Chapter 3 – The King of Terror
The bald leader stood behind his armed men, a smug, vicious grin on his face. He raised his right hand. Every gun barrel lifted at once, all aimed at Tony's armor.
"We've been waiting for you, Mr. Tony Stark," the bald man said in broken English. "Ever since that Dragon Country kid entered the cave, I knew something was off. Sure enough…"
Tony quietly took half a step back. The armor creaked. Facing this many heavy weapons, the crude Mark I suit could easily be torn apart...
"Listen, Baldy," Tony drawled deliberately, "we can make a deal. You want better weapons, right? I can—"
"Shut up!" the bald leader suddenly roared, cutting him off. "You think I'll still believe your lies?"
His grin turned even more savage in the firelight. He swung his right hand down sharply. "Open fire!"
In an instant, the entire cave was lit up by muzzle flashes.
Heavy machine gun fire roared. Bullets rained down on Tony's armor like a metal storm. The deafening clangs of rounds striking metal echoed everywhere, sparks flying wildly.
"Shit!" Tony grunted inside the suit as the massive impact forced him back step after step.
One bullet grazed the edge of the arc reactor, exploding into a blinding spark right in front of his eyes.
He staggered back to the corner, his metal boots carving deep grooves into the rocky ground.
"Tony!" Chen Tian's anxious voice came from nearby. "What's your situation?"
Tony leaned against the rock wall, breathing heavily. "Not good, Dragon Country boy. These lunatics set up an ambush at the entrance. They've got heavy machine guns and RPGs. We can't break through…" His words were cut off by another wave of bullets. Chunks of rock rained down from above.
The bald leader's voice cut through the gunfire, sharp and mocking. "Stop hiding, Stark! How long do you think that pile of scrap metal can protect you?" He gestured. Two men carrying RPGs pushed forward from the back of the group.
Tony's pupils shrank. The primitive armor might barely withstand rifle rounds, but it would never survive a direct rocket hit.
Hearing Tony's warning, Chen Tian's mind went blank. He had assumed things would go like the movie — Tony breaking through with the armor. But the situation had spiraled far beyond the original plot. Those heavy machine guns and RPGs were never in the film!
"Damn it… my little butterfly wings flapped way too hard…" Chen Tian muttered, cold sweat covering his palms. He was just an ordinary office worker. He had never faced a life-or-death situation like this.
In that moment of shock, Tony was already charging toward them in the heavy armor. The metal joints screeched with every step, as if the suit was about to fall apart.
"Run! What the hell are you waiting for?!" Tony's voice sounded muffled inside the helmet. "They're about to use the RPGs!"
Yinsen reacted first. He grabbed Chen Tian's arm. "Let's go!"
Chen Tian snapped out of it and ran after Yinsen. Behind them came the whistling sound of a rocket launching, followed by a deafening explosion. The shockwave hurled all three to the ground. Rocks and dust rained down on them.
"Cough… cough…" Chen Tian struggled to his feet. Tony's armor lay in pieces, the arc reactor in his chest flickering weakly. Yinsen was desperately trying to pull the damaged plating off him.
Chen Tian's eyes widened in horror. The once-imposing armor now looked like a broken toy. The unstable blue light from the reactor pulsed like the final breaths of a dying man.
"No… this can't be…" Chen Tian's lips trembled. His throat felt strangled.
He turned mechanically toward the end of the passage. The bald leader and over a dozen fully armed terrorists were advancing, their gun barrels gleaming coldly in the dim light.
Tony painfully crawled out of the wrecked armor. A deep gash on his forehead bled freely down his cheek. "Dragon Country boy…" he gasped, "remember that idiom you taught me? 'Place yourself in death…'"
"…and then live," Chen Tian finished automatically, his voice hoarse.
His eyes swept the narrow tunnel — broken armor pieces, Yinsen's deathly pale face. Despair crashed over him like a tidal wave.
The bald leader's mocking laugh drew closer. "What a touching scene!" He raised his AK-47. "Mr. Stark, this is the price of betraying us!"
Chen Tian's fingers dug unconsciously into the gravel. He thought of his old life — the 9-to-5 grind, weekends spent in a tiny apartment watching Marvel movies… and now he was about to die in this dark cave alongside Iron Man.
