Chapter 241: Matthew's Gone on a Rampage
In the arena.
As the Chaos Magic ate away at them, the magical shields around Matthew winked out one after another.
The Chaos energy under zombie Wanda's control moved like something alive.
The instant it neared a shield, it crawled across the surface, eating through it in a frenzy, like thin ice melting beneath a red-hot iron ball, closing in on Matthew relentlessly.
Right now, Matthew could feel a cold, oppressive presence bearing down on him from every direction.
Seeing this, he kept retreating, fast.
His heat vision swept sideways, and the crimson beam cut straight through the pursuing Chaos energy, forcing zombie Wanda, still chasing hard, to swerve out of the way.
At the same moment, flesh-armor spread across his entire body in an instant.
By the time you looked again, Matthew had already changed entirely.
Dark red biomass erupted outward from his spine!
It spread wildly along his limbs and torso, and in the blink of an eye had wrapped his entire body, like some war machine built out of flesh and machinery both.
Across the armor's surface, vein-like patterns pulsed and flickered, and a fierce red light glowed out through the seams of the faceplate.
Behind his shoulder guards and head armor, the golden energy of his Binary form burned in a wild blaze, giving off both a savage brutality and a strange, unsettling sense of the divine.
At the same time, the magical shields around him, dead moments before, flared back to life.
Suddenly, his right arm shot upward, and rings of golden magic circles surfaced between muscle and armor!
The runes within them interlocked and spun like gears within gears, and with a twist of his wrist—
Creeeak!!
The entire space let out a strange, droning hum, and the scene around them twisted and spun violently!
Walls, rubble, the grey-green sky, all of it stretched and warped, as if someone had poured the whole scene into some enormous kaleidoscope.
Zombie Wanda's vision swam, and by the time it cleared, she'd already been dragged, forcibly, inside a Mirror Dimension.
Matthew: This is—the Iron Man Solo Arena!
On the other side, zombie Wanda, suddenly dropped inside the Mirror Dimension, glanced around, a mix of shock and uncertainty in her eyes.
The buildings around her were now stacked and bent at impossible angles, the ground and sky interlaced and hanging upside down, and even gravity itself flickered in and out.
But before she could react, the magic circles and seals in Matthew's hands shifted again.
As his hands split apart their seal, the single Matthew standing there instantly multiplied into hundreds of figures.
—The Images of Ikonn!
The dense crowd of figures surrounded Wanda on all sides, and then, in unison, they swung their arms!
Whoosh—
Hundreds of magical whips, woven out of pure mana, tore through the air all at once, like a torrential downpour, and before zombie Wanda could even work out which figure was the real Matthew, she was bound tight, wrapped from head to toe.
The whips coiled from her neck down to her ankles, biting deep into her flesh.
Seeing her caught, Matthew's gaze swept down toward the ground beneath her.
The earth and stone beneath her feet instantly gathered into dozens of spikes, driving upward from below, straight for her lower body and her back.
But zombie Wanda was, in the end, no ordinary zombie.
Seeing the spikes closing in with no way to move, she registered the danger, and the Chaos Magic inside her erupted in an instant!
Crimson energy burst outward from her body like a volcano erupting!
The whips that had just had her bound completely immobile disintegrated the instant they touched that energy.
Even the earthen spikes closing in were blasted to dust by the same wave, never even making it close.
The Mirror Dimension itself shuddered under the force, and countless folded buildings were sent tumbling away like scattered building blocks.
The hundreds of duplicate figures Matthew had split himself into scattered under the blast, most of them vanishing outright, leaving only the real Matthew, who used the moment to fall back, landing atop a distant, upside-down building.
"Tch. Figures. Chaos Magic just doesn't play fair, does it."
"No matter how creative you get with it, Chaos Magic can just brute-force its way through anything." Matthew muttered under his breath, a trace of exasperation on his face.
He'd genuinely gotten a taste, now, of just how absurdly overpowered Chaos Magic really was.
No wonder Wanda had been able to wipe out the entire Illuminati of Universe 838 single-handed.
"But the more you pull moves like that, the more interested I get in the Chaos Magic inside you."
"Even setting aside you invading my universe, the Chaos energy in your body alone is enough to push the Blacklight Virus through another evolution." Matthew looked at zombie Wanda, a flicker of pure hunger in his eyes, the way you'd look at some rare delicacy.
It genuinely got hard, for a second, to tell which of them was actually the villain in this scene.
Zombie Wanda could feel that same hunger in the way Matthew was looking at her.
She had no idea why this thing, neither ghost nor man, had suddenly fixed her with that kind of greed, but right now, she still had far too much left undone.
Which meant she absolutely was not going down here.
