Lucci stood quietly at the edge of the crater, looking down at Thor with a gaze that seemed to look down on him.
He wore clean, neat clothes—forming a stark contrast to Thor's mud-caked outfit. A faint smile rested on his face, as though he were enjoying a good show.
Thor, Coulson, and the other agents all stared at him in disbelief.
He slowly walked up to Mjolnir.
Reaching out was like picking up an ordinary toy from the ground.
With effortless ease, he lifted Thor's hammer—said to weigh as much as a planet—out of the dirt.
The entire process was absurdly casual.
Holding Mjolnir in one hand, Lucci lightly hefted it, sensing the "worthiness" restriction Odin had set.
Then he turned his head and smiled at the sluggish, dazed Thor.
"See? Isn't picking it up easy?"
Hearing that, Thor finally snapped back to his senses.
The next instant—
All the grievance, helplessness, and confusion he'd been holding back burst out like a dam breaking.
He no longer cared about the dignity of the God of Thunder, nor the pride of an Asgardian prince.
He suddenly lunged forward, hugged Lucci's thigh, and bawled like a child who'd just been hurt outside.
"Big brother!"
"You finally came! Waaah…"
"If you didn't come again, I really wouldn't know what to do!"
"Father doesn't want me anymore!"
"The hammer doesn't recognize me anymore!"
"I'm still locked up here like a lunatic!"
"Waaah… it's so hard!"
Lucci looked down at Thor clinging to his leg, snot and tears soaking his pants, and the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
Farther away, the agents watching the scene stood with their mouths hanging open.
"That… that macho guy who took down a whole squad and tried pulling the hammer out for ages… is… crying?"
"And who is this new man?"
"Why can he lift that hammer so easily?"
An agent muttered to himself.
Coulson pushed up his glasses. The eyes behind the lenses were more solemn than ever.
He immediately grabbed his communicator and reported to Nick Fury on the other end.
"Director… you won't believe what I'm about to say…"
"But what I said is true!"
"What do you mean?" Nick Fury's voice suddenly sharpened. "What happened to the hammer? Get to the point!"
Coulson closed his eyes and gave a bitter smile.
"That hammer… that mysterious man… picked it up… easily."
After he said that, Coulson could practically imagine the expression on the one-eyed director's face back at base.
…
The Helicarrier, bridge command room.
Just as Coulson predicted, the moment Nick Fury heard it, he abruptly stood up from the director's chair.
The freshly printed document in his hand—titled Preliminary Assessment Report on the Alien Visitor "Thor" and His Weapon "Mjolnir"—slipped from his fingers and scattered across the floor.
That report was the product of days of analysis by top scientists and strategic analysts.
Their conclusion:
Mjolnir likely contained mass-manipulation or space-fixation technology. Its weight was theoretically "infinite," and there was no physical method on Earth capable of forcibly lifting it.
And now Coulson was saying:
Some man who appeared out of nowhere had picked it up like a toy.
What did that mean?
It meant everything they'd assessed, analyzed, and understood had been overturned—right then and there.
Meaning that outside the known "supernatural variable" named Thor, an entirely new unknown had appeared—one that seemed… even more terrifying.
Nick Fury's single eye gleamed with unprecedented gravity.
"Coulson…" Fury's voice took a long time to sound again. "Did you really see it clearly?"
Coulson smiled bitterly. "Director, I not only saw it—my men did too. And all our surveillance equipment saw it as well."
"Unless every human and machine there is collectively hallucinating."
That answer erased the last trace of wishful thinking in Fury's mind.
He immediately turned and issued a top-priority order to the technicians in the command room.
"All intel analysis units—listen up!"
"From Agent Coulson's area, send all real-time video data to my main screen immediately, under maximum secrecy!"
"Now!"
Fury's order shot through internal channels like a precise command.
The technicians rapidly typed, mobilizing clearances.
In seconds, the huge main screen in the center of the bridge split into multiple panels.
From different angles, in maximum quality, the New Mexico desert came into sharp view.
In the center panel was a close-up:
Lucci's calm, deep face filled the screen.
