Hum!
Renzo opened his eyes, and the scene before him went far beyond his imagination.
"This is..." Hill looked at the scenery below in disbelief. Even a well-informed woman like her was stunned into silence.
"Ugh... let me down..." Hill covered her mouth and muttered incoherently. Renzo decisively threw her down.
With the protection of the Space Stone, Hill landed smoothly on the ground, but her stomach was not so lucky.
Renzo's eyes nearly burst with anger. The scene here could not be described simply as corpses everywhere. This town... was completely covered in bodies.
Wherever he looked, mountains of bones piled high, and countless skulls were embedded in ground made of flesh and blood, crunching and screaming in fear.
Severed limbs, eyeballs, hair, internal organs... They were like a colorful, beautiful painting, composing a crimson, evil melody.
Twenty sacred pillars stood on the ground. Black blood and crimson chaos intertwined, sewn together into enormous pillars of flesh. Purple-red flames burned at the tops of those pillars. They were different from ordinary fire. They trembled with cold. Even getting one meter closer made a person feel as if they would instantly be frozen into an ice sculpture.
Renzo looked at the altar in the middle... It might have been an altar. Twenty flesh pillars surrounded the square at its center.
It was not made of flesh and blood, but cast from a large quantity of obsidian. For such an astonishing structure to be built within a single day was simply fantastical.
Puff, puff...
Every step landed on human bodies, and blood nearly covered the soles of his feet. With every step he took, it seemed as if wails rang in his ears, begging him for help, cursing him...
And sitting high upon the altar... was the person Renzo saw day and night.
"Wanda..." Renzo's voice trembled as he softly called the woman's name. He did not want to believe it, but he had to.
Because the countless wronged souls here and the chaotic red mist outside were constantly pointing to the same answer. The source of everything was the woman on the altar.
"How could this happen... Wanda, can you hear me? What have you done? What have I done!" Renzo had actually had a premonition ever since he met the first infected person, when Chthon's hoarse, unpleasant voice had lingered in his mind.
But he truly had not expected Wanda... to once again become a bridge, a doorway for Chthon, Elder God of the Underworld, to descend into this universe.
Chthon was too powerful. It was not difficult for him to find someone in the vast universe who could adapt to chaos magic. However, his standards were too high. He wanted only a vessel that could perfectly bear all his power.
Only Wanda.
Only Wanda could be the key to Chthon's arrival, and only Wanda could withstand such terrifying and dangerous power.
Renzo forced himself to calm down. He was not distracted by the cruel scene in front of him, but by the girl before him...
"You are not my Wanda," Renzo said firmly. In fact, that was true. She was the Wanda of Universe 838. Her soul had been invaded by Chthon. Now, only an occupied body stood here.
"Wanda" lowered her eyelids and saw Renzo standing below the altar at a glance. An evil smile appeared on her face. "Long time no see. I didn't expect I would still come knocking at your door."
"First of all, I have to correct you. We met yesterday." Renzo shrugged and spoke with strict precision.
"Secondly, watch the candle!"
"Wanda" raised her eyebrows, and a golden beam passed by her face, destroying a flesh pillar at extreme speed.
Renzo could tell at a glance that these corpses were all blood sacrifices offered by "Wanda" to Chthon. At the cost of thousands of lives, Chthon's true body was being summoned into this universe. If that happened, stopping him would no longer be the issue. The only question would be how to survive by any means possible.
Chthon's power was not something so-called superheroes could compare with. Perhaps several Skyfather-level beings together could defeat him if they risked their lives, but at Earth's current level... they could only wait to die.
The X-Men, the Inhumans, the Illuminati, Wakanda... These heroic forces might seem enormous in the eyes of ordinary people, but in the eyes of true cosmic powerhouses, they were no different from slightly larger ants.
Moreover, now, most of the X-Men were dead or injured, the Thunderbolts were almost completely wiped out, Kamar-Taj was unguarded, and the other heroes were evacuating and protecting civilians... There were no masters left who could take responsibility.
