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"I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive."
- Spike Spiegel (Cowboy Bebop)
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<(Atem POV)>
"W–why aren't my spells working? What did you do to me?" Strange demanded, his voice tight with panic as he cycled through sigils and arcane gestures, none of which produced even a single spark of magic.
I didn't answer. Instead, I kept my eyes locked on him, exerting just enough focus to unravel the magic forming around his hands. My new vision... it was able to tear through the layers of mystical energy he was summoning, shredding every spell and breaking every mystic circle at its source. I wasn't exactly sure how I was actually doing it since it was more instinctual than technique, but it worked.
'If I continue to improve at this pace, I'll soon might even be able to kill with a glance... or unmake the very laws of physics and reality with nothing but a glare.' I laughed silently, watching the Sorcerer Supreme flail like a street performer-turned-mime mid-breakdown.
"Strange, run back to your Sanctum. Without magic, you're a liability. Even that Infinity Stone you recently acquired isn't going to save you. If I'm correct, that's all you've got left besides draining your own life force to fuel your magic or borrowing some of the dark power from our masters to cast some worthwhile spells, right?" Lord Mar-Vell, the one who carried the original title of Captain Marvel, way before Carol Danvers ever did, motioned to the Eye of Agamotto hanging uselessly from the sorcerer's neck.
"I can't go all-out while worrying about dead weight like you." Lord Mar-Vell's voice was flat as his gaze shifted toward me. "Besides, I'm more than enough to take him down. I was the one who got the lion's share of power from our masters, remember?" An ugly feral grin twisted the face of the Kree warrior as bands of light and heat spiraled around his costumed frame... Although despite all that blinding brilliance, there was something else buried within that energy—something darker, swirling beneath the surface like rancid filth churning beneath all that dazzling light.
"You scheming bastard. You think I don't see through you?" Strange snapped, voice sharp with accusation. "You want the glory of taking him down solo, don't you? Well, tough luck, jackass. That's not happening. Nobody is robbing me of my moment of glory." He scoffed at Mar-Vell as he pulled a carved wooden staff from somewhere inside his cloak.
"Anyway, I've got a read on how he's blocking my spells. It looks like he can shut me down while I'm casting, but he can't seem to cancel the effects of the enchanted gear I'm already wearing. My Cloak of Levitation is still functioning as it should, and I can feel the magic pulsing through my staff. I think I can use the time stone—Urgh!" Strange's sentence cut off with a wet gasp as dozens of crimson spears tore through his back, ripping him apart into pieces before he could even react.
'Seriously? He dropped his physical buffs just because he thinks he's absolutely immortal in this universe?' I thought, resisting the urge to sigh. 'I swear, half the so-called heroes and villains out there deserve to get wiped out just for showing up this unprepared. In a world where every tenth person can blitz you at Mach speeds, having some kind of defensive enchantment should be the bare minimum for anyone without a super-durable body.' I shook my head inwardly, equal parts disappointed and amused.
"God, you guys have seriously lost your survival instincts, haven't you? Well, I guess the absence of death does that to people... Anyway, what I wanted to say was, please don't ignore me like that from next time. It hurts my feelings," I said, a mock melancholic smile on my face, as I snapped shut the red-glowing inventory portal I'd opened right behind the sorcerer.
Sure, copying Gilgamesh's Gates of Babylon move might be getting a little old by now, but damn if it didn't still get the job done. Raining down thousands of my divine energy weapon constructs in an instant? Still one of my favorite ambush moves. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: inventory powers are one of the most broken cheats ever if used smartly, plain and simple.
"… Well, that was unexpected." Lord Mar-Vell let out a dry chuckle, masking the flicker of surprise that had briefly crossed his face. But his brow creased—just slightly—for the first time since arriving. He now realized that dealing with me wasn't going to be nearly as effortless and simple as he'd arrogantly assumed.
However, before I could gauge anything else from his reaction, he rushed towards me at multiple times the speed of sound.
"Oh?" I muttered while raising one of my eyebrows as I saw the excess energy bleeding from his frame. The force from his hypersonic flight tore through the area, igniting everything in his wake—shattered buildings, glass, concrete, metal—nothing was spared from the explosion. His punch closed in, blazing with heat and brute power.
But I didn't flinch. I met it with a punch of my own. The impact triggered a sonic boom so intense it leveled nearly the entire block, splintering nearby structures and sending shockwaves across the cityscape. But Mar-Vell wasn't content with landing just one punch. He shifted, channeling every ounce of his Kree combat training, and drove his fist into my jaw with enough force to fracture a planet's crust. Before I could try and hit back, his hands then clamped around my neck—and in a flash, we were tearing through the atmosphere, streaking toward space at a speed that could only be described as lightspeed.
Once we cleared Earth's atmosphere, Lord Mar-Vell twisted mid-flight and tried to hurl me deeper into space. Emphasis on tried. Because the moment he went for it, I drove my forehead straight into his face with everything I had—shattering his nose and turning it into a crushed mess.
"ARGHH!" he screamed, agony ripping through him as a blast of cosmic energy burst from his body, flooding space with searing heat and blinding light, vaporizing dozens of nearby satellites and probes in the explosion.
Lord Mar-Vell didn't hesitate. Blood poured from the ruin of his nose as he let out a guttural roar, surging forward with both fists cloaked in cosmic energy—energy that was no longer radiant, but darkening by the second. Even the fabric of space around him seemed to warp with some sort of corrupted energy, as he hurled himself at me, trying to tear through my defenses with mad fury.
