The crimson mist still lingered in the sky—chaotic magic trapped within the spatial seal.
Lock raised a hand toward the void. A stream of red energy shimmered, drawn into an unseen rift before vanishing—only to reappear high above the so-called Evil God's head.
"Boom!"
The explosion sent the corrupted being tumoring from the air. Snarling in fury, he glared at Lock but didn't dare attack again. His only thought was to flee.
Yet no matter which direction he turned, he found himself looping back, trapped within the same warped landscape. It was as though invisible walls mocked every attempt to escape.
Nearby, Alexander Pierce had just staggered to the Evil God's side. If he wanted any chance of leaving, he needed this creature's power—ordinary escape routes wouldn't pierce the distorted space.
The Evil God grabbed him roughly. "Why didn't you tell me he was King Apocalypse?"
Pierce winced. "I… I thought you knew! Didn't you already survive a battle with him?"
The monster froze. Now that he thought about it, all the signs had been there—the control of space, the impossible calm. How could he have been so blind? Perhaps arrogance had dulled his instincts.
"Then find us a way out!" he roared. "Or I'll tear you apart!"
Pierce swallowed hard. "It's… It's like a three-dimensional Klein bottle. We're trapped in a folded loop of space. The only way out is to break the boundary."
"How?" The Evil God's crimson eyes flared. "I've tried brute force—it doesn't work!"
"Then your strength isn't enough," Pierce stammered. "There's still some of the Super-Soldier Serum left—"
"Hmph." The monster sneered but knew Pierce was right. The serum was dangerous—too much could make even him implode—but what choice did he have?
With a flick of his hand, an alloy case flew open. He uncorked five vials and downed them all at once.
Power erupted. Wind screamed around him as his control faltered, raw energy leaking from every pore.
"Let's see if this breaks your cage!" he bellowed.
A storm of gray energy coalesced into a massive drill that spun in front of him. With a furious roar, he hurled it forward.
It vanished the instant it crossed the invisible boundary—only to reappear behind them, slamming back into the ground.
Pierce flinched. "It's looping again… we're right back where we started."
Lock, watching from afar, smiled faintly and pressed a hand into the air. The unseen spatial threshold shifted back by a meter, folding the pocket dimension tighter.
The Evil God and Pierce blinked—and suddenly Lock stood before them again.
"Don't rush off," Lock said calmly. "You still have more serum left, don't you? Go ahead—drink it all."
The Evil God's teeth ground together. "You'll regret this."
But trapped, furious, and desperate, he did as told.
Every vial—red, blue, green, gold—burst into liquid streams, hundreds of serpentine ribbons of serum that slithered into his mouth.
"AAAAAAAAAAH!"
The scream shook the air. A column of black energy tore into the clouds as his flesh seared away, skin tightening over bone until he looked like a burning corpse made of shadow.
A hollow laugh rattled from his throat. "Ha… I should've done this from the start!"
Pierce stumbled backward. "He's… unsealed? With this power, maybe we can actually—"
Lock narrowed his eyes. Something interesting was happening.
The Evil God's chaotic fortune—his unnatural "bad luck" that once cursed him—had spiked beyond comprehension. It was that instability, that contradiction, that let him endure the impossible clash of energies.
"So," Lock murmured, "the worse his fortune, the greater his endurance. How amusing."
No wonder villains fell after long speeches—they always gave fate time to turn.
The black pillar split the sky, cracking even the sealed dimension. For a moment, the clouds themselves looked to tear apart.
From afar, Natasha and Wanda both felt the crushing weight of that power. Their hearts clenched; even at a distance, it was suffocating.
The Evil God raised both hands and screamed, "Thank you, King Apocalypse—for giving me the chance to surpass you!"
The dark column descended like the fall of a god's hammer, tearing through layers of space.
The lock didn't move. He simply extended a single finger.
"Luck—purification."
The world fell silent. To the Evil God, everything vanished except that slow, inevitable finger pressing toward his brow. There was nowhere to run.
When it touched him, he felt something leave his soul—a void where chaos had once lived.
The luck was gone.
Without that twisted equilibrium, the hundreds of conflicting energies inside him went wild.
The towering black column above shattered into spirals of smoke and vanished before even reaching Lock.
Lock turned, gripping Pierce by the collar, and began walking away. "He's all yours now," he said. "You've served your purpose."
Behind them, the Evil God convulsed. Energy burst through his body in crimson flashes, tearing holes through the decaying flesh.
"Bang!"
The final detonation obliterated him. The blast carved a crater dozens of meters deep and flattened everything within hundreds of meters—a miniature nuclear storm.
Had Lock not carried Pierce away, there wouldn't have been a trace of the man left.
Landing near Wanda, Lock tossed Pierce at her feet.
"He's the key to finding your brother," he said simply.
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A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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