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Seeing their companion die miserably, the group of ghost-fire youths were stunned for a moment, then flew into a rage.
"Shit! He killed Johnny!"
"Kill him!"
"I'm going to skin him alive!"
They roared, pulling firearms from their jackets, aiming their muzzles squarely at Darian.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang—!
Several bullets left the chambers, but before these ghost-fire youths could even pull the triggers, they each transformed into cheerful big boys and collapsed straight to the ground.
Darian walked past the corpses littering the ground and arrived before Wolverine: "Can you still stand up?"
"Who... are you?"
Wolverine propped up his scarred body, his red, swollen eyes looking at Darian.
At the same time, his injuries were slowly recovering, but the healing speed was clearly far inferior to other Logans, and not even as good as Sabretooth; the seeping blood had only just begun to clot.
Darian glanced at Wolverine's status bar.
[Status: Severe mental illness, causing the Healing Factor activity to be significantly weakened]
Good grief, this Healing Factor could actually change with one's state of mind; it was actually a subjective ability.
Darian chuckled: "Let me introduce myself. I am the Captain of the Immortal Alliance. The members of our team are all Mutants possessing high-concentration Healing Factors. You fit our criteria perfectly, so I've come specifically to invite you to join the Immortal Alliance."
Wolverine coughed twice, spat out the blood in his mouth, and said in a deep voice: "Sorry, you should go back. I won't be joining any alliance."
It seemed this Old Wolf really had lost his wildness; he was actually speaking so politely.
Darian didn't care about that, shaking his head: "That won't work. The rule of our team is that just because you want to join doesn't mean you can, but if you don't want to join, you must be made to join."
Wolverine: "..."
Not, are you sick or something?
Old Hawkeye felt his old friend's miserable state and couldn't help but frown and ask: "Logan, why don't you unsheathe your claws? Are you now so old that you don't even dare to fight back against this kind of scum? What exactly did they do to you fifty years ago?"
Wolverine lowered his head, silent for a long time, before squeezing a voice out from his throat.
"They... broke me."
He wasn't willing to say more, but this sentence was enough to make one imagine what kind of cruel events he had experienced to have devastated this tough guy to such an extent, to the point where he didn't even dare to fight back when beaten, and was even more pathetic than Old Logan.
At least Old Logan was just old and physically weak, unable to do what his heart desired, limp and unable to stand up—well, referring to his claws.
And this Wolverine before him, although looking elderly, didn't have the fatigue that Old Logan had at the beginning, and his healing speed was much stronger than Old Logan's. Logically speaking, it was impossible for him not to be able to beat this bunch of ghost-fire youths.
The only explanation was that it was caused by mental illness.
Darian shook his head secretly.
Was this bunch of Logans participating in some kind of who has it worse contest? How did they end up living more miserably than the last?
"So, if I beat you up now, you won't fight back either?"
Wade's eyes suddenly lit up. He planned to take advantage of the situation, beat Wolverine down, take hundreds of photos, and later when he traveled to other Universes, he could show off to other Logans, saying that a mere Wolverine was nothing but someone begging to be killed, a total weakling.
Just thinking about it made him excited!
Darian glanced at him with disdain: "Wade, were you a bridge-blocker in your past life?"
Wade felt no shame, righteous and confident: "Who told him to pin me down and beat me every time in the comics? This time it's finally my, Lord Wade's, turn to flip the script!"
"By the way, Captain, can you lie on the ground and let me step on you to take a picture? That way, I can brag to other superheroes in the future, saying I once beat up Du..."
Bang!
A gunshot rang out, and the World became completely quiet.
Wolverine watched, stunned for a moment, and hesitated: "Is he Wade?"
Darian nodded: "Yes, but he is not the Wade of your World, but a Wade from another parallel Universe."
"What?"
Wolverine and Old Hawkeye had the same reaction; the first thing they did was not believe it.
But he was easier to handle than Old Hawkeye. Darian immediately took out his phone and handed it to Wolverine: "If you don't believe it, I have video evidence from other Universes here."
Wolverine took the phone skeptically. After just one look, his face turned dark.
What greeted his eyes was a folder named "Wolverine Silly Compilation". The first video was exactly the high-definition, unedited experimental footage of Logan from "Wolverine 1".
He silently scrolled down. Behind it were all kinds of pictures and videos of Logan being beaten in various fancy ways, and there was even Wolverine fighting Wolverine, Wolverine greening Wolverine, Wolverine and Cyclops passionately rubbing against each other...
