Maybe it was because Luca's meteor strike was just too powerful, or maybe it was because a bunch of those meteors smashed right through the Hell Gate and exploded on the other side.
Either way, the Hell Dimension's assault on Earth finally slowed down a bit.
The Avengers took full advantage of the lull, closing dozens of Hell Gates, big and small.
This was largely thanks to Tony, who deployed a fleet of transport planes to drop off his combat drones.
For the smaller gates, they just capped them with drone-filled shipping containers to "seal" them.
For the slightly larger ones? Tony, being obscenely wealthy, just dropped empty airplanes right over the gates to seal them like bottle caps.
However, this smooth sailing only lasted because they had caught Hell off guard.
By the time they got down to the last dozen or so gates, the forces of Hell reorganized. Countless demons began surging out again.
The number of demons in Hell was effectively infinite. Even though this invasion didn't involve the entire population of the Hell Dimension, Luca's massive "map-clearing" attack had only stunned them briefly. Compared to the full scale of the invading army, his attack was just a drop in the bucket.
When the demons started flooding out regardless of the cost, their previous sealing methods started to fall apart.
Although there were only a dozen gates left to guard, and Luca's mechanical army combined with Tony's drone swarm could maintain a saturation bombardment that killed any standard demon the moment it poked its head out, that kind of firepower created a new problem.
The intense suppression fire made it impossible to place the "casings" over the gates.
If they didn't stop firing, the casing would get destroyed by their own saturation attacks. But if they stopped, the demons rushing out like suicide bombers would tear the casing to shreds before it could even land.
Finally, for the cracks under fifteen feet wide, the Avengers managed to seal them by using casings several times larger than necessary, combined with compression beams timed to the millisecond.
They succeeded by seizing that tiny fraction of a second between the demons rushing out and hitting the casing.
But for the remaining large rifts—those over thirty feet wide—they were stuck in a stalemate, relying entirely on suppression fire to hold the line.
There were still nine of these massive rifts left in New York.
And the biggest headache of all was still that super-sized Hell Gate towering over three hundred feet high.
"Luca! Ceasefire countdown! Five, four, three..."
"Hold your horses, I'm tossing one last meteor in there!"
As he spoke, standing before the massive Hell Gate surrounded by the team, Luca charged up another red crystal meteor and fired it straight into the portal.
Most of the entities rushing out of this massive gate were Elemental Demons.
While attacks like flooding them with seawater or blasting them with liquid nitrogen did some damage, for the sake of consistency, Luca was still the best man to guard this main gate.
Fortunately, after they killed the four massive Elemental Demons—who averaged about 160 feet tall and were likely the elites of their species—most of the demons coming out now were under thirty feet.
Dealing with these smaller guys while guarding a single gate was manageable. Luca didn't need to use his massive wide-range meteor attacks anymore.
With a nearly endless supply of demon blood to fuel him, Luca could ensure that no demon made it more than fifteen feet out the door, regardless of charge time or attack power.
Right now, Luca charged and released two red crystal meteors.
One blast obliterated a Wind Demon that was halfway out the breach. The other smashed a Earth Demon right back inside the gate, causing a massive fiery explosion.
Hovering in the air, Tony didn't hesitate. The moment the countdown hit zero, he tossed out a prepped Capsule.
Poof!
A massive cloud of white smoke exploded.
A slightly damaged skyscraper instantly materialized above the Hell Gate and began to plummet rapidly.
But before the building even dropped to the one-fifth mark, four demons burst out of the gate instantly.
The Earth Demon at the front smashed straight through a corner of the building, while the Wind, Fire, and Water Demons below launched a simultaneous attack on the falling structure.
Luckily, neither Luca nor Tony was unprepared.
Luca launched a red crystal meteor, obliterating the fragile Wind Demon and knocking the Earth Demon back into the portal.
Meanwhile, Tony withstood the shockwave from the explosion and rapidly threw two new Capsules.
One burst open to reveal a tanker truck full of seawater, aimed right at the Fire Demon.
The other was a medium-sized shipping container hastily packed with liquid nitrogen.
Tony fired two repulsor blasts from his palms, detonating the nitrogen and the seawater almost simultaneously.
In an instant, the Water Demon and Fire Demon shrieked as they dissipated.
However, even with their precise cover fire, the falling building still took heavy damage, losing a huge chunk of its structure.
More importantly, immediately after those four demons were wiped out, several more rushed out right behind them.
One of them smashed straight through the outer wall of the building's mid-section to get out.
Seeing that the building was about to disintegrate, Luca couldn't hesitate any longer. He fired several compression beams at the structure.
The first two beams were blocked by falling debris from the outer wall, but Luca was ready for that; the third beam hit the main structure.
Blue streamers of Hextech energy instantly covered the building. The demon that had its head sticking halfway out of the wall was instantly crushed as the building rapidly shrank inward.
"Did it work?!"
Tony looked delighted as he watched the building shrink, slicing off nearly sixty percent of the Hell Gate's rift.
But Luca, who was more familiar with the process and had closed more gates, knew the truth.
The damage to the bottom of the building had reduced its volume, and because Luca was worried about the building falling apart, he had fired the compression beam too early.
Combine those two factors, and the result of failing to completely wrap around the Hell Gate could only be...
"Damn... it failed!"
Sure enough, although the move had cut off about three-fifths of the gate, when the energy cube expanded again, the Hell Gate didn't turn into that reassuring weave of red and blue energy.
Instead, the red Hell Dimension energy instantly dispelled the blue Hextech energy.
The Hell Gate remained open, still towering over three hundred feet high.
Seeing the gate still standing intact, everyone around wore looks of disappointment.
Luca went back to his job of playing Whac-A-Mole with the demons.
Dealing with the demons running out wasn't too stressful for him, but he didn't want to waste time here forever. He turned his head to look up at Tony in the sky.
"Tony, how about you donate another skyscraper? Let's give it another shot."