Corin realized that the enemies he had just been fighting were only the vanguard of the Chitauri army.
Even as a forward unit, their numbers were already considerable. Even though he had held off most of the enemies himself, the three nearby city blocks had still been badly damaged by scattered forces, and the number of casualties kept rising.
"So this is what an army is like."
Watching the enemy troops pour through the portal in waves, as if a charge horn had been sounded, Corin felt depressed.
"Why is everything so damn worthless?"
In his eyes, those Chitauri scouts riding flying motorcycles and showing off should have been the real priority targets.
The flying vehicles under them could be exchanged for a decent price, while the other soldiers carried nothing worth exchanging beyond a very crude weapon.
Even those alien weapons that looked high-tech weren't worth much in the system exchange, bringing Corin zero excitement.
Not to mention the Leviathans that only looked scary.
A big bug with a belly full of little bugs, and none of them could be exchanged.
'Poor! So damn poor!'
What really frustrated him was that within the main Chitauri force, the number of troops riding flying motorcycles wasn't large. Compared to the densely packed masses hanging inside the Leviathans, they were pitifully few.
"What's the point of even playing this?", Corin had originally planned to make a killing while the aliens launched their large-scale invasion. Now it seemed his dream of mowing down enemies for cash was about to fall apart.
Faced with the fate of passively defending Earth next, Corin's response was simple, 'Forget it, I'm tired.'
But this was war, not a game.
The Avengers were all working their asses off defending Earth (America). Compared to them, Corin, who felt little sense of belonging to this world, was clearly lacking motivation.
In order to end this thankless, exhausting war as soon as possible, Corin opened a portal and moved to the rooftop of Stark Tower.
"Hey, bro, watch me drop a big lightning strike for you."
On the rooftop of another skyscraper, Thor saw Corin appear on Stark Tower and thought Captain Rogers had sent him over as support. His spirits lifted.
He raised Mjolnir high overhead.
Moments later, a thick bolt of lightning crashed down, or rather, was guided down by the hammer.
As Thor moved his arm, Mjolnir pointed straight at the distant portal.
Crack!
Lightning tore through the sky, forming a long dragon in midair as it struck the enemies pouring out of the portal.
Alien soldiers were pierced by the high-voltage lightning and turned to charcoal. Even the massive Leviathans couldn't withstand the thunderous blow. The intense electric arcs made them instinctively curl up as their armor peeled away under the ravaging lightning.
"Not bad, that's a pretty big bolt!"
Watching the lightning chain released by the God of Thunder, clearly exceeding one hundred thousand volts, Corin half-heartedly gave him a thumbs-up.
It was hard not to be half-hearted.
Not because Thor's divine technique wasn't strong, and not because Corin was arrogant or disrespectful toward his friend.
It was because Corin had heard the system prompt while crossing the portal:
[Demi-God Body activation successful!]
That made Corin want to immediately open the system and study it, so he only gave Thor a perfunctory response.
Feeling acknowledged, Thor was in a good mood. Grinning, he left the battlefield to Corin and went down to support the Hulk.
Watching Thor's figure depart, Corin immediately opened the system interface to study it.
'What exactly does activating the demi-god body mean?'
'Why doesn't it feel like anything at all?'
Below the demi-god body talent on the interface, a line of small text appeared:
[Demi-God Body (Activated)]
[Compatible energy attribute: Space]
[You will more easily perceive and utilize spatial energy]
[Your body already possesses a certain degree of divinity. Contact with special energy triggered resonance, activating it. A divine body is compatible with various energies. A demi-god body is compatible with a single energy.]
Corin repeatedly mulled over the system's explanation, recalling how he had felt earlier.
Indeed, only when he focused did he realize that at the moment he passed through the portal, his body had produced a humming, vibrating sensation.
At the time, Corin had assumed that was just normal when traveling through a portal.
After all, it was crossing space.
But thinking back now, that vibration he had almost ignored was precisely the resonance when the demi-god body was activated.
Realizing this, Corin couldn't help but feel that his luck was pretty good.
Because the time since Odin had given him that gift wasn't especially long or short.
If the energy his demi-god body resonated with had been a rare type, then with a body that could only match one energy, Corin might never have activated it in his lifetime.
But what did being compatible with spatial energy actually mean?
As he pondered this, Corin noticed another issue.
He closed his eyes and calmly felt the light and shadows within his spiritual power.
Gradually, Corin discovered that before, he could only open portals to places he had already been.
But after activating the demi-god body, it seemed that there were some places he hadn't been to yet where he now had confidence he could still open a portal.
"Damn! I thought I'd unlocked some powerful hidden attribute. Looks like it's just an upgraded sling ring portal effect…"
Thinking this, Corin felt he might have overestimated the significance of activating the demi-god body.
"Hmph! A demi-god? That's it?"
At this moment, Corin looked toward the nearby device.
Hum!
The Tesseract was still inside the apparatus, continuously releasing energy to keep the portal open.
But the instant his gaze touched the energy barrier, maybe it was an illusion, but he vaguely saw the energy inside the light shield slowly flowing toward him.
This was not an illusion. Corin, whose demi-god body compatible with spatial energy had been activated, did not yet realize that his body was slowly attracting energy from the Tesseract.
Corin recalled what Thor and Tony had said.
The emitter device was protected by a pure energy shield. Ordinary attacks couldn't penetrate it at all.
To interrupt it, Corin tried using heat vision.
Two golden beams instantly struck the energy shield.
A transparent ripple spread through the air.
The heat vision stopped at the location of the Tesseract, but only stopped.
There was no destructive effect whatsoever, let alone interrupting the energy output.
Next, Corin tried using freezing breath.
Whoosh!
Cold wind swept through, and a corner of Stark Tower was instantly covered in frost, but the energy pillar was still there.
Likewise, releasing a magnetic field couldn't shake the device in the slightest.
"Right!"
Corin suddenly remembered something.
The Tesseract was actually the container for the Space Stone, sharing the same origin as the Mind Stone in Loki's scepter.
So to shut down the portal, all it took was grabbing the Mind Scepter and poking it in.
"If only I had a tablet to pull up Marvel movies anytime."
With that thought, Corin raised his eyes and scanned the surroundings, searching the sky for Loki's figure.
———
"The councilors are waiting for you, sir."
On the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier, Agent Hill came to Nick Fury's side. This wasn't the first time she had reminded Director Fury.
But Nick Fury seemed to have zero interest in connecting with those councilors.
Judging by the situation, it couldn't be put off any longer.
Nick Fury let out a soft sigh.
Sure enough, just as Nick Fury had expected, there was no need to guess what those high-ranking councilors were thinking.
Nuclear weapons.
A bunch of politicians who only knew how to protect their own positions. How could they possibly understand the pressure his team was facing right now?
"Commander, your carrier is the closest to the battlefield. Please order your jets to immediately—"
"That's Manhattan Island! Councilors. Unless my team is unable to stop them, I will absolutely not order a nuclear strike against any civilians!"
Even facing the peak of power, Nick Fury still held fast to his convictions.
"If we can't stop them, then everything is over—"
"If we launch a nuke, that's when it's really over."
With that, Nick Fury decisively cut the connection with the council.
At this moment, Dr. Erik Selvig, who had been unconscious on the rooftop of Stark Tower, woke up and stared at the apocalyptic scene around him, completely dumbfounded.
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