lives out there with me.”

The men argued a bit more, trying to convince him to take at least one of them, but Gray wouldn’t budge. Eventually, they realized his mind was set and agreed to stay behind.

With the matter settled, Gray spent his remaining free hours finishing up the lower levels of his underground facility. He opened the system shop and bought a stockpile of Minecraft Shroomlights, using them to perfectly light up the bottom three stone floors. As he placed the very last glowing block into the ceiling, he checked his interface clock. It was exactly 11:45 AM.

Gray instantly teleported back up to the surface courtyard. Looking around, he saw that the group had taken his warning completely to heart. Every single person who knew how to handle a gun was already up on the guard towers, weapons raised and scanning the horizon. Even Andrea was stationed on a tower with a rifle in her hands, keeping a sharp watch over the fields.

Gray walked up to the main gate and yelled out to the guards, ”Keep an eye out, and protect each other! I’ll be right back.”

With those final words, Gray extended his angel wings and took off straight into the air, flying high above the treeline. Moving at incredible speeds, it took him less than five minutes to fly across the county and arrive at the designated halfway building.

Hovering in the sky, Gray activated his Wraith Sight. His vision pierced straight through the solid concrete walls of the building below. He instantly spotted a single figure sitting down at a wooden table inside the main room. Moving his gaze outward, his vision picked up two separate groups of Woodbury guards. They weren’t hiding... they were simply waiting out in the open around their trucks about a hundred feet away, keeping their distance from the meeting room while keeping an eye on the perimeter.

Gray dove down from the clouds toward the roof of the building. The moment he was in range, he activated his teleportation. With a sudden, sharp sound effect, he vanished from the sky and materialized instantly right behind the seated man.

Hearing the sudden shift in the air, the Governor spun around in his chair. His heart skipped a beat as he found himself face-to-face with the terrifying, black-armored figure from his nightmares.

’Gray...’ the Governor thought, a bead of cold sweat forming on his brow. He felt a massive wave of nervousness wash over him, especially because his guards waiting out by the trucks had never given him a single warning that anyone had arrived.

Trying to hide his fear, the Governor quickly straightened his collar, stood, and extended his hand in good faith. ”Glad you could make it.”

Gray reached out and firmly shook his hand back.

The Governor pulled his hand back, pointing toward the two chairs set up at the wooden table. ”Shall we?”

Gray gave a slow nod and walked over to his seat, keeping his Wraith Sight completely active as he kept looking at the man across from him.

Gray took a seat and looked around the room one more time. Satisfied that everything was clear, he deactivated his Wraith Sight and pulled off his Nazgûl mask, setting it flat on the wooden table.

The Governor watched Gray’s face closely as he took his own seat. He reached for a glass and a bottle, pouring himself a dark drink. He tilted the bottle slightly toward Gray, offering him a glass, but Gray calmly refused, ”I don’t drink alcohol.” The Governor simply shrugged his shoulders, leaned back, and downed his drink.

He set the empty glass back on the wood, leaning forward with a smooth, practiced smile. ”Look, Gray,” the Governor started, trying to sound reasonable. ”I think we just got off on the wrong foot here. The truth is, I was severely misled by some of my own people about who you guys were.”

Gray let out a sharp scoff, his eyes narrowing into a glare. He wasn’t about to sit here and listen to cheap excuses. ”You only say that because I retaliated,” he said, his voice cutting through the room. ”We never looked for trouble. If you had just stuck to your own side of the county and minded your own business, nothing would have happened to your town.”

Gray leaned forward slightly. ”Instead, you had the audacity to attack my people first. You chose to give shelter to the very same escaped prisoners I was hunting down, and now you want to sit here and act like nothing ever happened.”

The Governor’s smile faltered for a fraction of a second, the realization sinking in that Gray knew exactly what kind of game he was trying to play.

Gray reached into his back and pulled out a large map of the surrounding county, and spread it flat across the wooden table. He took out a thick marker and drew a heavy, dark line right down the center. The line passed straight through the exact commercial building they were sitting in. He slid the map over to the Governor.

The Governor looked down at it, his brows knitting together. ”What’s this?”

”This building is our new boundary line,” Gray said, pointing at the map. ”My people will not cross this line into your territory, and you and your people will do the exact same. You stay on your side, we stay on ours.”

The Governor frowned deeply, looking back up from the black ink. ”So, just because you managed to infiltrate our town and killed a few guards, you think you automatically have the upper hand in these negotiations?”

Gray stood up from his chair. ”No, not because of that,” he continued. ”It’s because it would be so much easier for me to just kill you and all of your little trusted guards waiting outside right now, rather than keeping this farce going on for a second longer.”

