Chapter 79: Farewell, Mystique~ (Crying)
The morning in New York City was bustling with traffic.
There was still some time before the official start of the public high school's anniversary celebration, Arthur casually found an excuse to slip out of the crowded auditorium, and strolled leisurely down the commercial street outside the school gate.
He knew that Gwen often consumed a lot of physical energy doing Web-slinging on the streets as a superhero, and playing the drums in the rehearsal room was also hard physical work, so she would definitely feel hungry after the performance ended.
Arthur walked straight into the familiar convenience store at the corner, picked out a few packs of Gwen's favorite sea salt-flavored potato chips from the shelves, grabbed some assorted gummies, and casually picked up two cans of iced cola from the freezer.
After paying the bill, he carried a full small bag of snacks and headed back.
When he returned to the school auditorium, about an hour had passed.
Arthur walked through the corridor, came to the anniversary hall, and casually found a seat near the front with a decent view.
On the stage, the school leaders were giving lengthy speeches holding microphones.
Most of the students below were unenthusiastic; some were bowing their heads playing with their phones, while others were whispering to each other.
After the boring speech lasting more than twenty minutes finally ended, perfunctory applause sounded throughout the venue.
Following that, it was finally time for today's main event—the student performance segment.
To heat up the atmosphere, the first opening explosive act of today happened to be the "Mary Jane" band where Gwen was.
As the curtain opened, several girls from the band walked onto the stage one after another.
Gwen was still wearing that cool and dashing outfit today, with a dark gray printed hoodie loosely draped over her body, and stonewashed blue ripped jeans making her legs look straight.
Her light blonde-to-pink gradient short hair was casually tousled a few times, holding two drumsticks in her hand, with her usual cold face, she walked straight towards the huge metal drum set amidst the cheers filling the room.
After sitting down, she naturally adjusted the position of the snare drum.
Just as she raised her head to give a signal to the lead singer, her azure blue eyes involuntarily swept across the audience, precisely capturing Arthur who was sitting in the front row.
At that moment, the aloof aura of keeping strangers at a distance on Gwen completely shattered.
Arthur clearly saw that this girl's eyes suddenly lit up, and the previously calm expression was instantly replaced by uncontainable excitement. She even shifted her hips slightly on the drum stool, seeming a bit unable to sit still from excitement.
She stared fixedly at Arthur, and across such a long distance, the corners of her mouth curved high up, quickly mouthing a sentence to Arthur: "Watch me."
Following closely, a guitar strum from the lead singer pierced the air of the auditorium.
Gwen turned her head sharply, the drumsticks in her hands smashing towards the cymbals as if carrying the force of a thousand jun.
Because Arthur was watching in the audience, she felt like she was high on adrenaline today.
Her movements were even bigger than usual during rehearsals, and the drumbeats were dense and wild.
The foundation of practicing ballet in her childhood gave every striking movement of hers an explosive sense of beauty, and every time she waved her arms, crystalline sweat flew off her cheeks into the air.
The reverberation walls of the entire auditorium were buzzing because of her violent yet precise rhythm.
The performance effect of this show simply blew up the entire venue.
The students below were all driven by this strong rhythm, standing up one after another to jump and cheer along with the beat.
Until the very last song ended, Gwen steadied all the sounds with an extremely gorgeous finishing move, and the screams of the whole audience almost lifted the roof off.
With such an explosive performance by this band acting as a fine piece of jade before, the programs preparing to take the stage afterwards would basically find it hard to get much of a response.
After the performance ended, Arthur did not stay in the hall to watch other performances.
He directly picked up the bag of snacks, stood up, and strolled along the corridor all the way to the backstage of the performance.
Among the students who were still moving musical instruments, Arthur easily found Gwen, who was wiping sweat with a towel.
He walked over and handed the snack bag in his hand forward.
"Great job, master drummer. Replenish some physical strength." Arthur said with a smile.
Gwen turned her head, and seeing that it was Arthur, her eyes immediately smiled into curved crescent moons.
She threw the towel aside without hesitation and took the bag with great joy.
Seeing that everything inside was her usual favorite flavors, the sweetness in her heart could no longer be contained.
Having experienced so many life-and-Death crises recently, she had long regarded Arthur as her only reliance, not caring at all that there were other students walking around backstage.
She took half a step forward, directly stood on tiptoe, hooked her hands around Arthur's neck, and kissed him hard on those still slightly astonished lips.
"Is this considered a tip given to me by the audience downstairs just now?"
Gwen let go of Arthur, licked her lips, and teased him deliberately with a somewhat proud tone, but the trace of happiness in the depths of her eyes could not be hidden no matter what.
"If all audience members were as generous as me, you would have gotten rich long ago."
Arthur took the opportunity to pinch her cheeks.
"I originally planned to stay here with you until the end of the anniversary celebration, but I just took a look, and the subsequent programs are really too boring. I can't sit still, so I plan to leave a step ahead."
Hearing that Arthur was leaving early, Gwen felt a little bit lost, but she still nodded understandingly.
"It's fine, go ahead and be busy with your matters. I'll share a bit of this bag of snacks with my teammates in a while, and I still have to listen to the principal's concluding remarks. See you tonight."
After the two briefly explained a few things to each other, Arthur lowered his head and bumped foreheads with her again as a farewell kiss, then turned and left the backstage.
Walking out of the high school gate, the sunlight outside was just right, and a breeze gently blew the leaves of the roadside trees.
With his hands in his pockets, Arthur was getting ready to stroll along the commercial street towards the apartment.
Just at this moment, a passerby who was originally wearing earphones and crossing the street in a hurried manner suddenly stopped by Arthur's side without warning.
That person slowly turned their head and looked at Arthur.
In just a split second, the originally anxious gaze of that passerby became incomparably profound and wise, and a calm temperament that completely did not belong to ordinary urban white-collar workers emanated from him.
Arthur was not unfamiliar with this kind of scene.
A few days ago on the streets of Brooklyn, Professor Charles had used this method to possess a passerby across a long distance to send him a message.
"Child, something has happened."
This passerby opened his mouth, and the tone and pitch he emitted were identical to that old man sitting in the wheelchair, with an uncontainable exhaustion and urgency in his voice,
"The school has been attacked. The opponent's strength is extremely powerful and they completely don't play by the rules. Many people on our side are injured... and worst of all, Mystique has been captured."
Hearing these words, the casual look on Arthur's face instantly retracted.
He slightly furrowed his brows and neatly replied: "I'll be right there."
As soon as these words were finished, the profound light in that passerby's eyes instantly dissipated.
He seemed to suddenly wake up from a dream, rubbed his head blankly, not remembering what had happened just now at all, muttered a couple of words, and continued to walk briskly forward along the street.
The situation was urgent.
Since Raven Mystique was captured, Arthur was not in the mood to take any transportation.
He directly raised his right hand, with the Sling Ring worn on his finger, and extremely skillfully drew a circle sparkling with golden sparks in mid-air.
Zi la—
The sparks expanded outward fiercely, and a Portalleading to the X-Men headquarters instantly formed at the corner of the street.
Without a trace of hesitation, Arthur stepped across it.
Passing through the Portal, the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which should have been tranquil and luxurious, looked like it had just experienced a small-scale war at this moment.
Arthur stood on the dilapidated lawn, and what met his eyes was a complete mess.
The heavy walls of the main building had been smashed by some terrible brute force into several huge and charred holes, and broken bricks and deformed metal fences were scattered all over the ground.
The air was filled with the smell of scorched soil and a faint bloody scent.
Around the shade of trees and steps, there were Mutants bandaging each other's injuries everywhere.
Arthur even saw a few familiar old member faces in the crowd.
However, the greatest misfortune among misfortunes was that he quickly swept his gaze around and found that most people were only severely wounded and lost their combat effectiveness, and there seemed to be no direct fatalities.
