Drex Valen found Hydra's schemes mildly entertaining at best.
The Hand interested him even less. Unless the Black Sky appeared, the organization barely registered on his radar.
That said, a Hand-controlled Ghost Rider would definitely become a headache.
Meanwhile, Hydra had reached the point where the pressure surrounding the stolen Decepticons became unbearable.
Reluctantly, they dumped all one hundred units in a hidden location and anonymously leaked the coordinates.
As painful as it was to give them up, they understood the alternative was worse.
If the investigation continued long enough, Hydra itself would eventually be dragged into the light.
And once that happened, they were finished.
After recovering the missing Decepticons, Nick Fury still refused to ease up on the internal investigation.
Traitors. Sleeper agents. Suspicious factions.
Everything remained under scrutiny.
The reason was simple:
The strongest man on Earth stood behind S.W.O.R.D.
As long as Drex Valen remained on their side, Fury wasn't afraid of anyone.
Neither were his agents.
The fear generated by the Saiyan invasion and the Chitauri incident accelerated S.W.O.R.D.'s restructuring far beyond anyone's expectations.
Governments that usually moved with the speed of rusted machinery suddenly operated like they were being chased by extinction itself.
The rebuilt S.W.O.R.D. implemented mandatory monthly investigations for every single agent. Extensive background checks. Financial audits. Psychological reviews.
To prevent bribery or political interference, the world's major powers rotated oversight responsibilities between themselves.
No one trusted anyone anymore.
Still, their fears were somewhat misplaced.
Ironically, Earth itself was far more dangerous than most extraterrestrial civilizations.
Across the Marvel universe, truly powerful individual fighters were actually rare.
Gamora, for example, had earned a reputation as the deadliest assassin in the galaxy, yet her level of strength would hardly dominate Earth's upper tier.
The Hulk had rampaged through the Grandmaster's arena effortlessly, despite the fact that the arena collected elite combatants from countless worlds.
Earth's civilization lagged behind the interstellar empires technologically, but the planet itself was absurdly abnormal.
A random laboratory accident, radiation exposure, genetic mutation, or failed experiment could produce a superhuman powerful enough to become a major cosmic threat.
It was as though the planet itself kept generating monsters.
Most alien empires simply didn't value individual combat power the same way Earth did.
Could the Kree Empire create super soldiers?
Of course they could.
Ronan the Accuser himself was essentially the product of advanced Kree enhancement technologies.
But from an interstellar military perspective, building fleets was far more efficient than creating singular warriors.
Why spend astronomical resources producing one super soldier when you could build another planet-killer cannon instead?
Even if someone possessed power on the level of an Eternal, what did it matter against a stellar bombardment weapon?
When a civilization could erase planets outright, the difference between a weak individual and a powerful one often became meaningless.
There were exceptions, naturally.
But they were rare.
That imbalance explained why the Avengers repeatedly humiliated supposedly superior alien invaders.
Earth's superhumans were simply outrageous by cosmic standards.
If someone counted the number of top-tier combatants below the godlike level, Earth might genuinely rank among the highest concentrations in the universe.
The Kree had once become intensely curious about that phenomenon.
Compared to Earth's accidental superheroes, the Kree spent enormous wealth and effort creating enhanced warriors with wildly inconsistent results.
Some of their best creations still fell short of the Avengers.
At one point, they had even considered capturing Earth's heroes for live experimentation just to understand what made the planet so abnormal.
Ironically, most superheroes themselves had no idea how terrifying they actually were.
They were born on Earth. Raised on Earth.
To them, aliens still carried an instinctive sense of superiority and mystery.
Any extraterrestrial threat naturally made humanity nervous.
The Saiyan invasion alone had nearly pushed the world into panic.
Russia reportedly produced over a hundred nuclear warheads within a single month afterward.
The United States and China weren't much calmer.
Then came Thor's arrival.
Even though S.W.O.R.D. had contained the incident successfully, humanity finally understood how vulnerable it truly was.
The Chitauri invasion only accelerated global militarization further.
Tony Stark had even approached Drex Valen about collaborating on a more advanced Iron Legion.
Drex declined immediately.
Given the existence of Ultron somewhere in the future timeline, he had absolutely no interest in accidentally creating a nightmare version powered by Kryptonian-level technology.
Instead, Drex chose a different approach.
If humanity wanted stronger deterrents than nuclear weapons...
He would give them one.
The announcement shook the entire world.
Drex Valen had discovered a second extra-periodic element.
During the global press conference, the room remained utterly silent as Drex spoke.
"During a recent experimental process, I identified a new high-energy fusion-capable element designated SG5903."
"A highly active material with extraordinary internal energy potential."
No one interrupted him.
The revelation was too overwhelming.
The discovery of even a single new element represented a monumental leap for human civilization.
For nations, it meant industrial revolutions, military revolutions, energy revolutions.
Everything changed.
And now Drex had discovered two.
At this point, some scientists had already begun calling him the Father of the New Elements.
Technically, Drex had only released the symbolic designations and classification framework rather than the complete molecular structures.
But for researchers like Tony Stark, that alone was enough to begin the hunt.
Every new element required an entirely new classification logic to define its behavior and placement.
Without Mendeleev, humanity would never have properly organized the periodic table, even after discovering new elements.
In the same way, Drex's second extra-periodic framework essentially handed scientists both the opening clue and the final answer.
All that remained was solving the equations in between.
And that process would eventually reveal how to manufacture the elements themselves.
Drex continued calmly.
"The previously discovered element FG2506 generates massive energy through instantaneous aggregation reactions."
"One milligram of fully combusted FG2506 releases energy equivalent to approximately two million times the same mass of uranium."
He paused.
"SG5903 possesses energy output exceeding that by a factor of ten."
The implications were horrifying.
Human civilization had just stepped into an entirely new era of energy science.
Or weapons development.
Depending on who you asked.
Umbrella Corporation wasted no time capitalizing on the discovery.
Its newest weapons division unveiled a new category of strategic armament personally authorized by Drex Valen.
New Element Destruction Bombs.
Or more simply:
New Element Warheads.