With that thought, zombie Wanda let out a roar and made a downward grab with her one remaining hand!
Crimson energy spread out in a frenzy!
The entire Mirror Dimension seemed to be seized by some invisible hand, contracting violently toward the spot where Matthew stood!
The building beneath Matthew's feet was crushed to pieces, inch by inch, under that force.
Just as he was about to be swallowed by the energy, Matthew pressed both hands downward through empty air, and gravity across the entire space flipped instantly!
The contracting space and the rubble within it shot upward all at once, slamming into the Chaos energy zombie Wanda had summoned, letting off a deafening roar.
From a distance, Matthew watched Wanda, swallowed by rubble and smoke, and before the dust had even fully cleared, his fingers suddenly curled into claws!
Binary form's stellar energy surged into his palm in an instant!
In an instant, a blazing white sphere of light condensed out of nothing!
Heat rolled off its surface, hot enough to vaporize any living thing or matter it touched, warping the very air around it!
The next instant, the sphere detonated.
A massive column of light tore straight through the smoke, swallowing the rubble and the upside-down building whole!
Everywhere the white light passed, rebar melted into liquid metal, stone vaporized into ash, and the entire Mirror Dimension shuddered violently under the blast, as if it might shatter apart at any moment.
Once it was done, Matthew waved a hand, clearing the thin white smoke drifting off his palm, his X-ray vision sweeping the field without pause.
Though the smoke hadn't cleared yet, his X-ray vision had already locked onto zombie Wanda beforehand, so there was no way this strike had missed.
And yet, right now, she'd vanished from view entirely.
"Dead? ...No. She's probably just hiding."
Matthew's eyes narrowed, glowing a deep red as they swept the surroundings.
At the same time, he pushed Cosmic Awareness to its absolute limit.
The red dot marking Wanda flickered on and off within his field of perception, like a candle flame seen through thick fog, impossible to pin down to any exact location.
"Where'd you crawl off to?"
Before the words had even finished settling, the space behind him warped violently.
Red mist seeped out from empty air, light bending strangely within it.
The next instant!
A withered, rotting hand thrust out from the warped space, fingers curled like claws, striking suddenly for the small of Matthew's back.
"Heh. Finally decided to show yourself?"
Matthew let out a cold laugh and spun around in an instant!
His right hand clamped down on zombie Wanda's wrist like an iron vise!
But before he could put enough force in to snap her arm off, the Mirror Dimension above him exploded outward, and a massive axe, wrapped in crackling lightning, came smashing down through the rift, straight for his face!
"???"
Matthew's eyes sharpened, and his gravity field twisted in an instant, forming a thick, invisible shield right above his head.
At the same time, he threw his other hand up, molecular manipulation running at full power, rewriting the sand and stone beneath him into several vibranium shields and sub-Adamantium alloy shields, layered one after another in front of him.
Still not satisfied, he casually layered a magical shield over the shields as well.
By the time all that was in place, Stormbreaker had already arrived.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Stormbreaker bore down relentlessly, wreathed in lightning, shattering shield after shield into fragments.
At the same time, the force behind the strike kept bleeding away, layer after layer of defense chipping it down.
By the time the axe actually reached Matthew's head, less than a tenth of its original force remained.
With that, Matthew raised his other hand, fingers spreading wide, and caught the axe's handle firmly in his palm.
Without a moment's hesitation, he swung the axe and brought it down on the arm he still had pinned in his right hand.
RRRIP!
Amid the faint crackle of lightning, the arm still attached to zombie Wanda's shoulder came clean off with a single stroke.
Wanda let out a scream that barely sounded human, her body wrenched free of the Chaos energy, black blood spraying in thick streams from the stump.
Looking up at Matthew, axe still in hand, she scrambled backward in a panic.
Her remaining hand clamped over the stump, her already-rotting face twisting into something even more grotesque.
At the same moment, a bolt of red lightning came crashing down from the broken Mirror Dimension above.
As the lightning faded, a figure landed hard on the ground below.
Half his body was charred black as coal, the other half rotted and falling apart, the muscle of his face turned inside out. His once-golden hair had gone matted and tangled from long neglect, and only one clouded eye still flickered with electric light.
His hands were empty now, but arcs of lightning still leapt from between his fingers without pause, tearing scorched gashes into the ground around him.
Thor, God of Thunder.
Or rather—
Zombie Thor, God of Thunder.
Matthew gave Stormbreaker a swing, testing its weight, then looked back up at the thing across from him that could barely be called Thor anymore, the corner of his mouth curling slightly, a flicker of disdain in his eyes.
"Well, well. One wasn't enough, so here comes another free kill."