His features were so handsome they looked unreal, but his black eyes were so indifferent—so devoid of human emotion—that he looked like a god gazing down on all living beings beneath his feet.
In his hand, he casually held Thor's hammer—rendering their entire organization powerless.
On the other side of the picture, Thor was shown in an embarrassingly pitiful state, hugging Lucci's thigh and crying bitterly.
The vivid contrast delivered an unparalleled visual impact.
Nick Fury stared at Lucci's face on the screen, the solemnity in his one eye growing stronger and stronger—until he even sensed something he hadn't noticed before…
Fear.
He had monitored the world for decades. He believed he'd seen countless vicious criminals; he believed he'd even encountered powerful abnormal beings like Captain Marvel, Carol.
But the man on screen felt completely different.
Carol was powerful—but her eyes held human joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness.
This man…
His eyes held ultimate calm.
Indifference. Not caring. No fear.
As if there was no person or thing in this world worthy of his attention.
That absolute confidence and apathy at the peak of existence made something cold rise from the depths of Nick Fury's soul.
"Do we have facial recognition results?" Fury asked in a low voice.
A technical officer replied immediately. "Reporting to the Director: we're comparing him against every database worldwide…"
"There is no such person. It's like he appeared from nowhere."
"Appeared from nowhere…" Fury chewed on those words, unease swelling in his chest.
A mysterious being of immeasurable power, with an unknown origin, suddenly appearing on Earth…
To Nick Fury—who had always committed himself to keeping Earth safe and holding everything in his hands—this was an intolerable threat.
On the spot, he made a decisive call and issued a series of unprecedented highest-level directives to the entire bridge.
"Launch the highest-level threat assessment!"
"List this individual immediately at the highest threat tier—God-class!"
"Create an exclusive file! Codename…"
"Unknown God!"
The air in the command room tightened to the extreme.
Everyone knew what starting a "God" level file meant.
It was the organization's ultimate plan for dealing with entities from myth and legend—things capable of destroying the world and overturning civilization.
Since the organization's founding, this level of archive had never truly been activated.
Thor might have been the first.
But now this mysterious man had appeared afterward—and become the first "real" one.
"And one more thing!" Nick Fury's voice was cold and firm. "Coulson and his men are absolutely forbidden from provoking any conflict with the Unknown God without my direct order!"
"Keep watching!"
"Record everything about him!"
"I repeat: there must be absolutely no conflict of interest!"
"At the same time, mobilize all available information resources, surveillance satellites, stealth drones…"
"No matter what, lock down his position!"
"But—" Fury cut off sharply, "all surveillance must be conducted under the premise of absolute safety, and retaliation is absolutely forbidden!"
He knew all too well that careless probing toward an existence at this level could lead to catastrophic consequences.
"Yes, Director!"
The Helicarrier—Earth's most powerful war-and-intelligence platform—began operating at unprecedented efficiency, driven into frantic motion by Lucci's appearance alone.
…
At the temporary base.
Lucci looked at Thor, who was crying like a child over two hundred pounds, gripping his thigh and soaking his pant leg with tears and snot.
"Alright, that's enough." Lucci lightly tapped Thor's head with his free hand. "If you keep crying, you'll lose Asgard's face."
At the word "Asgard," Thor's sobbing gradually stopped.
He lifted his tear-streaked face and looked at Lucci, his expression a mix of grievance, confusion, and hope; his voice was still thick with a nasal tone.
"Big brother… I… can I go back?"
Lucci looked at him and felt both irritated and amused.
He directly handed Thor's hammer to him.
"Do you want your power back?" he asked.
Thor's eyes lit up instantly.
He stared blankly at Lucci, then at the hammer, and almost reflexively reached out, excited to take it.
But the moment his hand gripped the handle—
That familiar, desperate weight surged back.
The hammer was like a mountain in his hand. It did not budge.
The excitement on Thor's face froze, replaced by profound despair and helplessness.
His voice trembled as he looked up at Lucci.
"Big brother… why can you lift it?"
