Chapter 48: Sokovia! The Mage Walking Through Fire
The blue light of the teleportation circle burst open above Sokovia, only to instantly dissipate in the biting cold wind.
Arthur stepped onto a protruding rock, the minus twenty-degree cold wind mixed with snowflakes rushing into his collar. Yet, he didn't even raise an eyelid, his gaze calmly fixed on the distance.
Before him lay a coniferous forest covered in thick snow; dark clouds loomed, and the sky was lead-gray, making the valley look as grim as a faded oil painting.
His gaze easily pierced through the wind and snow, landing on the faint metallic reflection hidden within the distant mountainside.
That was a military Base disguised as an abandoned mining area.
But under Arthur's Arcane vision, any simulated rock camouflage was a joke; the tangled energy lines inside were as clear as a map of human meridians.
"HYDRA's aesthetic is still as tacky and ostentatious as ever."
Arthur muttered inwardly, a playful arc curving at the corner of his mouth.
He leaped down from the rock, his feet sinking silently into the snow.
No stealth, no acceleration.
He just swaggered along the road toward the main entrance of the Base, his calm demeanor making anyone unaware think he was strolling in his own backyard.
Eight hundred meters. The infrared sensors sounded a silent alarm.
Six hundred meters. The pressure sensor plates were triggered.
Four hundred meters.
In the command room, Baron Strucker held his coffee, frowning as he watched the Asian youth walking in the wind and snow on the monitor.
"One?" He was dumbfounded. "What is he trying to do? Performance art?"
But after the moment of absurdity, a sense of foreboding welled up in his heart.
His hand trembled, spilling hot coffee everywhere, and he slammed the button for the Base's level-one combat alert!
"Wooo—!!!" The heart-wrenching siren tore through the silence of the valley.
"Rumble—" The camouflage walls on both sides of the blast doors sprang open, and forty-eight 12.7mm heavy machine guns and twelve modified Chitauri energy cannons slowly extended.
Crimson laser targeting dots fell all over Arthur's body like crazy.
At the same time, dozens of HYDRA soldiers leaned out from the walls, their black gun barrels forming a deadly arc.
One hundred meters.
Arthur stopped.
He looked up at the dense gun barrels, as if admiring a poorly composed painting, and gently exhaled a puff of white air.
"Fine."
As if finishing a warm-up, he took a step again.
"Fire! Fire! Blow him to smithereens!!"
In the command room, Baron Strucker watched the figure on the screen who treated the warning like air, feeling his authority challenged, and roared hysterically.
The next second, a storm of steel descended.
Forty-eight heavy machine guns roared simultaneously! Twelve energy cannons fired in unison! Hundreds of soldiers pulled their triggers!
Tracer rounds wove a net of death, energy beams tore through the sky, and the sounds of explosions and falling shell casings merged into a manic symphony of death.
This firepower was enough to instantly evaporate a reinforced company!
Facing all this, Arthur couldn't even be bothered to raise his hand.
[Frost Barrier].
A nearly invisible ice-blue light membrane silently expanded from the surface of his skin, covering a three-meter radius around him.
There was no earth-shattering explosion.
A bizarre scene occurred.
All bullets and energy beams, the moment they touched the light membrane, seemed to hit an invisible wall, instantly stripped of all kinetic energy!
White frost rapidly condensed on the surface of the bullets, and then they fell powerlessly with a "rustle."
The Chitauri energy beams suffered an even worse fate; they were directly frozen, annihilated, and turned into blue ice crystals that filled the sky, shattering.
Beneath Arthur's feet, the frost-covered bullets and ice shards piled up thicker and thicker.
He stepped on the "carpet" formed by the enemy's attacks and continued walking forward.
His pace, speed, and expression remained unchanged.
In the monitoring room, with a "clatter," Baron Strucker's coffee cup fell to the floor and shattered.
He stared fixedly at the monster on the screen walking through the hail of bullets, cold sweat instantly soaking his shirt.
"What… what kind of monster is this? A Mutant? A god?"
His mind buzzed, going completely blank.
"Mechs! Deploy the mechs! Crush him!!" he roared hoarsely.
Three "Havoc"-class combat mechs, standing four meters tall, stepped out with heavy strides.
This was HYDRA's proud creation; each one cost a fortune.
The three metal giants surrounded Arthur in a triangular formation, their shoulder cannons beginning to charge, the light bright as day.
Arthur finally stopped and looked up at these three ugly and clumsy hunks of metal in his eyes.
He even felt like yawning.
"Is that all?"
With his left hand, he casually snapped his fingers.
"Snap."
[Frost Nova].
A circle of white frost shockwave spread along the ground!
The legs of the three mechs were instantly frozen to the ground, their joints solidified, unable to move.
With his right hand, he waved casually toward the front.
Three diamond-like [Ice Lances] broke through the air, precisely hitting the power cores of the three mechs.
"Crack… crack crack crack—" A teeth-aching sound of shattering rang out.
The ice layer spread crazily like a virus; in just three seconds, the three War Machines turned into three giant ice sculptures.
"Clatter."
The blade arm of the leftmost mech broke off first, falling into a pile of ice chunks.
Followed by the head of the second one, and half the body of the third.
Within ten seconds, the three ice sculptures completely fell apart, shattering into a floor full of parts and ice shards.
In front of the main gate of the Base, the wall of fire completely went silent.
All the soldiers forgot to pull their triggers.
A soldier closest to him watched helplessly as an energy shell condensed into ice crystals and shattered in front of the opponent. He squeezed out a high-pitched scream from his throat, threw away his rifle, and turned to run.
Then the second, the third.
Fear is contagious.
The entire steel defense line completely collapsed within three seconds; the soldiers abandoned their armor and weapons, howling as they fled toward the depths of the Base, their morale shattered on the spot.
Arthur stepped over the wide-open blast doors and walked into the panicked Base.
Emergency lights flashed wildly, and screams erupted everywhere.
Yet he walked as if in an empty place, eyes fixed straight ahead, heading straight into the depths following the route marked by the system.
Along the way, a few blind soldiers tried to stop him with grenades, but he couldn't even be bothered to look at them.
The invisible [Frost Barrier] automatically froze the grenades into scrap metal, which clattered and rolled all over the floor.
The deepest part of the Base.
A thirty-centimeter-thick steel door with an "Ω - EXPERIMENTAL ZONE" warning sign stood before him.
Behind the door, the scarlet "97.3%" number on the system panel in his mind was jumping crazily at an unprecedented frequency.
Arthur raised his right foot.
The next second, surging arcane energy poured into his right leg, causing even the surrounding air to distort!
Then, he kicked out.
"Boom—!!!" A loud noise, comparable to a sonic boom!
That steel door, capable of withstanding missiles, burst inward like a piece of paper, along with the several-meter-thick walls on both sides!
Countless fragments turned into deadly shrapnel, instantly tearing apart most of the equipment in the laboratory.
When the choking dust cleared slightly.
In the center of the laboratory were two adjacent reinforced glass containment cells.
The one on the left was empty, with glass shattered all over the floor.
Inside the one on the right, a silver-haired boy was shielding the girl behind him with his body. His face was bloody, but his eyes were full of unyielding hostility, like a lone wolf protecting its cub.