"Guess I don't need to give the axe back, then." Matthew looked at Thor, consumed entirely by madness now, and kept a firm grip on the blade, refusing to let it be called back.
You hit someone and now you want to run?
Dream on.
The axe is a good one. So it's mine now.
Matthew glanced over at zombie Wanda, still retreating after taking such a rough hit, then shifted his gaze back to zombie Thor.
"Honestly, I've wanted to test myself against you for a while now."
"It's just that I had to think of that old man Odin's face, and I didn't want to go around interfering with how your home world runs, so I never actually squared off with you before."
"But now, since you just so happened to show up."
"Then. Die right here!"
Beneath his savage faceplate, red light flared.
The blaze of his Binary form surged behind him, washing the entire Mirror Dimension in blinding gold-white light.
The next instant!
Whoosh!
Matthew, who'd been a full kilometer from Thor moments before, was already standing right in front of him.
Compared to all the tricks he'd used against the Scarlet Witch, Matthew didn't bother with any of that against Thor. A single fist, wrapped in golden flame and overwhelming gravity, slammed straight into zombie Thor's face.
Seeing it coming, Thor still tried to strike back, his right fist wrapped in red lightning, meeting the blow head-on.
But—
BOOM!!
A deafening blast rang out.
The arm Thor had thrown into the punch burst into a mist of blood the instant it made contact with Matthew's fist.
Charred bone fragments and rotting flesh sprayed in every direction, and the red lightning still gathering on the arm was snuffed out before it could even fully bloom, crushed flat by the sheer force of Matthew's punch.
If you had to ask what the strongest thing among all of Matthew's abilities really was.
It was, without question, his own body.
By now, he could take the movie version of the Hulk and beat him around like a punching bag, and even Captain Marvel, in a pure contest of raw physical strength, would have had no choice but to fold.
Never mind this zombified Thor in front of him, one who hadn't even fully grown into his own power before getting infected.
Before the blood mist had even finished spreading, Matthew threw a few more punches.
Fists wreathed in golden flame slammed into Thor's body again and again.
Every single hit landed like a small nuclear detonation.
Only now did zombie Thor finally register the gap in raw power between them, calling down red lightning in a desperate frenzy, trying to force Matthew back.
But against Matthew's relentless barrage, the lightning was blasted apart the instant it formed, and every single punch landed clean, without a single one missing.
In an instant, zombie Thor, God of Thunder, who'd made such a grand entrance, didn't even manage a full roar before he was done for entirely.
Once it was all over, Matthew shook the black blood off his hands and turned around.
In the distance, zombie Wanda had retreated all the way to the edge of the Mirror Dimension, already trying to tear a crack open into the outside world with Chaos energy.
Sensing Matthew's gaze on her, she flinched all over.
Zombie Thor had, of course, been her doing. Summoned to bring an Asgardian's unique physiology into the fight, the two of them together taking Matthew down. But now, she realized she'd been wrong.
Her trump card, her zombie Thor, hadn't even survived a single exchange against whatever this thing was in front of her?
That was completely insane.
Chaotic thoughts spun through her head, but fear outweighed all of them.
Her one remaining hand shoved forward, and a column of crimson light blasted straight at Matthew.
Facing his prey's panicked attack, Matthew didn't even bother dodging.
He raised a hand and swept it aside, and the gravity field simply deflected the beam, letting it skim past his side and slam into an upside-down building behind him.
He took a single step toward Wanda, gold light flaring beneath his feet, and closed the distance in an instant.
"Crimson Bands."
Matthew let out a low command, his hands forming a seal.
Power borrowed directly from the extradimensional dark god of the Crimson Cosmos, Cyttorak, surged into being!
Crimson chains burst out from the empty air, like dozens of venomous snakes, coiling in from every direction toward zombie Wanda.
—The Crimson Bands of Cyttorak.
A forbidden spell from the Crimson Cosmos, unleashed by Matthew without a moment's hesitation.
Zombie Wanda still tried to fight it, her one remaining hand pouring out Chaos energy in a frenzy, trying to tear the crimson binding apart.
But this time, the chains seemed to share the same origin as Chaos energy itself. The crimson blast slammed into them, only to be swallowed whole by the runes surfacing across the chains' surface, and they coiled tighter still.
The chains bit into her flesh, pinning her body in midair.
And right at that moment, deep underground, the Uru-metal throwing knife, which had been waiting patiently all this time, broke silently through the earth.
It didn't stir a whisper of wind.
Even the blade's light was swallowed and turned back by its own runes.
The knife glided low along the ground, right up behind Wanda, then suddenly accelerated!
Shhhk—
The blade's edge traced a single circle around her neck.
The whole thing happened without a sound.
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