"It seems that the opponent's target is very clear, which is solely aimed at Mystique. Otherwise, with the combat power capable of smashing this place like this, it's impossible not to kill people." Arthur quickly made a judgment in his heart.
However, he searched the ruins for a circle and did not see that bald old man Charles who had always sat upright in a wheelchair.
Arthur's brows furrowed even deeper.
Could it be that even Charles was seriously injured?
Then how was that state of splitting the soul to possess someone on the street to find him and pass a message achieved just now?
Right at this moment, a bulky figure covered all over with dense blue fuzz strode over from behind a broken wall on the side.
That was Hank, also known as Beast.
He wore a pair of bookish black-framed glasses, and upon seeing Arthur, he visibly let out a sigh of relief.
"You're here."
Hank's voice was muffled, but it exuded a sense of urgency,
"Charles didn't suffer external injuries, but he is currently in the Underground Room. He is using the Cerebro apparatus to search for Raven's whereabouts globally. He instructed just now that once you arrive, I should immediately take you to see him."
After hearing this, Arthur instantly recalled that huge spherical space made entirely of special steel plates specifically used to amplify brainwaves that he had seen in movie scenes before.
Since he was pressed for time, Arthur didn't want to follow Hank around those stairs in the ruins.
He directly stretched out his hand and slapped it onto Hank's furry and broad shoulder.
Before Hank could react to what Arthur was about to do, Arthur's fingers had already traced a shorter golden arc in mid-air.
Another dazzling spark gateway tore through the air.
Arthur grabbed Hank's shoulder and stepped right in.
Hank only felt the scenery before his eyes twist, and the next second, his entire person was already standing at the edge of that sealed Underground Room constructed of special metal.
This completely unreasonable spatial jump left this extremely high-IQ Mutant scholar stunned for a moment.
He turned his head and looked toward the center of the Underground Room.
Charles was sitting right there, wearing that huge cerebro-enhancer connected to countless cables on his head.
On the panels inside the entire spherical space, densely packed red and white light points representing global humans and Mutants were flashing.
Hank opened his mouth and said to the figure in the center, "Charles, the guest... he brought me over himself."
Charles did not reply immediately.
He had long since experienced Arthur's outrageous ability of not playing by the rules and casually breaking open spatial jumps.
Furthermore, right now all his mental power was spread across the entire Earth's surface like a radar network via the instrument, frantically searching for Raven's biological frequency.
After about a minute or so, the light inside the spherical space gradually dimmed.
Charles tiredly raised both hands and took that heavy enhanced helmet off his head.
He took a deep breath, turned his wheelchair to face Arthur, his wise face written full of a rare sense of defeat.
He heavily shook his head.
"There is no signal at all. I can't find Raven's whereabouts at all."
Charles's brows were tightly locked together.
"Her mental frequency is as if it evaporated out of thin air from this World. It looks like the other party has made full preparations, using some special metal or force field that I cannot pierce to completely shield my brainwave tracking. They came prepared, specifically targeting my searching ability."
Arthur crossed his arms and leaned against the railing to the side.
He did not go to comfort Charles, but quickly let his thinking enter case-solving mode.
Since this matter exceeded the scope of an ordinary attack, there must be traces to follow.
"Since we can't find the person, we'll start from the source."
Arthur looked at the two people in front of him and very calmly threw out a question.
"I have a question, what on Earth does that person who attacked you and tore this place apart into that ghost of an appearance above look like? What specific clothing features does he have? What outrageous abilities did he use in battle?"
Charles and Hank exchanged glances.
Hank pushed the glasses on the bridge of his nose and took the lead to describe.
"He is wearing a set of black alien armor that looks very thick and extremely high-tech.
Not only is he infinitely strong and can easily crash through several-meters-thick reinforced walls, but he can also fly.
In addition, when he fought with us, he released red high-temperature vision from his eyes that could easily cut through steel.
Our defense to him was like it was made of paper."
Listening to Hank's description, Arthur immediately started brainstorming in his mind.
Black armor, super strength, ability to fly, heat vision.
Sweeping quickly through that massive memory bank in Arthur's mind regarding the heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe, he fundamentally couldn't find any native villain that could completely match these tags.
However, since there was no matching person in Marvel's system, the answer could only point to one place — that data of Metropolis's unique product that he had personally confirmed on the S.H.I.E.L.D. mothership!
That's right, the intersection of the Universe!
Not long ago S.H.I.E.L.D. had intercepted intelligence that General Zod belonging to the Universe was eyeing the outside of Earth's orbit with an alien fleet.
Isn't this completely Zod's fighting style!
Arthur suddenly had a flash of insight.
No wonder these powerful Mutants on Earth couldn't stop him; a Kryptonian who mastered air supremacy and had ridiculously strong physical fitness—this dimensional crushing was indeed a disaster for Mutants.
However, after confirming the enemy's identity, new doubts popped up.
Zod, an alien who had just descended upon Earth, instead of looking for his Superman, why was he making a huge fanfare to attack the academy, and why was his target directly aimed at Mystique?
Arthur directly asked the doubts in his heart.
"What do you guys say, what is this guy who went to such great lengths to capture Mystique plotting?
Since he's so strong and destroying the academy is as easy as turning over his palm, why didn't he kill all of you instead of insisting on painstakingly capturing Raven?"
Hearing this tricky question from a tricky angle, the three people in the Underground Room all fell into brief contemplation.
A few seconds later, a trace of deep fear suddenly flashed in Charles's eyes, and with a trembling voice, he slowly began to speak.
"If we have to find a reason why it must be Raven, then perhaps... it's because of that special ability Ravenpossesses."
The moment "Raven's ability" was mentioned, Hank and Charles almost simultaneously extended outward along this clue.
What is Mystique Raven's ability?
It is to change her own genetic sequence, thereby perfectly imitating anyone's appearance and voice.
And if someone can analyze and extract this ability to change genes at any time and apply it to weapons...
"Sentinel!"
The two shouted this horrifying name almost in unison.
Charles's fingers tightly gripped the armrests of his wheelchair, his knuckles turning white from the force.
He raised his head, those deep eyes filled with solemnity.
"As long as they possess Mystique's genetic sequence and successfully analyze her ability, those ambitious people hiding behind the scenes can create the most perfect 'sentinel robot' capable of generating resistance against any Mutant!"
Although the new timeline Arthur is currently in has been changed, the elderly Charles had personally participated in that cruel "Days of Future Past" plan when he was young.
He had once witnessed with his own eyes how tragic the future Mutants were under the Carnage of those sentinel robots, and also watched with his own eyes as Magneto Erik completely destroyed those early Sentinel prototypes.
Everyone knows that wanting to restart this inhumane Sentinel Program not only requires a massive amount of funds, but the scientific research preparation process behind it is also extremely tedious and lengthy.
But the current situation is very obvious, since that terrifying alien force has already acted to capture Raven as the final puzzle piece, it proves that the other party's research and development and preliminary preparation work for the Sentinel in secret has most likely all been ready.
Charles took a deep breath.
He turned his wheelchair to come before Arthur, his gaze serious like never before.
"Child."
Charles said in a tone close to pleading.
"I know you are not a person of our tribe, but what we are facing this time is not just our disaster.
I hope you can lend us a hand."
"Before this, I already sent an emergency summon order to all senior Mutants outside, they are all desperately rushing back right now, but according to conventional transportation, their speed is simply too slow.
By the time they assemble, Raven will very likely have been drained dry."
"With that ability of yours capable of instantly crossing space, I hope you can make a trip and bring them back."
Arthur looked at Charles, and did not decline this extremely crucial request, he simply nodded his head.
"Fine, a small matter.
No problem for you to go pick people up."
