After choosing to ally with other powers against the Imperium of Man, Thanos had obtained the Mind Stone, giving him four Infinity Stones, every one except the Space Stone.
He had also obtained the Infinity Gauntlet, forged by the dwarf king in a stellar furnace.
With the power of four Infinity Stones, Thanos's combat strength reached an unprecedented level.
After a fierce and chaotic battle, the forged warriors who had surrounded Thanos were all defeated.
If not for the life-support systems in their armour and the blessings of the gods, those warriors would truly have died on the spot.
"Who can fight me?" Thanos roared at the sky, his aura overwhelming.
The ruler of the universe stood at the centre of the battlefield, the Infinity Gauntlet on his hand glowing faintly.
The light of the four Infinity Stones intertwined, and every pulse shook the surrounding air.
Datch glanced at the old man beside him. The old man was staring intently at Thanos, measuring the strength of this powerful being from another universe.
"Emperor, how about giving it a try?"
The Emperor: ...
Please stop casually giving people nicknames.
Though a little displeased at first, the Emperor nodded and accepted the task.
He leapt up, soundlessly overtook Datch, and rushed toward Thanos.
His gigantic body drew a smooth arc through the air before slamming into the ground like a meteor.
The terrible impact of his landing raised dust across the entire battlefield, spreading in all directions.
The still-burning wreckage of nearby vehicles and shards of shattered asphalt were blasted away with tremendous force.
Thanos stared at the Emperor, and unease immediately welled up in his heart.
His intuition, honed through countless battles, told him plainly that this opponent was a tough and troublesome enemy.
After watching for a while, Thanos let out a roar, took up his double-edged sword, and charged the Emperor.
The sacred weapon forged from Uru metal traced a sharp arc in his hand.
The deep-purple light of the Power Stone flowed from the hilt to the blade and wrapped the entire sword.
The Emperor stretched out his empty hand, and a blazing Imperial Sword appeared in it of its own accord.
It was a hard, keen sacred relic shaped by his own will and the faith of the Imperium's countless citizens.
Thanos's sword swung down from the left, and the Emperor met it with his own.
The instant the blades collided, terrible energy exploded.
Within a radius of several hundred metres, the wreckage of every destroyed vehicle was crushed into fine powder.
Thanos locked both arms and tried to force his blade down onto the Emperor's shoulder.
The Emperor stamped his foot, released a powerful shockwave, and drove Thanos back.
Then he leapt up and brought his sword down on his opponent.
Thanos tried to block, but with a loud metallic ring, his double-edged sword was cut cleanly in two.
The broken blade spun several times in the air before stabbing deep into the ground behind Thanos.
Thanos looked down at the half-sword left in his hand, then up at the Emperor before him.
Surprise showed in his eyes.
What had happened?
How had his weapon been cut in two so easily?
This was a sacred weapon forged by a master craftsman from Uru metal refined in a stellar furnace.
A single blow from it could sometimes shatter even a vibranium shield.
And now it had been cut cleanly in two by a single stroke!
Before Thanos could react, the sword in the Emperor's hand dissolved into particles of light.
Clearly, the Emperor had no intention of beating Thanos with a better weapon.
"You are arrogant." Thanos understood what his opponent was thinking and felt humiliated.
After a brief silence, he threw away the broken sword, then took off the Infinity Gauntlet and threw that away too.
He was preparing for a fist fight, man to man.
He swore he would make his opponent pay for that arrogance.
In the end, it was a very foolish decision.
When Thanos threw the first punch, the Emperor turned his body slightly, raised his left arm, and blocked with his forearm.
Then a hook landed squarely on Thanos's most vulnerable spot, the hinge of his jaw.
Thanos's gigantic body could take the Hulk's full-power blows without budging,
yet under the Emperor's punch he was lifted off the ground and sent flying backward like a toppled statue.
His jaw gave a crack.
