Thanos looked at Doctor Strange, who was more than ten kilometers away, and a sudden realization stirred in his mind.
Doctor Strange was the most critical pawn chosen by the gods. Kill him, and the entire game would collapse in an instant.
With that thought, Thanos narrowed his eyes. He ran a quick calculation in his head, tightened his grip on the Tyrant's Blade, and charged forward without hesitation.
Just then, a roaring torrent of metal surged toward him from the side.
Clicking his tongue, Thanos was forced to stop. He swung his blade in a wide arc.
Boom!
With a deafening explosion, the metallic torrent shattered into countless fragments.
But before he could move again, the scattered metal twisted, reassembled, and rushed back at him like an annoying swarm of steel insects.
It barely did any damage, but it was unbelievably irritating—and worse, it blocked his line of sight.
Thanos frowned. This had to be someone's superpower.
Only by killing the source could this nonsense be stopped.
If he remembered correctly… there was someone in Marvel who could control magnetic fields.
But which one was it again?
—
Seven or eight kilometers away, Magneto hid among the crowd, veins bulging slightly as he unleashed wave after wave of metal toward Thanos.
Originally, he'd planned to seize control of Thanos's armor and weapons directly.
Unfortunately, the energy radiating from Thanos was absurdly powerful. After several failed attempts to influence the magnetic field around him, Magneto had no choice but to control distant metal instead.
At the same time, Mr. Fantastic had already flown back into the fight.
Thanos had clearly held back earlier, and Reed Richards' rubberized body recovered quickly. Seeing Thanos temporarily restrained by the metal torrent, his confidence immediately returned.
"Thanos, just surrender," Mr. Fantastic said smugly. "This is Magneto. His power is controlling magnetic fields—he can manipulate all metal."
Hearing this, Thanos turned his head and looked at Mr. Fantastic with something close to appreciation.
Then he vanished.
Because now he remembered.
Magneto—wasn't he that old guy with the white hair and the helmet?
—
In the next instant, Thanos appeared directly in front of Magneto.
The Tyrant's Blade came down without mercy.
Magneto's aged face was frozen in pure confusion. He didn't even have time to react.
Doctor Strange's protective shield flashed into existence for a split second—
—and was instantly shattered as the blade cut through it and severed Magneto's head.
The sudden release of pressure caused blood to burst outward, spraying freely into the vacuum of space.
Magneto's head drifted there, suspended, facing Mr. Fantastic.
His eyes were wide, filled with disbelief.
Almost as if accusing him.
Why did you have to say my name?
After killing Magneto, Thanos casually glanced at several strangely dressed enemies nearby—one of them even had wings.
Without a second thought, he slashed once.
They all died.
—
Just then, a red laser shot toward him.
The beam struck Thanos squarely, but it didn't even scratch him. At most, it felt… warm.
Turning his head, he saw a short-haired white man. The laser had come from the man's eyes.
Beside him stood a young, beautiful woman with long red hair.
But something was clearly wrong with her. Her expression was unstable, her emotions visibly unraveling.
In a blink, Thanos appeared beside the man with glowing eyes and casually sliced him into several pieces.
When Qin saw one of her boyfriends killed right in front of her, her face froze in disbelief.
Then she screamed.
"Ah!"
With that scream, an immense Phoenix Force erupted outward.
Her eyes turned dark red, veins standing out sharply across her body.
For her, this single day had already shown more death than she had witnessed in her entire life.
Coming to fight Thanos in the vacuum of space had already pushed her mental state to the brink.
Now, watching her boyfriend die shattered the last of her restraint.
She completely collapsed.
And so, the first personality began to seize control.
Yes.
The first personality.
Jean awakened the Phoenix Force when she was still a child. Back then, she had no way to control it, and the result was catastrophic—her parents died, and the entire town was nearly wiped off the map.
The guilt never left her. It sat in her chest like a stone, heavy and unmovable.
Not long after the disaster, the young Professor X found her. Realizing how dangerous the Phoenix Force was, he helped Jean seal it away. Along with that seal, he buried her original personality—and the memories of that tragic past—with it.
What had existed in the world ever since was only her second personality, carefully constructed to live a normal life.
But now, with Professor X's soul twisted and damaged by Thanos, the seal had already begun to loosen.
The deaths of her companions… and the brutal dismemberment of her lover were the final triggers. The original Jean—the real Jean—forced her way back to the surface.
Almost instantly, the Phoenix Force inside her began to surge.
Scarlet energy poured out of her body, twisting and reshaping itself into blazing tendrils of light. They spread behind her back like wings—magnificent, terrifying, and utterly inhuman, as if an angel made of fire had descended onto the battlefield.
The moment Thanos saw the Phoenix Force, recognition flashed in his eyes.
He remembered the information he had once seen.
The Phoenix Force possessed near-limitless energy. It could amplify its host's abilities with virtually no upper limit, grant a form of immortality, and manipulate matter at the most microscopic level. It could casually tear apart dimensions, shatter timelines, regenerate or erase anything in existence—even an entire universe.
Of course, in the Marvel universe, destroying a universe wasn't exactly headline-worthy.
But it did prove just how terrifying the Phoenix Force's potential truly was.
When Thanos noticed that the Phoenix host didn't immediately attack him—and instead radiated hostility toward everyone present—he suddenly understood what was happening.
His gaze shifted toward Doctor Strange in the distance.
Thanos clenched his left hand. The orange Soul Stone embedded in the Infinity Gauntlet began to glow, pulsing with an ominous light.
More than ten kilometers away, Doctor Strange sensed the change instantly. His eyes lit up.
"This is our only chance," he shouted. "Everyone, attack together!"
In the timeline he had foreseen, Thanos would spend exactly two seconds controlling Jean Grey.
Those two seconds would decide everything.
Without hesitation, Strange drew a glowing circle in the air. A portal snapped open.
"Mantis!"
At the call of her name, Mantis immediately understood. She didn't ask questions—she rushed straight into the portal.
An instant later, another portal opened directly above Thanos's head.
But before Mantis could even reach out—
Thanos suddenly smiled.
He turned around, grabbed her by the neck mid-air, and squeezed.
Hard.
Poof.
Her head burst open like a watermelon dropped from a skyscraper.
Even though more than five hundred years had passed and he'd forgotten most of the original plot, Thanos hadn't forgotten that iconic moment from Avengers: Endgame—the moment where Star-Lord quite literally punched away victory.
In this storyline, the key figures were Mantis and Doctor Strange.
One could directly hypnotize gods.
The other wielded the Time Stone, capable of reversing time itself.
Knowing the plot, how could Thanos not be on guard once he realized Doctor Strange and Mantis were working together to save Star-Lord?
When dealing with Professor X earlier, he could have easily controlled him using the Mind Stone.
But instead, he deliberately chose the Soul Stone—giving Doctor Strange what looked like an opening.
Unfortunately for them, the trap went both ways.
When that didn't work, Thanos simply shifted tactics and continued to bait the host of the Phoenix Force.
And to his mild surprise—
The fish actually took the bait.
.....
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