Arthur raised his right hand, the Sling Ring flashing a faint light under the lights, and he continued speaking.
"Since we're picking people up, you can directly give me their specific addresses, or find a computer and give clear pictures or video clips around the other party's location is fine.
As long as I can construct that kind of clear terrain memory in my mind, I can open a Portal and go right away."
Seeing Arthur agree, Charles immediately nodded.
He closed his eyes, subconsciously wanting to directly transmit the coordinates of those images into Arthur's mind via mental power, as this was the most efficient way.
However, before Charles's mental wave could probe out, Arthur had already seen through his intention, directly raising a finger and adding a sentence very coldly and rigidly.
"Don't think about taking shortcuts, absolutely don't use that mental power of yours to directly transmit images into my head."
Arthur's gaze at this moment became extremely sharp, like an unsheathed blade.
Of course he couldn't possibly open the door of his consciousness wide to someone who could read memories, not to mention that the background of him being a time-traveler absolutely could not be exposed.
Solely the Twelve Talismans origin hidden deep within his soul—that was something even Sorcerer Ancient Onefound tricky.
Once pried into, goodness knows what trouble it would stir up.
"I am a person with a very strong sense of territorial awareness."
Arthur pulled together an excuse half-true and half-false, but the warning meaning in his tone was extremely obvious.
"I will definitely never open up my brain and treat it as a public movie to show outsiders."
Charles stopped his action.
As a wise man who frequently wandered on the edges of other people's subconscious, he naturally deeply understood those untouchable defense lines in everyone's hearts, especially a powerhouse like Arthur who possessed unimaginable great might.
He tolerantly nodded to express understanding, turned his head to look at Hank on the side, and instructed,
"Since it's like this, Hank, you immediately go upstairs and get some paper and pens, or a tablet computer.
We'll use the most primitive method to give the coordinates to this gentleman."
Chapter 80 Assembly
Arthur stood in the dilapidated Underground Room of the Mutant Academy, reaching into his pocket to pull out his smartphone.
Without any nonsense, he directly dialed the number of Nick Fury.
The moment the call connected, Arthur had no intention of exchanging pleasantries, speaking into the receiver in an extremely flat and matter-of-fact tone.
"Fury, I need you to do me a favor."
Thousands of meters above the ground, above the clouds, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s massive Helicarrier was at the highest level of alert.
In the spacious and stern circular command hall, a high-level pre-battle mobilization meeting was underway.
Standing in front of the large screen, Fury had just prepared to carry out the next step of tactical deployment when the communicator in his pocket rang.
This usually unfathomable head of Agents glanced at the caller ID, rolling his single eye in an imperceptible manner.
He held a deep resistance in his heart toward calls from someone like Arthur, because he knew very well that as long as this completely uncontrolled super-dangerous criminal Arthur came looking for him, it definitely meant trouble.
Recalling previous encounters, the corner of Fury's eye twitched slightly.
But hindered by the highest-level clearance on Arthur that gave him a huge headache, Fury still forced down the urge to hang up, walked over, and pressed the answer button.
Arthur's voice came clearly through the receiver.
"Help me look into an old dying bastard named Trask. This old fellow previously took full charge of something called the Sentinel Program. I want you to find his recent whereabouts immediately."
Speaking to this point, Arthur paused slightly, then raised his voice:
"As soon as possible, I want the fastest speed."
Hearing Arthur's somewhat serious tone, Fury instantly put away the complaints he had been turning over in his mind.
He knew that with Arthur's formidable style of handling matters, for him to issue instructions in this tone meant that this matter definitely related to some deeper hidden dangers.
Fury gave a muffled response, assuring Arthur that he would dig up this person's information at the fastest speed.
The call hung up. Fury shoved the communicator back into the pocket of his black trench coat, turned around, and slowly swept his gaze across everyone present.
At this moment in the command hall, the embryonic team of the Avengers had fully gathered.
Tony Stark was wearing a casual outfit, spinning an expensive pen in his hand with a relaxed expression all over his face.
Dr. Yinsen stood beside Tony, lowering his head to cross-check some armor energy consumption data. On the other side, Bruce Banner wore a loose shirt; although his spirit was somewhat haggard, he no longer had that tension of constantly being on the verge of berserk rage.
Captain America Steve Rogers stood upright by the table with a stern expression, while Black Widow Natashaleaned casually against a chair, toying with a dagger.
The most eye-catching figure was the one huddled in the corner within a specially customized, super-large metal chair—Hulk.
Ever since he was forcefully separated by Arthur with undeniable divine power, violently hammered back and forth on the ground, and then subjected to special education, he had completely put away that lawless, berserk posture.
Coupled with Banner walking into the cell afterward to have a heartfelt, long talk with this homologous brother, Hulk now looked surprisingly well-behaved.
However, everyone was clear that this submissiveness was only a surface appearance; once they reached the real battlefield, as long as his anger was completely ignited, he would still be that terrifying giant monster with endless destructive desires.
Only now, with Arthur's extremely terrifying shadow pressing down on his head, this green big guy chose temporary docility.
"Everyone, I have confirmed it with Arthur's side." Furywalked to the main control console, pressed both hands against the tabletop, and looked at the crowd before him.
"This time, he will serve as our bottom-line secret weapon, observing the battle situation from the outside."
Fury's single eye revealed an unquestionable solemnity. He glanced at Steve and continued:
"Regarding those impending invading enemies from outer space, they are expected to make a move within today. This counts as the Avengers team's first official debut battle. Arthur is not going to the front line, so in this battle we must not only win, but also fight beautifully, and not let people look down on our own side's strength."
Having briefly given the instructions, Fury did not stay in the hall to continue listening to Tony's banter, but directly pushed open the door and strode toward the Communications and Intelligence Analysis Department to find that group of top technicians to complete the task Arthur had just handed down.
With the operation of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s massive intelligence network, the technical director soon projected the search results onto the large screen.
They dug out Trask's identity information directly from the bottom-most data network.
The technicians rapidly tapped on their keyboards, pulling out a clear movement trajectory on the three-dimensional electronic map based on Trask's past whereabouts records and various facial recognition probes.
Finally, a red dot representing Trask's current residence stopped at a relatively high-end retirement Villa far from the urban area. The external surveillance footage of this Villa from a few days ago popped up synchronously on the screen.
The recorded footage showed that a few days ago, a group of unknown armed militants whose identity backgrounds could not be checked at all, wearing black combat uniforms, forcefully broke into this Villa, controlled the scene with extremely high efficiency, and tied Trask into a black box truck without license plates.
Just as the technicians were preparing to pull up the surveillance along the route to continue tracking the vehicle's whereabouts, Steve, who had been standing to the side and intently staring at the big screen, suddenly stepped forward two steps.
"Stop here." Steve reached out and pointed at the image on the screen of an armed militant getting into the car.
The surveillance footage froze instantly.
"Enlarge this part." Steve pointed at the arm swung by that armed militant.
Following the instructions, the technicians continuously zoomed in and enlarged the image.
After a bout of restoration and scanning by the computer system, in the high-definition image, beneath the sleeve that had slid up due to the dragging motion, half of an extremely ferocious tattoo pattern was revealed.
That line outline resembling some kind of creature's head plus tentacles directly triggered a high-level alert for the S.H.I.E.L.D. system.
After comparison, this half tattoo had a coincidence rate of over ninety-nine percent with HYDRA's exclusive totem in the S.H.I.E.L.D. database.
Steve looked at this familiar logo, a trace of undisguised helplessness and deep Abomination surfacing on that resolute face.
As a veteran who crawled out of the quagmire of World War II, this logo was an inescapable nightmare for him.
"These guys really just won't quit." Steve shook his head, his lips pressed tightly together.
"What era is this, and they're still plotting these shady dealings behind the scenes."
