Upheaval in Eastern Europe

Latveria, also known as the Pearl of the Balkans, lay between Hungary, Serbia, and Romania. The Carpathian Mountains encircled its north, while the Mahla Mountains bordered its south.

It was a poor, backward little country. Like most nations in Eastern Europe, it had long been caught in cycles of regime change and unrest. As the economy declined and party conflicts intensified, the people suffered from war and disease. The aftershocks and consequences of the upheaval in Eastern Europe continued to spread even to this day.

Since the great Red Empire had collapsed and disintegrated, the situation in Central and Eastern Europe had been a complete mess. Unemployment had risen sharply, inflation remained high, and public resistance toward new policies and authorities was running strong. Massive waves of strikes, severe economic hardship… these were enough to drag the nations of Eastern Europe into a bottomless mire, and Latveria was among them.

After the Yalta System had been completely shattered, the world began moving toward multipolarity. Some countries had temporarily gained a chance to survive by paying the price of joining the European Union, such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine. Backward little countries like Latveria, however, could only seek favor on all sides amid the turbulent tide of change, struggling to survive in pursuit of a sliver of hope.

This was criminal soil where the law of the jungle prevailed. With no stable order, the Blood Clan and werewolves hunted down and driven away by Sanctum Sorcerers could breed, hide, and lie dormant here. Even the London Sanctum could not exert deep influence over this chaotic paradise controlled by gangs, Warlords, and political factions.

Doctor Doom, shrouded beneath a dark green cloak, finally set foot on the barren land where he had grown up after twelve days at sea and then a flight. The gray sky was blanketed in dark clouds, with flashes of lightning occasionally piercing through them, as though a torrential downpour might fall at any moment.

Victor Doom carried a black suitcase out of the country’s only airport. Rows of old-fashioned cars were parked outside. Foreign visitors who got into one of them would generally be fleeced mercilessly. The drivers kept wrenches and iron rods in their trunks, demanding more money halfway through the trip. And that was the best-case scenario. More often, those who encountered such things were stripped of everything they had.

Call the police? In Latveria, even police officers sometimes could not avoid being overcharged. Even with a gun at their side, they were still helpless when faced with an unreasonable taxi driver.

When you pointed a gun at a taxi driver, it meant you had offended the entire transportation industry. Those taxi drivers who banded together for protection would come knocking in droves. This was not some absurd joke or cheap threat.

They had the support of the local gangs behind them. One-third of taxi drivers had transported drugs or contraband. Anyone who wanted to make an honest living had long since been swallowed so thoroughly that not even scraps remained.

There was once a widely circulated joke: in Latveria, if you lost a dog, you could go to the police. If a burglar broke into your home, you went to the gangs for help.

In many people’s eyes, local gangs handled matters far more efficiently than the police. They had their hands in every industry. Legitimate businesses and gray-market dealings had become inseparable, forming a tangled web of interests.

Yet compared to the Warlords and great nobles who possessed private armies, the gangs became helpless little sheep. Every month, they had to pay a fixed amount of "tribute." If it was short or late, a group of armed thugs would blow your home into the sky with rocket launchers that very night.

At the top of the country’s food chain stood the prime minister, who controlled the military, and the political groups backed by Western powers. Whether they were Warlords, old nobles occupying vast land resources, or local gangs, all were as tiny as ants before them, easily crushed beneath a single foot.

Victor Doom casually chose a car and got in. Apparently, his luck was not very good. The driver’s greedy gaze was barely concealed, constantly drifting toward the suitcase in his hand. The man was surely already calculating how much wealth he could gain from this trip.

Sure enough, the taxi did not head for the luxury hotel in the city center. Instead, it turned toward the outskirts. Doom seemed not to notice at all as he looked out the window. Buildings with no planning whatsoever were crammed together in disorder, most built from tinplate. Tinplate had an electroplated coating and was less prone to rust than ordinary thin sheet metal, allowing these crude homes to endure the entire rainy season.

In the slums outside the city, such houses were considered decent. Most homes farther out were built from a few wooden boards. Once the rainy season arrived, they leaked and rotted, filling the air with a cold, damp stench. Whenever strong winds came each year, collapsed houses could crush whole groups of people to death.

Beneath the iron mask, his stiff face suddenly twitched. Doom had lived in this kind of slum as a child. Every day, he had to run several kilometers along muddy roads to the town’s only school. A child from a poor family like his naturally could not afford a private school in the city.

In fact, even at the public school funded by city hall, he had only managed to graduate with great difficulty through scholarships. Had the course of his life not changed, Victor Doom, the successful man who had once dominated Wall Street, might have dropped out in high school and entered some factory or become an apprentice at a shop. If he were lucky, perhaps he could have relied on his exceptional intelligence to accumulate his first bit of capital, start a small business, gradually rise into the middle class, and escape life in the slums.

The turning point in Doom’s fate came when he was fifteen. He met a kind priest, and through the man’s recommendation, he was fortunate enough to enter the library in the city center. What followed was frenzied study, as ravenous as a starving man. The dust-covered books on the shelves became the keys that opened the door to a new world for Victor, each one a step leading toward greater heights.

Poverty could wear away a person’s will, but it could also awaken the potential within. Victor Doom, a child who had displayed talent from an early age, received an acceptance letter from the State University of New York through diligent self-study, thus earning Latveria’s recommended admission slot.

As for his later journey to America, where he began a new life only to fall from the heights into the depths, that was another story.

The memories ended there, abruptly.

The moving car stalled and braked. The thin driver pulled a wrench from beneath his seat and stared at Doom with malicious eyes. Pointing at the suitcase on the back seat, he said in heavily accented English, "Bring that over."

His tone was commanding, leaving no room for negotiation. The driver gripped the metal wrench in his right hand, easily capable of smashing a hole in a passenger’s head. In his left hand was a phone, ready to summon a large group of fellow drivers at any time. If this outsider dared resist, his best outcome would be getting stripped clean and dumped by the roadside.

As for a worse ending…

He might be registered as a missing person among the mountain of unsolved cases at the police station. Or he might be sent to a private clinic, where his organs would be harvested and sold… Things like that. The light of humanity and the justice of the law did not reach every corner of the world. Darkness was everywhere, and evil occurred from time to time.

"You shouldn’t have done this," Victor Doom replied in the Latverian accent of his homeland.

The driver froze slightly. Then he saw the other man lift his dark green cloak, revealing a savage, icy iron mask. A cold gleam reflected from those hollow eyes, sending a chill through his entire body.

"You… hhk!"

Crack.

With a faint sound, Doom easily snapped the driver’s neck. He glanced at the phone that had fallen onto the seat, then dialed a number.

P.S. I really wanted to write a story about Doctor Doom becoming a god, but I’ve learned my lesson, so I won’t indulge myself anymore~