"Damn it, is this trying to blow me up or Ronan?"
"Why is this different from the plot?"
Nebula completely threw Blaine off.
According to the original plot, Nebula shouldn't have appeared at this time. Could it be that Blaine had really changed the course of events because of his actions? No—was it just a coincidence?
And whose side was Nebula on right now? According to the plot, she should still be following Thanos and Ronan, so why was Ronan being directly covered by firepower?
What the hell was this supposed to do—blow up Ronan to save her sister, or blow up Blaine instead? Could it be that Nebula had changed her mind ahead of time?
Because the distance was too great, and with the explosions from rockets and flaming meteors, Blaine couldn't use mind-reading for the moment to figure out what Nebula was thinking.
Just as Blaine was momentarily dazed, a rocket landed right beside him and exploded. Yet Blaine remained completely motionless, as if he wasn't afraid at all.
Indeed, after the explosion, gunpowder smoke filled the air, but Blaine still stood there unmoving, as though the blast that had just hit him was nothing more than a tickle.
At the instant the rocket detonated, a layer of golden light spread across Blaine's body, and the Diamond Body activated automatically. Although Blaine wasn't afraid of most cannons and weapons on Earth—aside from the really big ones—when operating in someone else's territory, he still used the Hunter suit cautiously. He always activated his defenses in advance. Yes, that's right—this was how cautious he was, how afraid of death.
"Huh? Trying to run? Playing tricks?"
"Creating chaos to take the chance to save someone."
From the moment the magic circle appeared, Blaine's mental focus had been locked on Ronan, just in case he tried to flee when things got dangerous. So when Ronan suddenly vanished from Blaine's sight, Blaine immediately sensed something was wrong.
In an instant, Blaine understood what Nebula was trying to do. This was taking advantage of the chaos to pull off a jailbreak—wasn't that exactly how Quill, Rocket, and the others escaped from prison?
Do aliens all think like this? Well, it seemed Blaine really hadn't expected Nebula to pull this move…
"Hit me and then run?"
"Hmph. No chance."
A cold light flashed in his eyes, and the Elemental Bow was already in his hand. Blaine closed his eyes and let Hawkeye in the sky take over. No matter how fast the battleship Nebula was piloting flew, it wasn't faster than Blaine's lock-on speed.
…
An arrow engraved with an explosive formation shot out like a loosed stallion, streaking toward the battleship at extreme speed. With Absolute Hit in effect, Blaine didn't need to worry about missing.
As the smoke cleared, Blaine could see the arrow continuing its pursuit. Although its speed was slightly inferior to theirs, as long as they stopped, under the blessing of Absolute Hit, the arrow would still strike them.
But things didn't go as Blaine had expected. Just as the arrow was about to catch up, the space in front of the battleship suddenly rippled, as if hexagonal blocks were forming a barrier. The battleship plunged straight into it and vanished from Blaine's sight.
"Damn it—space jump."
That's right, a space jump. There were many spacefaring civilizations far beyond what Earth could imagine. While people on Earth were still worrying about when they might leave the solar system, some civilizations had already equipped their warships with space-jump technology.
A space jump, as the name implies, was a leap from one region of space to another, enabling long-distance travel.
Of course, it wasn't nearly as overpowered as Blaine's weakened version of the Space Stone ring.
The weakened Space Stone ring directly tore open spatial rifts; as long as the traveler could withstand the environmental pressure, they could instantly traverse vast distances.
Space jumps, on the other hand, also involved spatial transitions, but each jump had a limited distance and required fixed coordinates. The Space Stone ring allowed instant arrival, while space jumps required continuous hopping—sometimes taking days, sometimes even years.
Moreover, space jumps placed far stricter demands on the user's body. Even with a battleship as protection, the occupants still had to endure the stress of the jump, often leading to apnea, cardiac arrest, or even bodily rupture. In short, a horrific way to die.
Perhaps this was why so many spacefaring civilizations with this technology still hadn't discovered Earth.
It could also be said that the technology wasn't fully mature yet. Still, reaching this level was an undeniable achievement.
At the moment Nebula and Ronan jumped away, the arrow Blaine had fired followed them into the jump.
However, how could an arrow made of such materials withstand the pressure of a space jump?
Boom…
Sure enough, before Blaine could react, the magic formation engraved on the arrow collapsed under the pressure and detonated. As space rippled once more, the arrow vanished into nothingness—not even slag remained. Otherwise, even the smallest fragment would have continued carrying out the Absolute Hit effect.
"Damn it, it's never the whole family showing up together."
Only now did Blaine truly realize how formidable Thanos was. Raising two daughters, neither of them ordinary—one strong, the other cunning. Especially Nebula: her strength wasn't outstanding, but her mind was chaotic, good and evil intertwined, impossible to read.
"Fortunately, the Power Stone wasn't taken away."
In any case, today Blaine had directly altered the plot. According to the original events, Ronan needed to obtain the Power Stone before daring to openly break up with Thanos and launch a full-scale invasion of Xandar. Now he had been beaten back, and the Power Stone still wasn't in his hands. This probably counted as losing both the wife and the army.
In the distance, the flaming meteor formation continued to rain down. The soldiers Ronan had brought were nowhere near as lucky as their boss—still trapped within the magic circle, they were undoubtedly burned to ashes.
The warship Ronan had arrived in was also scorched and shattered, reduced to scrap metal. Otherwise, Blaine could have taken one or two, extracted the material in space, and used it to upgrade his equipment. What a shame.
Blaine had stolen the spotlight with this move, but when he turned around, Quill, Rocket, Groot, and Gamora were all staring at him in stunned silence.
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