Behind him, that girl with long dark brown hair slowly raised her head.
Arthur's pupils shook.
Those eyes, which should have been green, were now engulfed by a scarlet energy storm!
Twisted, chaotic, and violent streams of red light gushed from her body, dragging everything around into a vortex of chaos.
The ground cracked, the ceiling bent, and gravity, light, space… all physical laws were torn apart here!
Wanda Maximoff.
Chaos Magic, in a berserk state.
The eternal indifference on Arthur's face was finally torn away, and a smile mixed with ecstasy and burning intensity curled crazily at the corner of his mouth.
"Finally… found you."
Chapter 49: The First Encounter of Chaos and Arcane
Red.
The entire World was left with nothing but a scarlet color that stung the eyes.
Wanda hung in mid-air, her limbs stiff, head tilted back, mouth wide open but unable to make a sound, as if her throat were being tightly gripped by an invisible giant hand.
In her eyes, only two burning red flames remained; her pupils were no longer visible.
Out-of-control Chaos Magic leaked frantically from her body, transforming into countless crimson energy whips that emitted sharp shrieks as they tore through the air, whipping and twisting everything around her.
One energy whip swept across the wall, slicing a mirror-smooth cut through the thirty-centimeter-thick alloy steel plate.
Eerily, half of the metal at the incision instantly rusted and weathered away, while the other half turned directly into sand and fell away with a rustle.
This was not destruction.
This was trampling the laws of physics at their root, rewriting reality!
"Wanda!"
The silver-haired boy Pietro clutched a steel pipe twisted into a pretzel, the floor beneath his feet cracking inch by inch.
He wanted to rush toward his sister, but an energy whip swept past his cheek, instantly leaving a wound on his left arm deep enough to see the bone, with blood spraying wildly!
No matter how fast Quicksilver was, he could not be faster than Chaos Magic, which appeared the moment a thought occurred.
"Stop... I beg you..."
Wanda's desperate, tearful voice came from the center of the storm.
She was begging herself, but she simply could not stop.
The erosion from the Mind Stone and the inhuman experiments had long since destroyed her mind.
The rampaging Chaos Magic was like a wild Beast off its leash, turning back against its Master.
At the end of the corridor outside the laboratory, a figure appeared quietly.
Baron Strucker.
This German guy with a goatee hadn't run away.
He hid around the corner, clutching a remote control tightly, his face filled with morbid fanaticism.
As long as he pressed the button, the electric shock suppressor on Wanda's neck would release a super-high-voltage current, knocking her unconscious.
Although it might damage her brain, it was better than having the entire Base torn apart by this "monster"!
The Baron licked his dry lips and pressed his thumb down hard.
"Click."
A soft sound.
But it wasn't the sound of an electric current.
The remote control in his hand, along with his last hope, turned directly into the finest powder in his palm and slipped through his fingers.
Baron Strucker froze.
He slowly looked up and saw that, amidst the smoke and dust, that young Asian man was standing deep in the corridor, and on his right index finger, a wisp of ice-blue Arcane light was dissipating.
[Counterspell]. Crushed from a distance.
"Get lost."
Arthur only said one word.
The Arcane pressure carried in his voice, however, was like an iceberg crashing down into Strucker's mind!
It was a crushing pressure originating from the hierarchy of life, an instinctive fear of an ant looking up at a god!
The Baron's pupils dilated to the limit, his crotch suddenly became hot, and a foul, pungent smell instantly permeated the air.
He had wet himself.
He scrambled to turn and run, not even caring that one of his leather shoes had fallen off, his mouth making unintelligible "he-he" sounds, as wretched as a dog with a broken spine.
Arthur withdrew his gaze and looked toward that scarlet hell.
Pietro, covered in blood, noticed Arthur at the doorway and instinctively viewed him as a new enemy.
"Another piece of HYDRA trash!"
He roared, and before his voice had even faded, he had already transformed into a streak of silver light, bypassing the wildly dancing energy whips and lunging straight at Arthur from the side!
However, he was fast, but Arthur's reaction was faster.
Arthur didn't even turn his head; he simply raised his left hand casually.
"Hum—"
Pietro felt as if he had slammed headfirst into an invisible wall.
The force field of [Mage Armor] pinned him tightly in mid-air; no matter how he struggled, he couldn't move a single inch.
"Back off, boy." Arthur spoke indifferently, as if brushing off a speck of dust, "Don't come and make a mess."
He ignored the pinned Quicksilver and took a step into the red storm.
The first energy whip whistled over and lashed heavily against his [Mana Shield].
The deep blue shield rippled, as steady as Mount Tai.
The second, the third...
Countless Chaos Magic energy whips lashed frantically at Arthur; red and blue lights collided violently, bursting with blinding purple light and a smell of scorched material.
The shield's mana was dropping rapidly.
The "reality warping" characteristic of Chaos Magic was attempting to rewrite his mana directly into stone, air, or even a string of gibberish code.
But Arthur's footsteps did not falter in the slightest.
One step. Gravity inverted, but he used magic to forcefully "nail" himself to the ground.
Two steps. Space twisted; the walls and ceiling before him melted into flowing pigment.
Three steps. Countless crazed whispers screamed in his ears, attempting to corrupt his mind.
At the core of the Chaos storm, the air was as viscous as mercury, and even light was bending.
Arthur remained expressionless, closing the [Warning] notifications popping up frantically from the system.
He walked up to Wanda.
The girl before him was frighteningly thin, her skin covered in needle marks and scars from electric shocks, a cold black collar visible at her neckline.
Her eyes were full of red light, but Arthur could "see" that beneath that storm of destruction was a soul drowned in fear and pain, weeping silently.
"HYDRA... you really deserve to die."
A trace of coldness flashed through Arthur's heart, and he raised his right hand.
No attack, no control.
His index finger, carrying a touch of pure ice-blue radiance, gently tapped Wanda's brow.
[Arcane Wisdom].
But this time, what flooded into Wanda's sea of consciousness was not computing power, but the most fundamental law of Azeroth Arcane—Order.
Absolute, cold, and perfect order, like a mathematical axiom.
In Wanda's mental World, which held only scarlet, shrieks, and destruction, this touch of blue was like the first star to light up in the eternal night.
It said nothing, yet it brought "silence."
It carried no temperature, yet it dispelled the fanaticism that was scorching her soul.
This feeling was like performing a low-level format and system reinstall on a computer stuffed with viruses and junk files.
Arthur's voice rang out directly in the depths of Wanda's soul, calm yet unquestionable.
"Close your eyes."
Wanda's body jolted violently.
"Feel it. It is not an enemy; it is a part of you."
In her mental World, the scarlet storm began to weaken.
"You are the Master, not a slave. It only goes out of control because you are afraid."
In reality, the wildly dancing energy whips dissipated one after another.
"Follow me."
The ice-blue Arcane light spread from Arthur's fingertips, flowing slowly like a shawl woven from starlight. Ice-blue and scarlet intersected on her body, no longer a destructive collision, but gradually reaching a rhythm of coexistence.
A thought flashed through Arthur's mind: This feeling is really like taming an over-energetic Husky.
In Wanda's burning eyes, her pupils reconverged.