"But I can't!"
"What should I do?"
"What exactly do I need to do to regain its recognition?"
Faced with Thor's barrage of questions, Lucci's gaze deepened.
In his vision, the hammer's interior was not solid at all.
It was a three-dimensional magical formation made of countless mysterious runes and energy circuits.
At the center of the formation hung a complex curse seal filled with paternal love, expectation, and the majesty of a king.
That curse seal had been carved by Odin himself:
"Whoever is worthy may lift this hammer and gain the power of Thor."
To ordinary people, it would look like a simple mantra.
But under Lucci's "defying comprehension"—the ability to analyze the origin of all things—every detail of the curse seal was as clear as the lines on his palm.
He immediately saw its structural principle:
Odin's power as the core, guided by the laws of the World Tree, forming the judgment criteria.
He saw through the core "worthiness" standards.
So-called "worthiness" did not simply mean strength or identity.
It contained three main elements:
Selfless sacrifice: the willingness to give one's life to protect the weak.
Humility of character: recognizing one's flaws; abandoning arrogance and vanity.
A sense of responsibility: understanding what responsibility truly means; no longer waging war indiscriminately for personal glory.
Only when Thor met these three standards would Odin's "dial lock"—which Thor believed unbreakable—automatically unlock.
"So that's how it is…" Lucci understood.
Breaking this seal would be easy for him.
He wouldn't even need to "decode" it—he could simply erase the curse seal's existence outright using higher causal authority and return Mjolnir to its original state.
But…
He looked at Thor.
Thor was gazing at him expectantly, waiting for an answer.
In the end, Lucci abandoned that thought.
He knew Odin's ultimate purpose in setting this "dial lock" wasn't to punish Thor—but to make him grow.
It was an old father's last and deepest lesson for a son who wasn't ready.
This trial and discipline were necessary if Thor was to transform from a reckless "warrior" into a qualified "God of Thunder."
In Lucci's view, it was a good thing.
He could solve any external enemy alone.
But Thor's inner growth ultimately had to be completed by Thor himself.
As long as Thor stayed alive and was allowed to suffer a bit more—allowed to hit walls—it would benefit his future growth.
With that thought, Lucci reached out and gently placed his hand on Thor's shoulder.
"Let's go. Being told won't help. You have to feel it and discover it yourself."
Before Thor could understand what he meant, Lucci's spatial power quietly activated.
Buzz—
Their figures vanished in an instant.
In the distance, Coulson and the agents watching from the side saw the scene and were petrified again.
"Everyone… where are they?"
"Gone!"
"That… that speed… less than a tenth of a second!"
"What is this? Teleportation? Spatial teleportation?"
Coulson's pupils shrank to the limit; his heart nearly jumped out of his throat.
Just lifting Thor's hammer had been enough to shatter his worldview.
And now this man had displayed unprecedented spatial teleportation.
The "Unknown God's" power had completely surpassed the limits of their imagination.
Coulson immediately grabbed the communicator again and reported the even more terrifying news to Nick Fury.
…
On the Helicarrier, Nick Fury listened to Coulson's report and stayed silent for a long time.
"Spatial ability…" he muttered, his eyes dark. "This Unknown God is even more unimaginable…"
"And… backed by the sky."
He knew that with such an ability, any physical defense or pursuit on Earth would be meaningless.
He could come when he wanted, leave when he wanted.
For Nick Fury—who always liked holding the initiative—this produced a helplessness he'd never felt before.
He took a deep breath and issued another order. "Mobilize all units immediately. All eyes worldwide, all cooperating intelligence agencies…"
"Find the Unknown God's location!"
"But remember: do not act rashly!"
"No confrontation!"
"The only thing we should do now—observe!"
…
At the same time.
Far away in Asgard, in the golden palace, Odin—resting with his eyes closed—suddenly opened them.
He felt it.
The core of the seal he had left in Mjolnir… had been stirred by a power.
That power, like an all-seeing eye, was carefully "observing" the entire rune formation he had built—from the inside.
…
Bonus chapter at 100 PS