The instant Harry stepped out of the portal, a sharp, piercing whine tore through the air—then a dense storm of bullets poured toward him like torrential rain, screaming as they cut through the room.
But just as they were about to touch him, they slammed into an invisible, overwhelming resistance. Under the pull of electromagnetic force, they stopped dead—frozen in midair exactly one meter in front of him.
Time seemed to lock in place. Every single bullet hung there, perfectly still. The sight was eerie—yet utterly staggering.
Harry's expression didn't change. He merely raised his right hand, palm forward—
And all the suspended bullets snapped around in an instant, reversing direction and rocketing back along their original paths at several times the speed.
They shrieked through the air and punched cleanly into the guards in the room. A few short, muffled grunts sounded out before bodies toppled one after another, blood spreading across the floor.
In the blink of an eye, only two remained in the room:
Harry, and Baron Strucker—his face dark as a storm.
Harry didn't let his guard down. He frowned slightly, staring at Strucker with a hint of confusion.
On Strucker's body, Harry sensed a peculiar energy fluctuation—strangely familiar. It carried echoes of the energy radiating from the Hulk… yet it was completely different at the core, far more violent and savage.
If the Hulk was like a white hole—linked to the dimensional space of some great existence—then as his rage climbed, the energy within him surged like a raging flood, endlessly spilling outward.
Strucker, on the other hand, felt like a black hole—constantly devouring surrounding energy. Even the light near him seemed swallowed, the space around his body dimmer than everything else.
Strucker clenched his jaw, glaring at Harry, voice dripping with hatred. "Fine. I'll admit it—I underestimated you a little. Looks like I'll have to deal with you personally… ah!"
His sentence hadn't even finished—
A blur flashed.
Harry used Apparition, appearing behind him in an instant.
A gleam swept across Harry's hands as spell arrays flickered into existence. In the next moment, he gripped a lightning sword in one hand and a holy sword in the other, and before Strucker could even react, Harry drove both blades in hard.
Harry already knew something was off about Strucker. He wasn't about to act like some movie protagonist who politely waits for the boss to finish transforming before attacking.
Back when he fought abyss demons, he never bothered with "honor" either.
Ambushing was the point.
Righteous backstabs, kidney shots—Konoha's ultimate taijutsu secret technique, Thousand Years of Death—those were some of his favorite methods.
But to Harry's disappointment, his righteous backstab didn't seem to do much.
Strucker's skin turned corpse-gray in an instant, deathly pale. Then his body began to swell and expand at an astonishing speed.
With a thunderous roar, he transformed into a giant—three meters tall.
His skin took on a bizarre gray-and-red tone, like burning flame tangled with a strange, ashen mist.
Compared to the Hulk, he was even bulkier, his muscles more exaggerated, radiating oppressive power.
Even his facial structure grew more brutal and coarse, and the ferocity in his eyes was so savage it made your blood run cold.
The two energy blades Harry had buried in him were forcibly squeezed out, inch by inch, by writhing muscle.
Strucker glared at Harry, rage boiling over as he bellowed, "Damn sorcerer! I'm going to smash you into a puddle of meat!"
He swung his arm.
The wind howled around it, the strike coming down like a massive stone pillar, carrying terrifying weight as it crashed toward Harry.
Harry tapped the ground lightly and slipped aside, dodging the punch, and nodded to himself.
Just as he suspected—Strucker was a Hulk variant.
Even though Strucker looked bigger than the Hulk, he didn't seem to have formed the same connection the Hulk had with that malicious, unfathomable great existence and its dimension.
In raw strength, Strucker did surpass the Hulk in a normal state.
But once the Hulk fell into true fury, Strucker wouldn't stand a chance.
Thinking that, Harry's expression turned a little strange.
The Hulk was clearly the true favored one of that great existence—maybe even the very source of the Hulk's power.
And yet the Hulk, in his normal state, was weaker than the Abomination… and even weaker than this gray-red Hulk.
Which meant that every time the Hulk fought another Hulk variant, he always started off getting suppressed—taking a brutal beating—until, through constant punishment, he finally forced his inner power to awaken, clawed his way back, and won with difficulty.
Poor Hulk.
Like some biography protagonist who only "awakens" at the very last second—finally exploding into the hidden power inside him.
Strucker threw another punch—different from before. This time, his fist was wrapped in a blinding layer of white light as he slammed it toward Harry again.
That white glow seemed to carry a strange, mighty force. The instant it met the air, it was as if a heavy club had struck the surface of water—
The atmosphere itself rippled, then split into jagged white fissures.
Those cracks looked like gruesome wounds, racing toward Harry at terrifying speed. Wherever they passed, the air seemed shredded into fragments.
In a blink, the fissures slammed into the Shield Charm Harry had set up in advance.
The invisible barrier instantly filled with dense cracks. It lasted only a heartbeat before it shattered with a roar, scattering into countless points of light.
Harry's brows knit slightly. Electric light wrapped around his body as he darted and weaved, narrowly avoiding Strucker's strikes.