The instant Thanos was knocked away, the Emperor appeared in front of him, moving far faster than Thanos could.
His right fist came down and slammed into Thanos's abdomen like a sledgehammer.
The force was so tremendous that Thanos's deep-purple pupils lost focus for an instant.
For a moment, he thought he saw his late great-grandmother.
Thanos was sent flying several hundred metres, smashed through the wreckage of several vehicles, and hit the ground,
gouging a magnificent trench into it.
Bones throughout his body creaked and snapped under the strain.
Writhing in agony, Thanos tried to stand, meaning to call a halt and surrender.
There was no prospect of winning. The gap in strength between them was too great.
Even with the Infinity Gauntlet and four Infinity Stones, he could have done nothing.
But before Thanos could open his mouth, the Emperor teleported in front of him.
Another savage punch struck Thanos's head and drove him deep into the ground.
A deep crater instantly appeared, and spiderweb cracks spread out in every direction.
Each crack ran for several hundred metres. It was a shocking sight.
Had Thanos's body been even slightly weaker, he would have been reduced to a bloody mist on the spot.
"Stop! I surrender." Trapped at the bottom of the pit, Thanos looked up and saw the Emperor gathering strength for another punch.
It wasn't that he was weak. The punches were simply that powerful.
He had spent most of his life roaming the universe, and this was the first time he had ever been hit that hard.
Thanos suspected his opponent could destroy a planet, or even a star, with a single blow.
Hearing this, the Emperor slowly lowered his fist.
Thanos lay at the bottom of the hole and sighed in relief. Being alive was truly wonderful.
With Thanos's surrender, his Black Order (Corvus Glaive, Proxima Midnight, Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, and Black Dwarf) had no choice but to surrender to the Imperium of Man as well.
Thanos's crushing defeat and capture dealt a heavy blow to the resistance's morale.
When they learned of it, Star-Lord and the other rebel leaders fell silent.
"Don't despair. We still have a trump card."
It was Fury, the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D., who had fled Earth to join the resistance.
While everyone else despaired, he stepped forward.
Under the puzzled gazes of the others, he took out an old-fashioned mobile phone.
It held only one contact, and that contact was Director Fury's strongest trump card.
Once that person was summoned, the Imperium of Man would surely be defeated.
...
Thanos's failure leaked a great deal of information.
Just as the Imperium of Man was using that information to wipe out the resistance coalition and secure its victory,
news arrived from Earth: the Kingdom of Wakanda in Africa, together with many superheroes who had refused to submit to the Imperium, had risen in rebellion.
T'Challa, king of Wakanda and the Black Panther, had even openly declared war.
He made the declaration standing in front of the palace in Golden City, Wakanda's capital, a building that blended vibranium with ancient African architecture.
He wore full-body black armour woven from vibranium, and every purple energy line on it sparkled under the African sun.
T'Challa claimed to have received counsel from the panther god Bast, who had promised to grant Wakanda the power to fight the invaders and prophesied that Wakanda would surely defeat the Imperium of Man.
The report was presented to Datch and the Emperor.
Watching the Black Panther in his black vibranium armour give a passionate speech of resistance to the camera, Datch looked puzzled.
"Panther god? This guy's asking for a beating. How dare he openly defy us!"
The panther god Bast was one of Earth's native gods, the guardian deity of the Black Panthers who had ruled Wakanda throughout its history.
Down the ages, Bast had repeatedly granted his blessing to Wakanda's rulers.
A Black Panther blessed with his divine power gained superhuman strength, durability, and immunity to all poisons.
Because the native gods belonged to Earth, they had not been targeted when the Imperial gods swept away the gods of the Marvel Universe.
The Imperium took a fairly tolerant line toward native gods who did not actively declare war on it.
As long as they did not resist, they would not be forcibly absorbed.
And this man had the nerve to openly defy the Imperium of Man. Did he think the Imperium could do nothing to him?
