Chapter 55: Clashing Head-on with the Leviathan, the Collision of magic and Technology
The Leviathan came.
It didn't fly in.
It crashed in.
This biochemical behemoth, over 120 meters long, squeezed arrogantly through the gap between two skyscrapers. Reinforced concrete crumbled like biscuit crumbs against its body, and massive prefabricated slabs fell from the height of forty or fifty stories, exploding into clouds of grey mushroom-like dust upon hitting the ground.
It scraped off an entire layer of the facades of both buildings, skin and bone.
Rebar twisted, glass shattered, and concrete fragments poured down like torrential rain.
Three miniature armor-piercing rounds left by Tony were still embedded in its head armor. The warheads had only sunk in less than two centimeters, failing to even penetrate the outermost biomass shell of the armor. Like three toothpicks stuck in rhino hide, they served no practical purpose other than making this biochemical Beast even more irritable.
Iron Man streaked past at high speed beneath the Leviathan.
The tail flame was scorching, nearly singeing Arthur's hair. The wind pressure caught the hem of his grey loungewear, making it flap loudly.
"It's coming! I suggest you quickly—"
"Move aside."
Arthur didn't let him finish. His voice wasn't loud, and his tone didn't even carry a sense of urgency. It was just like asking a passerby to step aside in a vegetable market.
Tony was stunned.
His thrusters instinctively veered, and he whistled past three meters above Arthur's head, his tail flame drawing an arc.
In the distance, Captain America and Black Widow were retreating frantically.
Steve looked back as he ran, shield held before him, his muscles tensed to the limit. Natasha was even more decisive; she didn't even look back, grabbing a fire hose and flipping directly through a second-story window.
Hulk jumped out from the ruins.
He smashed a two-meter-deep crater into the asphalt where he landed. His green fists clenched, knuckles as large as small bowling balls, a Beast-like low growl emitting from his chest.
Everyone was running.
Everyone was hiding.
Everyone was retreating.
Except for Arthur.
He stood right in the middle of Central Avenue. He raised his hand to put away his staff, which turned into a wisp of purple light and vanished into his palm. Then he rolled his wrists, left and right, his joints making crisp cracking sounds. His movements were as casual as someone who had just woken up and was preparing to stretch.
The Leviathan Beast dived down.
Its hundred-ton body tore through the air, the resulting pressure wave forming a conical sonic boom cloud behind it. That wasn't flying; that was falling. It was a small mountain of steel smashing toward the ground. Combined with the acceleration of gravity and the full-power blast of its own thrusters, the kinetic energy of this strike was enough to level a thirty-story building along with its foundation.
The behemoth's shadow loomed over the entire street.
The sunlight was completely cut off.
Central Avenue fell into a brief darkness.
"He's crazy!"
Steve's voice cracked. He instinctively wanted to rush back but was held firmly by the arm by Natasha beside him.
"It's too late!" Black Widow's nails dug into the seams of Captain America's uniform.
She had seen too many people die.
But she had never seen anyone choose to stand still in the face of a Leviathan's diving strike.
Arthur raised his right hand.
Palm facing up.
Fingers slightly spread.
The next instant—deep purple arcane energy seeped from his every pore. It wasn't a gush, but a seepage. Like groundwater through rock layers, it was slow, heavy, and unstoppable. The energy condensed on the surface of his body, layer upon layer, its density so great that the patterns were almost visible to the naked eye. Those lines were like inscriptions from some ancient civilization, flowing slowly within the purple light.
Mana Shield.
Max level form.
Collision.
"BOOM—!!!"
The sound arrived even slower than the shockwave.
First came the light.
A sphere of pure white light exploded at the point of Impact, its brightness comparable to a small nuclear blast; all surveillance cameras facing this direction were simultaneously overexposed and burned out.
Then came the shockwave.
Spreading in a ring from the point of Impact.
The pavement of the entire street was flipped up from the middle as if by an invisible giant hand, a wave of asphalt, gravel, and soil surging to both sides. Water mains and gas pipes beneath the road burst simultaneously, water columns and flames erupting alternately from the cracks.
All the remaining glass on both sides—this time, it was completely shattered.
Not just cracked.
It was directly vibrated into powder.
The four traffic light poles at the intersection were twisted into spirals like dough twists. An overturned taxi smashed into a fire hydrant, sending a water column soaring into the sky.
Dust, gravel, and rebar fragments mixed with water mist to form a wall of smoke dozens of meters high, swallowing the entire point of Impact.
Nothing could be seen.
Tony hovered in mid-air, his face twitching behind the faceplate.
His lips moved, his voice softer than he had expected.
"Jarvis... is he dead?"
"Scanning, sir. Please wait."
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
A voice came from within the smoke.
Neither rushed nor slow, it was flat to the point of being almost indifferent.
"Is that all the strength you have?"
Tony's mouth fell open.
He didn't close it.
He even forgot to blink. The holographic interface inside the faceplate flickered before his eyes, but his attention was entirely drawn away by that voice.
A gale poured in from the east, sweeping through the street with smoke and debris. The dozens-of-meters-high grey curtain was sliced down the middle as if by giant scissors, the smoke billowing back to both sides.
The image revealed itself bit by bit.
First, the ground—the asphalt pavement had sunken more than half a meter, with spiderweb-like cracks extending dozens of meters in all directions.
Then, a pair of cloth shoes. Grey, so ordinary they couldn't be more ordinary, the soles even stained with glass shards he had stepped on earlier.
Further up—grey loungewear, hanging loosely on his body.
Further up—a hand.
A human, well-defined right hand.
The palm was pressed against the Leviathan's nasal armor.
Quite literally.
A single palm held back a hundred-ton alien biochemical weapon.
The Leviathan's massive head stopped less than two meters from the ground, its entire forward kinetic energy completely neutralized by a single palm. The deep purple Mana Shield enveloped Arthur's body, perfectly intact.
Not even a single crack.
The back half of the behemoth's body was still frantically pushing forward due to inertia. Its 120-meter-long body arched up, looking like a snake whose head had been pinned from the air, contorted into a twisted curve. The armor plates on its back collided under the pressure, producing a piercing sound like metal tearing.
But while the ground beneath Arthur's feet was shattering...
He himself remained motionless.
Helicarrier Command Center.
Everyone stared at the large screen.
No one spoke. No one breathed. No one moved.
The tablet in Agent Hill's hand slipped, hitting the floor with a snap, the screen shattering. She didn't pick it up.
Fury's fingers gripped the metal antenna of the walkie-talkie.
Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, he bent, folded, and snapped that antenna.
The light sound of metal snapping was exceptionally clear in the dead silence of the command center.
His one eye stared fixedly at the screen. His lips were pressed into a tight line, and the veins at his temples were throbbing.
On the large screen, the Asian youth in grey loungewear was pressing down on a Leviathan's head with one hand.
His posture was as casual as if he were pinning down a pet dog trying to break free.
The Leviathan began to struggle.
Its eight biochemical mechanical appendages clawed the ground frantically, its metal claws scraping series of sparks and ear-piercing noises against the cracked asphalt. The gravel kicked up by the appendages flew everywhere like shrapnel, clattering incessantly against the bodies of abandoned vehicles in the distance.
It tried to open its mouth.
Just as the massive lower jaw armor cracked open a slit, Arthur's left hand had already caught its upper jaw.
Two hands.
One above, one below.
He forcibly pried open and held the Leviathan's bloody maw.
It could neither bite down nor close its mouth.
A gust of foul-smelling hot air erupted from inside the Beast's mouth, its temperature at least several hundred degrees. Arthur tilted his head slightly and frowned.
"Bad breath."
He only said those two words.
His tone was like commenting on a neighbor's dog that hadn't brushed its teeth.
Hulk was stunned.
He stood on the ruins fifty meters away. His green fists were raised high, originally prepared to rush in and help. But he had held this pose for a full ten seconds.
He slowly lowered his fists.
The expression on his face fluctuated between anger and confusion. His large green eyes blinked twice. On that rugged face appeared an extremely rare emotion, one that almost didn't belong to a creature like Hulk—
Confusion.
"Hulk... not the strongest?"
When these words came from the Hulk's mouth, his voice was actually soft. It carried a sense of bewilderment that made one want to pat his shoulder.
