Crack, crack, crack—!!!
Centered beneath his foot, the supposedly solid concrete floor shattered like cheap glass, instantly crawling with dense, yawning fissures that seemed bottomless! Those cracks tore outward in all directions in a frenzy, spreading faster than sound!
Splash!
The few mutants closest to Natasha, still trying to crawl toward her, suddenly lost their footing and dropped straight into the gaping chasms that had opened beneath them! They didn't even have time to scream.
"What?!"
Natasha, who had just struggled to her feet after being blown back, felt her blood surge and her face drain of color. She barely managed a single roll, throwing her arms around a broken steel beam beside her that was still relatively stable. The ground under her feet bucked and tilted violently like a storm-tossed wave!
"Hold on!"
Steve's eyes almost split with panic. He was a bit farther away, but the floor under him was heaving wildly as well. He could only hurl his vibranium shield with all his strength, smashing it into a soldier who hadn't had time to dodge—one whose body had only been lightly eroded by the scepter's energy. The tremendous impact knocked the man clear over to a patch of ground that was still temporarily stable.
"Damn it!"
Bucky growled, flattening himself on the ground. His metal fingers dug deep into the loose rubble, clawing for any kind of anchor. Up above, Clint clung white-knuckled to the edge of a high platform. The makeshift structure under his boots let out a terrifying groan, swaying on the brink of collapse.
The entire tunnel was shaking as if it were in the grip of a magnitude ten earthquake. With that tiny spot where Saitama's foot had come down as the epicenter, a monstrous force was transmitted into the fragile structure below, triggering a chain reaction in an instant!
And the very core of that tremor… was right in front of the massive pile of rubble sheathed in blue mystic ice and rebar!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The enormous frozen blocks that Corvus Glaive's impact had loosened earlier could no longer hold together under the catastrophic tearing force of the quake. Like a tower of blocks shoved over by a giant hand, they crashed inward, collapsing and rolling down in an avalanche!
"No!!!"
A shrill, hate-filled, despairing roar tore out from within the rubble.
Corvus Glaive, who had just been buried there and was struggling to claw his way out, watched almost helplessly as the place that held the scepter—the very target he had been fighting and bleeding for—slipped away from him. It was only a few meters from his outstretched fingertips!
Those massive collapsing slabs, wrapped in a blue energy barrier as unyielding as ten-thousand-year ice, along with that ghostly blue radiance that made even his soul shudder, all plunged together toward the depths below—into a black, bottomless abyss like the throat of some colossal beast!
He strained, thrusting out his arm, the dark-gold gauntlet covering it flashing as he reached for that falling blue light. It might have been the gem from the tip of the scepter… or a shard of the device.
His fingertips… grazed just shy of that tumbling, spectral blue glow!
Rumble—!!!!
An even deeper, heavier crash and collapse thundered up from far below the tunnel, from what felt like the torn-open maw of hell itself—accompanied by the furious roar of rushing water.
An underground river.
There was an underground river beneath this tunnel!
Corvus Glaive was slammed and buried again by the churning boulders and the even more violent torrent of ice shards. This time, he was crushed completely beneath a mountain of wreckage. Annihilation was blasted even farther away. The last thing he saw was the final glimmer of the scepter's blue light being swallowed in an instant by the merciless, freezing current.
Glug, glug… splash!
The scepter was gone.
It had fallen completely into the surging underground river, vanishing without a trace. Corvus Glaive let out a roar of purest agony—then his consciousness was swallowed by the darkness as well.
The sudden cave-in and tremors receded as quickly as they'd come, like a wave drawing back (the outburst had only lasted an instant). The collapsed area was mostly confined to the deep branch of the tunnel where the rockfall pile had stood, as well as the section around the fissures beneath Saitama's feet and the zone near Natasha.
(End of Chapter)
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