A touch of fresh green emerged against the scarlet background, like a new sprout breaking through scorched earth.
The Chaos storm subsided.
The remaining red energy transformed into docile filaments of light, curling up at their fingertips like a tamed young Beast.
Wanda's body lost support and fell forward softly.
Arthur reached out and caught her steadily.
The girl in his arms was frighteningly light, feeling like less than ninety pounds, her body smelling of a mixture of disinfectant and blood. She leaned against Arthur's solid chest, gasping for air like a drowning person, as weak as a porcelain doll.
She slowly looked up, using those eyes that had turned green again, though still bloodshot, to look blankly at this unfamiliar Oriental face.
"You... who are you?" Her voice was hoarse, as thin as a mosquito's buzz.
"A mage." Arthur looked down at her, his tone flat, "A mage much stronger than you."
Wanda stared at him for three seconds, her mouth twitching uncontrollably, not knowing whether she wanted to cry or laugh.
"...Asshole." She cursed softly in a thick Sokovian accent, her eyelids grew heavy, and she passed out completely.
Pietro, pinned in mid-air, saw that his sister was out of danger; he had just breathed a sigh of relief when he was filled with vigilance and anxiety once again.
Arthur lifted his restraint on him.
He stumbled to the ground and immediately wanted to rush over and snatch his sister away.
"Let go of her—"
Before he could finish his sentence.
The entire Base suddenly began to shake violently, a hundred times more intensely than when Wanda had lost control just a moment ago!
Debris and light tubes overhead came crashing down, and all the lights flashed wildly three times before instantly switching to a blinding blood-red!
A cold, synthesized electronic voice blasted from every corner of the Base simultaneously:
"Warning—The Base's core fusion reactor has suffered an irreversible overload—Self-destruct sequence initiated—All personnel evacuation failed—"
"Countdown: Thirty seconds—Twenty-nine—Twenty-eight—"
The floor beneath their feet began to heat up at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Pietro's face instantly turned as pale as paper.
Five hundred meters underground, with heavy granite mountain rock overhead.
In less than thirty seconds, this place would turn into a nuclear furnace.
That madman Strucker had initiated the final program of mutual destruction!
They had been buried alive!
Chapter 50: Dragon's Breath, Scorch the Heavens
Twenty-eight seconds.
The Earth beneath their feet began to roar!
It was not a tremor; it was the entire crust wailing, as if some World-ending behemoth was awakening deep within the Earth's core.
Spiderweb-like cracks exploded across the concrete ceiling overhead, and dust and debris rained down like a storm.
The air was thick with the pungent smell of scorched wires and ozone.
In the distance, dull, consecutive explosions rang out; the ammunition depot had been detonated by the intense heat.
Each sound was like the heavy hammer of the God of Death, shattering the last shred of hope.
Pietro's eyes instantly turned blood-red; he gritted his teeth so hard his mouth tasted of blood.
He snatched Wanda from Arthur's arms and scooped her up horizontally; her feather-light weight made his heart ache.
The muscles in his legs tensed to the point of tearing.
He knew this was suicide, but he had to run! Dying on the charge was better than being roasted alive! Do it!
"Put her down."
Arthur's voice was as calm as ten-thousand-year-old black ice, completely out of place with the apocalyptic scene around them.
"Are you fucking crazy!" Pietro roared, spittle flying, "There are only twenty-something seconds left! If you want to die, don't drag us down with you!"
"I said, put her down."
Arthur ignored him and merely glanced down at the young girl, whose brows were tightly knit, before slowly raising his head. His gaze seemed to pierce through layers of rock walls, looking toward the ceiling.
Hundreds of meters of granite, the hardest rock layer on Earth.
A chasm for mortals.
Twenty-three seconds.
He suddenly laughed, a laugh tinged with a touch of madness and absolute confidence that did not belong to a human.
He reached his right hand into his pocket and pulled out the Void Core fragment. It was the size of a fingernail, pitch black, with dark purple veins flowing across it like a trapped galaxy.
Arthur gripped it. He applied force. "Click."
The soft sound was insignificant amidst the deafening explosions, yet it detonated in Arthur's soul like a clap of creation thunder!
The fragment shattered!
Pitch-black energy surged into his meridians like a dam breaking in the abyss! A high-dimensional "tearing sensation" emanated from the depths of his soul, as if his very existence was being forcibly squeezed into a greater mold.
In his mind, data streams flashed by at light speed: [Void Core fragment consumed!] [Temporarily gained massive amounts of Chaotic Dimension energy!] [Warning: Energy quality too low, forced conversion in progress... Conversion complete.] [Over-level spellcasting restriction — Lifted! Duration: 15 seconds!]
In the depths of Arthur's eyes, two balls of ghostly blue divine fire ignited, and his pupils transformed into cold stars!
Eighteen seconds.
He handed Wanda back to the stunned Pietro.
"Hold her tight and close your eyes. Remember, no matter what happens, don't let go, and don't open your eyes, or you will go blind."
Pietro was dazed. Under the gaze of those eyes burning with blue divine fire, all his doubts and resistance seemed laughable. Awe, rooted in biological instinct, made him instinctively choose to obey.
He held his sister tightly and squeezed his eyes shut.
Arthur drew his staff from his storage space. The simple staff hummed in agony under the strain of the overloaded energy infusion, with electric arcs dancing across its surface.
He slammed the staff onto the ground. "Thump!"
Fifteen seconds.
Arthur looked up, staring directly at the hundreds-of-meters-thick, insurmountable rock layer.
Deep in his throat, something was burning and coalescing. It was not a mortal incantation, but a more ancient, more primitive, and more savage way of invoking the laws of the Universe.
In Azeroth, there was only one type of spell that required the "throat" to cast. Dragon's Breath.
"Let you mortals—" He opened his mouth, his voice not loud, yet it clearly drowned out all the noise in the World. "Witness a miracle!"
[Dragon's Breath (Permission Cracked Version)] [Flame Storm (Fusion Overlap)]
Two forbidden-level spells completed an unprecedented compression and fusion within his throat! And then—a blue-white pillar of light, over ten meters in diameter, which could no longer be called "flame" but rather "Heaven's Punishment," erupted from his mouth!
It was not fire; it was high-temperature plasma forcibly compressed to the extreme by arcane laws, its core temperature instantly exceeding ten thousand degrees!
With his eyes closed, Pietro only felt a sea of "white" before him, as if billions of Suns had exploded outside his eyelids! A heatwave that threatened to vaporize him instantly rushed toward him, but it was gently blocked by an invisible barrier.
He could hear nothing, for the destructive roar had long since transcended the realm of sound waves, turning into an ultra-low-frequency resonance that made his very soul tremble!
I'm stunned... Is this what magic is really like? His mind was a blank slate.
Granite? In the face of this power, it didn't even have the qualification to "melt"; it sublimated directly from a solid to a gas! The rock was evaporating!
One meter, ten meters, fifty meters! Wherever the light pillar touched, the hard rock layers vanished silently like snow under the Sun. Molten rock, having just formed, turned into steam under the even higher heat.
One hundred meters, two hundred meters, three hundred meters! The entire mountain was shaking violently! From the outside, under the night sky of Sokovia, a blue-white pillar of light that pierced the heavens erupted from the peak of a snow-capped mountain without warning! The snow on the peak instantly evaporated, and the thick clouds were brutally torn open, creating a huge, smooth, circular hole!