No one answered him.
Because no one had the mind to.
Everyone's attention was pinned to the utterly absurd scene on Central Avenue—a youth in grey loungewear, prying open the mouth of a hundred-ton behemoth with both hands, his posture like he was checking the mouth of a disobedient large dog.
And in Arthur's mind—
Ding.
A crisp notification sound rang out.
Clearer than any explosion on the battlefield.
[Congratulations to the Host! Cumulative kill experience has reached the threshold!]
[Level Up: Lv. 39 → Lv. 40!]
[Unlocked Core High-Dimensional Burst Skill—Arcane Blast!]
A massive amount of mana flooded into his body at this moment.
It wasn't a trickle, but a bursting flood. The depleted mana pool was instantly filled, and the excess mana seeped from his pores, forming a visible purple Arcane Cyclone around his body.
The cyclone rotated. Accelerated. Expanded.
Gravel on the ground began to be swept up, hovering and rotating around him. The Leviathan's struggling suddenly stopped for a moment—it sensed danger, its biological instinct making its eight appendages exert force simultaneously, desperately trying to retreat.
But Arthur's hands didn't loosen.
In the depths of his eyes, a purple light lit up.
It wasn't a reflection or a glint.
It was a cold purple glow emanating from deep within his pupils that made one instinctively want to retreat.
Arthur rubbed his palm with his thumb—it was a habitual movement when he was thinking, exactly the same as how he usually rubbed the shaft of his staff.
The corners of his mouth curled up slightly.
"Just right."
"I'll try the new skill on you."
Chapter 56: Treating the Behemoth Like a Ball, the Dominance of Arcane Blast
Arcane Blast.
The core output skill of an Azeroth Mage.
No flashy special effects or pre-cast animations. No lengthy chanting rituals. No fancy magic circle deployments, elemental resonance, or celestial phenomena.
Just pure violence.
High-dimensional arcane energy collapsed rapidly in his palm, compressed, and compressed again. The energy density climbed exponentially, and the space within a three-centimeter radius of his palm began to visibly warp—light bent, air liquefied, and even dust was crushed into a thin grey film clinging to the surface of his palm.
Arthur released the Leviathan's upper jaw.
His right palm pushed forward, aimed at the behemoth's head.
His five fingers spread slightly.
The movement was as casual as pushing open his own bedroom door.
The first shot.
"Hum—"
A thick pillar of purple light blasted out from his palm.
There was no explosion. No fire. None of the Impact waves and mushroom clouds that Earthlings liked. There was only a dull spatial distortion roar that made one's internal organs resonate—like someone striking a giant bell right in the center of your eardrum, and the sound wasn't spreading outward, but collapsing inward.
The Leviathan's armored jaw shattered.
It didn't crack. It didn't dent. It didn't deform and break under external force.
It was directly disintegrated and collapsed at the material level.
That layer of biochemical armor, claimed to be able to withstand direct hits from armor-piercing rounds, was like a layer of wet cardboard in front of the purple light pillar. The molecular structure was forcibly dismantled, turning into a mass of metal dust splashing backward, drawing a fan-shaped silver-grey mist curtain in the air.
The behemoth let out a shrill scream.
The sound was sharp, high-pitched, and filled with intense fear. The sound waves shattered the remaining glass along half the street, and the fragments fell to the ground with a pitter-patter.
It instinctively wanted to retreat. Its eight appendages clawed backward frantically, its metal claws digging eight deep grooves into the asphalt road.
Arthur didn't give it a chance.
His right wrist turned slightly. Before the purple light in his palm had even dissipated, a new round of energy collapse had already begun.
The second shot.
The core mechanism of Arcane Blast—continuous casting, increasing damage.
This was the most insane output logic of an Azeroth Mage. It wasn't stacking or doubling; it was using the residual energy of the previous shot as the amplification base for the next in a way that violated the laws of thermodynamics.
The diameter of the second pillar of light doubled.
The purple torrent of destruction poured directly into the behemoth's open mouth, traveling down the esophagus, trachea, and every internal cavity that could be filled with energy.
"Bang!"
A muffled sound came from inside the behemoth. It wasn't from the outside—it exploded from within its body.
The Leviathan's body convulsed violently. The 120-meter-long massive body arched and twisted like an earthworm being electrocuted. A huge crack appeared in its back armor, extending from head to tail.
Purple energy light seeped out from the crack.
One by one, like lava gushing from a cracked crust.
The spine was broken.
It was shattered all the way from the mouth to the back. Over a hundred vertebrae shattered in sequence under the infusion of arcane energy, emitting a series of dense, crisp sounds, like someone quickly snapping a whole bunch of dry branches.
In the distance, inside Tony Stark's faceplate, Jarvis's monitoring interface was already filled with dense red warnings. The energy reading numbers were jumping frantically, refreshing the upper limit every second.
"Sir, the target's second energy release has exceeded all reference points in my existing database—"
"Shut up," Tony said.
His voice was very soft.
It wasn't anger. It was that instinctive reaction of the brain automatically shutting down redundant information input when facing something completely beyond the scope of understanding.
And Arthur's hand did not lower.
The purple light in his palm lit up for the third time.
This time, it wasn't a collapse. It was an implosion.
The air within a fifty-meter radius was instantly sucked dry. It wasn't airflow—it was space itself deforming under the pressure of mana, like a piece of crumpled fabric, with all the air molecules squeezed into the folds of the deformation.
The mana pool poured out frantically.
The road beneath his feet sank by more than a meter under pure magical pressure. The cracked asphalt patterns spread in all directions—ten meters, thirty meters, fifty meters, a hundred meters—the entire surface of Central Avenue was like a layer of ice hit by a stone, shattering into dense, irregular pieces with Arthur as the center.
The third shot.
The pillar of Arcane Blast was as thick as a water vat.
The color changed from purple to an almost pure white bright purple—that was the manifestation of the energy density breaking through a certain critical value, where even the light spectrum was compressed to the limit.
The light pillar pierced through the Leviathan's entire body.
Entering through the mouth. Traveling backward along the already destroyed internal organ channels. Blasting a three-meter diameter circular hole in the tail armor, it sprayed out from the tail along with a mixture of metal fragments and unknown bodily fluids.
The 120-meter-long alien biochemical behemoth.
Was turned into a hollow tube, pierced from head to tail by this strike.
Internal organs, bones, biochemical tissues—all vaporized. Only a layer of outer shell armor barely maintained the behemoth's silhouette, like a giant specimen that had been hollowed out of all its contents.
Then, the absolute knockback effect triggered.
The hundred-ton remains of the behemoth left the ground.
It didn't fly up—it was catapulted away. Like a tattered bag kicked by a giant, it tumbled and rushed into the high sky. Fifty meters, eighty meters, a hundred meters—
"Boom!!"
The remains smashed into an abandoned office building three blocks away. The building was snapped in half. The upper half collapsed with a roar under gravity, and the rising dust soared into the sky, obscuring the sky over half the block.
From the first shot to the third shot.
Four seconds.
Total silence.
This kind of quiet wasn't soundless. It was that sense of vacuum when all sounds are automatically blocked by the brain. The Chitauri soldiers still fighting on the battlefield stopped, and several hoverboards directly lost control and crashed into walls. The Avengers stopped. Those flying in the sky, those running on the ground, and those hiding behind ruins trembling in fear, all stopped.
All eyes converged on the young man in the deep pit in the middle of the street.
His grey loungewear fluttered loudly in the arcane cyclone. The void staff was stabbed diagonally into the shattered road, the runes on its shaft flickering. Purple energy residue still jumped at his fingertips, like five clusters of fireflies that refused to go out.
His hair was a bit messy from the air current.
Aside from that, he was unharmed.
Even his breathing hadn't changed much.
Tony Stark slowly opened his faceplate.
The moment the metal panel flipped up, the wind rushed in, drying the cold sweat all over his face. He opened his mouth. His lips moved twice, and his Adam's apple rolled up and down.
Ultimately, he only squeezed one sentence out of his throat.
"Jarvis."
"Yes, sir."
"What was the total energy output of those three shots just now?"
"The peak total output is approximately equal to three tactical nuclear warheads, sir."