Just as despair threatened to swallow him, the air around them suddenly turned scorching hot.
Large beads of sweat rolled down his face and hissed as they hit the stones.
Yinsen's shout rang in his ears, distant and blurred: "Careful!"
Chen Tian looked up in a daze. The entire passage had been engulfed in crimson flames.
The rocks began to melt, dripping like lava in the distorted heat waves.
The terrorists retreated in terror. Even the bald leader showed fear.
"This… what is this…" Tony struggled to sit up, firelight dancing in his pupils.
A deep, powerful voice emerged from the heart of the flames, drilling straight into everyone's bones and awakening their deepest fears: "Interesting world…"
The flames suddenly surged, forming a massive vortex.
Within the twisting vortex, a terrifying figure slowly materialized — dark red scaled skin, curved demonic horns gleaming like metal, a crown of towering spikes, and eyes burning with hellfire that seemed capable of scorching souls.
The massive body had to bend slightly in the narrow cave, yet the oppressive pressure it radiated made everyone's hearts freeze.
"Diablo…" Chen Tian's legs went weak. He couldn't believe his eyes. The King of Terror from Diablo had appeared in the Marvel Universe!
The bald leader screamed hysterically, "Open fire! Kill this monster!" Bullets rained toward the demon, but they turned to ash the instant they touched its skin.
Diablo let out a contemptuous laugh. With a casual wave of his massive claw, the five terrorists in the front row screamed horribly. Their bodies visibly shriveled, drying out at terrifying speed until they became nothing but withered corpses.
"Fear… such a sweet taste…" The demon inhaled deeply, as if savoring the terror in the air.
Tony's lips trembled. He stared at the hellish being and muttered mechanically, "Well… this is definitely the worst Easter egg I've ever seen…"
Yinsen's face was paper-white. His cracked glasses hung crooked on his nose, but he didn't even have the strength to fix them. His lips quivered, unable to form a single word.
Chen Tian bit his lower lip hard until he tasted blood. As a longtime Blizzard fan, he knew exactly how terrifying Diablo was — the King of Terror who devoured souls and exploited humanity's deepest fears. His legs shook uncontrollably, fingernails digging into his palms.
Diablo slowly turned. His burning eyes locked onto the three men. In that instant, Chen Tian felt his insides freeze. The demon's mouth twisted into what it probably thought was a friendly smile — on a demon's face, it looked even more terrifying than pure rage.
"Hello," it said.
The bald leader completely broke down. He dropped his AK-47 and fell to his knees, kowtowing frantically. "Great deity! Please spare us! We offer these three as sacrifices!"
Diablo didn't even glance at him. He simply snapped his fingers. The bald man's body began convulsing violently, as if countless insects were crawling under his skin. Before the three men's horrified eyes, his body inflated like a balloon and exploded with a wet bang, turning into a mist of blood.
"Too noisy," the demon muttered in disgust, flicking his claw.
The surviving terrorists screamed and scattered, but Diablo lazily waved his hand. The ground split open with countless fissures. Glowing red lava erupted, swallowing the runners one by one. One man tried to leap over a crack but was impaled through the chest by a sudden bone spike and left dangling in the air, screaming inhumanly.
After dealing with the terrorists inside the cave, Diablo turned again. His massive tail swept across the rock wall, sending stones clattering down.
His hideous face twisted into another "friendly" smile. "I'll go clean up the trash outside."
His deep voice echoed through the cave, each syllable scraping against their nerves like a dull blade.
As Diablo bent down and walked out of the cave entrance, the outside world instantly erupted with terrified screams and the sounds of death. Gunfire and explosions mixed with agonized cries.
Inside the cave, an eerie silence fell. The three men looked at each other, faces filled with disbelief.
Tony broke the silence first. He wiped the blood from his face, his voice trembling with lingering shock. "So… that big horned guy just said 'hello' to us?"
He forced a smile uglier than crying. "I bet even Jarvis couldn't analyze what language that was."
Yinsen shakily straightened his cracked glasses. "I'd rather believe this is a hallucination from blood loss…" His eyes flicked over the corpses on the ground and quickly looked away. "But clearly it's not."