Four hundred meters, five hundred meters— "Boom!" The light pillar completely pierced through the mountain, shooting ten thousand meters into the sky!
A vertical tunnel, ten meters in diameter with walls scorched into smooth glass, led straight from five hundred meters underground to the surface! The cold night air poured in, colliding with the residual heat, creating a "crackle" like shattering glass.
Five seconds. Arthur retracted the Dragon's Breath. The staff "cracked," covered in fissures, its light dimming as it neared destruction. He felt a sweetness in his throat and the taste of blood, his mana pool instantly bottoming out, his body completely drained. But, it was enough.
He grabbed Pietro's shoulder with one hand; it felt icy, the kid had been scared stiff. [Teleportation (Group)].
Three seconds. A ball of blue light swallowed the three of them. One second. They vanished from the spot. Zero.
Five hundred meters underground, the containment magnetic field of the fusion reactor completely collapsed. Looking down from the glass tunnel at the peak, a deadly, silent white light that consumed everything lit up deep underground. A ten-thousandth of a second later, the white light expanded crazily.
There was no sound. The entire mountain silently... collapsed.
Millions of tons of rock and steel crashed into the cavity formed by the explosion, and the radioactive dust and smoke churned up mixed into a massive black mushroom cloud, obscuring half the night sky.
Dozens of kilometers away, the window glass of the village shattered in unison amidst the silence....
Two thousand meters above the mountain peak. The biting cold wind howled. Arthur hovered in the night sky, his left hand gripping Pietro's collar like he was holding a chick. The staff finally turned into specks of light in the wind and dissipated without a trace.
He looked down at the unreasonably large crater below that was still spewing thick smoke.
Pietro held Wanda, trembling like a sieve. He couldn't tell if it was from the cold or because he had been terrified out of his wits by the miracle just now. In front of that pillar of light, the speed he was so proud of was as slow as a joke.
"You two." Arthur let go. Pietro screamed, only to find that he and his sister were being steadily supported by a layer of blue light.
Arthur turned around, looking down at the twins. Starlight reflected on his pale face, and a trace of blood still hung at the corner of his mouth. He looked somewhat exhausted, but those eyes were startlingly bright.
"From today on, you belong to me."
Pietro opened his mouth, his throat as dry as the Sahara Desert, wanting to say "Why?" But he looked at his sister sleeping soundly in his arms, then at the giant crater below that looked like the entrance to hell, and finally, he looked up at the man who had just melted through a mountain with his "mouth." Wisely, he swallowed all his words.
New York, S.H.I.E.L.D. temporary command center. Daisy Johnson was frowning at a bizarre report from Sokovia. Satellite images showed a mountain missing, but the energy analysis didn't match any known weapons.
Her private laptop screen suddenly lit up. In the center of the screen, a line of magnificent arcane runes popped up word by word: "Looking forward to your awakening, Quake. We will meet again soon."
Daisy stared at the screen for five seconds. Then she quickly lowered her head, using her bangs to cover her face. The curve of her mouth just couldn't be suppressed.
Outside New York, Westchester County. Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. In the Underground Room, next to the Cerebro machine. Charles Xavier was conducting his routine global mental scan when his body suddenly stiffened.
In his mental network, something that absolutely shouldn't exist had appeared. It was a "reflection" of a magnificent building. Blurry, translucent, like the moon in water or flowers in a mirror—but Charles was intimately familiar with every single structure of it.
Because that was his school! Another version of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters was slowly "developing" in the reality dimension of this World in a way that violated all laws of physics!
Charles snapped his eyes open, veins bulging on his forehead, and a line of blood slowly flowed from his nostril. He heard it. Deep in the rift where two Universes collided, came an eerie, sharp sound, like glass being slowly crushed... the wail of the Universe.
Chapter 51: The Rift Over New York, The Interrupted Daily Life
Queens, New York. A luxury penthouse.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, lazily spreading across the expensive Persian rug. The smart climate control system hummed quietly, keeping the early autumn chill at bay.
A faint purple Arcane Barrier flowed silently along the walls. This thing didn't just provide soundproofing; it also conveniently blocked all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s pervasive satellite radars in the sky.
Want to monitor this place? Maybe in the next life.
Wanda was nestled deep in a leather sofa, holding a cup of hot cocoa. Having washed away the grease and dust and changed into a beige turtleneck sweater, she finally had the quiet air of a girl next door.
However, the intensity with which she stared at the television revealed an inescapable unease deep in her bones.
The TV was broadcasting news about Stark Industries. On the screen, a man in gold-and-red armor roared through the air, trailing fire, as the crowd below erupted in excitement.
"Superheroes..." Wanda murmured, her lips pale.
She subconsciously gripped the cup tightly. Her nails dug into the ceramic glaze, and a wisp of uncontrolled scarlet light flickered at her fingertips.
That image flashed in her mind again—eight years old, ruins, her parents' blood, and a Stark missile embedded halfway into the ceiling. She could draw the logo on the shell even with her eyes closed.
HYDRA had burned this memory into her mind hundreds of times. They burned it until she could no longer tell if the hatred was her own or something she had been force-fed.
"Stop watching. It lowers your IQ."
A cool voice cut through the surging mental noise. Arthurwalked out from behind the bar holding a cup of black coffee, dressed in loose loungewear, his face practically screaming "I haven't woken up yet."
He walked to the sofa, glanced at Wanda who was on the verge of losing control, and extended a finger.
A spark of pure, icy-blue Arcane light lit up at his fingertip, and he tapped her lightly on the forehead.
"Hum—"
A cool energy poured into her brow. That frantic Chaos Red Glow was crushed by the high-level Arcane magic, obediently dissipating into nothingness.
Wanda's tense body relaxed, and she let out a long breath.
"Broaden your horizons," Arthur said, taking a sip of coffee and looking at the Manhattan skyline outside the window. "Don't waste your hate on a puppet pushed to the front of the stage."
"Technology spends its whole life just trying to reach the starting point of magic. Only magic is the sole key to deciphering the Universe."
His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried an absolute sense of pressure.
"Wanda, as one of my people, your goal is the stars, the sea, and the Multiverse. Don't spend your days thinking about stealing the spotlight from those weirdos in tights downstairs. Your potential could let you hang them up and beat them."
Wanda nodded as if she understood, but her body subconsciously moved closer to Arthur. In this unfamiliar place, this man's "sky is falling, use it as a blanket" composure was the only thing she could hold onto.
"Why isn't Pietro back yet?" Wanda glanced at the wall clock. "He went downstairs to buy donuts, and it's been twenty minutes."
"Probably waiting in line; I strictly forbade him from using his Super-speed casually," Arthur replied dismissively. "If he really starts running, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s energy detectors will be a pain in the neck."
Having just absorbed a Void Fragment, his mana pool had grown absurdly. He planned to stay low and develop in New York for a while. As for the thankless job of saving the World? That was the Avengers' KPI; he'd have to be crazy to do that work for free.
However—
The moment the coffee cup was about to touch his lips, he stopped.
The Arcane Mark deep in his soul throbbed like crazy. It wasn't a warning; it was an air-raid siren.