The Governor’s eyes flared with anger. He slammed his hand down on the wood. ”No deal.”

Before the tension could boil over, the heavy front door swung open and Martinez stepped into the room. He froze instantly, his eyes widening in pure shock when he saw Gray standing there. Martinez had been keeping watch by the trucks outside and never saw a single vehicle pull up. He had honestly thought the prison group just failed to show up at all. Recovering quickly, Martinez pulled his handgun from his holster and pointed it straight at Gray’s chest.

With an armed guard standing right behind him, the Governor instantly started feeling a lot more in charge. The nervous sweat on his brow vanished as he glanced over his shoulder. ”Martinez, are there any other vehicles or people waiting out there?”

Martinez shook his head, his gun hand remaining steady. ”No. Nothing. He’s completely alone.”

The Governor stood up from his seat, a smug, arrogant smirk slowly breaking across his face. ”Well, it seems you were a lot more stupid than I originally thought. To come all the way out here by yourself to a meeting, saying all kinds of absolute nonsense, and actually thinking you’ll be able to just walk away alive...”

Before anyone could make a move or pull a trigger, Gray looked past the barrel of the handgun and locked his eyes on Martinez. ”Go bring all the guards from outside in here, or take me out to them. I really don’t want to kill innocent people today. I want to give them a choice.”

Martinez blinked, holding his gun steady but looking completely thrown off by the absolute calm in Gray’s voice.

”They have two options,” Gray continued. ”First, they can choose to stay here and die alongside their Governor right now. Or second, they can turn around, go back to Woodbury, and live.”

The Governor let out a loud, mocking scoff. He leaned back slightly. ”You’re delusional. Every single one of my guards out there was hand-picked by me. They are completely loyal. They would never betray me.”

Gray just shrugged his shoulders, completely unfazed. ”I just want to give them a chance at living. If they are too stupid to see the lifeline I’m throwing them, then they can die right alongside you for all I care.”

The Governor narrowed his eyes and gave Martinez a sharp nod. Martinez hesitated for a fraction of a second, then lowered his weapon just enough to back out of the room to gather the men outside. Gray remained standing completely still in the center of the spacious building, his bare face exposed, while the Governor kept his own handgun raised and pointed straight at Gray’s chest.

As the seconds ticked by in the silent room, Gray felt a sudden, strange sensation deep down in his chest. He felt like something was wrong. It wasn’t a warning from his Danger Sense about an oncoming attack. It was more about himself—something felt different with the way he was acting. He realized he was being way more aggressive, acting like an instigator, and actively pushing their buttons. Deep down, his new Saiyan biology was whispering to him. He didn’t want a peaceful truce at all. He wanted a fight. He desperately wanted to test his new body and raw power against the Governor and every single one of his guards.

It took about three minutes for Martinez to round up all the guards from the trucks. Once the entire small army filed into the wide, open room, Gray stepped forward to address them. He didn’t say a word at first. He simply focused and activated his Sin Vision.

Instantly, the world shifted, and bright, blood-red writing bled into reality, floating directly over every single soldier’s body. Gray scanned the bloody scripts of text, tallying up their histories in a heartbeat. The results were clear. Roughly eighty percent of the Governor’s hand-picked guards had a massive list of innocent kills staining their pasts. They were raiders and murderers wearing uniforms. The remaining twenty percent, however, were completely clean. They were just normal people trying to survive, with no innocent blood on their hands.

Gray locked his eyes strictly onto those three innocent guards. He didn’t care about the rest. ”Negotiations fell through with your boss,” Gray stated, his voice echoing off the walls. ”So, before I kill all of them, I’m giving you a choice to turn back and go to Woodbury. Once I’m finished here, I will go pick up everyone over there.”

The building went dead quiet. The innocent guards looked toward the table, seeing the map and the clear, aggressive boundary markings sliced right across it. They saw the terrifying confidence in Gray’s eyes. Surprisingly, without saying a single word, the small group of normal guards slowly lowered their guns and actually walked straight out of the building.

The Governor was absolutely fuming inside, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his pistol, but he forced himself to calm down. In his mind, the math was still in his favor. Even without those few cowards, he still had Martinez and the remaining hardened, ruthless killers packed into the room. With this much firepower, they could easily riddle Gray with bullets, take him down, and then march straight over to conquer the prison.

As for those guards who had just turned their backs and left? The Governor secretly smiled a dark, twisted smile. He fully intended to make a brutal example out of them the second he returned to Woodbury.