Once everyone snapped back to their senses, they realized nothing around them seemed to have changed. Even the innocent civilians who'd been taken hostage were still standing right where they were.
Everyone looked confused—clearly wondering how there'd just been that huge a commotion, yet nothing happened at all.
Black Widow swayed her hips lightly as she walked up to Harry.
Her face was as calm as ever, but her hot, rapid breathing still gave her away—her emotions were nowhere near as steady as she pretended.
She tilted her chin up, eyes locked on Harry. "Did the magic fail?"
The other agents' expressions turned grim too. If the spell had really failed, they'd be forced right back into that cruel, impossible choice.
And that was the worst-case scenario.
Harry flashed an easy smile and spoke in a bright, reassuring tone. "Relax. The spell worked. Those dozens of hostages aren't a threat anymore."
Only then did everyone loosen up.
Dr. Lizard had been so scared by that massive racket that his whole body jolted, his heart nearly jumping out of his throat.
But when he looked around and saw everything was the same—no horrifying catastrophe, no sudden disaster—his taut nerves instantly went slack. He let out a long breath, the fear on his face fading away.
Then, out of habit, he glanced at his phone—
And his entire body stiffened.
All the relaxed composure vanished, replaced by sheer disbelief.
On the screen, the livestream had cut out. The signal bar was completely empty, showing: No Service.
The moment he realized the stream was down, Dr. Lizard's face changed dramatically. He knew exactly what that meant: once the livestream was gone, the value of those hostages would plummet.
The instant that thought hit him, he didn't hesitate. He rushed to the hostages, glaring at the approaching crowd, and barked with bluster that couldn't hide his fear:
"Back off! Even if my phone can't get online, tens of thousands of people already know what's happening here! If these hostages don't make it home safely, the outside world can guess exactly what happened!
I'll say it one last time—move aside, or I'll kill them right now!"
What shocked Dr. Lizard was that nobody backed up even a single step.
Instead, they sped up, closing in even faster.
And Harry, with a mocking look on his face, shouted encouragement like he was cheering from the sidelines:
"Go on, try it. Maybe if a few people die, we'll actually start to care!"
Dr. Lizard's expression turned ugly. Without hesitation, he swung his claw and stabbed hard toward a hostage's chest.
But what happened next made his eyes widen, his face filling with stunned disbelief.
At the instant his razor claws should have pierced flesh, the sensation was completely wrong.
His hand didn't make contact at all.
It was like he'd struck a phantom—his claws passed straight through with no resistance, unable to harm the hostage in the slightest.
At that moment, one hostage seemed to notice something strange. A flicker of hesitation crossed his eyes, then—like he'd forced himself to be brave—he ignored the lizard-man trying to block him and sprinted away.
The other hostages immediately followed suit, working together to cut the ropes binding them, then bolting after him.
And no matter how the lizard-men tried to stop them, it was like grabbing at flowers in a mirror or the moon reflected in water—visible, but untouchable. Close enough to see, impossible to reach.
Just now, with Hedwig's help, Harry had overloaded himself and drawn on a massive amount of chaos magic, creating a Mirror Dimension that covered the entire Catskill watershed—while using Hedwig's computing power to exclude every hostage from its range.
The Mirror Dimension was a special spatial dimension created by magic, corresponding to real space.
From inside it, you could observe reality like looking at a mirror—which was why everyone was clearly in the Mirror Dimension, yet could still see the hostages in the real world.
From the hostages' perspective, Harry and the others had suddenly vanished, disappearing without a trace.
That was why, after the spell ended, they'd looked bewildered at first—then, moments later, found the courage to run.
The Mirror Dimension was unquestionably one of the most important spells in Kamar-Taj's magical system. Once it was successfully cast, it gave sorcerers a battlefield where anything that happened inside couldn't affect reality.
And beyond that, a sorcerer with powerful magic gained something close to a creator's advantage within it.
Now that Harry had successfully cast a large-scale Mirror Dimension, he undeniably possessed a degree of "creator authority" here.