With that special vibrating white light enhancing him, Strucker's already monstrous strength surged again—qualitatively stronger than before. Every blow carried horrifying destructive power.
Against attacks like that, Harry's Shield Charm wouldn't even hold for two seconds.
And with the strength of his current Shield Charm, he could normally withstand high-yield artillery shells head-on.
Dodging forever wasn't a solution.
Harry Apparated behind Strucker and thrust a sword toward his eye socket—but Strucker dodged with razor-sharp instincts, even reaching out as if to grab Harry.
And even when Harry managed to land a hit, his blade only sank a few centimeters before the magic in the sword was absorbed, the glow dimming as it drained away.
At the same time, Strucker's strength grew even greater.
In this gray-red Hulk state, Strucker actually had the ability to absorb energy.
Harry tried to open a portal beneath him to make him fall freely, but before the portal could get close, Strucker sensed it and dodged in time. The Mirror Dimension was the same—too slow to catch him.
If it were any other day, Harry could overload his magic and force out spells far beyond his current output. The speed of his portals and Mirror Dimension attacks would shoot up—he should've been able to tag Strucker.
But recently, in order to deal with the Destroyer Armor descending into the world, Harry had been overloading his magic for a long time—so long he had nearly lost control completely.
Now his magic was in a state of extreme turbulence. He needed time to stabilize it. During that period, he couldn't overload again—if he did, the magic inside him would immediately spiral into total loss of control.
He couldn't exactly gamble the entire Earth just because of Baron Strucker, could he?
Strike after strike failed to hit Harry, each one dodged by a hair's breadth.
And in the gray-red Hulk state, Strucker was already short-tempered. Missing again and again only made him more frantic.
He roared, "Damn little ant! All you do is dodge!"
Harry lifted an eyebrow and replied flatly, "I'm not dodging because I have to. I'm dodging because I'm afraid I'll accidentally kill you. And if I can force you into a contract, you'd make an excellent lender."
Strucker didn't know what "lender" meant, but from Harry's tone, he understood one thing clearly—
This brat was worried about killing him?
Strucker was so furious he laughed instead. "You, kill me? You worthless bug! Even if I stand here and let you hit me, you won't be able to hurt me at all!"
Based on the force of Harry's earlier attacks, Strucker had decided Harry posed no real threat.
He had defense even stronger than the Hulk's, and he could absorb most forms of energy. Aside from a handful of spells he couldn't absorb, any other attack wouldn't injure him—it would only keep making him stronger.
He feared nothing.
Seeing how confident Strucker looked, Harry seemed to be reminded of Professor Quirrell, back when Quirrell first tried to duel him.
Harry hesitated, voice a little uncertain. "Are you sure?"
Of course, Strucker wasn't actually going to stand there and take it. Whether it was the portals or the Mirror Dimension mentioned in intel, those were both annoying, troublesome magics.
But that didn't stop him from posturing—and trying to bait out an opening.
So he planted himself in place anyway, taunting, "I'm right here. If you've got the guts, kill me. Come on—hit me!"
Harry could naturally see what he was trying to do.
As a pampered leader, even if Strucker gained power through experiments, his combat experience was laughably shallow.
How could he possibly be Harry's match?
Harry didn't care.
The emotion in his eyes vanished, turning cold and indifferent. He raised his wand slowly and gave it a light flourish.
A strange green light began to flash at the wand tip—eerily bright.
Then Harry said calmly, "Fine. As you wish. Avada Gnaw-a-Melon."
In the next instant, driven at full force—three times the normal baseline magic of the wizarding world—a thick, thigh-wide beam of green killing light, carrying endless death, shot straight for Strucker at blistering speed.
The moment that green light flared, Strucker's instincts screamed.
Every muscle in his body tensed. His eyes widened. His whole frame trembled violently, like he was staring down something indescribable—something that could snuff out his life with ease.
He tried to dodge with everything he had—
But the gravity beneath his feet suddenly multiplied several times over.
The abrupt crushing pull threw off his balance, his step staggering—
And that tiny pause was enough.
The green beam slammed straight into his chest.
In the next moment, the unstoppable gray-red Hulk froze stiff. His eyes rolled white.
Life left him instantly.
Harry lowered his wand, gaze settling on the corpse, regret filling his eyes. He sighed softly.
"Tsk. I thought I'd get myself a solid enforcer. Looks like that's not happening."
What a shame…
Harry liked the gray-red Hulk's body.
But he hated the attitude attached to it.
So he could only send Baron Strucker off to meet Mephisto—
No. With his soul collapsing entirely, he didn't even have the right to go to hell.
After confirming there were no other enemies nearby, Harry tossed Strucker's corpse into his pocket dimension. Then his figure flickered, and he left the room, returning outside.
The moment he was back, he was greeted by chaos.
The others were still brawling with the defective knockoffs. Harry raised an eyebrow.
Seriously—are you guys any good, you scrawny little mutts?
How are you taking this long to deal with trash mobs?
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.