Jarvis paused for 0.3 seconds. This AI butler had been running for so many years and had never had such a pause.
"The release medium was a pair of human palms not wearing any equipment."
Tony silently closed his faceplate.
He needed to be quiet for a while.
Or quiet for a long time.
Hulk squatted on the ruins. His large green eyes stared at the direction where the behemoth had fallen, watching for a long, long time.
The wind blew, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Then he silently sat down. His buttocks crushed half of a ruined wall, and broken bricks rolled everywhere. He didn't care. He just sat there. His two large green hands rested on his knees, like a silent green hill.
No one heard what he muttered.
But if someone leaned in to listen, they would find that the Hulk was repeatedly muttering the same sentence in a very small voice.
"Hulk can do it too... probably..."
Captain America stood at the distant intersection. The shield in his hand hung by his side, most of the paint of the star-spangled flag on the Vibranium shield's surface had fallen off, revealing the silver-white metal body underneath. His lips were tightly pursed. His gaze moved from Arthur to the ruins of the crashed building, then back.
That expression was very complex.
Like a veteran who had used cold weapons his whole life, seeing an atomic bomb explode on the battlefield for the first time. It wasn't fear. It was a sense of weightlessness after his cognitive framework was completely overturned.
Black Widow's voice came through the communicator. Her tone was steady and her wording professional, much calmer than before. But if one listened closely, they could find that her breathing frequency was twice as fast as usual.
"Captain, this person... what exactly is his background?"
Steve gripped his shield. He gripped it very tightly. His knuckles turned white inside his gloves.
"I don't know," he said, his voice dropping a notch, "but I'm glad—he's on our side."
Arthur pulled out his staff.
His left hand gripped the middle of the staff's body, his thumb habitually stroking a rune pattern on the staff. A slight vibration came from his fingertip—the staff was resonating. After the infusion from the Level 40 mana pool, this void staff seemed to have undergone some kind of change.
He ignored the dumbfounded gazes around him.
The system panel floated in front of his vision.
The Level 40 skill tree was now fully lit. The icons for the two core skills, Arcane Blast and Ice Barrier, were emitting a steady light, like two side-by-side purple-blue stars.
The mana pool had expanded by nearly double.
With his current total mana, the duration of a large-scale AOE like Blizzard could be at least tripled. The continuous casting limit of Arcane Blast had also increased from three shots to—
He glanced at the values and raised an eyebrow slightly.
It was enough.
"Not enough yet."
Arthur looked up at the wormhole.
That black hole tearing the sky was still expanding. The spatial cracks at the edges were spreading like spiderwebs, and more Chitauri flight formations were pouring out from the depths of the wormhole, dense like a disturbed hornet's nest. New rounds of explosions and screams came from the distant blocks.
The battle was far from over.
And as long as the wormhole wasn't closed, these bugs could never be finished.
Arthur's gaze pierced through layers of smoke, accurately locking onto a position.
The roof of Stark Tower.
A slender figure wearing gold and green armor was standing at the edge of the observation deck. His long black hair was blown by the wind, the Mind Stone scepter held upright in front of him, the blue gem emitting a faint cold light.
Loki.
The God of Mischief looked down from above, overlooking the entire New York battlefield.
He had obviously seen everything just now.
Because even across such a distance, Arthur could still clearly perceive—from that direction, an enmity and jealousy so intense it almost condensed into substance.
That emotion was thick and scalding, like boiling asphalt.
Envy.
It wasn't fear of power; it was jealousy over the fact that "someone is more dazzling than me."
Too typical. Arthur had seen too many of this kind—in Azeroth, in dungeons, in the arena. Clearly incompetent themselves, yet unable to stand others being capable.
Loki's lips were moving.
Arthur couldn't read lips. But his Arcane Mark faithfully captured the danger signal wrapped in that enmity—the energy of the Mind Stone was rising sharply. The light inside the blue gem changed from dim to piercing, like a focusing pupil.
The God of Mischief was about to act.
Not against the Avengers.
He was coming for him.
Arthur let out a sneer.
He pulled the staff from the ground, spun it half a turn in his hand, and with the tail forward and the head back, he shouldered it.
His posture was relaxed.
Like carrying a fishing rod and preparing to spend an afternoon by the river.
"What—"
He tilted his head and looked at the small gold and green dot on the roof of Stark Tower.
The curve of his mouth wasn't large, but the mockery in it was thick enough to overflow.
"This dead snake also wants to come and try to get some attention?"
Chapter 57: Facing a God? The Mage's Disdain
Loki made his move.
The words "Dead Snake" were still drifting through the smoke when the gold and green figure on the roof of Stark Tower swung the Mind Stone violently.
The tip of the staff sliced through the air.
It wasn't an attack.
It was a targeted teleportation.
Deep blue rifts tore open simultaneously on the roofs of six buildings surrounding Arthur.
Each crack resembled a wound in space carved by a blade, and the pungent smell of ozone and the metallic stench peculiar to the Chitauri mothership rushed toward him.
Twelve figures stepped out of the rifts.
Heavy armor.
Masks.
What they held in their hands wasn't the mass-produced junk rifles of the Chitauri—it was a 1.2-meter-long heavy energy sniper rifle.
Dark gold energy conduits were wrapped around the barrels, emitting a low hum as they charged.
Elite.
Every single one of them.
Half-kneeling.
Aiming.
Charging.
Twelve azure crosshairs, from six directions, locked on simultaneously.
Two aimed at the center of his forehead.
Two aimed at his heart.
Four sealed off the joints of his limbs.
The remaining four crossed to cover every possible evasion route.
Three hundred and sixty degrees, no blind spots, a kill formation.
"Snipers on the roof! Crossfire!"
Hawkeye's voice exploded in the communication channel.
His bowstring was pulled taut, his arrow tip switching frantically between the twelve targets, his pupils contracted to the limit.
He was the best marksman in the World.
But the twelve targets were scattered across six rooftops, separated by over three hundred meters.
Even if he fired an arrow every second, he could only take down three.
The remaining nine were enough to turn Arthur into a sieve.
"Retreat! Find cover!"
Captain America's voice was hoarse from screaming.
He smashed the head off a Chitauri with his shield and sprinted toward Arthur with all his might.
But the distance was too far.
There were at least eight seconds left.
Eight seconds.
Enough for those guns to fire three rounds.
Black Widow stared fixedly at the battlefield, her brain operating at the limit speed of her training.
Building cover?
No.
Crossfire meant that any single-sided cover was useless.
Rolling to dodge?
Useless.
The coverage area of the twelve beams far exceeded human limits.
The conclusion came within 0.3 seconds.
Unsolvable.
"Hum—!"
Twelve heavy sniper rifles fired simultaneously.
There was no gunshot.
Only the sharp hiss of air being torn apart by high-energy particles.
Twelve azure beams of light shot out from six directions, converging above Arthur's head into a deadly cone of light.
High-density plasma beams.
Over six thousand degrees.
Tony's Mark VII would have its armor melted through if it took one shot head-on.
Let alone twelve concentrated shots.
The whole scene felt like it had been throttled.
There wasn't even the sound of breathing in the communication channel.
—The beams were less than half a meter from his forehead.
Arthur didn't even lift his eyelids.
His left thumb traced the familiar rune patterns on the staff's shaft.
A violent resonance traveled through his fingertips; the staff was responding to him.
He flipped his wrist.
He slammed the void staff heavily onto the cracked asphalt ground beneath his feet.
"Thud."
It wasn't the sound of hitting the ground.
It was the sound of striking everyone's heart.
No chanting.
No gestures.
No flashy opening moves.
The tip of the staff exploded with a frost-white light so pure it was unbelievable.
Ice Barrier.
But not an ordinary Ice Barrier.
Full power infusion from a level 40 mana pool.
Amplified by the staff's resonance.
The temperature released by this strike—approached absolute zero.
A two-hundred-meter radius.
Frost barrier, covering the entire area.
The cold air surged outward, centered on the point where the staff touched the ground.
It wasn't spreading; it was crushing.
Puddles on the road instantly froze into white mirrors, gravel was covered in a thick layer of frost, and the water vapor in the air turned directly into fine ice crystals, blinding people in the sunlight.
The explosions were gone.
