On Luke's side, the situation had taken a sharp turn.
Thor and Captain Marvel had them surrounded, their undead faces watching with eager hunger, ready to tear into them.
"Cuties," Carol said, tilting her head with something that might have looked playful if her eyes weren't sunken and dark and fixed on them the way a predator fixes on something it has already decided belongs to it. "Why don't you just let me eat you? I promise it'll be quick."
Luke and Daniel looked at each other.
Then they both raised their hands at exactly the same time, flat palms out, absolute refusal, no hesitation.
"Nope," they said together. "We're family men."
The synchronization was completely unplanned, which somehow made it worse, and Daniel felt something dangerously close to a laugh rising in his throat despite the rotting Asgardian god standing ten feet away from him.
Thor looked between the two of them. Something moved across his face briefly — not quite amusement, not quite recognition, just a flicker of whatever was left underneath the hunger before it got swallowed back down again.
Carol's eyes narrowed.
The moment of almost-humor passed.
And then they attacked.
"I'll take Thor, you handle her," Daniel said, the Black Scythe materializing in his grip before the words were fully out of his mouth.
Thor's hammer came down like a judgement, lightning screaming along the arc, and Daniel caught it dead on — the clash sending a shockwave outward that cracked the already ruined street beneath them in every direction, darkness and lightning bleeding against each other between the two weapons, neither giving an inch.
Thor looked down at him with something that wasn't quite surprise but was close to it.
"Are you a god, little one?"
"I happen to be one, yeah," Daniel said, holding the hammer's weight without buckling, the clockwork pattern already creeping back into his eyes.
Thor's expression shifted into something worse than rage. Something closer to appetite.
"Then I will eat you," he said, pulling back and swinging again, this time faster, the lightning doubling in intensity. "It has been a long time since I ate one."
Daniel didn't retreat. He stepped into it, redirected the angle of the hammer with the flat of the scythe, let the momentum carry past him, and drove the handle hard into Thor's ribs before spinning back to distance.
On the other side Luke was already dealing with Carol, who came in fast and bright, energy blazing from both fists, her speed still everything it had ever been even with half her mind gone to hunger.
Luke sidestepped the first blast without moving his feet, the energy passing close enough to feel the heat of it.
"I don't really like persistent women," he said conversationally, ducking under a second beam without breaking his posture. "I already have one at home and she's considerably better looking than you."
The thought of Esdeath crossed his mind briefly. Genuinely briefly, because Carol was already swinging again.
"I don't care," Carol said, lunging forward with both hands reaching. "Just let me eat you."
She was fast. Genuinely, terrifyingly fast, the kind of speed that had leveled battlefields before the infection ever touched her.
Her hands cut through the air in every direction, grasping, blasting, changing angle mid-motion, not fighting with strategy exactly but with something worse — pure instinct married to power, relentless and completely without hesitation.
Luke slipped every single one.
Carol snarled.
"You bastard — die!"
She lit up like a star going supanova, energy pouring off her in every direction at once, plasma tearing through the air in overlapping streams that left the ground beneath them scorched and cracking, not aimed anymore, just everywhere, the kind of attack that didn't need precision because there was nowhere left to go.
Luke's hand came up.
Lightning began gathering around his fingers, not crackling and wild but concentrated, dense, pulled tight into a single shape — a lance that hummed with a temperature so extreme the air around it warped and bent, reality itself flinching away from the heat at its core.
Plasma Lance.
He pointed it directly into the incoming storm.
The beam that left his hand split on contact, fracturing into dozens of smaller streams that threaded through Carol's attack like needles, intercepting each blast, killing their momentum one by one before they could reach him — and what was left of the lance's energy didn't stop there.
It kept going, straight through the gap it had carved, and caught Carol directly across the face.
She went backward fast, spinning twice before hitting the ground and skipping across.
Luke looked at the Lance as it dissipated from his hand, the last of the lightning curling away into nothing.
"Have to say," he said quietly, "these lightning skills are genuinely good."
"You son of a bitch—"
Carol came off the ground on all fours and launched herself straight at his throat, teeth first.
Luke dropped his weight and drove an undercut straight up from his hip, catching her clean under the chin the moment she reached him.
Her teeth cracked together on impact, several shattering outright, jaw wrenching open from the sheer force of it as the shockwave rolled outward and split the street in every direction.
Carol left the ground spinning, shrinking into a dot against the grey sky before disappearing into the clouds entirely.
Luke straightened and rolled his shoulder once, glancing over toward Daniel and Thor.
"How are you doing over there?"
*****
A/N: If you'd like to read ahead of the Webnovel release schedule, you can join my Patreon!
The Patreon version is 50 chapters ahead.
👉 patreon.com/Universal_Peace