Chapter 352: Just How Strong Is Ethan, Really?
Home-Thanos studied his own universe's counterpart-enemy with genuine interest.
"I truly didn't expect a man like you to exist within our own universe. I underestimated you."
Then his gaze drifted upward, toward the sky — toward the dense, seething mass of Spider-Men above.
They blanketed the entire sky like a black cloud, every last one clad in the iconic red-and-black suit, their forms woven together like an actual spider's web.
"Impressive." Home-Thanos let out a genuine sound of appreciation. "And yet, commanding a force this vast, you choose to hide away on some backwater planet? I suppose this must be the full extent of your power, then." He turned to Ethan, a note of condescension creeping into his voice.
This was the first time Home-Thanos had ever laid eyes on this many people wearing spider costumes. He found the sight genuinely entertaining — but none of it worried him in the slightest. These little spiders weren't especially strong, individually.
Weak individually or not, though, this was still a formidable collective force — one that, if it wanted to, could probably level any single planet it chose.
And the fact that a force this massive existed without him — the universe's undisputed ruler — ever having heard of it, told him this Ethan had been hiding some serious depth.
"Seems you've kept yourself well hidden," Home-Thanos said to Ethan. "This must be everything you've got, right?" He asked it with total confidence, as if he already knew the answer.
"No wonder you managed to handle those Chitauri and my own men. That much power, that's not so surprising after all," Home-Thanos went on, giving Ethan zero opening to actually respond.
"If every last one of them dies here, you'll probably be devastated, won't you?" he continued. "Though — I doubt you'll get the chance to find out. Because this place is about to become your grave. Yours, and every one of these little spiders' too."
Ethan stared at him, genuinely baffled by the sheer arrogance of it all. When exactly had he ever said the Spider-Society was the sum total of his forces? He hadn't even called in Hell's Kitchen proper yet, let alone the mutants.
He hadn't said a single word, and this Thanos had already written the whole story himself. Frankly, Ethan didn't think dealing with Thanos required calling in reinforcements at all.
Ethan could say, without a shred of false modesty, that at this point in time, there wasn't a single existence in the entire universe worth mobilizing all of Hell's Kitchen against.
He was starting to notice this universe's Thanos had a wildly different personality from the one he'd already killed. This one was insufferably full of himself.
Home-Thanos, though, apparently had no patience for letting Ethan get a word in edgewise either.
A surge of overwhelming energy exploded outward from his body.
He raised one hand, and a massive orb of energy gathered in his palm, blazing with a brilliance like a star on the verge of going supernova.
"Let's find out exactly how much power an enemy this well-hidden actually has!" Home-Thanos roared, and hurled the orb straight at Ethan and the assembled Spider-Society.
The attack combined the fused power of the Reality Stone and Power Stone.
Ethan wasn't rattled in the slightest. He blinked forward, appearing right in front of the incoming orb, and traced a circle in the empty air.
The circle expanded instantly, swallowing the energy orb whole.
Then it began to spin, forming a massive vortex that pulled the entire orb into itself.
And just like that, in full view of everyone watching, that overwhelming burst of power simply vanished into thin air.
Ethan gave Home-Thanos a cold, mocking smile.
"You're not the only one with Infinity Stones," he said flatly. He drew a slow breath, and a matching wave of power surged out from within him — gentle, but every bit as immense. It stood in stark contrast to Home-Thanos's raw, violent aura, more like a clean current washing the dust and grit right off the battlefield.
Steve, watching the two of them radiate power on this scale, understood immediately this was no longer a fight anyone else could take part in.
"Move! Everyone, fall back — get some distance, or you're going to die out here!" At his shout, the Avengers scattered, scrambling away from Ethan and Home-Thanos as fast as they could.
Thanos's remaining army caught the same signal and bolted too — even the warships hanging in the sky above turned and fled at full speed.
In an instant, a five-kilometer radius around Ethan cleared out entirely — a total vacuum.
If a satellite had been watching from orbit, it would have caught a genuinely absurd sight: not a single living thing within five kilometers of Ethan and Thanos — and beyond that radius, an entire crowd of people and warships packed in shoulder to shoulder.
With the Spider-Society buying the Avengers a moment to catch their breath, the whole group gathered at a safe distance to watch this era-defining duel unfold.
"This fight, right here — this is what's going to decide the outcome of the entire war," Old Tony said gravely.
"It's genuinely terrifying. We already knew what Thanos was capable of firsthand. But this Ethan guy keeps shattering my whole understanding of what's possible, over and over. If someone had told me before today that a human being could go toe-to-toe with Thanos, I'd have had them committed. And yet here he is — not only doing exactly that, but he's already killed one version of Thanos outright. He's on a whole different level," Clint said, watching Ethan in the distance, unable to hide his awe.
"Yeah. Every time I think I've adjusted to this guy from another universe, he blows my whole understanding of reality apart all over again. Guess I really am a relic of a different era." Steve managed a bitter half-smile. He wasn't a man who admitted defeat easily — but Ethan had genuinely rattled him.
"What I really want to know is where his actual ceiling is. We watched him fight the Stone-less Thanos to what looked like a dead-even match, and we assumed that was the peak of what he could do. Then he turns around and handles a Thanos with the full Gauntlet just as effortlessly — like his strength scales up automatically to whatever he's facing. It's like there's no upper limit to that man's power at all. Impossible to get a real read on him. Can you answer that for us — you, from his universe?" Doctor Strange turned to the one person present who actually shared Ethan's universe and hadn't been dragged into the fight: Strange.
Doctor Strange had just voiced the question everyone on the field was dying to ask. All eyes turned toward Strange.
Yes — Strange had, once again, quietly slipped out of the fighting. The moment reinforcements arrived, he'd faked an injury and bowed out entirely.
Now, he regretted it deeply.
He hadn't expected to end up cornered by the entire Avengers roster instead. If he'd known this was coming, he'd have been better off just picking a fight with some random alien.
It wasn't that he didn't want to answer. He genuinely didn't know.
"I don't actually know how strong Ethan really is. Every single time he shows something new, it's stronger than whatever came before." Strange looked around at the group's visibly disappointed faces and added, "But I do know this — Ethan never seems satisfied with his own current strength. It's like he already knows some even bigger threat is waiting out there somewhere. Like something's chasing him, forcing him to keep getting stronger — and forcing the rest of us to keep up right along with him."
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