"The King of Sakaar..."
Adora murmured Kaela's words blankly.
She had thought that the volcano-like demon was the mightiest warrior of Sakaar, but she had never imagined that he would actually be the King of Sakaar!
The lord of an entire world, personally leading his forces to rescue another world — it was something Adora found hard to fathom.
In her eyes, the flame-wreathed figure seemed to grow taller and taller, until he became a truly unassailable volcano.
And within those flames, the battle between Bant and Thanos raged on.
No one knew how many exchanges they had traded.
The Eternal Flame meant death at a touch, but the harm it dealt to Thanos was negligible.
The Tyrant's Cleaver cleaved the fire apart. Bant, wielding a blade condensed from flame, clashed with Thanos.
The searing heat had long since melted the earth beneath their feet into lava, but the molten rock could not harm either of them. Where they stood, the pooled magma erupted, and they sank deeper and deeper, as if into a bottomless pit that could never be filled.
The longer they fought, the more Thanos was astonished by Bant's strength.
It was hard to imagine that such a powerful being existed in this universe, living in a remote place like Earth, unknown and unheralded across the cosmos.
And according to Loki's memories, Bant was still very young.
A mere teenager from Earth, yet now possessing strength no less than that of a divine king.
Even in such fierce combat, Thanos found it difficult to overcome him.
Once again, Thanos gathered cosmic rays, but the powerful beams were instantly intercepted by the fiery man's lasers.
Bant blasted powerful energy from the soles of his feet, rocketing himself into the air. The next moment, flames like fresh blood swirled into a vortex in his palms, forming a spinning disc of fire that he hurled at Thanos.
Thanos reversed his blade and shattered the flame disc with a swing.
But in the next instant, the shattered flames exploded!
BOOM!!!
A colossal pillar of fire surged from the ground, shooting straight into the heavens like a column that propped up the sky.
"Explosive Blaze!"
The fiery man already possessed the ability to unleash explosive flames, and after being enhanced by the Eternal Flame, the explosive force of his fire had grown even stronger.
The blast was powerful enough to cause a small-scale collapse of space in an instant, and after the thermal explosion came even fiercer flames.
In the air, Bant, wreathed in fire, looked down upon it all.
He was not surprised by the scene, nor did he believe that Thanos could be defeated so easily.
Sure enough, a massive cleaver blade sliced horizontally through the pillar of flame, and the completely unharmed Thanos walked out once more.
Though, to be fair, Thanos didn't have a single hair on his body, so of course he was unscathed.
His Tyrant's Cleaver, however, did not survive that last attack. The blade that could hack Steve's alloy shield to pieces had been utterly broken in two by Bant's flames, snapped right through the middle.
Thanos had used one half of it to cut through the fire just now.
And after that, he abandoned the weapon that had followed him for so many years, leaving only the Power Stone that had been embedded in the hilt at the center of the blade.
That Bant could break the Tyrant's Cleaver was partly because the fiery man's attacks were powerful enough to destroy anything, and partly because the cleaver, as a vessel for the Stone, had its structure weakened by the immense energy it channeled.
"You are indeed stronger than I imagined."
Stepping out of the flames, Thanos once again sized up Bant.
It could be said that Bant was the most formidable opponent he had ever encountered.
Others, like Odin — Thanos knew their power was immense, but he had never truly clashed with them.
And precisely because Bant was so strong, Thanos found himself less inclined to kill him.
He would rather have Bant submit — or rather, he wished Bant could acknowledge his ideal.
"You are powerful, but all things are destined to end," Thanos said in a low voice. He raised his head and looked at the Sky Union Plumbers battling his army in the sky, then added with approval, "The warriors of Sakaar's Sky Union are indeed very brave, far stronger than those frail members of the Nova Corps."
"But no matter how many you destroy, it is futile. On Earth, I believe you experienced it too — the Chitauri cannot be wiped out, and your warriors will eventually grow weary, will be wounded, will die..."
Thanos spoke as if delivering a declaration of victory. As his words fell, more and more Chitauri came swarming from the cosmos, blotting out the sky.
It was as if a great rift had opened in the heavens, and someone was endlessly dumping Chitauri garbage down through it.
"You see? You cannot win."
"Is that so?" Bant smiled. "Take another look."
"Hmm?"
Puzzled, Thanos raised his head. His gaze pierced through Xandar's atmosphere and fell upon the Chitauri soldiers.
The Chitauri, who had been charging with fierce momentum, suddenly went limp as if disconnected, each one losing all signs of life in an instant and plummeting like trash.
The Chitauri Leviathans were the same — every last one of them lost their buoyancy and crashed toward the ground.
"The mothership!" Thanos realized the problem after a brief moment of shock.
"That's right. I sent people to blow up the Chitauri mothership," Bant said. "The Chitauri's weakness is so obvious. Did you really think they would be of any use?"