Sensing the danger, Dr. Lizard's internal alarm bells went berserk. He didn't hesitate—he commanded the endless green-skins to surge toward Harry like a tidal wave.
His gaze locked onto Harry, savage intent flickering in his eyes.
He didn't understand the bizarre chain of changes that had just happened—but it had to be connected to that staff-wielding sorcerer radiating that mysterious aura.
If he could kill this sorcerer, he still had a chance.
Thanks to the Hulk serum provided by his partner—the Big Boss—Dr. Lizard's physical abilities had been strengthened beyond anything he'd ever known. His power had skyrocketed by orders of magnitude.
Now, a single punch from him could unleash tens of tons of force—enough to flip a heavy truck and smash reinforced concrete into powder.
Under his command, dozens of green-skins moved like trained wolves, quickly surrounding everyone else.
While the others were tangled up with the green-skins, Dr. Lizard planted his feet and exploded forward—launching himself like a fired shell, charging straight toward Sorcerer Harry!
As a doctor capable of successfully developing a lizard serum, Dr. Lizard's intelligence wasn't in question.
Before he moved, he'd already used that brain of his to analyze and predict every scenario in meticulous detail.
Based on the Big Boss's intel, the sorcerer in front of him was very likely the mysterious figure who had defeated both Abomination and Hulk.
This sorcerer possessed a terrifying spell—one that could fire a hypersonic electromagnetic railgun.
Even with his Hulk-serum-enhanced body, if he took a direct hit from something like that, the result would be severe injury—maybe even death.
So as he rushed in, Dr. Lizard abandoned the obvious straight-line approach and advanced in a bizarre S-shaped path instead.
That hulking body of his moved like a ghost—darting left and right through the chaos, ducking low, slipping sideways, twisting and weaving—skillfully avoiding any possible railgun firing lines, making it impossible for anyone to lock onto him.
Closer. Closer.
Dr. Lizard's heart surged with glee, bloodlust glittering in his eyes.
That sorcerer's physical body wasn't strong. As long as he could get in close, force a melee fight, then with his enhanced claws—each strike carrying tens of tons of power—he could turn that mysterious sorcerer into a puddle of mush in just minutes.
The S.H.I.E.L.D. agents' faces changed drastically. They tried to break free from the lizard-men harassing them and rush to support Harry.
Harry was their creditor—and their source of strength. Something absolutely could not happen to him.
…They weren't worried about Harry, of course.
They were worried about themselves.
If Dr. Lizard got close and forced Harry into a magic meltdown, what would it matter if they won the fight?
New York would still be wiped off the map.
But the lizard-men's astonishing regeneration kept them pouring in like a flood, clinging to the agents without end.
They fought like they didn't fear death, surging forward in waves. Even with grievous wounds, they recovered quickly and rejoined the battle.
Even Coulson—the strongest of them—was swarmed by the stubborn monsters, dragged into a brutal struggle with no chance of breaking away, let alone rushing to help.
Seeing how anxious they were, Peter comforted them. "Don't worry. In the Mirror Dimension, a sorcerer like Harry—someone with that kind of magic—is basically invincible."
The next second, Dr. Lizard had already slipped past the others and the towering rock giant, closing to within a few dozen meters of Harry.
He knew the mysterious sorcerer had a defensive spell—one with incredible protection, capable of tanking several of Abomination's punches.
But after taking that many hits, that defense had nearly shattered. If he could stay close to the sorcerer for just one minute, he could tear him apart alive.
Even so, Dr. Lizard didn't let his guard down. No one could say how many weird spells a monster like this sorcerer still had hidden.
Everything went exactly as he predicted.
When Dr. Lizard finally reached Harry and threw a full-power punch, an invisible transparent barrier caught it cleanly.
He clenched his teeth, let out a low roar, and summoned every muscle in his body—then began raining punches down in a frenzy, strikes hammering the barrier like a storm.
Each blow carried brutal impact. Fine cracks immediately appeared across the shield, spreading like a spiderweb.