The engine sounds were gone.
Even the wind had stopped.
The entire battlefield looked as if someone had hit pause.
And then—
Everyone saw a scene they would never forget in their entire lives.
Twelve plasma beams capable of melting through armor.
Had stopped.
No explosions.
No deflection.
They weren't bounced off by shields, nor were they distorted by force fields.
They simply, cleanly—"stopped."
The momentum of the photons was locked.
The flow of energy was frozen.
The twelve azure beams of light solidified less than two meters above Arthur's head, turning into twelve crystal-clear ice spikes.
Blue energy patterns remained on their surfaces, like lightning trapped in amber.
Suspended in mid-air.
Motionless.
The communication channel was dead for a full three seconds.
"He... froze the energy beams?"
Hawkeye's voice was as dry as chewing sand.
He rubbed his eyes hard, suspecting he was hallucinating.
No one answered him.
Because those twelve elite snipers, along with their fingers on the triggers, their kneeling postures, and the expressions beneath their masks that hadn't even had time to change—had all turned into ice sculptures emitting white mist.
As the wind blew.
"Crackle—pop—"
The sound of shattering came one after another from the six rooftops.
Twelve ice sculptures simultaneously crumbled into ice shards filling the sky.
Like a late rain of ice crystals, falling silently to the ground.
On the roof of Stark Tower.
The grimace on Loki's face froze.
Not frozen by ice.
But by fear.
He was a descendant of the Frost Giant.
An abandoned child of Jotunheim.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the creatures in this Universe couldn't compare to him in their understanding of "ice."
The ice of the Frost Giant could freeze steel, freeze flesh and blood, and freeze magma.
But that was freezing matter.
What the mortal below did—
Was to freeze energy.
He froze the movement of photons.
He froze the flow of plasma.
He froze the energy transfer process allowed by the laws of physics themselves.
This wasn't elemental magic.
This was a crushing at the level of rules.
Loki's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
His hand gripping the Mind Stone trembled.
He tried desperately to control it, but his fingers completely disobeyed him.
Arthur casually brushed off the ice shards falling on his shoulder.
He lazily spun the staff between his fingers and tapped the end of the staff against his shoulder.
His gaze pierced through layers of smoke, pinning itself on Loki.
No relief from surviving a disaster.
No panting from a narrow escape.
Just one kind of look.
The look one gives a stray dog on the side of the road.
"In Asgard—"
Arthur spoke.
His voice wasn't loud.
But the lingering power of the frost barrier remained, and the cold air became a natural amplifier, sending every word clearly into Loki's ears.
"You are just an abandoned baby that was picked up."
Loki's face paled a shade.
"The position your adoptive father gave you, from beginning to end—"
Arthur paused, the corner of his mouth curling slightly.
"Was just to be a background board for the golden-haired fool."
It paled three more shades.
Loki's cheekbones began to twitch.
His knuckles gripping the staff cracked, as if he wanted to crush something.
His lips moved several times, but he couldn't spit out a single word.
Because every sentence stepped on his deepest wounds.
Accurate as if he had read his life script in advance.
"Stole a few old books, learned a few parlor tricks—"
Arthur's tone was airy, as if he were chatting about the nice weather today.
"And you dare to call yourself a mage?"
After speaking, he smiled.
It wasn't an angry smile, nor was it a hostile smile.
It was pure, bone-deep disdain.
A max-level mage seeing a newbie-village mob baring its fangs before him.
That was the feeling.
"You aren't even worthy of carrying my shoes."
In the communication channel, Tony whistled.
"Hey, magic Bro, nice work!"
The thrusters roared as he swept through the high altitude.
Behind the Mark VII mask, Tony Stark showed his first genuine smile of the day.
"Get on! I'll carry you to teach that dead snake a lesson!"
"Your piece-of-junk tin can is too slow."
Before Arthur finished speaking, he pushed his staff forward, and the tip of the staff submerged into the void.
Like a pebble thrown into water, space rippled silently.
The next instant.
Arthur's entire body turned into a blue afterimage.
Blink.
The core skill of spatial magic.
Unlocked at level 40, the enhanced version—continuous casting, zero cooldown.
He appeared on the outer wall of the fifteenth floor.
His toes stepped on a protruding piece of broken glass, and his body paused in mid-air for less than 0.2 seconds.
As soon as his foot left, he held the staff in his left hand with an underhand grip, the tip of the staff aimed at a Chitauri aircraft chasing him from behind.
Arcane energy compressed, folded, and detonated at the tip of the staff.
Arcane Explosion.
"Boom!"
The aircraft snapped in half right down the middle.
The pilot was torn into pieces by the airwave before they could even scream.
The fireball dragged black smoke as it plummeted to the ground.
Arthur used the thrust of the explosion to soar higher again.
Second Blink.
Thirty-eighth floor.
His toes precisely stepped on a falling piece of concrete.
He pushed off, rotated his body one hundred and eighty degrees, and swept the staff horizontally.
Arcane Explosion.
Two aircraft trying to sandwich him exploded into fireballs simultaneously.
Debris rained down like a meteor shower.
Third Blink.
Breaking through to the fiftieth floor directly.
Against gravity, tearing through the sky.
Three Blinks.
Three Arcane Explosions.
Three breaths.
Arthur stepped on the wreckage of alien mobs and burning debris, literally walking a path to the sky in mid-air.
The landing point of every step was precise to the millimeter, and the thrust of every explosion was calculated to two decimal places.
Who said mages have short legs?
On the ground, Captain America looked up at the blue arc of light streaking across the building's outer wall.
His shield almost slipped from his hand.
Tony's Mark VII had just shifted into second gear acceleration when he saw a blue light "whoosh" past him on the right.
"..."
"Jarvis, take a note."
Iron Man's voice was complex.
Three parts shocked, three parts unconvinced, four parts itching for a try.
"After we get back, quadruple the thruster power."
He paused for a second.
"No, eight times."
"Snap."
His cloth shoes stepped onto the marble floor of the viewing platform.
Crisp.
Like placing a go piece.
Arthur stood five meters directly in front of Loki.
Behind him was the slowly falling firelight and debris in mid-air, like a background board custom-made for him.
He didn't even catch his breath.
Loki subconsciously took half a step back.
His heel knocked against the metal railing at the edge of the platform, with a "thud."
The God of Mischief's Adam's apple bobbed.
But madness almost instantly overwhelmed his fear.
The corner of his mouth pulled into a sinister, twisted arc, and the light of the blue gem on the Mind Stone surged violently.
"Your magic... is indeed a bit interesting."
Loki's voice was extremely low, carrying a hint of ruthlessness.
"But in front of the Mind Stone—"
He didn't finish.
Because he had already acted.
No wind-up.
No charging.
It was precisely timed to the 0.1-second gap after Arthurlanded, his heels touching the ground, his center of gravity not yet fully stabilized.
The tip of the staff stabbed directly at his heart.
"Ding."
A crisp sound of metal colliding.
The moment the tip of the staff pressed against Arthur's chest, a deep blue light erupted from inside the Mind Stone.
The nauseatingly thick mental erosion force was like ten million insects, frantically flooding toward Arthur's brain.
Loki leaned in half a step.
Close enough to see his own twisted reflection in Arthur's pupils.
His mouth widened.
Widened to the limit.
He could almost see his back molars.
"Now—"
his tone was like pronouncing a death sentence, "you are my dog."
Arthur didn't dodge.
From the moment the staff touched his chest until now, he hadn't even blinked.
His gaze dropped, scanning the frantically flashing deep blue gem on the tip of the staff.
There was no fear in his eyes.
No anger.
Only a kind of playfulness of having seen through all the cards.
The Arcane Mark on his left palm transmitted a warm touch, like a loyal old hound rubbing against its Master's palm.
The mental barrier of a level 40 max-level mage stood firmly in his mind.
That barrier was solid, thick, and airtight—just like the Sighing Wall of Azeroth.
The mental erosion force released by the Mind Stonecollided with the barrier.
Like water hitting a dam.
No cracks.
Not even a splash was made.
Using a mental attack against a mage with maxed-out mental stats?
Arthur sneered in his heart.
Who gave you the courage?
He slowly raised his right hand.
His five fingers closed one by one.
