"What—?!"
Elric abruptly shot to his feet, his chair scraping backward with enough force to make a harsh, ear-piercing screech.
The sound instantly drew the attention of everyone else inside the small shop. Several people turned to stare at him, visibly startled by the sudden outburst. An elderly woman near the counter actually flinched.
He didn't notice any of them.
He didn't care.
"What's his current status?" he demanded sharply, his voice low but intense. "Can I still intercept him before he reaches the town? Give me numbers, Aline. Exact numbers."
Aline's response came immediately through his earpiece, her normally steady mechanical tone carrying what almost sounded like tension—which was unusual for an AI.
"Boss, it appears that JARVIS interfered directly with the satellite feeds," she explained quickly. "He supplied falsified imagery to mask Tony Stark's movements. Because this interference was completely unexpected—and because I did not verify the raw data thoroughly enough before processing—the anomaly was not detected in time."
Elric felt his jaw clench involuntarily.
There was a short pause on the line, and somehow that pause felt heavier than it should have.
"Boss," Aline continued, and now her tone was definitely more careful, "it is already too late to prevent entry. The Hulk has nearly entered Xing Chu's city limits. However, if you proceed at maximum flight speed immediately, you will arrive just barely in time to intercept him before he can destroy anything critical or cause mass casualties."
For a brief instant—just a single heartbeat—a tight, uncomfortable anger formed in Elric's chest.
Then it loosened slightly.
At this very moment, right now, Aline wasn't just monitoring the Hulk's movements. She was simultaneously keeping watch over every single location potentially affected by this incident.
And at the same time she was providing active assistance to Anastasia.
If it were simple surveillance? That would have been effortless for Aline. She could literally observe the entire surface of Earth simultaneously without breaking a sweat. That was child's play for her processing power.
But this? This was far more demanding.
She wasn't just passively watching events unfold in real-time. She was actively deducing them. Calculating future possibilities as they developed. Running thousands of simulations per second, adjusting variables continuously based on new data, ensuring that his carefully constructed plan could proceed as smoothly and efficiently as possible despite unexpected complications.
That level of real-time predictive analysis and multi-threaded operation pushed even her computational limits to near maximum capacity.
So no. He couldn't blame her for missing one falsified data stream in that ocean of information.
Still…
Elric exhaled slowly through his nose, forcing his racing thoughts into some semblance of order.
He had absolutely no right to be angry at anyone else here.
Not at Aline for the oversight.
Not even at Tony Stark for being an unpredictable idiot.
This situation existed primarily because of his own fundamental assumption—that everything would somehow go perfectly according to plan even if he just sat back and did nothing to account for variables.
That was arrogance. Pure arrogance on his part.
"No," he muttered to himself under his breath, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "This isn't the time to sit here dwelling on what went wrong, or whose fault it is, or how it could've been prevented."
He could do that later.
Right now, people were about to die if he didn't move.
"I'll think about all of that later," he said quietly, more to himself than to Aline. "After I stop the Hulk."
He turned sharply and strode toward the door.
Teleporting directly there would have been easy.
Just focus on the destination, bend space, and pop—instant arrival.
The problem was precision. Or rather, the complete lack of it over long distances.
He didn't know Xing Chu's exact spatial coordinates down to the meter. For long-range teleportation—like intercontinental jumps—rough estimation was usually acceptable. He could aim for "general area" and still land close enough to walk the rest of the way.
But for short-range teleportation like this? Where even a minor miscalculation in his mental math could potentially send him off-course by fifty, maybe even a hundred kilometers in the wrong direction.
That margin of error was completely unacceptable given the circumstances.
No. Flying would actually be faster in this case.
And definitely safer.
He launched himself into the air, accelerating hard.
With Aline's real-time guidance and satellite mapping assistance feeding, it took only about two minutes of sustained flight to locate the town's exact position.
Even then…
Even moving that fast…
It was already somewhat late.
The moment he crossed into the outskirts of Xing Chu, absolute chaos immediately assaulted his senses from every direction.
Panicked screams pierced the air—high-pitched, terrified, desperate. People shouting in Mandarin, crying out for help, calling for loved ones. Car alarms blaring. The deep, grinding sounds of concrete and steel being violently destroyed echoed through the narrow streets.
Through all the confusion and dust, he could clearly see the aftermath of the Hulk's rampage already in progress.
Several buildings were already reduced to rubble—just complete piles of broken concrete and twisted rebar. A small apartment complex looked like it had been punched straight through the middle. Storefronts were smashed open, their contents spilled across the street. A car had been thrown into the second story of a building and was now just… stuck there.
His eyes scanned the destruction rapidly though his byakugan, looking for the worst possible scenario.
Fortunately—
There were no bodies visible.
No blood staining the streets.
No obvious casualties that he could see.
Not yet, anyway.
People were still running, still screaming, still alive.
His gaze hardened as he locked onto that towering green figure in the distance, currently in the process of tearing the roof off what looked like a small pharmacy.
"…Good," Elric murmured quietly to himself, his voice barely audible over the surrounding chaos.
His body tensed, preparing to engage.
"I'm still in time."
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