The technicians did not stop their work, continuing to track vehicles across the entire network along the surveillance clues.
The trajectory of that black truck went all the way west after leaving the urban area, and finally disappeared at the edge of a barren deep mountain ravine.
According to the analysis of the last bit of interference radio waves collected along the way, their final stronghold of escape was deeply buried underground, where the strata contained strong magnetic field-shielding substances. The further down they tracked, the noisier the signal received by S.H.I.E.L.D. became, until it finally turned into snowflake-like dead silence completely.
Holding a cup in his hand, Tony walked leisurely to the big screen.
He pointed at the coordinates frozen in the deep mountains, casting a sideways glance at Fury who had just walked back in from outside.
"Officer, is this planning to let us go to that bird-forsaken mountain ditch to play groundhogs and dig holes?" Tonyraised an eyebrow, his sarcasm showing no restraint at all.
Fury shook his head expressionlessly. He reached out and tapped his tablet computer a few times, saying indifferently:
"No, the dirty and tiring work of this matter can just be packaged and handed over to Arthur to handle. Since this matter was proposed by him to investigate, and that guy is most suited for doing this kind of reckless, troublesome work of dealing with hassles."
As Fury said these words, his heart also slightly eased some of its depressed mood.
Throwing this remote and troublesome finding-people location directly to Arthur was more of a sort of implicit retaliatory behavior from his heart for the shock he suffered earlier.
He decisively pressed the send button, packaging all the information with one click and transmitting it over to Arthur's side, then ordered everyone in the control room to be on standby at all times, ready to welcome unusual movements in the near-earth orbit, while he shook his trench coat and walked out of the room.
The perspective turned back to the blast-proof Underground Room of the Mutant Base.
At this moment, Arthur had already obtained the list hastily written down in pen from Charles. His gaze swept casually across the pages, and almost all the prominent old-school names in the Mutant World were listed on it.
Behind some names, Charles had specially written the words "On Duty" in a square font to prove that these people belonged to the core echelon currently possessing the strongest combat effectiveness and execution capability.
Arthur scanned through the list with his eyes, and without thinking too much, directly determined the first primary candidate.
If he wanted to stabilize Charles's footing, he naturally had to let Charles's good brother, who was both a friend and a foe, hurry over to meet up first.
These two had a friendship that remained unchanged for decades, making meeting at this time the most appropriate choice.
He glanced at the remote address in the middle of nowhere written on the paper, slightly constructing the terrain in his mind.
Then he directly raised the hand wearing the Sling Ring, and dazzling golden sparks lit up at his fingertips.
With a soft sizzle.
A spark-burning Portal was directly pulled open out of thin air within the hall, and the other end of the door precisely aimed at the location recorded on the list.
As luck would have it, this door opened far too precisely, directly opening right in front of the nose tip of MagnetoEric.
Magneto, who had just sat down in his secluded deep mountain retreat to rest his eyes, was startled by this sudden glare and high-temperature spatial cleavage. His magnetic field subconsciously fluctuated, and the surrounding metal objects began to emit uneasy hums.
When his vigilant gaze saw clearly the person standing on the other side through the spark door frame, his movements paused.
He saw the familiar face of his old buddy—Charles, as well as the massive-bodied Hank standing beside him. And the completely unfamiliar, carefree young Asian standing at the very front was obviously the person who opened the door.
Charles sat in his wheelchair, looking at his old friend opposite him. The long-standing exhaustion on his face eased slightly.
He revealed a somewhat dry smile, suppressing anxiety in his voice.
"Eric, long time no see. Raven has encountered extreme danger, and now we need you."
Just this extremely simple opening remark directly laid bare the current core disaster situation.
Magneto's eyes, which always radiated a cold light, narrowed slightly.
He spent about half a second on the spot digesting the amount of information contained behind this sentence.
Raven was not only Charles's sister, but also a core follower he had once valued greatly.
Without much hesitation, he cautiously retracted the magnetic field around him, lifted his leg to step across the still-flashing Portal, and entered the Underground Roomdirectly.
After standing firm, Eric's gaze was nailed dead on Charles, without looking at Arthur aside. His voice appeared extremely low and dangerous.
"Tell me, what kind of thing has actually happened."
Charles had no intention of hiding anything, and replied quickly and briefly,
"It's Trask. The Sentinel Program has been restarted, and other even more terrifying people are pushing these things to happen behind the scenes. Raven was intercepted and taken away by them, and her whereabouts are currently unknown."
Hearing the two words Trask and Sentinel, Magneto's weathered face was instantly shrouded in a layer of icy haze, and the anger in his eyes was almost overflowing.
"Raven has been wandering and hiding everywhere during this period, and it was not easy for her to come back once. You actually let her fall into this kind of deadly trouble at this time? Even her life and death are unknown now?"
Magneto roared low, this accusation hammering towards Charles like a nail.
Arthur was still holding that list note in his hand, leaning against the edge to watch the show.
He knew very well the interaction mode of this pair of elderly close friends: usually fighting to the death, but immediately uniting externally when something actually happened.
Therefore, he didn't want to meddle in their emotional venting quarrel at all. After all, these two had this temper; after spewing at each other for a few sentences to vent their anger, they would naturally start discussing tactics calmly.
Arthur lowered his head and continued to screen on the list for the next person who needed to be captured over to act as a thug.
His gaze moved downward for a long time, and finally landed without any surprise on a name extremely familiar to everyone—Logan.
The address information behind briefly wrote that Loganwas currently staying in a remote western town thousands of kilometers away.
Arthur shrugged and casually drew a new golden halo in the air.
As the Portal spanning a long distance completely took shape, the streets of a small town with heavy western sand and dust and wooden architectural styles emerged behind the door.
Arthur stepped across the threshold, isolating the old friends' quarrel behind him.
He glanced casually around the street filled with the smell of horse manure and cheap beer, and very directly identified the dilapidated tavern at the end of the town that was still glowing with dim yellow light.
Pushing open those half-paneled louvered wooden doors, Arthur walked directly inside.
There were not many people in the tavern, the light was dim, and a few aged wooden pillars supported the old roof.
Arthur's gaze simply swept through the venue for a few rounds, and quickly locked onto the familiar figure sitting in the corner, gulping down cheap whiskey cup after cup.
That man's healing factor allowed him to live for nearly two hundred years, but from his appearance, he still looked like a well-built middle-aged uncle who had just entered middle age, with a wild hairstyle and rough stubble.
He exuded an eccentric, Beast-like aura all over his body, and two or three empty wine bottles had already fallen in front of him.
Arthur strode over, and before Logan had time to react with vigilant counterattack, he casually raised his right hand and gently patted him twice on his broad shoulders.
Logan, who was suddenly approached from behind by a stranger, turned around abruptly.
His eyebrows raised, and he was still holding that thick-bottomed glass wine cup in his hand. A trace of annoyance and confusion from being disturbed had just appeared in his eyes, and his lips had just opened to ask who the other party was.
But this question of his was stuck in his throat forever.
Because in the next second, Logan only felt the light and wooden tables in front of him collapse and shatter into a piece of distorted flowing light.
Before his proud beastly intuition and formidable nerves could make any reaction, his body had already broken through the barrier of space.
When the dazzling whiteness in front of him passed, Logan's feet had already firmly stepped on the steel alloy floor of the Mutant Academy explosion-proof Underground Room.
At this time, the dispute between Charles and Magneto on the other side had subsided a lot, and the two were bickering there, occasionally inserting a few tactical plans on how to break the current grim situation.
Logan blinked twice before barely recovering from the spatial dislocation sense brought by that forced teleportation.
His acute senses quickly filtered out the metal smell and the low-frequency current sound of equipment operation on the scene. Sweeping his gaze across the faces of these old acquaintances present, he quickly understood that he had been forcibly conscripted by some supernatural power.