Chen Tian stared fixedly toward the cave entrance, his throat tight. "That was Diablo… the King of Terror."
His voice dropped so low it was almost inaudible. "But that doesn't make any sense… How can a Blizzard game character appear in the Marvel Universe…"
"Wait, what did you say?" Tony frowned and suddenly grabbed Chen Tian's shoulder. "You know that red-skinned monster?"
Only then did Chen Tian realize he had slipped up. He swallowed hard, hesitating how to explain, when a deafening explosion suddenly shook the entire cave. Rocks rained from the ceiling. The three instinctively covered their heads.
When the shaking stopped, all the screaming outside had vanished, replaced by an unnerving silence.
Occasionally, the sound of dripping liquid could be heard — whether water or something else, no one wanted to guess.
"Outside is clear, everyone," a female voice suddenly rang out from beyond the cave.
The three exchanged glances. A demon had just walked out — where was this female voice coming from?
"Should we go out?" Yinsen asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Go out for what? I don't want to see that red skin again!" Tony's eyes widened.
"If we don't go out, he'll probably come back in…" Chen Tian sighed.
"Hey! I've finished cleaning up out here," the female voice called again — this time from inside the cave.
They looked over. A young woman in her early twenties appeared around the corner.
She had neat short brown hair and wore a signature red leather jacket. Her face was attractive, with a faint smile at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes… deep in those eyes flickered an unnatural red glow.
"Li… Lia?" Chen Tian blurted out.
Tony and Yinsen both whipped their heads toward him. You know her too?!
Lia raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Hmm, you can call me Lia. But I prefer to be called the King of Terror."
The three instantly understood — this girl named Lia was Diablo's transformed form.
Tony swallowed hard, his mouth twitching. "Heh… looks like demons have… interesting personalities."
Lia ignored Tony's comment. Her red-glowing eyes fixed straight on Chen Tian. With a meaningful smile, she walked closer, her leather boots clicking on the gravel.
"The chaos outside might attract your friends," she said, tilting her head. The gesture should have looked cute, but on her it felt deeply unsettling. "You can go out and wait now." She paused, red light flashing in her eyes. "It's safe."
Tony stepped protectively in front of Chen Tian. "Wait, who exactly are you—"
Lia didn't let him finish. Her body was suddenly wrapped in crimson flames. The fire licked every inch of the cave but strangely didn't burn the three men. In the distorted heat, her figure blurred and finally dissolved into a wisp of green smoke.
"Holy shit…" Tony stared wide-eyed and turned mechanically to Chen Tian. "You sure this isn't some advanced holographic projection tech?"
Yinsen shakily removed his broken glasses and wiped them with his sleeve. "If it was a hallucination, all three of us wouldn't see the same thing… Besides…" He glanced fearfully at the corpses on the ground.
Chen Tian took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "We need to leave here immediately." He pointed toward the exit. "If she's telling the truth, rescue should be arriving soon."
The three carefully made their way through the passage filled with bodies. With every step, Chen Tian felt his heart pounding violently. The terrorists had died in horrifying ways — some shriveled into dry husks, others exploded from the inside, their remains smeared across the walls.
When they finally stepped out of the cave, the blinding sunlight made all three squint. The entire camp had been turned into ruins. Tents and vehicles were burning, but there wasn't a single living person — or even a complete corpse — in sight.
"Oh God…" Yinsen covered his mouth, nearly vomiting.
The three stood frozen at the edge of the camp. The horrific scene made their legs feel like lead.
Tony was the first to collapse. He staggered and fell to his knees. He had taken the brunt of the RPG explosion while shielding Chen Tian and Yinsen.
"This… this is just…" Yinsen's voice broke. He leaned mechanically against a half-burned jeep, firelight reflecting off his glasses.
Chen Tian felt as if cotton was stuffed in his throat. Breathing became difficult.
He forced himself to look away, but everywhere he glanced was a scene from hell — a body cut in half hanging on barbed wire with intestines trailing meters away, several charred figures frozen in running poses, carbonized fingers still on triggers.
"Over there…" Tony pointed hoarsely toward the center of the camp. "There's a slightly cleaner spot."
Yinsen and Chen Tian helped Tony over to an empty ammunition crate.