**[Warning! Detected ultra-high frequency spatial dimension tear!]**
**[Warning! Large-scale alien energy sources are flooding into the reality dimension exponentially!]**
Arthur turned to look out the window.
One second, New York was clear and sunny—the next, it went dark.
Atop Stark Tower a few blocks away, a blinding beam of eerie blue light shot into the sky! The beam brutally pierced the atmosphere, tearing a hole in the sky. With a dull roar, a massive wormhole opened above the clouds.
The deep, cold starry sky of the Universe was laid bare against Earth's daylight.
The next second, dense swarms of black dots poured out of the wormhole. The fully armed Chitauri army, riding their gliders, plummeted toward New York in overwhelming numbers!
"Wooo—!!!"
A shrill air-raid siren shattered the peace of the entire city.
"What is that?!" Wanda stood up abruptly, her hand shaking so much that all the hot cocoa spilled onto the carpet, though she didn't even notice.
"Alien scum," Arthur said flatly, his voice cold enough to drop ice chips.
No sooner had he spoken than a glider in mid-air was hit by a gold-and-red palm thruster blast, trailing thick smoke as it spiraled out of control. As luck would have it, it crashed right toward the cafe downstairs.
"Boom—!!!"
Flames soared, the Impact shattered glass for half a block, and screams erupted everywhere.
Arthur's face darkened completely.
"Bang!"
The blast-proof door was slammed open by a massive force, the alloy lock shattering on the spot.
Pietro, turned into a silver afterimage, stumbled into the room, gasping for breath and covered in dust. His right hand was still protecting a crushed paper bag of donuts.
But on his left arm, a high-temperature fragment had sliced a deep gash, revealing the bone. Blood gushed out, staining half his sleeve and dripping onto the floor.
"It's crazy out there!" Pietro hissed in pain, tossing the paper bag onto the coffee table. "Monsters are falling from the sky, killing everyone they see! I protected a passerby with a stroller and couldn't dodge the fragment..."
"Pietro!"
Wanda froze for half a second. Then tears welled up and fell.
She rushed over to cover the wound, her hands covered in blood. The Chaos Red Glow that had just been suppressed went out of control again, and the surrounding furniture began to vibrate violently.
Arthur didn't speak.
He looked at the blood on Pietro's arm, then at the crushed donut on the coffee table.
He slowly placed his coffee cup on the coffee table.
"Click."
A soft sound.
The moment the bottom of the cup touched the table, the scalding black coffee froze into a lump of black ice within 0.01 seconds! Deathly white frost spread frantically from the cup, and the living room temperature plummeted below freezing in two seconds!
"In my territory, you touch my people?"
His voice was very soft.
Without changing into a suit or taking any equipment, he turned and walked toward the floor-to-ceiling window. Every step he took condensed bone-chilling frost.
"Lin? Where are you going? There are monsters everywhere!" Wanda cried out anxiously.
Arthur didn't look back. He placed his right hand directly on the blast-proof glass that could stop armor-piercing rounds.
"Crack—Bang!"
Without even a wind-up, the thick glass was covered in frost and exploded into a cloud of ice crystals!
A gale mixed with gunpowder smoke howled in. He took a step forward and leapt from the top floor, dozens of stories high.
Even a low-key mage has his bottom line.
I don't care if the heavens collapse, but knock over my donuts and touch the people I protect—
Let the masses endure their myriad sufferings, but anyone who touches my people must die.
The gale cut his face in mid-air.
Space twisted, and a Divine Wood Staff embedded with a Void Gem appeared in his hand. Raging magical elements converged, turning into a tangible eerie blue halo. He didn't slow down; instead, he accelerated toward the ground!
During his descent, Arthur scanned the blocks below that had turned into a sea of fire.
His gaze locked onto a patch of ruins two blocks away.
It was originally a S.H.I.E.L.D. evacuation convoy, but now only burning scrap metal remained. A short-haired girl in a black leather jacket was being forced into a dead end by two Chitauri flyers.
Above her, a Leviathan beast roared as it swam past. With a flick of its tail, it smashed the corner of a building. Tons of rubble crashed down, sealing the girl's last path of retreat.
Leaning against the wall, the girl raised her hands. At her wrists, faint shockwaves that distorted the air were gathering. But in front of the dark energy cannons, this unawakened power wasn't even enough to fill the gaps between teeth.
Arthur recognized her at a glance.
Daisy Johnson. The future Quake. The person he had just sent a message to "reserve."
"My people... you think you can touch them?"
He gripped the staff.
His descent speed broke the sound barrier, and a circle of pale sonic boom clouds exploded behind him. Carrying an overwhelming eerie blue Arcane glow, he slammed down toward that certain-death situation.
Thirty floors. Twenty floors. Ten floors—
In the dead end, Daisy heard the sonic boom from above. She looked up through the gaps in the rubble and saw that rapidly falling blue speck of light in the high sky.
The barrels of the Chitauri flyers lit up.
The speck of light was faster.
Chapter 52: Frost Descends! The Fury of Absolute Zero
Daisy closed her eyes in despair.
Her ears were filled with the grating metallic roar of Chitauri flier engines, sounding like countless steel needles scraping harshly against her eardrums.
The energy guns were charging at high speed, their piercing shrieks growing sharper and sharper, nearly penetrating her skull.
The air was thick with the sickening stench of ozone and scorched flesh, remnants of bystanders instantly vaporized by energy weapons. The searing energy blasted toward her, even causing the stray hairs on her forehead to curl from the heat.
It was over.
She could clearly feel her hands shaking violently, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
Lately, whenever her emotions ran high, the surrounding air would produce a strange resonance, even shattering glass cups from a distance.
But now, this weak superpower that didn't even count as an "awakening" was a complete joke in front of these three heavy energy cannons capable of melting tanks. Forget blocking them; it wasn't even enough to get stuck between their teeth.
"Damn that Black Braised Egg Director! If I kick the bucket here today, even as a ghost, I'll crawl through the network cables back to S.H.I.E.L.D. just to wipe my browser search history clean!"
Under the shadow of death, Daisy complained wildly in her heart, her mouth full of bitterness.
She wasn't willing to die so pathetically, and even less willing to let those bastards at S.H.I.E.L.D. see the shameful search history on her computer!
"Zzt—Boom!"
There was no more time for complaints. The three heavy energy guns finished charging simultaneously and fired with a roar!
Three thick, ghostly blue plasma beams, like scythes wielded by the God of Death, trailed paths of destruction and instantly illuminated the trash-filled dead-end alley.
At the very last second before the beams were about to pierce her body—
"Vroom—"
An ancient chant that seemed capable of piercing the soul suddenly erupted over the battlefield without warning!
The voice was deep and majestic, carrying the absolute indifference of one who stands high above the clouds looking down on all living things, radiating a terrifying pressure that brooked no desecration.
Immediately following that, Newton's laws of physics were being utterly defied.
The temperature didn't transition; it plummeted straight off a cliff!
This wasn't ordinary cold. This was a tyrannical and unreasonable power of law, an Absolute Zero that forcibly froze atomic motion and made even time stagnate!
The expected intense pain and vaporization did not come.