He gripped the Mind Stone pressed against his chest tightly.
Gripped very tightly.
So tightly that his knuckles turned white.
Chapter 58: The Humiliated God of Mischief
The tip of the scepter pressed against Arthur's chest.
It didn't penetrate.
A thin film of Mana Shield automatically surfaced on his skin, firmly blocking the metal tip of the staff.
But the Mind Stone didn't rely on physical penetration—its power operated on a conceptual level. It only needed contact for the control link to inject itself into the target's consciousness like a virus.
A blue light surged from the gem.
It flowed down the shaft of the scepter like a glowing snake, frantically burrowing into Arthur's body the moment it touched his chest.
Loki laughed.
The laughter echoed across the empty rooftop platform, arrogant, unrestrained, and overbearing.
He had seen too many powerful beings turn into puppets before the Mind Stone—Hawkeye, Dr. Selvig, and countless mortals who thought they had iron wills.
There were no exceptions.
"Kneel before me!"
The ghostly blue light of the gem reflected in Loki's green eyes, his tone sounding like he was handing out a job offer to a subordinate.
"A mage as powerful as you serving as my vanguard—it's simply perfect."
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Arthur stood there.
He just stood there.
His posture didn't change. His expression didn't change. His breathing rate didn't change.
His eyes—they were still those clean, black pupils.
They didn't turn blue.
They didn't turn cloudy.
The size of his pupils didn't even fluctuate in the slightest.
Loki's laughter caught in his throat as if someone had grabbed him by the neck.
Arthur looked down.
He glanced at the scepter poking his chest.
Then he looked at Loki.
That look—
Hawkeye had been silent on the comms channel the whole time.
He had been controlled by the Mind Stone.
He knew that feeling all too well. His self being hollowed out bit by bit, his soul gripped in someone else's fist, his consciousness awake but unable to control his body—that fear and suffocation still tortured him in his nightmares.
So when the image of the scepter pressing against Arthur's chest reached his retinas through the remote lens, his blood ran cold instantly.
There was no time to shout. No time to warn him.
Then he saw Arthur's eyes.
It wasn't resistance.
It wasn't a struggle.
It was that kind of... slight irritation you feel when you look down and see your shoelaces are untied while waiting for a long red light.
Hawkeye's mouth opened, then closed again.
*Ding.*
Arthur extended his index finger.
He flicked the Mind Stone on the scepter.
His fingernail tapped the surface of the gem with a crisp, loud sound.
Like flicking a glass marble.
"Holding the most top-tier Infinity Stones in the Universe—"
Arthur's voice was as flat as a pool of stagnant water.
"And all you can do is poke people with a stick like a street thug?"
Loki's pupils shrank to pinpricks.
He gritted his teeth and violently shoved the scepter forward again. The tip scraped against the chest shield, making a piercing metal-on-metal screech. The blue light exploded to its limit, and the metal shaft of the scepter became hot enough to fry an egg.
"Impossible—Submit! Submit to me!"
He poked again.
"Why isn't it working!"
And again.
"Your mental barrier—a mortal couldn't possibly have this kind of—"
Iron Man's voice suddenly cut into the comms channel: "Is he... poking him with a stick?"
A one-second pause.
"Jarvis, record this for me. Loki definitely won't want anyone to see this later."
In Arthur's mind, a line of text popped up on the system panel:
**[Low-dimensional mental intrusion detected.]**
**[Source of intrusion: Mind Stone (Infinity Stonesseries).]**
**[Intrusion intensity rating: D-.]**
**[Max-level Arcane Mark has automatically crushed the intrusion link and executed the rebound protocol.]**
**[Note: This intrusion source does not have the authority to access the host's soul anchor points. Suggestion: Host should ignore it.]**
D-minus.
He didn't even get a full D.
Arthur really almost lost his composure.
Was the Mind Stone top-tier in the Marvel Universe? Yes. One of the six Infinity Stones, a conceptual-level mental manipulation artifact.
But the problem was—the dimensional level it manipulated and the soul laws of Azeroth were simply not in the same system.
To put it in the most straightforward terms:
The Mind Stone was a skeleton key. In the Marvel Universe, it could open almost any mental lock.
But Arthur's soul wasn't secured with a lock.
It was a door from another Universe.
When you tried to jam a key into it—you couldn't even find the keyhole.
Unlock what?
Enough. He'd played enough.
Arthur's right hand shot out like lightning, his five fingers firmly gripping Loki's wrist that was holding the scepter.
The speed was so fast that Loki's neural reflexes didn't even have time to transmit a signal.
Arcane power poured into his five fingertips. Like five steel pincers, they tightened.
*Crack.*
The sound of bone shattering.
Loki's scream split the sound of the wind on the rooftop.
His Frost Giant lineage gave him skeletal hardness far exceeding that of an Earthling—but under the crushing force of arcane power, that hardness was no different from a biscuit.
The wrist bones shattered.
The scepter slipped from his grip-less palm and hit the marble floor with a *clack*, but the sound was completely drowned out by Loki's agonizing howl.
"Playing with mind control?"
Arthur didn't let go. The shattered bones poked out under the skin, and Loki's entire arm was twitching uncontrollably.
"Let me show you—"
"What a real mental attack looks like."
He raised his left hand.
No staff needed. No magic circle needed.
He didn't even need to touch him.
His left hand made a hollow grip, pushing toward Loki's forehead from a distance.
Arcane Wisdom—Overload Punishment Mode.
The essence of this thing wasn't an attack spell. The underlying logic of Arcane Wisdom was "knowledge infusion"—its normal use was to accelerate learning and enhance memory.
But what if the amount of information poured in exceeded the target's brain capacity?
Loki's body instantly stiffened like an iron plate.
It was as if an invisible steel pillar had pierced through him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.
Every muscle in his body tensed to the limit simultaneously, his pupils exploded, and his mouth opened wide enough to fit a fist, yet not a single sound could come out.
A torrent of information poured into his brain.
Not images. Not words. Not any form of information Lokicould understand.
It was pure, naked, uncompressed—knowledge.
Knowledge of Azeroth.
The cosmic laws of the Titan's creation. The void whispers of the Old Gods. The destructive trajectory of the Burning Legion sweeping across countless Worlds. The World Treefrom sprout to decay. The underlying code of arcane energy flow. The branching and collapsing of timelines.
Twenty-seven ways to deconstruct a soul.
Every single piece was complete and systematic. It couldn't be skipped, fast-forwarded, or compressed.
It wasn't a "transmission."
It was a forced insertion.
A lifespan of fifteen hundred years had given Loki a brain capacity far exceeding that of a mortal. In Asgard, he was a recognized sage. He was fluent in dozens of languages and knew the underlying theories of all magic schools in the Nine Realms.
But the amount of knowledge in the Nine Realms—
Compared to Azeroth?
That was an entire other Universe.
Golden blood poured from Loki's nostrils.
Then his ears.
Then the corners of his mouth.
Then his eye sockets.
Golden blood flowed from all seven orifices.
A throat-tearing scream finally squeezed out from deep within him.
The scepter fell. His kneecaps hit the marble floor with a dull *thud*.
The Prince of Asgard.
The outcast of Jotunheim.
The self-proclaimed conqueror of Earth.
He knelt.
He knelt before a human wearing grey loungewear.
He clutched his head with both hands, his ten fingers digging deep into his black hair, his knuckles so white it looked like the bone was about to poke through the skin. He curled into a ball, like a snake with a broken spine.
Arthur let go of his wrist.
He looked down from above.
"Do you feel it?"
His voice was as light as if he were commenting on the nice weather.
"The feeling of being crushed."
Loki's screams turned into intermittent gasps. Golden blood mixed with snot smeared his face, his green eyes were bloodshot, and his pupils were out of focus—inside was a blank void left over from the overload.
But in that blank void, something was slowly crawling up.
It wasn't fear.
It was something more dangerous than fear.
Unwillingness.
Pure, intense, red-eyed unwillingness.
Loki's right hand was trembling.
His shattered wrist bone made every movement feel like someone was dragging a file back and forth in the gaps of his bones. But he still moved.
His trembling fingers reached into a hidden compartment inside his armor.
He touched a golden sphere the size of a fist.