He had no radical resistance, but instead very calmly raised his hand, tilted his head back to gulp down the last bit of strong liquor left in the wine cup, and then let out a somewhat rugged chuckle from his nasal cavity.
"The completely unreasonable forced person-pulling feeling you guys created really reminds me of another slick kid on our side who runs very fast."
Logan's joke had just landed in this metal room when the air around him suddenly emitted a sonic boom-like tearing sound.
A yellow light so fast that even afterimages were hard to capture scraped an arc across the hall's floor like lightning, and immediately afterwards, that violent airflow instantly stagnated.
Arthur stood there completely unscathed.
And in his hand, just like carrying a chick, he was dragging a young man with white hair mixed in and wearing a pair of goggles he thought were very handsome—Pietro, which was Quicksilver.
In the interval just now when he went to find Logan, Arthurdirectly urged the rabbit hidden within his body.
At this time, Quicksilver was thrown on the floor, the whole person completely in a state of deep confusion and worldview collapse.
The depths of his eyes were filled with an incredible look.
He was a proud speedster Mutant, and time in his eyes was like pressing the slow-motion button.
But just now, he didn't even capture a trace of afterimage on his retina, only feeling an invisible hurricane sweeping past his eyes, and then he, the person who controlled speed, was forcibly packaged and sent here by someone else with a more terrifying and absolute super-speed without any ability to resist.
Quicksilver sat on the ground, his glasses somewhat crooked, his mouth slightly open, completely unaware of what had happened.
Chapter 81: Quicksilver: "Starting from today, I would like to call you the fastest man in the World!"
Inside the Underground Room of the Mutant Academy, people were gradually gathering.
Arthur held the list he got from Charles, looked at the remaining names on it, and without talking much, raised his right hand, twisted his fingers, and directly conjured a circle of golden sparks at his fingertips.
To be honest, there were really only a few dependable field backbones left here; besides acquaintances like Magneto, Wolverine, and Quicksilver who had just been directly yanked over, there were probably only six or seven people left.
Arthur's actions were extremely casual and rough.
The first Portal opened, directly dragging over Cyclopswho was standing by drinking water;
Then, with a turn of his hand, the second door hoisted Storm, who was patrolling high up in the sky in another hemisphere, into the Underground Room;
Closely following that, Nightcrawler hiding in a transnational dark corner, as well as the academy teaching assistant Colossus who was currently out on a mission, were all forcefully dragged and pulled by this unreasonable spatial jump, crashing heavily onto the explosion-proof floor of the Underground Room like dumplings dropping into a pot.
This bunch of frontline backbones were completely dumbfounded when they landed.
Charles, that old man sitting in his wheelchair, gave a light cough, attracting the attention of these dazed employees, and began to explain the serious crisis currently faced by the Academy and the present situation to them in a solemn tone.
Arthur didn't get involved in their mobilization meeting because the smartphone in his pocket vibrated twice in succession.
Pulling it out to take a look, it was a top-secret briefing sent by Fury, the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent boss.
Arthur had to admit that although this old black man was annoying, his work efficiency was indeed maxed out; the data not only found out the whereabouts of that old bastard named Trask, but even clearly listed the specific coordinates and final vanishing point of where that group of HYDRA remnants took him to hide.
Arthur quickly scanned the screen, walked over to Charleswho was holding a small meeting, patted the back of the wheelchair, and casually briefed Charles about the newly obtained intelligence and exact location.
"Old man, the people you wanted are all here. I've got the stuff, I'm going to pull out the nails first, you guys make your own arrangements."
After saying that, Arthur turned around, tucked his phone into his pocket, and strode out the large door of the Underground Room.
Just as Arthur had walked a couple of steps, Quicksilver, who had been standing to the side listening to the meeting, suddenly couldn't hold it in anymore.
This hot-blooded Mutant, who had taken speed as his only pride since childhood, was still brooding over the scene where he was forcefully dragged around like a little chick just now.
How could he stomach this kind of humiliating grievance.
"Hey, buddy, wait for me! I'm going with you."
Quicksilver bolted out the door in two or three steps, sidled up next to Arthur, his eyes flashing with obvious provocation.
Arthur glanced at him sideways.
How could he not know what bad intentions this kid was holding in his belly? Saying they were going together was actually just being unconvinced, wanting to compete in pure speed with Arthur head-on in a spacious venue.
Arthur didn't bruise his ego either, giving a soft chuckle with a tone full of teasing:
"Alright. Then it depends on whether you can catch up to me."
Before his voice had even fallen, the Rabbit Talisman mark within Arthur's body roared in resonance.
Quicksilver only felt the air before his eyes ripple; without even catching an afterimage, Arthur completely disappeared from his sight.
"Hey, I refuse to believe this!"
Quicksilver gritted his teeth, the veins on his neck bulging, and his whole body's Mutant genes instantly boiled.
Everything around him directly entered a slow-motion state similar to being frozen.
Quicksilver spread his legs and entered a sprinting mode of full-speed pursuit.
A terrifying race that almost transcended human common sense unfolded on the wasteland highway.
Quicksilver felt as if he had even used the strength of drinking milk, with the trees and mountains on both sides all stretching into blurred lines, and the wind in his ears compressed into sharp sonic screeches.
But what made people extremely despairing was that throughout this long tug-of-war race, a weak distance of just two or three meters was always maintained between him and Arthur.
Quicksilver accelerated, and the back figure ahead also accelerated; Quicksilver gritted his teeth and pushed for speed again, yet that person still unhurriedly walked just a tiny bit ahead of him, and Arthur even turned his head midway, smiling at him in an extremely relaxed state.
Until sprinting all the way to the final destination marked in Fury's intelligence, Quicksilver had almost worn the soles of his shoes flat, yet he still failed to accomplish the feat of surpassing Arthur by even half a step.
This was also the first time in his life he encountered someone whose pure physical speed could suppress him tightly.
Arriving at this desolate and remote destination, Arthurstopped, standing on a pile of rubble with even breathing, just like he had just gone to the supermarket to buy some groceries.
But Quicksilver, who followed right at his heels, couldn't take it anymore.
As soon as he stopped his steps, his whole body violently lunged forward two steps, and then a pair of hands firmly supported his knees, his mouth wide open panting wildly and heavily, with sweat dripping straight down his cheeks.
Arthur walked over to Quicksilver, carrying a kind of fatherly care, reached out and patted his rising and falling shoulders, and bluntly comforted him: "Little brother, for this kind of physical labor, you still need to go back and practice more."
Hearing these sarcastic words, Quicksilver almost choked and passed out.
He slapped away Arthur's hand resting on his shoulder, rolled his eyes immensely, and grumbled in a rough voice:
"What kind of elder are you acting like here! Still calling me little brother; if we really count by birth era, my age could even be your dad!"
Arthur carefully turned it over in his mind, and thought about it—it really made sense.
According to the years those old fellows had lived to the present, Quicksilver, who was standing in front of him panting heavily right now, must be around fifty years old at the bare minimum.
But Arthur just shrugged and casually said:
"So what? Anyway, you didn't catch up to me. Alright, let's go. The location information I got here is definitely right around this area beneath our feet."
Quicksilver curled his lips, stopped dwelling on this humiliating topic, took a deep breath, and followed.
That extremely detailed task report from Fury really helped a lot.
Following the extremely detailed coordinate instructions on it, Arthur held his phone to compare the terrain and reference points around, and quickly drew an approximate central area on a dusty flat ground.
Arthur put away his phone, turned his head to glance at Quicksilver who was still looking around:
"Step back two paces, make some room, so as not to accidentally injure you when the commotion gets too big later."
Quicksilver didn't know what he was going to do, but he still obediently retreated more than ten meters back, watching with his arms crossed over his chest.