With that thought, Datch took out Rick's portal gun, set the coordinates to Bast's location, opened a portal, and went straight to find the panther god.
The panther god Bast was in his own domain at the time.
It was an ancient savanna bathed in the eternal golden glow of sunset, dotted with vine-tangled temple ruins.
Every stone brick was engraved with ancient inscriptions that generations of Wakanda's Black Panthers had chanted during their trials.
Bast himself lay at the highest point of the ruins. In the sunset's afterglow, his jet-black fur had a cool yet warm sheen, like vibranium.
His amber slit pupils were half-closed as he enjoyed the eternal silence of his domain.
When a green light appeared in the middle of the grassland, Bast pricked up his ears at once, on high alert.
His amber slit pupils narrowed sharply in the dimness.
This panther god had weathered countless storms and crises without ever showing a shred of fear toward any enemy.
Yet when he saw the Nameless One and the Lord of Humanity step out of the portal, he leapt to his feet in sheer terror.
While the Imperial gods conquered one pantheon after another, Bast had watched the once-arrogant old gods and outer gods be defeated, absorbed, or utterly destroyed.
The ones who had refused to surrender were long dead and buried.
Bast hurried over to the man who was both Emperor and Lord of Humanity, dropped low on all fours, bowed his head, and tucked his tail tight against his side.
"Honoured Nameless One, Lord of Humanity, welcome to my sacred domain."
His voice was servile, without a trace of a god's arrogance.
"Did you order your followers to attack the Imperium of Man?" Datch wasted no words and tossed the data panel to Bast.
On the holographic screen, footage of Black Panther T'Challa declaring rebellion to the media was playing on a loop.
The panther god had personally promised to grant Wakanda the power to fight the invaders and prophesied that Wakanda would surely defeat the Imperium of Man.
Every word was backed by Bast's sacred name, the ultimate authority.
Bast took the panel and stared at it, and the world went dark before his eyes.
He studied the data panel and checked every frame again and again.
From the Black Panther's "the panther god appeared before me" to "the panther god personally promised to grant Wakanda the power to fight the invaders,"
every word rang above his head like a death knell.
Since the Imperial gods had invaded the Marvel Universe, he hadn't even dared to meddle in the mortal world.
He knew better than anyone how powerful the Imperium's gods were.
How would he dare order the Black Panther to rebel against the Imperium? Did he want to die sooner?
Fear was written plainly across that dark, grim panther face.
"I am innocent, Your Honour."
"I swear I did no such thing. That man was using my name. Nameless One, please see the truth. I will revoke his blessing at once and abandon all of Wakanda."
As a god, Bast drew faith from every tribe and kingdom in Africa that worshipped the panther god, and Wakanda was the most important of them.
Giving up Wakanda would be a devastating loss for him.
Datch looked at Bast, satisfied himself that the panther god wasn't lying, and shook his head.
"There's no need to revoke his blessing just yet. If they want to rebel against the Imperium, let's make them taste their darkest, most despairing moment."
One of the key criteria in choosing Wakanda's king was who could win the panther god's approval.
At a Black Panther's coronation, the candidate entered the ancestral plane by consuming the heart-shaped herb,
then passed the trial under Bast's personal watch and received his blessing.
So whoever held the panther god's blessing was the true king of Wakanda.
After the Imperium of Man settled on Earth, the Wakandan royal family should have been abolished.
But for the sake of political stability, it had been allowed to continue.
If they were going to act this arrogantly, it was only natural for the Imperium to show no mercy.
Datch resolved to show the Black Panther just how cruel the world could be.
He would bring the Black Panther before the people of Wakanda and have the panther god declare him a fraud.
Then he would pick a criminal exiled by the Wakandan royal family and make him Wakanda's ruler.
Datch chose Ulysses Klaue, the man who had killed the previous king of Wakanda.
Seeing his old enemy win the panther god's approval, T'Challa was sure to feel wonderful.
...