The surface was covered in runes.
A High-level artifact from the Royal Palace of Asgard—the All-Fathers Vault.
Loki had stolen it before invading Earth. He had been carrying this trump card, reluctant to use it. Saving it for the very end.
But now—
The shattered wrist. The brain stuffed to the point of exploding. The fragmented dignity.
He had no rationality left.
Only one thought remained.
To win.
At any cost.
The golden sphere was crushed in his palm.
Space distorted. The temperature plummeted.
The marble floor tiles on the roof cracked with a *pop pop pop*, and white frost surged from the cracks. The temperature dropped to minus forty degrees within three seconds.
Three shadows solidified from the distorted void.
Ten meters tall.
Frost Giants.
Not illusions—they were Physical Phantoms. Magical creations with real physical mass. Each was wrapped in a layer of blue-black ice crystal armor, clutching a Frost Battle-axe larger than a van.
Three giant shadows.
Three battle-axes.
Raised above their heads simultaneously.
Swung down simultaneously.
Target—
The crown of Arthur's head.
Chapter 59: False Mages and True magic
Three frost battle-axes swung down.
The axe blades tore through the air, emitting a piercing, ear-splitting howl. Frozen water vapor swirled into white cyclones on both sides of the edges, looking like two writhing ice snakes.
Three directions. Three arcs. The point of convergence was precise to the centimeter.
Loki knelt on the ground, bleeding from his seven facial orifices, his brain turned to mush—but the attack formation he had set up still had no flaws.
This was the instinct of an Asgardian prince. Even if his consciousness had shattered into dregs, his combat intuition was still etched into his bones.
The viewing platform began to crack under the weight of the three giants. The reinforced concrete support structure let out a dull groan, like an old ox with a broken back.
Below the building.
Tony was desperately flying upward.
The thrusters were at full power, but the Asgardian defense barrier Loki had set up on the roof hadn't dissipated yet. A layer of green light film lay across mid-air, blocking him firmly outside.
His fist slammed into it.
Vibranium alloy clashed head-on with the magic ward, sparks flying into his face, but only a shallow dent was left on the barrier.
"Damn it—"
Captain America looked up at the roof from the ground, his fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.
He could do nothing.
The roof.
Loki knelt on the ground, his whole body shaking like a sieve. Golden blood flowed out of his ears, dripping down his jaw onto his armor.
But a trace of a smile hung on his twisted lips.
He was mad. Completely mad.
"This is... a high-level physical illusion from the All-Fathers Vault..." His voice was as raspy as a broken bellows, every word carrying blood foam, "Each strike... can cleave mountains..."
He raised a pair of bloodshot eyes and stared straight at Arthur.
"You mortal mage—you're dead."
The three battle-axes were less than four meters from the top of Arthur's head.
Three meters.
Two meters.
Arthur stood in place.
He didn't open a shield. He didn't raise his staff. He didn't even move his feet.
He sighed.
That sigh was so light it was almost scattered by the wind.
It was like at the end of a term, when the dean flips open the exam paper of the student in last place and sees that even the first question is wrong—that kind of misplaced helplessness welling up from the bottom of one's heart.
"Asgard's magic system—"
He raised his right hand.
His index finger pointed up at the largest Frost Giant in the center.
The movement was as casual as a teacher calling on a distracted student in class.
"Is so primitive it makes one weep."
Counterspell.
No light effects.
No sound.
No visible release of energy.
Arthur just "pointed" with his index finger.
But on the level of mana invisible to ordinary people—an extremely thin arcane thread shot out from his fingertip, precisely piercing the chest of the Frost Giant in the center.
There was a dim, continuously pulsing green dot of light there.
The mana transmission node between Loki and the physical illusion.
All magical constructs have these things.
Whether it's a high-level illusion of Asgard, a spatial mirror of Kamar-Taj, or a summon from any random dimension, they are all the same.
In essence, they are all "projections" maintained by the caster using their own mana.
No matter how realistic the projection is, it's still a projection.
Unplug the power, and nothing remains on the screen.
How simple is this logic?
It's taught in the very first lesson for Azeroth mage apprentices.
The first lesson.
The arcane thread bored into the node. No violent demolition, no forced crushing.
Just a gentle twist.
Like snapping a candle wick.
"Pop."
A very light, muffled sound.
The Frost Giant in the center—ten meters tall, clad in blue-black ice crystal armor, holding a battle-axe larger than a van—froze in mid-air.
Zero point three seconds.
Then its outline began to blur.
The edges of the ice crystal armor were the first to turn transparent, like ice cubes dropped into hot water. The blue-black physical mass fell off layer by layer, turning into water vapor and drifting upward. The massive battle-axe went from solid to translucent, then into a cloud of white mist, and dissipated.
From foot to head.
From outside to inside.
The whole process was frighteningly quiet. No explosion. No shattering. None of the expected noise of violent disintegration.
It was like popping a soap bubble.
The second one.
"Pop."
The third one.
"Pop."
Arthur's index finger tapped twice in succession. Each interval was less than half a second. Two arcane threads shot out simultaneously, precisely finding the mana nodes in the chests of the remaining two giants.
Cut off at the same time.
Three ten-meter-tall Frost Giants.
High-level physical illusions of the All-Fathers Vault.
Loki's final trump card.
Three "pops."
Gone.
From appearance to disappearance, it took less than two seconds.
The battle-axes hit nothing. The frost froze nothing. The destructive power claimed to "cleave mountains" didn't even touch a single floor tile.
Only a bit of water vapor remained.
Slowly drying up in the afternoon sun.
The roof fell silent.
Loki's smile froze on his face.
It wasn't the kind of "frozen" caused by ice—it was a muscle spasm. After the brain sent the command to "smile," before the consciousness could switch to another emotion, the facial muscles got stuck halfway.
The corners of the mouth were upturned.
The eyes were empty.
The mana that was forcibly cut off inside him didn't dissipate. After losing its transmission target, that mana surged back along the original channels—just like a water pipe being blocked, the water pressure instantly backwashing the pump.
Mana Backlash.
"Pfft—"
A mouthful of golden blood sprayed out.
It wasn't vomited—it was forcibly "squeezed" out by the internal pressure. The blood was mixed with fine golden specks of light, which were mana fragments. The backlash didn't just injure the physical body; even the mana circuits themselves were blasted with cracks.
Loki's entire body went limp.
Changing from a kneeling posture to being on all fours.
Golden blood dripped onto the white marble floor tiles.
One drop. Two drops. Merging into a small puddle.
His arms were shaking. It wasn't psychological shaking—it was the physiological tremor of muscles completely out of control.
A pair of cloth shoes stepped into his field of vision.
Clean cloth shoes. The soles hadn't even picked up much dust.
Then that foot was raised.
Not heavy.
Not light.
It kicked him in the back of the knee.
"Thud."
The kneeling posture that was already on the verge of falling apart completely collapsed. Both knees slammed onto the floor tiles, and a piercing pain came from his kneecaps.
But compared to the remnants of knowledge still churning in his brain, compared to the burning pain of the Mana Backlash scorching his circuits—
This bit of pain didn't even rank.
Loki knelt on the ground.
Forced to kneel by a kick.
He looked up.
He saw Arthur's face.
There was no anger on that face. No triumph. Not even a trace of the pleasure of "finally winning."
There was only evaluation.
A calm, objective, and even somewhat regretful evaluation.
Like an old master who had repaired clocks his whole life, being handed an electronic watch stuck together with glue by a trembling apprentice for appraisal.
What could he say?
"Illusion," Arthur spoke.
Just one word.
The void staff condensed in his right hand again. The butt pointing to the sky, the head pointing down.
He slowly pressed the head of the staff against Loki's brow.
The moment it touched, Loki felt a warm energy seep into his skin from that contact point. It carried a certain ancient, rhythmic pulse.
It wasn't an attack.
It was ten thousand times more terrifying than an attack.
It was a power that was rewriting the underlying code of his body.
From the genetic level.
From the level of existence.
From the level of the definition of "What is Loki" itself.
Transformation Magic.
Not that low-level illusion set from Asgard that fooled people with appearances.
It was Azeroth's Advanced Polymorphism—directly rewriting the target's species information, turning an intelligent being into something else from a conceptual level.
