He had come to Red Dream's farm because the Dollar Cabal is one of the things that he knows that Kelvin cares about. The other thing is Kelvin's hoverbike.
Actually, Kelvin might care more about his hoverbike than his cabal, as it is the closest thing Kelvin has to family, but he can't use Kelvin's hoverbike to find or pressure Kelvin. So he came to find the next best thing.
He found Red Dream's real body within the bunker in the ground and knocked her out. Then he released a puppet that entered her body and attacked her mind.
The puppet found the mental mark that Kelvin had placed in her mind and used it to find his mind on the other side of the connection.
Kelvin sensed the danger quickly and cut off the connection, but it was already too late. The puppet slammed against his mind and was expelled into the world.
If it were someone else, the puppet would have struck and incinerated their minds immediately. But there was a barrier around his mind that protected his mind.
The barrier was created by the ring of paragon. It granted him mental immunity. It meant that no god could go through his mind without breaking the ring of paragon first. It also meant he couldn't be possessed easily.
The puppet failed to possess him, so it appeared beside him. He was in the core of the world, which meant that the puppet had found his hiding place.
Back in the bunker underneath Red Dreams's farm, Icon was trying to find his puppet and teleport to it. But he couldn't sense it. It was as if the spatial connection between them had been severed.
He knew that his puppet was still whole, but he couldn't sense anything else from it or even control it. He couldn't even make it return to his body.
It caused Icon to be agitated. His confusion changes to agitation and anxiousness because anything that can interfere with his puppets can nullify his power.
He was wondering what to do when he suddenly felt the loss of the puppet. It wasn't a temporary loss, like the crumbling of the tracker puppet. This was a true and permanent loss.
"What is going on?" he asked in agitation.
Unfortunately, there was no one to provide an answer for him. It made him angrier than he was before.
But he didn't give up. He put a monitoring mark on Red Dream that will let him see everything going on around her. Then he went to Kelvin's other subordinates in the Dollar Cabal. and did the same to them.
After doing that, he went around looking for the other things that Kelvin would like to acquire. Those things are wielders of abilities that Kelvin has shown interest in but hasn't acquired, such as Havoc of the Justice League.
He put monitoring marks and teleportation marks on them. That way he will be able to know when Kelvin comes from them and trap him.
Then he went in search of the bearers of the other rings, such as the Patriarch, who is currently known as Zero. He also sabotaged them and turned them into baits.
Unfortunately, he didn't know those who had the rings because Wrath didn't know. The one ring bearer he knew about was also a bust.
He couldn't put a mark on Zero because he was a powerful null. So he decided to watch Zero personally.
He said to himself, "The ring of the soul is the most important ring anyway. He needs it for immortality and to gain the support of Manhattan and the other demigods. As long as I stay with this zero, I will catch him."
He has cast a wide net for Kelvin. Once Kelvin triggers one of his traps, he will swoop in quickly to catch him.
He might not succeed immediately because of Kelvin's extraordinary perception, but his traps will give him new leads in his hunt for the paragon. He is just waiting for Kelvin to make a single mistake.
Kelvin had run away immediately he confirmed that his enemy was Icon. He had swapped his position with the shadow at the core of the world as a way to escape.
The change in position was instantaneous and couldn't be stopped. Then he had destroyed his shadow so that Icon wouldn't be able to use it against him.
He thought he had successfully escaped, so he returned to the sitting room of his apartment. Everything seemed fine, so he was wondering how Icon had found him. It was then that he noticed danger.
He had returned to the core of the world after sensing the danger. But his mind was restless.
He decided to confirm what he feared by changing his appearance and appearing in one of his safe houses. No sooner had he done that than he felt danger again.
So he returned to the core of the world and began pacing around.
"This is bad. This is very Icon."
He has said a lot of smack about Icon and promised to kill Icon, but when he finally came face to face with the first demigod of Earth-11, all he could do was run.
He said to himself, "At the latest, we can confirm that he is not a demigod. That is good."
Even though Icon is not a demigod, he didn't plan to use his safe house to get rid of him. He had only picked a place he was familiar with at random.
Now he has confirmed that Icon can truly find him if he leaves the core of the world, regardless of his appearance. This is not good news at all. In fact, he considers it to be the worst news possible.
"Why is he after me? Could it be because I killed Wrath? Or is he after me just for the ring?
Then he thought of something. "Does he still have an account with the Tower of Destiny? Maybe I can use that to contact him."
He wanted to know what was going on. Since the messaging system of the Tower of Destiny is anonymous, he thought he could use it to communicate with Icon and come to a truce.
He doesn't have much hope for the truce. He just wants some information, no matter how little it is, so that he will have an inkling of what is going on.
Currently, he can't access the internet or contact anyone through his devices. The only links he still has are his mental domination network and his shadows.
He was thinking of which one to use when he suddenly felt a crisis. He felt immense danger coming from everywhere and nowhere.
He knew that something bad was about to happen, but he didn't know where the danger was from. Something about the core of the world was messing with his perception of the source of danger.
It wasn't until the danger appeared that he realized what it was. But by then, it was too late.
Fortunately, the ring of paragon saved him. But then one of Icon's puppets materialized before him.
His first instinct was to escape, but he didn't do that because he didn't want to appear in the world above and be cornered by Icon.
He also wanted to remove this puppet. from this place, as this was his last refuge. So he stood his ground to fight.
He wanted to use speed force to run away from the puppet, but he didn't have an effective means of long-range attack that would work on the puppet, so he moved closer to it to attack.
Life siphon doesn't work on the puppet because it wasn't alive. It didn't have life force for him to drain. The only thing he could count on was his diamond blade.
As he rushed to fight it, he said to himself, "When this is over, I must find something stronger than diamond."
He remembers vividly how his diamond blade had been destroyed by a puppet. That was a few seconds ago, so he still has a clear memory of it.
He already knew that diamond only had its usefulness at the S rank to SSS rank. It becomes less deadly at higher ranks and finally becomes useless at the X rank.
The slap on the shoulder from the ice giantess on the foreign battlefield had shown him how he would fare against an X-rank being with his diamond. She had crushed his shoulder.
That and the recent failure of Diamond had made him want to find something more deadly.
Even though he is not sure that he will be able to kill this puppet, with what he has in his arsenal, he is confident of survival because it is only one enemy while he has speed force and rewind.
With speed force, his speed of attack is blindingly fast. He can attack more than a hundred times in a second. He can also run away from danger quickly with speed force.