Renzo silently calculated in his mind. Based on the speed and area of the red mist's expansion, the whole of New York should already be shrouded in red mist, and its speed would only become faster and faster until the entire world was covered by Chthon's chaos magic. Earth would become a plaything in his palm...
If this continued, within five days at most, the whole world would become Chthon's amusement park. Renzo had to cut off his connection to Earth.
"Wanda..." Renzo raised his head, stretching his neck high as he looked at the woman slowly rising from the altar. A brand-new red shirt draped over Wanda's body, and her fingertips were dark, as if countless wronged souls were wrapped around them. Hollow eyes and sunken sockets stared in Renzo's direction. They looked like mad demons, carrying the power to destroy the world with every movement.
"The Darkhold gave her to him!" Renzo immediately understood Chthon's method: seizing the body, astral projection, and using the entire Earth as a blood sacrifice to find his Wanda.
The altar before him was the center of the blood sacrifice. Chthon's avatar descended upon Wanda through this place, then controlled this body to fulfill his greater, long-held desire.
He was willing to destroy several universes for his own selfish purposes... Chthon, Elder God of the Underworld.
"You damned bastard!" Renzo roared angrily, and his body shot out like a spring, slamming toward "Wanda."
"Wanda" smiled disdainfully. Such a primitive trick, used in front of him? She pushed both hands forward, and a protective shield composed of chaos magic blocked his path.
But...
A spatial crack suddenly tore open behind "Wanda," and a golden beam of light knocked her to the ground.
Renzo's body also sprang out of the spatial crack. Without hesitation, he rushed toward the fallen "Wanda," mounted her body, and restrained her spellcasting.
Renzo had long studied how to fight mages. Marvel magicians were not like Harry Potter, shouting incantations with wands until powerful magic suddenly appeared and washed away the enemy's sins like a flaming phoenix.
Marvel mages belonged to a completely different system. They preferred close combat and needed to form seals with both hands to cast spells. This was similar to Naruto, directing magic through gestures to create different forms and effects.
However, this had a fatal weakness: the wind-up before casting.
As everyone knew, in several scenes involving Kamar-Taj, mages were interrupted because their spells took too long to cast, and they were easily defeated.
For example, at the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War, Strange faced Ebony Maw. Strange might not have matched Ebony Maw in terms of raw magical technique, but the convenience provided by the Time Stone allowed Strange to skillfully use all kinds of white magic, and its power was also very impressive.
Unfortunately, the casting time was too long. Before he could even finish his gestures, Ebony Maw only needed to point, and the objects around them moved according to his will, subduing the Sorcerer Supreme in an instant.
Also, this group of mages needed a medium to cast certain spells. For example, the simplest basic portal still required a sling ring. Otherwise, a person could only be left hanging over the East African Rift Valley for more than ten hours.
Of course, someone at the Ancient One's level did not need the blessing of any external magical weapon. She could cast spells casually, and the amount of mana consumed was not worth mentioning.
The same was true for the "Wanda" in front of him. If she wanted to cast chaos magic, she also needed a short wind-up. As long as he seized that moment, Renzo could subdue her without bloodshed.
"Wanda's" hands were locked tightly by Renzo, and her legs were pressed beneath him. With only the strength of a woman's body, she could not move the man away from her.
Renzo was very heavy, but he could adjust his weight by controlling his density, so it did not usually show.
Do not forget that his entire body was made of vibranium, the hardest mineral on Earth. Such hardness naturally came with enormous weight, just like adamantium alloy, which made Wolverine's size and weight completely disproportionate.
With such terrifying weight pressing down on "Wanda," she could not even think of escaping.
"Wanda" revealed an expression of extreme hatred, roaring crazily and making incomprehensible sounds from her mouth, like a hungry wild beast in the jungle. Her sunken pupils stared lifelessly at Renzo's face, which was so close at hand.
Renzo calmed down and looked at "Wanda" beneath him. That face... that fair and gentle face had once been so familiar to him. They had been together for two years and lived together for two years. Everything about Wanda was engraved deep in his mind and could not be forgotten.
He looked at that face and fell into a daze...
She really looked like Wanda. Her appearance, body, scent... almost exactly the same as his girlfriend.