Loki felt it.
His cells were in turmoil.
The genetic information in every cell nucleus was being "erased" line by line by that warm power, and then new content was being rewritten.
Fear came.
True fear.
Not the fear of being beaten down. Not the fear of how much suffering he had endured.
It was the fear of "I am about to no longer be me."
This fear was a hundred times deeper than death.
If he died, at least it was "Loki" who died.
To be rewritten—then not even "Loki" would remain.
"I am a god!"
Loki's voice completely changed its tone. It was as sharp as scraping glass, as shattered as stepping on shards. Even his voice was trembling, words popping out one by one.
"You dare—you cannot—I am—"
The purple-red light at the tip of the staff surged.
At this very moment—
At the edge of the roof, the sound of hurried footsteps and the roar of engines rang out simultaneously.
The defense barrier Loki had set up finally shattered under the impact of his Mana Backlash.
Iron Man rushed in from the crack in the barrier. Captain America flipped onto the edge of the platform using an ejection device. Black Widow and Hawkeye followed closely behind, flipping onto the roof.
The four of them.
Stopped at the same time.
The scene they saw—
A young man in gray loungewear, holding a staff, with the head of the staff pressed against the brow of a kneeling person.
The one kneeling wore gold and green armor, his face covered in golden blood, his hands hanging limply at his sides.
The purple-red light from the staff's tip was swallowing his entire body.
Tony Stark opened his mouth behind his mask.
Jarvis had never seen his boss silent for this long in his life.
But the purple light had already completely submerged Loki.
Chapter 60: The God of Mischief turns into a sheep?!
The purple light dissipated.
It wasn't a slow fade. It was a "snap," extinguished cleanly and decisively.
The rooftop returned to the afternoon sunlight. Cracked marble floor tiles, golden bloodstains everywhere, and four Avengers rushing up with weapons raised.
Captain America's shield was held across his chest.
Tony's palm repulsor was charged to its limit, a warm yellow light overflowing from the discharge port.
Natasha pointed her twin pistols forward.
Hawkeye's arrowhead locked onto the spot where the purple light had vanished.
Four people. Four types of weapons. All aimed simultaneously at Arthur's feet—
Aimed at what?
Where was Loki?
Where was the Asgardian prince who, a second ago, was kneeling there in gold-and-green armor, with long black hair and a face covered in golden blood?
Only a small pile of green fabric remained on the floor tiles, as if it had been tossed there carelessly. The fabric was arching slightly. Something was struggling underneath.
Captain America's shield lowered slowly by three centimeters.
The fabric was lifted.
A sheep.
A medium-sized sheep with snow-white fleece and thick, curved horns was crawling out from under that pile of green cloak.
Tied around its neck was a small section of an Asgardian-style gold-and-green cape. Every stitch and thread carried the craftsmanship of the Nine Realms' top tailors, yet now it hung crookedly around the neck of a sheep.
Golden pupils.
Slit pupils.
Those were Loki's eyes.
Irises of green with golden flecks—unique, belonging to the outcast of Jotunheim, eyes recognized by all of Asgard.
Now, they were set into a furry sheep's face.
They were filled with rage, humiliation, fear, and disbelief.
"Baaa—!!"
The sheep opened its mouth.
That cry was sharp and irritable. It was the hysteria of a being who considered himself a god after being stripped of all dignity—squeezed out of a sheep's vocal cords, all the anger and sense of threat were shaved away.
Only absurdity remained.
Loki—no, this sheep—suddenly charged at Arthur. Its four hooves slipped on the cracked marble, it stumbled for two steps, lowered its head, and tried to headbutt Arthur's calf with its curved horns.
Arthur stepped aside half a pace.
The sheep missed and slammed its head into the bottom of the staff. With a "clank," the curved horns knocked against the metal staff and bounced back; the whole sheep sat down on its rump, hooves pawing the ground frantically, scraping white marks onto the marble.
"Baaa baaa baaa baaa!!!"
Captain America's shield lowered completely. His arms hung at his sides. His mouth was open, forgotten to be closed.
He had fought HYDRA. He had fought the Chitauri. He had been frozen in ice for seventy years. Since waking up, he had seen all sorts of ridiculous things.
But a god turning into a sheep—he had never seen that.
"Mr. Mage..."
Tony's voice came from behind the faceplate. He stuttered. Tony Stark, MIT's youngest graduate, the global arms industry's former top chatterbox—stuttered.
"That... he... mutated?"
Arthur put away his staff. The staff turned into purple light and merged into his palm.
He flicked his sleeves. His gray loungewear was clean, without a speck of dust.
Natasha watched this movement and suddenly understood the phrase: handling the monumental with ease.
"Transformation Magic."
Two words.
Then he added: "Don't touch him. Physical attacks will automatically dispel the spell."
He glanced down at "Loki-sheep," who was frantically pawing at his shoes, with an expressionless face.
"I don't want to hear him blabbering anymore."
Hulk climbed up from the edge of the roof. His massive green body crashed onto the platform, the impact shattering a few more floor tiles.
He saw the sheep.
His fist was raised halfway, suspended in mid-air. That fist was big enough to flatten the entire sheep, wool and bone, into a pancake with one hit.
But he didn't know if he should hit it.
Hulk crouched down. His massive green face leaned in close to the sheep. His breath made the sheep's wool quiver.
The sheep was startled by his face and stopped struggling for a second.
"...Hammer's little brother got small?"
Beside them, Natasha turned her head away. Her shoulders were shaking.
It wasn't fear.
She was holding back laughter.
Hawkeye leaned against the low wall. He didn't even pick up his bow when it dropped to the ground. He had been controlled by Loki with the Mind Stone. That memory was his nightmare.
Now, the nightmare had turned into a sheep wearing a green neckerchief, spinning in circles out of anger because it couldn't headbutt anyone.
Clint Barton felt that most of his psychological trauma had been healed.
Helicarrier. Command Center.
The 4K resolution large screen broadcasted the entire process live.
Nick Fury stood before the command console. In his hand, he held coffee he had just gotten from the water dispenser. It was scalding hot.
He had stared at the screen throughout. From the moment the purple light lit up until it dissipated. From Loki's disappearance to the sheep's appearance.
His hand had been very steady.
Until the first "Baaa" came from the screen.
His hand shook.
The entire cup of coffee spilled. A large dark water stain appeared on his crotch.
He didn't move. He didn't look down. He didn't curse.
His single eye stared at the sheep on the screen. The veins in his temples were throbbing.
Agent Hill stood to the side, opened her mouth, and then closed it again.
A red pop-up window appeared on the system terminal. Arthur's threat level assessment was being overwritten. The new rating—black frame. Colorless. Unassessable.
A line of text in the remarks column: "This target possesses the ability to forcibly rewrite the species of high-dimensional beings (Asgardians). Recommended response level: Confrontation not recommended."
Fury watched for five seconds.
Then he sat down.
He slowly sat back into the command chair. Not a slump, but a very calm seating after clearly realizing that "standing is useless."
Five kilometers away. Temporary safe zone.
Daisy crouched inside a scrapped communications vehicle, her laptop screen running the S.H.I.E.L.D. satellite live stream she had hacked into.
The image quality wasn't great. It was enough.
She saw the sheep.
She froze for two seconds. Then she laughed. The kind of laugh that bubbled up from her throat, growing louder as she tried to stifle it, until she finally bent over, her head hitting the keyboard.
"Heavens—"
She covered her mouth, her eyes curving into crescents. They were bright, and not because of the screen's light.
On the rooftop.
Arthur walked two steps toward the edge of the platform. He no longer looked at the sheep.
His gaze passed through the gaps between the buildings, casting toward the wormhole in the sky where Chitaurigrunts were still pouring out. The sounds of explosions and screams came from the distant streets.
The war wasn't over.
But the backbone was broken. With Loki losing control of the Mind Stone, the Chitauri's collective command network would degrade. Before long, the army would turn into stragglers.
It was just mopping-up work.
He was about to tell Tony to go close the wormhole—
The instruments inside Stark Tower erupted in a piercing buzz.
On the energy monitor screen next to the observation deck, the Tesseract's energy readings began to jump frantically. The numbers rolled so fast the screen flickered.