Old Hawkeye couldn't see anything, so he asked curiously: "Logan, what did you see?"
"Nothing."
Wolverine answered without hesitation.
If this were said truthfully, he feared he would be laughed at by Old Hawkeye for the rest of his life.
Darian continued: "If you still don't believe me, I have your two Adamantium skeletons here."
"No need, I believe you."
Wolverine's mouth twitched, and he asked instead: "Since this guy is Deadpool from another World, then what kind of person are you?"
Because Darian had been wearing a mask, Wolverine couldn't tell whose variant Darian was; perhaps the other party was even an acquaintance of his.
Darian chuckled happily: "You should know me. In my World, I am a famous superhero, and I have a very good relationship with the Avengers and the X-Men."
Upon hearing this, Wolverine and Old Hawkeye simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed the other party was one of their own, so things would be easier to handle.
Old Hawkeye said with a relaxed tone: "So you are..."
"My name is Darian, you can also call me Lord Doom."
Wolverine: "..."
Old Hawkeye: "..."
They seemed to have died a little inside.
Darian saw their expressions and knew they had misunderstood, so he comforted them: "Don't worry, I am not the Doom you know. I am allergic to green, and since I was a child, I haven't liked to be associated with green."
"Uh, we believe you."
Wolverine and Old Hawkeye nodded vigorously. They had to believe it!
Even so, Wolverine still shook his head: "But you found the wrong person. The current me is just an ordinary old man. My healing ability has long been far inferior to before. Wounds take days to heal, and whenever it's windy or rainy, my joints ache so much I can't sleep. I get out of breath after walking a few more steps. I don't meet your team's recruitment criteria."
This Wolverine had indeed become soft. In order to decline Darian's invitation, he actually started a self-deprecating mode.
Darian smiled slightly: "Sorry, our team has another rule: if I say you meet the criteria, you meet the criteria."
Wolverine: "..."
You've said everything, so what else can I say?
Old Hawkeye saw that the atmosphere was a bit stiff and hurriedly interjected: "Sorry, we still have important things to do. Logan probably can't join your team."
Old Hawkeye secretly wiped away cold sweat.
Just a moment ago, he was planning to team up with Logan to deal with these two, but looking at Logan's current state, let alone teaming up, it would be good enough if he didn't drag him down. If they really started fighting, they would probably be pressed to the ground and rubbed into the dirt in minutes.
Darian raised an eyebrow and asked: "Oh? What is it?"
Old Hawkeye hesitated for a moment, then said: "We need to transport a batch of cargo, across the entire United States, to New Babylon in the east."
[NPC Clinton Barton has issued a new task for you]
[Task: Transport Cargo]
[Objective: Escort the cargo to New Babylon with Hawkeye and Wolverine]
[Reward: EXP +2000, Anchor Fragment *2, Random Item *1, Random Equipment *1]
Darian grinned: "That's good, let's go to New Babylon together, and then we can talk about joining."
Is he always this familiar?
Old Hawkeye was a bit hesitant: "This isn't very good, after all, we aren't familiar with each other."
"Wade, get up quickly, there's a big fish here. Today we can open for business and rob his cargo!"
"But then again, strangers on the first meeting, friends on the second. I believe we will become friends very soon on this journey!"
"Of course!"
Darian and Old Hawkeye shook hands, laughing as if they were old friends who had known each other for many years.
Wolverine: "..."
Two shameless scoundrels!
Bang—!!
On the desolate red rock Gobi, a red off-road vehicle drove straight down from the edge of a cliff over ten meters high, smashing heavily onto the ground!
However, the heavy car body only shook violently, the four wheels landed steadily, not even a bit of paint was scratched, and it continued to drive forward as if nothing had happened.
This red off-road vehicle was called the Spider-Mobile. Judging by the name, it was Spider-Man's custom vehicle.
Just like Batman had the Batmobile, this car could not only climb walls but also spray spider webs. Even if it fell from a height of over ten meters, it remained unscathed, and passengers didn't feel much recoil. It was pure black technology.
At this very moment, the four of them, Darian, were sitting in the Spider-Mobile, and the one driving was Old Hawkeye.
That's right, a blind man was sitting in the driver's seat. It wasn't known how he managed it, but he did it.