But I didn't move. Instead, I engaged Astral Manipulation and phased out of sync with physical space. His punch passed harmlessly through me just as I drove my palm into his chest. A torrent of crimson divine energy erupted, launching him backward with the weight of a falling star. He spiraled across space, then snapped into a stable stance mid-spin, his snarl laced with hatred. His corrupted Kree biology healed the damage at a disturbing rate, with the fist-sized hole in his chest closing as quickly as one could blink.
"You think this changes anything?" he spat, his flesh spasming as black tendrils of stellar energy crawled across his form, looking like some sort of sick armor of living shadow. "You can't stop what's coming. This reality already belongs to my masters. Resistance is meaningless as long as they exist. Just accept and join us. You will be rewarded with more power than you can imagine."
'Really? Because I can imagine a LOT of power.' I smirked, activating Boost, which doubled my strength, speed, and durability instantly.
In a blink, I vanished and reappeared behind him. Both Chaos Blades ignited in my hands, their chains floating like serpents ready to strike. With a grunt, I lashed out, binding his limbs with the red-hot chains before plunging both blades deep into his corrupted flesh. Lord Mar-Vell let out a scream, unleashing a shockwave of vile energy so powerful that the moon, which was nearby, exploded into three massive pieces due to the force of the shockwave.
"Damn it," he cursed, tearing himself free of the chains and yanking the blades from his body. He charged again, faster now, his fists glowing with that same corrupted energy before firing a concentrated beam of dark energy at me.
The beam struck the Earth behind me before trying to cleave me in two. Wherever it made contact, the land reacted like it had been hit by the wrath of a thousand suns—like dozens of hydrogen bombs had gone off all at once, minus the usual radiation. In seconds, a massive portion of the Sahara was obliterated, reduced to a seething inferno. As a matter of fact, the planet itself seemed to groan beneath the impact, as if it had just scraped by the edge of total annihilation.
However, when the beam hit me directly, it barely left a mark. It wasn't just my raw durability at work—it was the Mysterium-plated Uru armor I wore. The suit didn't just endure the blast; it actually adapted to it as well because of the advanced sentinel technology Zoya had integrated into it, drinking in the dark energy like it was nothing. Then it began to glow—a faint, reddish-golden light pulsing from the plates—casting me in the image of a rising sun breaking over the horizon. 'Well, look at that. You just gave me a glow-up.' I mocked.
"BOOST," I called again—this time doubling my magical reserves instead of my body. Then, I extended my arm, palm open. "Avada Kedavra."
A crimson beam shot forward and struck him dead center. The spell carved through the space between us and hit his very soul. It didn't kill him outright as I expected it to. But I saw it twist his essence, trying to sever his very soul from that cursed body. But unfortunately, it ultimately failed in front of the corruption that plagued his body despite the humongous amount of magic I had used in the spell.
So I stopped holding back. I reached into the depths of my existence and called upon my divinity of Nothingness.
Space bent unnaturally around me, and even the light of the stars themselves appeared to dim as I pulled power from a void older than time. As I raised my hands, a sphere of absolute black formed between them. It seemed to be able to curve reality itself inward, consuming light, gravity, energy, and even reality itself. It looked like everything it touched collapsed into it.
Mar-Vell hesitated. He seemed to be contemplating whether he should continue to fight or escape and live to fight another day. But then, before he could come to a decision, I threw the ball of nothingness at him with all the strength I had, treating it like a grenade.
"Wait—NO!" he cried, jerking away. But the orb grazed him. And a touch was all it took. Parts of him vanished—erased from reality itself. Not wounded or burned. Just gone.
"N-No... This isn't how it ends... I can't die. I can't!" he muttered, glowing like a miniature sun despite being only half a body now.
Perhaps, he was thinking of using the last bit of his energy reserves to hypercharge himself and self-detonate in one last desperate attempt to infect me.
I watched him struggle. My chest rose and fell once, spent from the drain. I met his fading eyes. "Sadly, you are no Odin or Galactus... well, at least not the truly strong versions who exist in my universe." A flame of Voidfire flickered to life on my finger before I tossed it at him.
That was the moment when Mar-Vell truly saw it, his inevitable death.
Not metaphorically. But in his fear. His superior senses and cosmic awareness made sure that the Kree warrior knew the fact that this was his end. The second he noticed a red glow in my eyes that even I wasn't sure was there, he knew that death was coming for him, despite the concept of death not even existing in the universe. Even his twisted and rotten soul that refused to die recognized the truth. A future carved into the bones of fate.
And then, in a final blast of my all-consuming black fire, Lord Mar-Vell—the Champion of the Cancerverse—was erased from existence.
I remained still, floating above the Earth, my gaze locked on the last traces of his form as it faded into ashless nothing.
"Just one last hurdle left now," I muttered, exhaling slowly as I braced myself for what might be the hardest fight I'd ever faced. This wasn't the kind of battle I liked to engage in—it was the kind I'd always tried to avoid: a clash with a reality-bender. And truthfully, I didn't know if I could win. Only reality benders could defeat other reality benders, and unfortunately for me, I wasn't one. But, I had something—a gamble, a cheat that could give me an overwhelming opportunity of victory if it actually worked. It was something that might turn the tide to my favor if it was successful, or perhaps spell my death in case it failed.
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