It wasn't a signal from the wormhole.
"Not good—" Tony's faceplate snapped shut. Jarvis's voice was so urgent he lost his usual elegance.
"Sir! The World Security Council has bypassed the President and issued a direct order—"
Tony's face behind the mask instantly lost all color.
"A nuclear missile. It has already been launched. Coordinates—"
He turned to Arthur.
"Manhattan. Dead center."
He paused for a beat.
"Thirty seconds."
The rooftop went silent.
Captain America's hand gripped the shield back to his chest, his nails sinking into his leather gloves.
The gun in Natasha's hand wavered—this was the first time her weapon had been unsteady since her debut.
Hawkeye's arrow slipped from the string.
Even the sheep stopped moving. The same expression was reflected in everyone's faces within its golden slit pupils.
Arthur turned around.
Looking at Tony.
Very calm.
"Yield?"
"—Enough to level half of Manhattan."
Twenty-seven seconds.
Arthur nodded.
He walked to the edge of the platform and looked up at the northeastern skyline.
A black dot was trailing an orange-red exhaust flame, tearing through the clouds at Mach 3.
Hurtling toward them.
Chapter 61: Nuclear Crisis
Twenty-four seconds.
Tony's faceplate snapped shut. The blue light from his thrusters surged, and his feet left the ground.
"I'll take it up."
Three words. No hesitation. No grand speech. He even skipped his signature quips.
Captain America's Adam's apple bobbed. Having crashed a bomber into the ice during World War II, he knew all too well what it meant to volunteer for such a task.
"Tony."
"Put Pepper on the line for me."
The Mark VII soared into the sky.
Nineteen seconds.
A hand reached out from behind, fingers gripping the cooling fins on the back of the armor's neck, wedged into the seam between two armor plates.
The thrusters whirred at full power in place. The blue light scorched a patch of floor tiles black.
It didn't budge an inch.
Tony was forcibly pulled back. His feet slammed back onto the roof, making him stumble.
"Let go!"
"Don't go to your death."
"You still owe me for my work. Who's going to pay if you're dead?"
Behind the mask, Tony turned his head.
"Have you lost your mind? That's a nuke!"
Fourteen seconds.
"Millions of people!" Captain America rushed forward, his voice cracking. "All of Manhattan!"
Arthur let go.
Five fingerprints were left on the armor's neck fins. They weren't deep, but considering the hardness of the Mark VII's alloy—Hawkeye saw the close-up on the comms channel and didn't dare think further.
He walked past Tony.
He walked past Captain America.
He walked past the sheep.
He walked to the very edge of the observation deck.
The wind rushed in, billowing his gray loungewear.
High in the sky, the black dot was now large enough for the naked eye to discern its silhouette. A conical warhead. An orange-red tail flame.
Nine seconds.
"A nuclear missile."
He repeated the word.
"Nuclear fission."
He paused for a beat.
"That's it?"
Those two words landed before the nuke did.
He raised his hands, palms to the sky, fingers spread wide.
The valves of his mana pool were thrown wide open.
This wasn't the controlled release used against the Chitauri, nor the concentrated burst used to blast the Leviathans. The plug at the bottom of the pool had been pulled completely.
Purple mana surged from his palms, spreading across his arms, shoulders, and chest until it enveloped his entire body. Then, it expanded outward.
Ten meters. Fifty meters. Past the edge of the roof.
The void staff materialized, hovering half a meter in front of him, its head spinning on its own toward the sky. Runes lit up in circles from bottom to top.
Arcane Barrier. Overload.
The purple light membrane surged.
Two hundred meters. One kilometer. A translucent dome covered Stark Tower, Grand Central Station, and Times Square.
Three kilometers.
The surface of the dome trembled slightly, shifting from translucent to a heavy, flowing solid shell. A deep purple shimmer flowed slowly across it.
It was sealed tight.
Three seconds.
The nuke arrived.
Inside the dome, everyone looked up.
The moment the warhead pierced the purple dome.
White.
It wasn't white light. It was as if color itself had been incinerated. The sky, the clouds, the silhouettes of the buildings—all were wiped into a single base color in that instant.
Nuclear explosion.
Arthur's system panel numbers flickered frantically. His mana pool's four-digit value plummeted. Every second, the mana consumed was twenty times what he had used to blast the Leviathans.
Million-degree temperatures slammed into the outer wall of the dome. The shockwave pushed outward at over a thousand meters per second. A fireball expanded, and a mushroom cloud formed. Lethal nuclear radiation spread in all directions.
Inside the dome.
The wind didn't stir.
Captain America's hand rested on his shield. The shield didn't vibrate.
Natasha sheathed her gun. It wasn't exactly relaxation; her body had made the judgment for her—in the face of something of this magnitude, a gun was just a piece of scrap metal.
Zero conduction.
Outside, Manhattan was being blasted. Inside, all was calm and quiet.
The fireball of the nuclear explosion was flattened into a ring of light against the outer wall of the dome. The firelight filtered through the purple barrier, turning everyone's shadows orange-purple.
Arthur stood at the edge of the platform, arms wide, the void staff hovering before him.
The light of the nuclear blast hit his face.
There was nothing on his face.
The World Security Council had tossed a nuke over, and he hadn't even changed his posture.
The mana pool continued to drop. Three digits. Two digits.
He didn't move.
The nuclear explosion lasted seven seconds.
The fireball dissipated. The mushroom cloud was torn apart by high-altitude air currents. The energy of the shockwave was exhausted.
The purple dome was perfectly intact.
Inside Tony's mask, Jarvis's voice carried a hint of hesitation uncharacteristic of an AI:
"Sir, the instantaneous peak strength of the barrier far exceeds the output limit of the nuclear missile."
He paused.
"Far exceeds."
Tony watched for three seconds behind his mask. The five fingerprints on the neck fins still felt faintly warm.
The force with which that hand had gripped him just now...
It wasn't to stop him. It was because he was in the way.
Outside the dome, the aftermath of the blast was channeled upward by the curved shell, flowing back through the still-open wormhole. A stream of high-temperature plasma surged into the portal, heading straight for the Chitauri Mothership on the other side.
On the other side of the wormhole, an orange-red light flared.
Then, the wormhole began to shrink.
The Chitauri's collective communication signal was cut. Every surviving alien soldier lost power simultaneously and fell to the ground.
The war was over.
Arthur lowered his hands.
Mana pool: single digits. The remaining mana sloshed at the bottom. The void staff fell from its hovering state back into his palm, its runes completely dark.
His left index finger twitched slightly. It was a tiny movement, unnoticeable once he pulled back into a fist.
The dome dissipated. The purple membrane began to peel away from the edges, turning into fine specks of light that drifted toward the sky.
The rooftop fell silent.
Even the sheep stopped bleating. Its golden vertical pupils reflected the sky full of purple specks.
Tony opened his faceplate. He looked at the dissipating remains of the mushroom cloud in the sky, then at Arthur.
He opened his mouth twice.
He reached out a hand.
"How much is your employment fee? I'm serious. Name a number, don't be polite."
He paused for a second.
"I'm only being polite because I'm afraid I can't afford it."
Arthur didn't take it.
Text began to flash on the system panel in front of his eyes.
[Warning: Violent oscillation of ultra-high dimensional energy! The Laws of space have been torn by the dual Impact of the nuclear shockwave and Tesseract energy!]
[Anomaly Detected: Dimensional coordinates from another Universe are forcibly embedding into this Universe. Energy Signature: Mutant gene.]
[dimensional wall rift expanding. Estimated stabilization time: Unpredictable.]
His hand tightened around the void staff again.
From a certain direction on the outskirts of New York, an extremely unfamiliar but uncontrollably powerful mental wave was seeping through the rift in the dimensional wall.
The frequency was ancient, gentle, and extremely restrained.
It was consciously suppressing its own boundaries, afraid of touching something it shouldn't.
It was knocking on the door.
Arthur's mana pool was down to single digits. The meridians throughout his body were faintly burning from the overloaded barrier.
He raised his head and looked in that direction.
Mana is empty. Trouble is coming.
His lips moved slightly, but no sound came out.
The shape of those two words was only caught by the lip-reading system on the comms channel.
Charles.