Confirming that Quicksilver had avoided the explosion range, Arthur didn't make any preparation movements at all, and directly mobilized that absolute violent power belonging to the Ox Talisman within his body.
He casually clenched his fists and punched down hard onto the solid ground beneath his feet.
"Boom——!!"
This attack, which completely violated common sense in physics, slammed into the ground, producing a terrifying muffled sound like a depth charge explosion.
The ground was like a fragile dough pancake, instantly shattering into a dense web centered on Arthur's fist.
Following closely, a huge patch of solid soil and rock layers couldn't bear the weight and directly collapsed and caved inward, kicking up a ten-meter-high yellowish-brown smoke pillar.
Under this violent disassembly, the metal facilities that had been deeply buried underground finally saw the light of day. An abandoned elevator shaft leading deep into the underground was forcibly shaken out by this brute force, and the broken metal pipes were still spewing electric sparks outward.
Quicksilver, standing in the distance, was completely stunned, his mouth slightly open, and it took him a long time to react, mechanically reaching out to clap his hands:
"No way... This is truly magical. Awesome, buddy, earlier you cast that invisible cross-frame magic, then ran with a god-like speed that left people eating dust, and now you can even display such giant strength to split mountains and cleave rocks..."
Speaking of this, he carefully leaned forward, sizing up Arthur from top to bottom. That look was just like looking at a monster, and he asked doubtfully:
"You... you... you shouldn't be a Mutant at all, right, buddy?"
Arthur patted the lime residue on his hands and asked back with some amusement: "When did I ever open my mouth to admit that I am a Mutant?"
Quicksilver thought about it, and that was indeed true.
From beginning to end, Arthur never said he was a Mutant; this was entirely his own subconscious assumption after seeing Arthur standing among Charles and his group of people.
Just as the two of them were standing on the edge of the pit hammered out, preparing to step into the elevator shaft passage:
Suddenly, an extremely dangerous sound of breaking wind rushed up madly from the bottom of the deep shaft.
Following closely, a tall figure wearing full-coverage battle armor, accompanied by a muffled metal impact sound, rushed out fiercely from beneath the shaft, heavily stepping onto the broken load-bearing beam above the elevator shaft.
This person was none other than General Zod who crossed over from an alien star. All over his body exuded a ruthless sense of oppression from long-term high position, and those cold eyes surveyed Arthur and Quicksilver standing below from a high position.
Zod spoke in a tone akin to a judgment, extremely coldly.
"You are already too late. That blue fellow has already been completely dismantled by us."
The malice contained in these words was like a knife.
Quicksilver's eyes instantly widened to the extreme, his face full of disbelief.
He gritted his teeth tightly, his palms abruptly clenched into iron fists, his nails almost digging into his flesh.
"Still... are we still too late!"
He felt extreme despair; to think they made so many preparations and spent so much effort running over, only for the ending to turn out like this.
Just like that, watching and confirming the loss of another companion they lived and breathed with every day, this feeling completely filled Quicksilver's heart with the flames of raging Fury.
The atmosphere was completely suppressed to freezing point at this moment.
But just when Quicksilver was about to break out due to grief and indignation, Arthur very unromantically reached out and slapped Quicksilver's tightly tensed shoulder.
Arthur's tone appeared very relaxed, even carrying a hint of laziness, and he muttered extremely casually:
"It's fine, buddy, look on the bright side. So what if he was completely dismantled? What's the big deal, it's not like he can't be resurrected."
As soon as these words popped out of Arthur's mouth, the scene directly fell into a bizarre, dead silence.
Quicksilver, who was full of grief and ready to risk his life just a moment ago, froze on the spot, the moisture in his eye sockets not even fully dissipated, utterly failing to figure out how Arthur dared to use such a casual tone to say the word "resurrect" which defied life and death at this time.
Zod, standing at the height, was visibly stunned for a split second.
He tightly frowned, sizing up the Earthling below with suspicion and shock.
He never expected that Arthur, looking like he didn't have any protective gear or terrifying muscles all over his body, could brazenly speak of the ability to restore the dead.
If such a thing truly existed, it would completely shake the greatest foundation of his plan.
In this instant, Zod's murderous intent surged, directly treating Arthur as a target that must be eliminated and killed first.
The battle was on the verge of breaking out.
Seeing that the opposite side was about to raise murderous intent, Arthur immediately turned his head and looked at Quicksilver beside him.
Arthur raised his eyebrows at Quicksilver, giving an exact look towards the depths of the elevator shaft with strong implication.
Arthur's meaning was very simple: go into the shaft to clean up the mess, and the guy up here is blocked by me.
Quicksilver met Arthur's gaze, nodded with absolute certainty, and put on an expression of leaving it to me.
The next moment, Arthur and Quicksilver both moved simultaneously, making preparations for a burst sprint with extreme tacit understanding.
Just as Arthur exerted force under his feet, preparing to confront Zod who jumped down from above head-on, he abruptly discovered a whirlwind rising from the ground around him.
Turning his head to look, Quicksilver actually didn't charge toward the elevator shaft below at all; instead, he set up a fist-swinging stance, followed directly behind Arthur, and howlingly pounced toward Zod over there as well.
"Stop, stop, stop!! That's not right!!"
Arthur hurriedly called a halt loudly, slamming on the brakes with his feet and sliding two meters away on the muddy ground full of stones.
He pointed right at Quicksilver's nose and cursed aloud: "I told you to run towards the elevator shaft! I didn't tell you guy to crash towards his direction!"
Hearing the shout, Quicksilver hurriedly withdrew his extreme speed, comically retreating back to Arthur's side.
He still looked entirely innocent, even learning Arthur's previous eyebrow-raising gesture in a decent manner, and argued back reasonably:
"Then what do you mean? Didn't your meaning mean that you are going to rush into the elevator shaft to do business, and let my speedster brick help you cover for that guy up here?!"
Hearing this righteous and self-assured misinterpretation, Arthur took a deep breath and covered his forehead in despair.
Sure enough, entrusting one's life's back and communication details on the battlefield to a teammate met just for the first day, and still expecting any tacit cooperation from him, was simply having a broken brain.
Zod: "So are we going to fight or not?"
Chapter 82 I Don't Know What Title to Give It"
At the edge of the desolate and empty site, harsh winds swept through the surrounding collapsed ruins.
Arthur could not be bothered to beat around the bush with Quicksilver beside him anymore. He raised his hand and pointed casually at the damaged elevator shaft that was still billowing black smoke, directly assigning the upcoming task in plain language.
"Alright, Quicksilver, hurry down this path and go find Mystique Raven. As for this pretentious fellow standing up here, I will stay behind to hold him off."
As soon as these words were spoken, the anxiety on Quicksilver's face not only did not fade, but instead knitted even tighter.
Unwillingly, he took a step forward, pointed his hand toward the pitch-black shaft, and shouted excitedly at Arthur,
"Did you not say yourself just now that you can resurrect the dead! Raven and I have known each other for so long anyway, we are old friends, and now you are directly sending me down to look for people?"
"How can your heart bear to let me run down there to face her cold corpse, which might have already been hacked to pieces and mutilated by someone?"
Hearing this somewhat hysterical questioning, the corners of Arthur's mouth twitched uncontrollably.
Staring at the runner in front of him whose brain was clearly a bit stubborn, he felt a deep sense of speechlessness. He sighed and simply laid the words out clearly.
"Then by your meaning, you do not plan to go down, and want to stay here to fight him in my place?"
Arthur stuck out his thumb and gestured toward Zod, who was standing high up behind him, his tone filled with undisguised doubt,
"I can make it clear to you in advance, the one standing up there is no nobody. This fellow went single-handedly and directly slaughtered through your Charles Mutant Academy, where talented people emerge in droves."