Daisy tentatively and cautiously opened a sliver of her eyes.
In the next second, the brain of this top hacker who could easily break into the Pentagon completely crashed.
The scene before her eyes ground her twenty-plus years of established worldview into the dirt.
Those three lethal beams capable of melting superalloys had actually come to a dead stop less than half a meter from the tip of her nose!
The violent energy particles on the surface of the beams were forcibly stripped of their temperature and kinetic energy by this overbearing law. In the blink of an eye, the three beams of destruction turned into three brilliant ice pillars shimmering with ghostly blue light.
"Crack—"
A crisp sound rang out.
The three ice pillars became covered in cracks like low-quality glass and shattered with a roar, turning into a floor full of ice shards emitting a bone-chilling frost.
Daisy stiffly raised her head.
Snow had begun to fall over the gray skies of New York at some point.
No, that wasn't snow at all!
They were countless fist-sized, terrifying ice spikes with Frigid Runes swirling inside! Carrying the terrifying kinetic energy of their high-altitude fall, they whistled and smashed toward the ground like guided missiles with eyes!
[High-Tier Magic: Blizzard].
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
An unavoidable carpet-bombing of ice spikes began!
The Chitauri fliers that had just been flaunting their power, along with the dozen or so hideous alien soldiers on them, didn't even manage to let out half a scream.
"Crack! Crack! Crack!"
The piercing sounds of freezing joined together. The semi-mechanical shells the Chitauri were so proud of were instantly coated in thick white frost, their internal organs and mechanical structures directly cracking and dying from the cold.
The alien lackeys who were fierce and malevolent a second ago all turned into ice sculptures in various poses the next, their faces frozen in expressions of bewilderment.
Then, the gravitational field of the frigid storm suddenly pulled inward.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The dozen or so ice sculptures, along with the metal fliers, shattered in mid-air all at once!
There was not a drop of blood, nor any flames. The entire alley was left with nothing but a ground full of bone-chilling blue ice shards.
In just a single encounter, the alien forces occupying half the street were instantly wiped out!
In the swirling snow, Arthur descended slowly like a feather, stepping on an ice-blue magic circle.
He held a Divine Wood Staff embedded with a Void Gem, and his gray loungewear didn't have a single wrinkle despite the howling wind.
On this battlefield where flesh and blood flew everywhere, he was as clean as a noble scion who had wandered onto the wrong set, every gesture radiating an absolute composure that crushed everything.
It was Arthur.
Daisy's mouth hung open, completely stunned. Was this the "Mysterious Mage" she had stayed up all night tracking?
At this moment, her leather jacket was covered in dirt and bloodstains, and her face was smudged with black and gray, looking as wretched as a stray cat just pulled out of a mud pit.
Arthur glanced at her indifferently without any nonsense. He casually raised his left hand and snapped his fingers.
"Snap."
[Life Cantrip: Cleanse].
A gentle shimmer with the fragrance of herbs swept over Daisy like a ripple of water.
The bloodstains on her clothes, the black ash on her face, and the mud on her soles were instantly stripped away and purified. In just one second, she was completely refreshed, as if she had just showered and changed into new clothes.
"Miss Agent."
Arthur's voice was cool, carrying an unmasked mockery.
"Is this how that Black Braised Egg Director of yours, who hides behind a screen all day, tricks workers into coming to the front lines to throw their lives away?"
Daisy swallowed hard, feeling her dry clothes, and stammered, "You... you are actually..."
"Lin!"
Before she could finish, two silver-white afterimages charged into the alley with the sound of sonic booms.
Pietro held Wanda as they stopped steadily beside Arthur. Seeing the floor full of ice shards and the unharmed Arthur, Pietro was so excited his silver hair trembled, his eyes full of adoration.
Wanda stared intently at Arthur's back. There was no longer any red light of Chaos Magic in her eyes, only the words "die-hard fan" written all over them, as if Arthurwere her one and only god.
Daisy looked at these two people who had suddenly appeared, even more bewildered.
Just then, a violent tremor like a magnitude five earthquake came from the ground in the distance.
"Rumble—"
From the communicator at Daisy's waist with its patchy signal, the exasperated, voice-cracking roar of Iron ManTony Stark suddenly erupted:
"Help! Who's nearby? Someone get over here now! There's a several-hundred-ton Big Mantis Shrimp following my ass! It's chasing me and trying to bite! Jarvis says my thrusters are about to start smoking!"
Accompanying Tony's scream, the roar of a giant beast smashing through buildings and the screams of the public came through the communicator.
Arthur slowly turned his head, his gaze piercing through the smoke to look toward the central Manhattan war zone.
A mountain-sized Leviathan Bio-beast was roaring and rampaging among the skyscrapers, turning everything it passed into ruins.
Arthur casually twirled his staff, and the Void Gem at its head suddenly erupted with a ghostly blue light as bright as a supernova.
"Big Mantis Shrimp?"
His tone turned cold, and a chilling killing intent soared into the sky.
"It seems it's time for these bumpkins from an alien village to experience what a true dimensional strike feels like."
Chapter 53: The Avengers' Bitter Battle, the Mage's Mockery
In the New York Central War Zone, smoke and dust blotted out the sun.
Captain America Steve gasped for air, his lungs feeling like they were filled with crushed glass. Sweat mixed with blood from his forehead blurred his vision, and he didn't even have a moment to wipe it away.
"Bang!"
He swung his iconic Vibranium shield, using his running momentum to forcefully crush the armored throat of a Chitauri Soldiers.
Before he could pull back his shield, three beams of ghostly blue high-energy particles shot from a blind spot, slamming hard into the shield's surface.
The massive impact forced Steve to one knee, plowing two charred, ten-meter-long furrows into the hard asphalt.
"Natasha! Cover the left!" Steve gritted his teeth, his voice a hoarse roar as he endured the sharp pain in his arm.
Black Widow Natasha was rolling clumsily behind the wreckage of a car. The twin pistols in her hands spat fire frantically, but those brass bullets hit the alien armor without even leaving a dent.
"Click!" The gun's slide locked back on an empty chamber.
"I'm out of ammo!" Natasha gritted her teeth and hurled the empty gun away, drawing a baton that crackled with dangerous electricity, preparing for a melee fight against overwhelming odds.
In mid-air, Thunder God Thor swung his hammer wildly, as violent lightning shattered a diving flyer.
But this small victory was hardly enough. In the next second, a swarm of individual flying vehicles surrounded him again, nearly drowning him in dazzling cannon fire.
Hulk roared in Fury among several skyscrapers. He grabbed a taxi and hurled it into the air, but the agile Chitauri craft easily dodged it.
A few high-energy shells fired back, instantly knocking the green behemoth off balance and sending him crashing heavily through a building's glass curtain wall.
At the very top of the war zone.
Inside Tony Stark's mask, red lights flashed frantically, and alarms wouldn't stop ringing.
"Sir, the right thruster is damaged, output is down by 35%... Warning, we cannot break target lock," the AI Jarvisreported coldly.
Less than fifty meters behind Tony, a Leviathanbiochemical beast over a hundred meters long charged through the steel forest of Manhattan with its bloody maw wide open.