Under the sunlight, those fractures looked painfully bright—as if the barrier would shatter the very next second, leaving Harry with nowhere to hide.
Yet Dr. Lizard didn't feel any relief at all.
His face only grew darker—like a stormfront about to break.
Because Harry, instead of showing even a trace of fear, was calmly studying Dr. Lizard through that cracked, wobbling barrier—clicking his tongue in open admiration.
"Tsk, tsk… not bad construction," Harry said slowly, with an investigative tone. "If I'm not wrong, you injected yourself with lizard serum first, then pumped in Hulk blood afterward. That's how you got strength comparable to Abomination. I've got to say—bold. And completely insane."
Dr. Lizard's pupils shrank sharply, unease surging through him. He hadn't expected Harry to guess the source of his power just by looking.
Harry didn't seem to care about his reaction at all, continuing casually:
"Looks like you've got a partner too. High IQ—good enough to rival Tony—and an artificial intelligence.
If I hadn't stepped in, you might've actually pulled it off. If you turned everyone in New York into monsters, that would've been a global-scale disaster.
Even my teacher would've had to spend a lot of effort cleaning up something like that.
But…"
Dr. Lizard stared at Harry, every nerve stretched tight like a drawn bow, ready to strike at the slightest opening.
In this razor-edged standoff, Harry slowly lifted a hand, making a motion like he was holding something up.
Time itself seemed to freeze.
The air grew heavy, oppressive.
One second. Two seconds.
Several full seconds passed—yet no attack came. No spell. No strange shift.
Nothing.
Everything was so quiet it felt wrong.
Just as Dr. Lizard's confusion spiked—
A shrill, miserable wail tore through the silence.
Not his.
The other lizard-men's.
In an instant, Dr. Lizard's attention was yanked toward a scene so absurd it looked impossible.
The vast earth itself—under an indescribable, limitless force—was being folded like a sheet of thin paper.
In the blink of an eye, flat ground was bent into a perfect ninety-degree angle. Soil and rock at the edges shattered and twisted, the thunderous cracking deafening, smoke and dust blasting skyward.
The ground rapidly reassembled, stitched and rebuilt—forming a sharp-edged, perfectly regular cube in moments.
At the same time, massive reservoirs, as if pulled by some mysterious power, slowly rose from the earth and floated above the cube—hanging in the air in blatant defiance of reality.
Even stranger, the water inside—water that should have poured down under gravity—was as calm as a mirror, not a single drop falling.
Dr. Lizard trembled violently. He understood exactly what it meant—
Even the laws of physics had been altered.
Space had been folded.
Staring at the unbelievable spectacle, a movie that had hit theaters not long ago flashed through his mind: Inception.
In the film, the heroine, Ariadne, used her astonishing spatial imagination to build a bizarre dream world—folding dream space at will, folding it into a neat cube.
But—
This wasn't a dream.
This was reality!
Without warning, the once-still cube-space erupted into chaos.
Thick stone pillars howled out from what felt like tears in space itself, slamming in with unstoppable force from all six faces of the cube.
Each pillar carried the power to split mountains and crack boulders, and their targets were precise—every single one aimed directly at a lizard-man.
A series of heavy impacts boomed.
The lizard-men didn't even have time to react before the pillars smashed into them.
Overwhelming pressure crashed down like a landslide, mercilessly grinding their bodies into pulp.
In the span of a heartbeat, these lizard-men—each with strength comparable to Captain America—were reduced into indistinct piles of flesh.
In only a few seconds, dozens of lizard-men were annihilated.
Only Dr. Lizard survived—barely—relying on his monstrous physique and regeneration to scrape through.
But even he had been pinned in place by countless pillars, trapped and locked down so thoroughly that the crushing force wouldn't let him move an inch.
Then he saw the mysterious sorcerer float up from the ground, drifting into view before him.
Behind the gray mist concealing Harry's face, there seemed to be a hint of a sneer as he looked down from above and said:
"Come on, kid. Sign this contract."
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.