Thanos fell silent for a moment, then decided to compromise.
He could afford to yield one more step.
"All you want is to protect your planet. I can promise you this: if you hand over the Infinity Stones, then neither Earth, nor Sakaar, nor anyone you know — Asgard, for instance — will perish because of this."
Thanos spoke.
In his view, Bant's only reason for opposing him was to safeguard his own planet. In that case, why not grant him that?
Ultimately, his goal was to kill half of all life. As for who died, Thanos did not care.
A planet or two would not affect the balance.
"You don't believe me?" Thanos asked when Bant remained silent.
Bant replied calmly, "I do. Your daughter said you never lie."
"Nebula? Ah..." Thanos suddenly sighed, a trace of guilt surfacing on his face. "Perhaps I was a little too harsh with her in the past..."
"I know you likely let Gamora be recaptured on purpose. You wanted Nebula to defeat her? But I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Nebula has never been Gamora's match."
"She will lose, and so will you."
Thanos did not waste any more time on the matter of Nebula. Instead, he continued to persuade him: "Why do you insist on opposing me?"
"Or is it that the Sky Union truly intends to uphold cosmic justice?" he asked in return.
"But you have no idea — everything I do is, in fact, saving this universe."
Bant raised a hand, cutting off the endless speech that would likely have followed.
"I think you might be overthinking this a little, Purple Raisin."
He glanced at Thanos and then said, "Upholding so-called justice is just a side benefit. Honestly, I just want payback."
"Payback?"
Thanos froze. He truly had not expected Bant to say such a thing.
He had assumed that Bant must be an opponent full of conviction, fighting for the justice he envisioned. Who could have guessed that the other party would outright deny it?
Yet Bant did not see anything wrong with it.
Pointing at Thanos's head, he said, "I'm hitting you for one simple reason: you messed with me first. Understand?"
"Did you think that after attacking Sakaar and Earth, and sending people after Luma, you could just withdraw your troops and it would be over? If so, then all I can say is — sorry, I hold grudges!"
The Sky Union might indeed be a righteous organization; that was also Bant's original intention when he created it.
Plumbers could travel the world helping those in need, just as Peter did in New York.
But if Bant himself took action, then the situation was definitely not that simple.
Thanos: "..."
Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that the Sky Union's enmity toward him was for such a trivial reason.
In his eyes, Earth and Sakaar had suffered almost no losses in the previous war. On the contrary, he had lost several of his top generals, his fearsome reputation across the universe had been somewhat called into question, and most importantly, he had lost a Stone.
By any measure, he was the one who had come out worse.
He never expected that Bant would still be so relentless.
But just as Bant had said, Thanos could decide when a war began, but he could not decide when it would end, nor could he dictate the price of that war.
Perhaps Thanos felt that losing a Stone and the Black Order was already a huge loss, but in Bant's eyes, it was not enough!
Nowhere near enough!
"Since you chose to start this war, you should have foreseen this day." Bant leaned forward and said.
"Or have you grown so arrogant that you think everyone is yours to butcher at will?"
Hearing this, Thanos chuckled softly, then shook his head.
"I believe that power rules all."
He raised his head. As he looked at Bant, he revealed the Infinity Stone that was the same color as his own skin.
"No matter how great your power, this Infinity Stone will absorb it unchanged, amplify it, and then release it back upon you."
He explained.
"The truth of all things in the universe lies within it. You cannot be my match."
Thanos clenched his fist. The Stone's energy flashed across his body, surging power filling every one of his cells.
"Ugh— aaah —"
With a pained groan, the energy of the Power Stone was completely unleashed by Thanos!
In that moment, Thanos felt omnipotent.
With a mere thought, the sunken earth suddenly rose, hills sank into valleys, and the boiling lava cooled instantly into black volcanic rock.
The ground tore apart in chunks, and under the Stone's energy, they began to float up toward the sky.
He beckoned with one hand, and the moon, hundreds of thousands of kilometers from Xandar, seemed to answer some summons, instantly hurtling toward the planet.
The approaching moon grew larger and larger, rapidly disrupting Xandar's gravitational field.
At first, the tides surged.
What followed would be endless catastrophe!
Tsunamis, earthquakes... the land ripping apart, until at last the planets collided, delivering a devastating final blow to this world.
"I warned you..."
Thanos showed not the slightest flicker of emotion at what he had done.
In his view, whether toward those about to die or toward the survivors on other planets, his actions were a form of mercy.
"But you chose the path to your own destruction."
"There will be no more surprises now," Thanos said, shaking his head.
But Bant smiled again.
He stretched out his hand. Between his fingers, he held a purple crystal — a crystal that looked exactly like the Infinity Stone in Thanos's hand.
"I wouldn't be so sure about that."
/-\
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