"I have eyes! Shut up!" Tony was drenched in a cold sweat, complaining frantically inside his mask, "This thing's hide is too thick; my micro-armor-piercing rounds are like giving it a massage!"
Meanwhile, in the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier's command center, the atmosphere was oppressive to the extreme.
Nick Fury stared intensely at the battle damage map of New York on the screen, which showed a total collapse; his single eye was bloodshot.
"The Avengers need support! Where is our anti-air fire network?!" Fury slammed his fist heavily onto the metal console.
"Director!" A technician staring at the radar suddenly stood up. "On the edge of Queens... an unknown level of ultra-high energy reaction has appeared! The energy waveform doesn't match any known weapon on Earth!"
The screen switched instantly, zooming in on a corrected, blurry image.
It was the very street where Arthur had just landed. The originally dense red dots representing enemies were completely cleared out within just three seconds.
Only a vast area of deep blue, absolute low-temperature reaction that seemed capable of freezing the soul remained on the screen.
Fury's single eye narrowed sharply, and his heart skipped a beat: "It's him... that ghost."
At this moment, on the streets of Queens, the chill had not yet dissipated.
Arthur casually tapped the air with his staff, and a deep purple light shield flowing with ancient runes instantly expanded, steadily protecting Pietro, Wanda, and Daisyinside.
[Mana Shield].
"Stay here and don't run around." Arthur glanced sideways at Pietro, who was shaking with excitement. "Especially you, don't let me see you bleeding again. My Healing Spells are expensive."
Pietro nodded frantically. The usually arrogant and unruly Speedster was now as well-behaved as an obedient elementary school student.
"Where are you going?" Daisy looked at the flames of war outside and asked instinctively.
"To go teach those'superheroes' you're so proud of," Arthur sneered. "Fighting an interstellar war like this, relying entirely on fists and a piece of scrap iron plate—people are going to die."
Before his voice even faded.
The space around Arthur underwent a strange folding that even distorted light. There was no run-up, no movement of exerting force to take off.
"Whoosh."
A flash of pure blue Arcane light, and Arthur vanished into thin air before the eyes of the three, leaving not even a trace of an afterimage.
Manhattan, Central Avenue.
Captain America Steve had been forced into the lobby of an abandoned bank by a dozen elite Chitauri Soldierss. His back was against a marble pillar, his chest heaving violently.
On the indestructible shield in his hand, the star-spangled paint had mostly peeled off due to the high temperatures, emitting a pungent burnt smell.
"Captain, I'm pinned down on the rooftop by six flyers, I'm out of arrows, I can't provide support!" Hawkeye's anxious roar came through the communicator.
Steve took a deep breath of the dust-filled air and gripped the edge of his shield. He was prepared for a final stand, even if he had to use his teeth to bite those alien scum to death.
Suddenly.
The air half a meter beside him let out a muffled boom, as if space were being torn apart by some great power.
Blue Arcane brilliance rippled out, and a young man wearing casual home clothes and holding a wooden staff appeared silently beside him.
Steve's pupils shrank, and muscle memory made him instinctively raise his shield, about to smash it hard toward this stranger.
"Using this piece of peeling scrap iron plate to hit your savior? That's a bit small-minded, Captain."
Arthur didn't even spare a glance at the tense Captain America; he simply tapped the void staff lightly on the marble floor.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Several lethal energy beams shot from outside the door and, two meters away from Arthur, slammed into a [Mana Shield] that appeared out of thin air.
The beams, powerful enough to melt steel, only caused a few deep purple ripples on the shield, without even a hint of heat penetrating through.
Steve was completely stunned.
In this meat-grinder of a battlefield filled with cannon fire, the young man before him was so clean that not even a strand of hair was out of place. That composure, radiating from his very bones, was simply a dimensional strike.
"You... who are you?" Steve's throat felt dry.
"Just a passing mage."
Arthur turned his head, his gaze sweeping over Steve's battered tactical suit, then looked through the ruined doors at the other Avengers still fighting in melee outside.
He shook his head with extreme disdain.
"You're fighting this level of civilization invasion and you plan to rely on backward kinetic weapons and primitive muscle brawling?"
Arthur's tone was flat, but between the lines was the helplessness of a higher-dimensional being toward a lower-dimensional civilization. It was simply painful to watch.
Steve's face turned red with embarrassment; he couldn't squeeze out a single word to retort for a long time.
Before he could speak, the Chitauri Commander outside had already noticed the anomaly in the lobby, and a series of rapid commands rang out.
"Clack, clack, clack—"
Hundreds of Chitauri grunts swarmed toward the bank doors like a tide, surrounding the place so tightly that not even a drop of water could get through.
Hundreds of heavy energy guns were raised simultaneously, their dark muzzles weaving a web of death, locking onto the two of them.
Surrounded on all sides, with no way out.
"Watch out! Find cover!" Steve's eyes were nearly bursting as he reached out, wanting to pull Arthur behind the pillar.
But Arthur remained motionless, as if his feet were rooted to the spot.
Ignoring Steve's tugging, he slowly raised the void staff in his hand.
The ghostly blue Arcane brilliance at the tip of the staff shifted at high speed in less than a tenth of a second. A suffocating, terrifying red light began to gather frantically at the top of the staff.
In an instant, the air in the entire lobby became scalding hot, and scattered banknotes and wooden furniture actually spontaneously combusted.
"Cover?"
Arthur looked at the alien soldiers outside who were instinctively backing away and laughed softly, his eyes filled with a fanatical light.
"All fear stems from insufficient firepower."
"In the face of absolute Magical AOE, there is no need for cover!"
Chapter 54: Flame Storm
The staff struck the ground.
No chanting. No hand signs.
None of that fancy finger-twirling before casting that Marvel sorcerers do.
Arthur just slammed the void staff down at his feet.
With just that one strike.
The Void Gem embedded in the head of the staff suddenly exploded with dark red light. That light didn't bloom—it tore. Like the heart of a star forced to ignite, it spewed out all the compressed fury of billions of years in an instant.
The dark red light illuminated all of Central Avenue.
The pupils of all the Chitauri soldiers contracted simultaneously.
"Quick, hide—"
Captain America's roar was drowned out.
Not by the sound of the explosion, but by something more primal—a heatwave. An unreasonable, searing heat rising from the soles of their feet.
Centered on Arthur's feet, the asphalt road within a fifty-meter radius exploded within 0.01 seconds.
It didn't crack.
It skipped directly from solid to liquid, turning into roiling, boiling magma.
This was unscientific. It violated the basic laws of thermodynamics. But spells never reason with science.
Dark red fissures spread frantically in all directions, and a scorching heatwave carrying the scent of sulfur surged into the sky, as if someone had torn open a rift to hell right in the center of New York City.
Flame Storm.
Instant cast. No cooldown. No wind-up.
Pillars of fire surged from the fissures in the ground.
Not just one.
Dozens of them.
Each one was thicker than a utility pole, with a blinding white light at the center of the orange-red flames, the temperature so high that the air itself let out a sharp hiss. Thermal radiation distorted all light; in everyone's vision, the outlines of buildings were warping violently, as if they had been thrown into a melting glass bottle.
The fire pillars weren't darting around randomly.
They intertwined, interspersed, and locked down in a trajectory precise to the point of insanity, weaving a tight cage of flames.