"Now calm down and use your brain to think about it. Are you sure that, with your specialty of having no other major skills besides running fast, you can beat him in a one-on-one head-on clash?"
Arthur paused, patted the dust off his hands, and said in a matter-of-fact tone, "However, anyway, I can beat him. If you are not afraid of death, you go up."
This brutally honest truth, carrying a mercilessly derogatory meaning, completely poured cold water over Quicksilver's impulsive emotions.
Although he was usually arrogant and domineering, a little bit of thinking at this moment made him realize that if he really stayed behind to fight that alien armored man exuding a terrifying sense of oppression, he would simply be going to throw away his life for nothing. Weighing the pros and cons took him almost less than half a second.
"I will go down to find Raven!"
Quicksilver made his choice immediately. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva, stared straight into Arthur's eyes, and asked again for confirmation,
"Are you sure you really can definitely resurrect people, right?"
Arthur did not waste any extra words, giving him only a crisp and affirmative nod.
With this guaranteed bottom line, Quicksilver no longer had the slightest bit of hesitation. The Mutant genes all over his body instantly stirred, turning into a blurred silver whirlwind, and he dived headfirst straight into the dim and deep elevator shaft, instantly disappearing from sight.
On the ruined site above, only Arthur and Zod, who had leaped down from a high place, were finally left.
During this not-so-brief process of haggling over the division of labor, Zod, as a Kryptonian general, did not choose to launch a surprise attack while the other was unprepared. The soldier's honor engraved in his genes deep down made him very much dislike and disdain engaging in such despicable acts of taking advantage of someone's precarious position.
Therefore, even though Arthur and Quicksilver were chatting and dividing tasks there as if no one else was around just now, Zod suppressed his temper on the side, stubbornly bearing it right on the verge of fury with his temples throbbing, and stubbornly endured listening to the two men's unnutritious conversation.
Now, the nuisance had finally scrammed, and the situation for a one-on-one duel could be considered quiet.
Arthur twisted his neck, producing two crisp bone-grinding sounds, and casually moved his wrists and shoulders, speaking in a lazy tone as if strolling through a vegetable market,
"Alright, the warmup is over. Then let us touch bases next; I will try to hold back my strength as much as possible when fighting, lest I break things."
It was precisely this breezy sentence that, falling into Zod's ears, instantly ignited his pent-up anger.
Zod's tense face was filled with anger after being insulted.
What did holding back in a fight mean? What was his identity? He was a Kryptonian general!
In the conquest history of the entire Universe, who would dare to stand in front of him and brazenly utter such absurd words as needing to hold back his strength!
Without any more verbal communication, the battle erupted directly amidst Zod's fury. Almost at the same time, the two shattered the ground beneath their feet and charged at full speed toward each other.
Zod's clenched giant steel fist had already raised, carrying a force sufficient to shatter mountains, preparing to completely pound the ignorant Earthling in front of him into meat paste. However, within that extremely short microsecond of contact,
Zod was astonished to find that his perspective began to recede.
He did not even see clearly at all by what method Arthurhad made his move.
He only felt a terrifying giant force coming from his chest that was utterly irresistible and completely beyond his scope of understanding.
Immediately following that, his proud Kryptonian physique flew backward uncontrollably like a baseball hit by a bat.
The surrounding scenery stretched into blurred afterimages in his eyes. He flew more than a hundred meters away in the air, and then rolled heavily onto the desolate land full of gravel and soil, smashing out a huge deep pit.
Zod lay sprawling at the bottom of the pit, his mind falling into a brief blankness.
Only an extremely absurd thought echoed back and forth in his currently crashing mind: I, a dignified supreme military commander of Kryptonian, in a head-on collision, was actually knocked flying in a single strike by a completely unprotected Earthling?
He angrily pressed his hands against the cracks in the ground and abruptly stood up again.
At this time, he saw that Arthur on the opposite side had not even moved his standing position half a step, still standing in the distance, and even leisurely moving the wrist that had just delivered this strike over there.
Faced with such utter humiliation, Zod did not lose his reason; instead, a strong surge of interest suddenly welled up deep in his heart.
This was not because he had some strange masochistic tendency, but because in this long and lonely wandering and conquest of the Universe, he had not encountered an opponent who could directly inflict physical damage on him for a very, very long time.
This kind of strength that could go toe-to-toe with him was enough to be worth him treating it with a little bit of seriousness.
The next moment, Zod's feet slowly left the ground, and his body suspended directly in mid-air, defying the laws of gravity.
He stared fixedly down at Arthur from high above. The pupils in his eyes quickly congested and turned red, and the surrounding air began to distort under the scorching heat of this high temperature.
Following closely, two crimson, dazzling heat-vision beams, as if slicing through the Universe, spewed out from his eyes, carrying a high temperature capable of almost vaporizing steel, and struck straight at Arthur's body.
The beam hit the target without any suspense. A wisp of white smoke rising due to high-temperature scorching even kicked up on the site. But when the light slightly weakened, Zod widened his eyes in shock.
Under the direct hit of those heat-vision beams sufficient to destroy a skyscraper, Arthur actually did not dodge at all.
He just stood in place, letting those two destructive high-heat red beams hit his chest. There was no burned-through hole, no painful screams; Arthur even casually patted the ash on his chest with his hand, seeming to feel that this light did not even have enough temperature for roasting a fire.
Zod clenched his teeth and unyieldingly continued to frantically increase the intensity of the heat vision released from his eyes.
The red light became thicker and thicker, and the surrounding stones began to melt into magma under this overflowing high temperature.
However, it was utterly useless. That person was still standing there safe and sound, not even a single hair scorched.
With his physical strength draining bit by bit, Zod finally had to unwillingly withdraw these massively draining eye rays.
He floated in mid-air, his chest rising and falling violently due to breathing, revealing deep disbelief in his eyes.
Merely through these two rounds of brief probing clashes, Zod's traditionally calm and precise military brain had already quickly and clearly figured out Arthur's strength performance.
This person's strength was so formidable that not only could he head-on knock himself flying without any suspense, but his own body was also completely unaffected by any backlash from Newton's third law of reciprocal forces;
His speed was so fast that even the Kryptonian's super vision simply could not capture the afterimage trajectory of his strikes;
What was even more outrageous was that this person's physical body strength could actually rely purely on his flesh, without any energy shields, to withstand his full-power output of heat vision and remain completely unscathed.
Where the upper limit of this fellow's strength in front of him was hidden, Zod could not probe the bottom of it at all.
But as long as he evaluated it according to the casual strength Arthur was displaying right now, Zod knew very well in his heart that if they really continued to fight, the opponent completely had the ability to pin him, a dignified Kryptonian general, to the ground like a punching bag and beat him fiercely.
This level of power should have been meant to rule the stars.
Zod slowly dropped back to the ground, his brow tightly furrowed into a deep shape. He looked at Arthur, his tone filled with incomprehensible questioning,
"This is impossible! This backward Planet should never have given birth to an existence like you. Why would a person like you, who masters absolute powerful strength, condescend to live a cowardly existence and willingly protect this fragile and valueless Planet?"
"A person like you, conquering the vast Universe, ruling more galaxies, and making all lower life forms submit—that should be the only destination for a person like you!"
Listening to this impassioned, ambitious Universe-overlord rhetoric, Arthur did not follow his train of thought to elevate his own ideological realm at all.
He couldn't help but laugh on the spot, answering very casually and down-to-Earth: "I don't have the time to go conquering any Universe. I'm staying here to take care of my girlfriend."
With that single sentence thrown out, Zod's high-speed warring brain completely crashed instantly.
All those grandiose blueprints for rule and interstellar warfare strategies were smashed to pieces by this sentence.
He opened his mouth, and after a long while, extremely laboriously squeezed out a word full of confusion from his throat
"... What?"