But she was not Wanda. Wanda was a strong, stubborn, lively girl, brave and self-respecting, pursuing herself and committed to protecting civilians.
His Wanda would never have her hands covered in so many traces of life taken.
The Mind Stone shone brightly, almost covering both of them. Renzo wanted to use this chance to completely remove Chthon's consciousness from this universe's Wanda. As long as another layer of protection was placed over her, Chthon would not be able to invade this universe again, and he would not be able to find a more suitable avatar.
The idea was beautiful, but Renzo had forgotten one thing. The body and mind of the "Wanda" before him were completely controlled by Chthon, and in Chthon's eyes, his method was nothing more than a trick.
"Wanda's" arms were tightly restrained, but her mouth was not.
"Ah!"
The crazed woman opened her mouth, and the bones of her face loosened and cracked. Thick black smoke and scarlet mist quickly spread from her mouth.
Not only that, a sticky tentacle actually stretched out from Wanda's mouth. Renzo failed to dodge and was strangled tightly, just as he was restraining Wanda now.
A huge eye suddenly opened, and a majestic, strange power instantly knocked Renzo away from Wanda's body. More tentacles stretched out from the girl's mouth, as if another universe were connected to her stomach.
The girl raised her head, looked up at the sky, and opened her mouth. Those octopus-like, sticky, disgusting tentacles flew wildly through the air. Wanda was suffering through all of it, her skull repeatedly hovering between tearing apart and being reborn. One moment, her body was almost ripped apart; the next, it was restored by the red mist drifting into her.
Renzo looked at the cruel, bloody scene, and a flame called anger almost swallowed him whole.
Even if the person before him was not his Wanda, it was not your turn, Chthon, to control and play with her body.
The purple light emitted by the Power Stone enveloped his body, and the power of the Mind Stone was instantly amplified, exploding across the scarlet altar.
The sun... It was the sun.
The golden light was as hot as the sun, dispelling the darkness and filth of the world, leaving light to everyone.
Those outstretched tentacles were like mice meeting a cat. As if burned by the intense light, they waved in terror and twisted together, trying to retreat back through Wanda's mouth and return to their own world.
How could Renzo let them do as they wished? His body suddenly appeared in front of Wanda. His hands tightly gripped the slimy tentacles, and purple light flickered around his fingers.
He was going to tear this coward out of Wanda's body.
"Ah!"
It was no longer clear who was screaming or who was furious. Renzo held on tightly and refused to let go. The two voices of "Wanda" and Chthon intertwined, producing a roar with no clear meaning. Her eyes were dim and unreadable, seeming to contain extremely complex emotions.
Pity, anger, gratitude, pain, ridicule... Renzo did not dare look into Wanda's pupils. He was afraid he would find the memories he shared with Wanda inside them, and he was afraid he would soften because of it.
"Save... save... my... children..." A familiar female voice entered his ears, and Renzo's body visibly paused. That single moment gave the tentacles their chance. They all wrapped around Renzo's neck, trying to pull him into Wanda's mouth.
"I don't have the habit of being parasitized, you dirty paramecium!" Renzo cursed angrily, and the energy of the Power Stone instantly filled his body.
Through the experience of his last battle with Chthon, Renzo had also learned to grasp the intensity of the Power Stone's energy. There would no longer be a situation where his body could not bear it because the energy was too strong, causing it to fragment and fly apart.
Renzo yanked hard, and the living entity carrying countless tentacles was dragged out by an unparalleled force. Along with it came fragments of Wanda's internal organs and blood pouring out like a fountain.
"Sure enough... a Beholder's clone... Chthon, you're really generous!" The creature Renzo pulled out fell to the ground, and its size changed from one meter to a ten-meter giant within seconds.
A black pupil shining with mysterious light suddenly opened, and a powerful psychic shock threw Renzo into a trance. Taking the opportunity, it spread its eight arms and smashed down violently like a madman...
__________________________________________
You can read early chapters on Patr*on. If you enjoy my work and would like to support me, consider becoming a patron. My Patr*on username is Renzo28557.