The Chitauri soldiers inside the encirclement had nowhere to run. Ahead were fire pillars. Behind were fire pillars. Above—also fire pillars.
Alien armor was no different from tin foil in the face of such temperatures.
The alloy shells first turned red, then softened, and then evaporated within 0.01 seconds.
There were no screams.
Because their vocal cords had carbonized before they could make a sound.
A Chitauri Commander tried to activate a teleportation beacon to evacuate. Just as his finger touched the button on his gauntlet, his entire hand along with half of his forearm turned to ash in the high temperature. He looked down at his disappearing arm—and then his head disappeared too.
One hundred and thirty-seven fully armed Chitauri elites. Five heavy armored hover tanks. A firepower configuration sufficient to flatten three blocks.
In less than 0.1 seconds.
From solid life forms, they became ash particles floating in the air.
Clean and efficient.
Not even a drop of blood had time to splash.
The flames receded.
As if they had never appeared, dozens of towering fire pillars dissipated at the same time, without even a trace of residual flame. But the marks they left behind would give anyone who saw this scene nightmares for a lifetime.
Half a block had been burned into a smooth black glazed ground.
The surface glowed with a faint red light, as if the Earthhad grown a new skin—a thin glass shell that hadn't cooled down yet. The air was filled with a mixture of charcoal and ozone, along with a weird, sweet, metallic smell that didn't belong to Earth.
That was the product of alien biological proteins being instantly pyrolyzed.
It smelled like burnt caramel mixed with rust.
Steve Rogers crouched behind his shield, maintaining a standard defensive posture, motionless.
It wasn't that he didn't want to move.
His legs had gone weak.
His legs, strengthened by the Super Soldier Serum, were shaking like sieves right now. His shield, that Vibraniumshield capable of withstanding a full-force blow from Thor's hammer, was now so hot it turned the web of his hand red, sending needle-like stings of pain through his palm.
And the World outside the shield—
The enemies that were densely packed just a moment ago now only consisted of a few wisps of green smoke drifting in the wind.
It was so quiet it was maddening.
Steve stiffly lowered his shield. The skin on the web of his hand had already blistered from the heat, but he couldn't feel the pain at all.
He looked down at the glazed ground beneath his feet that still glowed red; his own reflection in it looked as pathetic as a joke.
He had fought all the way to Berlin in World War II. He had fought to the death with Red Skull. He had been frozen in ice for seventy years. He considered himself to have seen everything.
But he had never seen this.
A man in loungewear, holding a wooden stick, had burned over a hundred aliens into thin air.
Natasha's urgent voice came through the communicator: "Captain! I've detected a fusion-level thermal reaction at your coordinates! The peak data has gone off the charts! Did you use a mini-nuke?"
Steve swallowed. His throat was as dry as sandpaper.
"No..." His voice was so raspy it didn't sound like his own. He paused for two seconds before squeezing out the rest of the sentence, "It's an... Easterner playing with fire."
There was a full three seconds of silence on the other end of the communicator.
That kind of silence was more oppressive than any follow-up question.
High in the air, Tony Stark was dragging a smoking thruster, performing frantic serpentine maneuvers between buildings. The red and gold paint on the surface of his armor was already scuffed and mottled, the left auxiliary thruster was misfiring intermittently, and he was flying like a duck with a broken wing.
The stench of the Leviathan beast's breath behind him was close at hand, its massive shadow looming over him.
"Sir."
Jarvis's voice suddenly changed.
It wasn't the usual British butler tone. There was a hint of hesitation. An AI shouldn't hesitate. But Jarvis did.
"Speak!"
"In the Central Avenue area below, a fusion-level thermal release has been detected that does not belong to any known Earth energy system. Peak temperature exceeds six thousand degrees Celsius. Duration: 0.07 seconds."
Tony frowned. Six thousand degrees. The surface temperature of the Sun.
"Who did it? Is the Military finally willing to use their trump card?"
"No, sir. The source of the energy release is not any known weapon system."
Jarvis paused.
This pause made Tony's heart skip a beat.
"It's a human individual not wearing any protective gear."
"...What?"
"More accurately—it's an Asian male wearing grey loungewear. Holding a... wooden rod-like object."
Tony almost crashed into a building.
The thrusters suddenly veered left, the right shoulder of the armor scraping against the glass curtain wall of a building, sending sparks flying as shattered glass rained down.
"Jarvis, are your sensors being jammed by alien signals? Pajamas? A wooden stick? Six thousand degrees? What are you telling me—"
Before he could finish.
An unfamiliar voice cut into the communication channel.
Cold. Flat. Carrying a kind of irritating certainty.
"The one in the tin can."
Arthur stepped out from the glazed ruins, walking on the embers that hadn't yet gone out.
The glazed ground beneath his feet was still scorching hot, but when his cloth soles stepped on it, there wasn't even a scorch mark. His staff leaned against his shoulder, and stray arcane sparks danced at his fingertips, as if he were casually playing with a firefly.
He looked up.
His gaze passed through the gaps of several skyscrapers, through the gunfire and smoke, and accurately locked onto Iron Man, who was being chased like a coward high in the sky.
And the ugly-as-sin space worm behind his butt.
"Lead that bug behind your butt down here."
His tone was as casual as if he were asking a neighbor to help pick up a package.
There was a brief, dead silence in the communication channel.
"..."
Tony Stark had lived for over forty years; he had been snubbed by the board of directors, scolded by Pepper, questioned by Congress, and even blown up by his own weapons.
But for the first time in his life, he was being ordered around by a stranger in pajamas.
"Who are you? Do you think I'm walking a—"
"ROAR!!!"
The Leviathan's bloody maw opened behind him, and a stench-filled heatwave and slimy saliva plastered his face at the same time. Alarms blared inside the armor; the back plating was gouged by the beast's teeth, creating a trench deep into the alloy layer, sending sparks flying.
The impact sent him spinning twice in the air.
Jarvis calmly prompted: "Sir, back armor integrity has dropped to 47%. Cracks have appeared in the spinal protection layer. At the current rate of depletion, you can withstand three more impacts of the same level."
A beat passed.
"I suggest you listen to the gentleman in the pajamas."
Even the AI had defected.
Tony gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw tensing hard.
He turned around, thrusters at full power, diving toward Central Avenue trailing a plume of black smoke. Behind him, the Leviathan's roar shattered all the remaining intact glass along the way, as tons of fragments poured down like a rainstorm.
On the ground.
Arthur withdrew his gaze.
He wasn't in a hurry to move. Instead, he looked down at the system panel that only he could see.
The experience bar was jumping frantically.
The experience points from killing one hundred and thirty-seven Chitauri soldiers poured into the experience bar like boiling golden liquid. The numbers jumped so fast they were almost a blur to the naked eye, and every moment a number flipped, it brought an addictive pleasure.
The experience bar—was almost full.
Arthur rubbed the shaft of the staff with his thumb and looked up at the approaching Leviathan.
The corners of his mouth slowly curled up.
It wasn't a smile.
It was the pure pleasure of a hunter seeing his prey deliver itself to his door.
"Just a little bit short on experience."
He whispered to himself, and the arcane sparks at his fingertips suddenly became intense.
"Thanks, big bug."