If it were ordinary people, they would have already peed their pants, but everyone present was bold as a bucket. Wolverine and Wade were both healing-ability users; even if they faced the Hulk head-on, they wouldn't be afraid at all, basically immune to crossing.
And Darian was even more fearless. Anyway, even if there was a car accident, it wouldn't break his defense.
The only one with a bit of risk was probably the driver, Old Hawkeye himself. Since even he wasn't afraid, the others were even less so.
Wade sat in the passenger seat, stretching his hand out of the car window, his five fingers splayed and groping at the air, his movements looking exceptionally lewd.
"B... B+... C... Green Arrow, drive faster, it's about to reach D+!"
"I've said it many times, I'm not Green Arrow, I'm Hawkeye."
Old Hawkeye gripped the steering wheel, his face breaking down.
Before driving, he, Darian, and Wolverine played rock-paper-scissors to decide who would sit with Wade.
The result was obvious; he lost.
So he was annoyed by Wade for an entire night, from evening until morning. That broken mouth just never stopped!
"Then what's the difference between you two?" Wade asked a soul-searching question.
Old Hawkeye: "..."
He was speechless for a moment.
Thinking about it carefully, it seemed there really wasn't much difference. Both were ordinary people who played with bows, mixing in a pile of monsters who played with technology and superpowers.
Darian in the back seat saw Old Hawkeye holding it in and feeling uncomfortable, so he kindly spoke up to help him out: "Don't say that, there is a difference. At least... Hawkeye is not as rich as Green Arrow."
Old Hawkeye: "..."
Thanks, I feel comforted.
After a night of bumpy travel, the atmosphere in the car loosened up quite a bit.
Wolverine and Old Hawkeye could both feel that although Darian and Wade's methods were a bit wild, their temperament was a bit evil, and their style was a bit silly, they really didn't seem to harbor any malice, so their guard gradually let down, and their conversation gradually increased.
Darian said: "By the way, I heard you mention fifty years ago. What exactly happened back then?"
Intuition told him that Wolverine's mental illness was very likely related to the events of fifty years ago.
As the saying goes, heart disease requires heart medicine. As long as the root of the disease was dug out and treated symptomatically, perhaps this Old Wolf could stand tall again.
Darian was quite confident in his medical skills. He had a set of original physical therapy methods, rich practical experience, and had successfully treated many patients, with zero negative reviews to this day.
Hearing this question, the expressions of Wolverine and Old Hawkeye dimmed simultaneously.
Extremely complex emotions flashed in their eyes: anger, regret, sadness, powerlessness... just like a pie chart.
After a moment of silence, Old Hawkeye slowly spoke: "50 years ago, almost all supervillains suddenly united. They planned an unprecedented conspiracy and attacked the many superheroes led by the Avengers."
"They attacked in a pack, separated us one by one, and then broke us one by one. We didn't even have time to organize effective resistance. Thor, Captain, Tony Stark... several Avengers fell in the first few hours. As for the other superheroes, they were also defeated one after another by that bunch of supervillains and finally cruelly murdered."
"In the end, the supervillains won a complete victory. They divided the entire World, delineated their respective spheres of influence, and to this day, every corner of this World is almost in the hands of that bunch of scum."
Even a powerful god like Thor could not survive; it was enough to imagine how tragic and desperate that war was.
"So dark, did we accidentally run into the DC Universe?" Wade complained.
Darian looked at Old Hawkeye with some curiosity: "Then how did you survive?"
It was understandable that Wolverine could survive until now; this guy was famous for being hard to kill.
But Old Hawkeye was just an ordinary person relying on archery and physical skills. So many super-powered superheroes had fallen, so how did he survive until now?
Old Hawkeye was silent for a few seconds: "That bunch of villains felt that killing me directly would be letting me off too easily. They chose to let me live, as a form of torture."
Darian nodded.
Understood, he was just too weak and was ignored.
It was fine that he didn't have much presence in the Avengers before, but he didn't expect that even when the supervillains wiped out the Avengers, they were the only ones who forgot about him. With this talent, why be an archer? If he had changed his profession to an assassin, his achievements might have been higher than many super-powered heroes.
Sure enough, women fear marrying the wrong man, and men fear choosing the wrong profession; career choice is very important.
Darian secretly rejoiced. Fortunately, he chose the right profession from the beginning. His strength attribute of over a hundred points allowed him to walk more and more smoothly on the path of an archer and mage. The future was promising!