The moment Chen Tian sat down, he jumped up again — half a severed finger was stuck to the box.
He frantically brushed at his pants even though nothing was actually on them.
Silence pressed down on the three like a physical weight. In the distance, flames crackled and metal groaned as it twisted.
Tony suddenly let out a nervous laugh. "Ha… You know, last month I turned down an investment in a horror movie project…" His laughter cut off sharply, as if someone had grabbed him by the throat.
Yinsen kept wiping his glasses with trembling hands. "This isn't real… This can't be real…"
Chen Tian stared at his shaking hands. Dirt from the cave was still stuck under his fingernails. He suddenly realized that just minutes ago they had been fighting to survive, and now they were breaking down because they had survived. The irony made his stomach twist painfully.
"That… girl…" Tony spoke up, his voice low. "She said rescue was coming?"
Yinsen looked up sharply. "You believe a demon?"
"No," Tony replied, his mouth twitching. "But I believe explosions attract my friends." He pointed at the distant sky. "For example…"
Three Black Hawk helicopters tore across the sky. The roar of their rotors grew louder. Tony narrowed his eyes at the familiar military markings and finally showed a genuine, tired smile.
"I knew you'd come, Rhodes."
Before the helicopter even fully landed, a fully armed Black officer jumped out.
Colonel James Rhodes ran over quickly. "Tony Stark!"
His voice mixed anger and worry. "Where's your 'Happy Humvee'?" Rhodes's sarcasm matched Tony's. "Next time, don't leave me behind again. Okay?"
Tony tried to stand but staggered. Rhodes immediately supported him, finally seeing the full extent of his friend's condition — face covered in blood, clothes torn, the strange metal device in his chest flickering unsteadily.
"Jesus, you look…" Rhodes's voice caught.
Tony forced his signature Stark smile. "New look. Like it?" He tapped the arc reactor. "Arc reactor. I built it myself. Ten years ahead of anything the military has."
Rhodes shook his head, then suddenly pulled Tony into a tight hug, slapping his back hard. "You bastard… Do you know how many times Pepper cried?"
Tony's smile froze. A flash of guilt crossed his eyes. He hugged Rhodes back lightly. "I owe her an apology… a lot of apologies."
Only then did Rhodes notice Chen Tian and Yinsen standing nearby. His gaze swept over them and settled on Chen Tian. "And this is…?"
"Chen Tian, genius programmer from the Dragon Country," Tony casually made up. "If it weren't for him, I might've died in that cave."
Rhodes raised an eyebrow, clearly not fully satisfied with the explanation, but now wasn't the time to press. He spoke into his comms: "Survivors located. Prepare medical support!"
Medics rushed over with stretchers. Tony waved them off. "Take care of them first." He pointed at Yinsen and Chen Tian. "Especially Yinsen. He saved my life."
Yinsen tried to protest but suddenly coughed violently, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. The medics immediately surrounded him.
Rhodes frowned deeply. "What the hell happened here? Satellite images showed the entire camp suddenly engulfed in flames…"
Tony and Chen Tian exchanged a glance.
"Terrorists had an internal conflict," Tony said smoothly. "They wanted to use the missile I designed to attack civilians. I refused, so…" He shrugged. "You know how unreasonable terrorists can be."
Rhodes didn't buy the casual explanation but still supported Tony and led him toward the helicopter, murmuring comforting words.
The three helicopters soon took off. Inside the cabin, Tony leaned back in his seat, the desert scenery flashing past the window, reflected in his tired but bright eyes.
"Listen, Dragon Country boy," he suddenly turned to Chen Tian, "I owe you my life. Penthouse suite at Stark Tower, Michelin-star chef on call 24/7. How's that sound?"
Yinsen, undergoing medical checks, couldn't help laughing. "Tony, are you recruiting him or proposing to him?"
"Both work," Tony raised an eyebrow. When he turned back to Chen Tian, his expression became serious. "Seriously, I need you. Not just because you saved my life… but because you seem to know that red-skinned monster."
Chen Tian sat leaning against his seat, but his eyes were strangely vacant. He didn't react at all to Tony's words.
Because… he found himself floating in space, surrounded by galaxies. Standing in front of him was Lia, smiling at him sweetly.