Arthur didn't feel embarrassed at all. He shrugged his shoulders very naturally, his eyes even carrying a bit of smugness that would only be revealed when missing a specific person, and added,
"What's so hard to understand about that? Because I have a girlfriend whom I deeply love, and who deeply loves me back. No matter how vast the Universe is, how can it compare to going home and holding my wife?"
This time, Zod truly didn't understand at all.
He felt that the neural pathways of Earthlings were simply deformed.
You, a powerful existence with World-destroying abilities who could have sat high and mighty upon a throne in the Universe, could actually completely stop your steps of conquest for such trivial, illusory romance on Earth?
This was simply a crude trampling on absolute power!
Just as the two of them were having this misaligned conversation amidst the ruins,
a huge and gloomy shadow suddenly cast down from the unreachable sky.
A massive Kryptonian spaceship with a peculiar appearance and emitting a cold metallic luster slowly broke through the clouds and revealed its true form. Zod's long-awaited army finally completed the final landing preparations.
Although the shadow of the hull in the sky didn't look very huge from this position, judging by the direction its landing locked onto, the destination obviously hadn't changed at all. The main force of those invaders ultimately still fell directly towards the bustling center—Metropolis.
Seeing this scene, the tense muscles on Zod's face finally relaxed a bit, followed by a cold smile of total control.
He looked at Arthur again, attempting to use the other's bonds with Earth to exert extreme moral pressure.
"My army has officially landed."
Zod spread his arms, displaying the apocalyptic scene on the skyline, with a pressing sense of coercion in his tone
"Now, there are only two paths before you. Do you choose to continue meaningless entanglement and waste time with me here, or do you choose to turn around and save this crumbling, fragile World you are in?"
Faced with this soul-striking binary choice problem, Arthur's expression didn't even flicker by a single eyebrow hair.
He shrugged again, rejecting Zod's righteousness kidnapping in a lazy, infuriating tone
"Did you get something wrong? I don't owe this Worldanything, why must I go save it? Whether the outside World lives or dies is none of my damn business. I have nothing else to do right now, I just want to stay here and keep playing nicely with you."
As soon as this impervious, rogue rhetoric came out, Zodcompletely shut his mouth.
He finally painfully recognized a reality: a bastard like Arthur, who didn't care about the life or death of all humanity, couldn't be softened or hardened, and didn't care about any external constraints, simply could not be negotiated with through any talks or reasoning.
Since it couldn't be avoided, he could only fight hard. Zodclenched his teeth, ignoring the spaceship in the sky, and poured all his strength, rushing fiercely towards Arthuronce more like a maddened beast, disregarding everything.
Meanwhile, on the other side, the situation was equally not optimistic.
Quicksilver, who had previously sprinted all the way down the dark elevator shaft, descending continuously by parkour-like climbing and jumping, finally landed steadily on the ground deep underground at this moment.
However, what greeted him was not the expected enemy, nor was there the figure of Raven whom he cared about.
Because his surroundings were frighteningly quiet and completely devoid of people.
Quicksilver looked around and found that the only thing blocking him was a circle of cold, silvery-white metal walls emitting a high-tech reflection.
Quicksilver frowned and immediately activated his super-speed state.
Transforming into a silver stream of light invisible to the naked eye, he rapidly circled a large loop along the walls in this not-so-wide peripheral space.
After stopping his steps, Quicksilver's face turned somewhat ugly, and he even felt somewhat helpless.
Because he discovered during this circling process that on these silvery metal walls enclosing the central area, he couldn't find even a single regular portal to enter and investigate.
This entire shell cast from high-strength special metal was like a completely sealed metal can. Let alone a door, it was so smooth and flat that not even an extremely tiny seam could be found on it.
Quicksilver reached out and punched the cold wall twice forcefully, the rebound force making his finger bones ache faintly.
This suffocating situation made him extremely frantic.
He was merely a Mutant relying purely on kinetic energy generated by extreme speed movement, and didn't have that kind of formidable brute strength to tear apart and destroy this high-grade metal wall with bare hands relying solely on physical strength.
No matter how fast he ran, facing a lump of iron without an entrance, he could only stare helplessly.
Shifting the view back among the high-altitude clouds, inside the control room of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s massive Helicarrier, the red alarm lights were flashing to the extreme.
On the big screen, the real-time footage of the alien fleet officially intruding into Earth's airspace and landing in densely populated Metropolis stung everyone's nerves.
Nick Fury's only single eye stared fixedly at the expanding scope of disaster on the screen.
He turned around, his long black trench coat abruptly whipping out a sharp arc with his movement.
He looked at the group of super-powered individuals behind him who had already assembled and were on standby at any time. Without delivering any lengthy pre-battle mobilization, he shouted out a short and powerful instruction in that unquestionable tone unique to the Director
"No more nonsense! Metropolis needs us. Avengers! Assemble!"
The moment the order was given, the personnel operation of the entire Helicarrier entered the highest efficiency combat-ready state.
Captain America Steve, wearing his uniform and carrying his iconic round shield, along with Natasha in a black Agent bodysuit, swiftly rushed out of the command hall, nimbly boarded the armed helicopter already on standby on the deck, took off against the howling wind, and rushed at full speed toward the central destination of the Metropolis disaster to conduct personnel evacuation and ground support.
Meanwhile, inside the equipment cabin, Tony Stark stood on a huge mechanical assembly platform.
Around him, countless precise mechanical arms, operated by the intelligent system, methodically and swiftly fitted the silver-glowing components of the Mark II Armor next-generation mecha onto him one by one.
Not far away at the control console in front, Dr. Yinsenwore a communication headset, his fingers flying rapidly across the optical keyboard.
He had successfully accessed the main communication channel of the Mark II Armor, ready at any time in the subsequent complex battle situation to provide Tony with the most precise data backing and strategic command using the supercomputer in the rear.
Beside this tense group of people charging out, Dr. Bruce Banner, wearing a loose shirt, appeared particularly conspicuous.
But at this moment, he didn't appear flustered or fearful.
He calmly looked at the huge, glowing green, muscular Hulk beside him.
The violent monster that had always struggled to seize control, now, after a certain power's stripping and reconciliation, was surprisingly quiet and obedient.
"Go on, big guy."
Dr. Banner reached out and patted Hulk's thick calf, pointing at the faintly visible city fire below the Helicarrier, with encouragement in his tone
"Now, it's officially time for you to come out and smash things to your heart's content!"
"Roar—!!"
Hearing the combat authorization order, Hulk's huge face immediately cracked open a ferocious smile full of battle intent.
He raised his head, letting out a terrifying roar that shattered the clouds and made the entire deck tremble.
Following that, that massive green body suddenly bent its knees and squatted down, then like a launched Rocketlauncher, carrying a wildly violent posture with extreme visual impact, without carrying any parachute equipment, directly leaped off the edge of the Helicarrier deck from ten thousand meters high, slamming down toward the ruins of Metropolis.
The mighty first-generation Avengers had all rushed to the most tragic frontlines.
Wait, was someone missing?
Oh right! There was also Sandman who joined the Avengers because of a single sentence from Arthur.
As for Flint Marko, he was currently wearing a janitor's uniform, holding a mop, obediently wiping the floor slowly in the corner of the Helicarrier's living area.
What was the point of having someone with pure physical resistance like him face Kryptonians who could melt even high-tech armor?
Send him up to deliver sand for the alien fleet to play with?
Since his daughter's incurable disease had been cured, and his wife and children had all been properly placed, his state of mind right now was incomparably peaceful.
Honestly staying on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s stable big ship doing odd jobs that didn't require risking his life, having nothing to do after finishing cleaning, and being able to go to a designated visitation area safely and steadily check on his cherished wife and that reborn precious daughter—wasn't such a cozy little life much more appealing than going
out and killing people?