Odin didn't answer immediately, but raised his hand, gesturing for them to carefully observe the energy projection in the center of the hall. He magnified the energy flow data regarding the MagicNet, explaining in a low voice:
"Look! After the Chitauri attack energy touched the barrier, it didn't completely disappear—quite a bit of it was actually… sucked inside the barrier!"
"And rather than being drained by the attack, the barrier's own energy response… is steadily increasing!"
Hearing this, Thor and Heimdall looked back at the image, carefully studying the complex data. When they finally understood, identical ghostly expressions appeared on both faces.
"This… how is this possible?"
This time, they were truly shocked.
"It's not just blocking attacks—it's devouring the enemy's attack energy to replenish itself? This… what kind of principle is this?!"
Heimdall, too, was speechless. He had lived long, seen countless magics and technologies, but had never witnessed such an unreasonable and absurd defense system!
…
On the Death Scythe's Bridge
General Corvus Glaive's face was unreadable. He stared at the screen, at that spot which remained as steady as Mount Everest amid the fleet's indiscriminate bombardment. Even the ripples began to shrink into the magical barrier, and a chill flowed straight from his feet to his crown.
"How could this happen? Why is this happening?"
He screamed hysterically.
"Is it still not broken? Increase attack power! Keep attacking! Overload the ship's reactors!"
But his roar was replaced by even more terrified reports from his subordinates.
"General! Sir, something's wrong!"
The energy officer rushed up, voice trembling with fear.
"The protective barrier… under our attack, not only has it not weakened, but its energy response is getting… stronger!"
"What did you say?"
General Corvus Glaive grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up.
"General… it seems… it's devouring our attack energy!"
The officer shouted his conclusion with all his strength, unable to believe it himself.
"Devouring our attacks?"
General Corvus Glaive roared, feeling his subordinates must have gone mad or become stupid with fear. He pushed the officer aside, rushed to the main console, and pulled up the core energy monitoring screen himself.
Countless complex data streams scrolled rapidly.
The red curve representing the Chitauri fleet's attack energy output remained at its peak like a howling beast. But the golden curve representing the barrier's response, after some fluctuation, immediately stabilized and then…
It steadily, visibly… rose!
The contrast between the two curves was stark and desperate.
General Corvus Glaive stared at the slowly climbing golden line, his body freezing, his expression morphing from anger to shock, to blankness… and finally, to the dead gray of despair.
It was true…
Unbelievably…
True!
The more they attacked, the stronger the opponent became!
At this moment, General Corvus Glaive finally understood. What they faced was not a "shield"—
But a "devouring monster!"
"How… how can we play this game?"
His lips trembled as he muttered to himself.
A new, unprecedented sense of powerlessness and despair overwhelmed him. He had fought in the cosmos for years, destroyed countless civilizations, but never encountered such a strange, unreasonable enemy.
In the face of such a "wall of sighs," all tactics, all force was meaningless.
Could it be… the task given by his master was destined to end here, in the most humiliating and ridiculous fashion, in failure?
At the thought of failure and Thanos's emotionless face, General Corvus Glaive shivered.
Failure was worse than death… ten thousand times more terrifying!
He stared at the screen. Beyond the barrier, a still figure stood, and for the first time, a flash of terror appeared in his eyes.
"What do we do… what should we do?"
General Corvus Glaive's mind raced, desperate for a countermeasure. Should he have his soldiers pilot small ships for suicide kamikaze attacks? No—that was useless. In the face of this unbreakable barrier, not even the main cannons of the warships had worked. Physical suicide attacks would be even more futile.
Just as General Corvus Glaive was sinking into deep self-doubt and despair, he suddenly sensed something was wrong. The whole bridge fell into silence.
Not far away, the Chitauri officers looked like strangled ducks, their bodies stiff, mouths wide open, and faces frozen in extreme terror—as if they'd seen the most unspeakable horror in the universe.
"What are you doing…?"
He turned around in frustration, but swallowed his rebuke halfway—for he saw it.
There, right in the center of the bridge, stood a man—when had he arrived?
He had black hair and black eyes, an indifferent expression, as if he were strolling through his backyard rather than invading the enemy flagship.
It was the Asgardian who had been inside the barrier!
At that instant, General Corvus Glaive's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
How had he gotten in?
The Death Scythe's bridge had the fleet's best space stabilizers and phase shields—teleportation should have been impossible! Not even temple technology could have allowed him to teleport in so quietly!
Before General Corvus Glaive could react, Lucci, who had teleported using cosmic laws, spoke first. He swept a cold gaze over the killing intent filling the bridge, finally settling on General Corvus Glaive, frowning slightly, his voice tinged with obvious disappointment.
"I thought Thanos would come himself.
But it's you—the leader of the five Black Order Generals, General Corvus Glaive."
Hearing this, General Corvus Glaive's eyes narrowed, his heart suffering another shock.
He can travel through space… and he knows who I am?
But this shock lasted less than a second, replaced by the ecstasy of survival! The violent emotional swings made his heart pound wildly.
The man had actually come out! Out of that damn, unbreakable turtle shell!
He must be courting death!
A twisted, cruel smile instantly appeared on General Corvus Glaive's face.
"Fool! Arrogant fool!"
He roared inwardly. "Your greatest reliance is that turtle shell! Now you dare to throw yourself before me—who do you think you are? A god?"
"Kill him!"
General Corvus Glaive gave the order without hesitation.
The Chitauri soldiers around him snapped back to their senses, roaring like beasts, raising their energy rifles and aiming at Lucci. At the same time, General Corvus Glaive himself turned into a gray lightning bolt, his blade tracing a mysterious, deadly trajectory as he attacked Lucci. Wherever the blade passed, it seemed to slice through space itself, leaving a trail of mournful wails!
This was his signature move—he had slain countless strong foes with this technique.
In the next instant, he could already imagine his enemy's body split open by his battle blade, blood and organs spilling across the bridge.
Yet, facing this thunderous, fatal strike, surrounded by hundreds of gun barrels glowing with energy, Lucci merely lifted his eyelids. He didn't even bother to move a finger.
In the next moment, two dazzling lights suddenly shone in his eyes—
Hotter than the core of a star, brighter than a supernova!
Super Laser Eyes!
From his eyes, thin beams burst forth at a speed surpassing both light and thought!
Fwoosh!
There was a faint sound, like a hot knife slicing butter.
The two crimson beams pierced straight through General Corvus Glaive's chest, perfectly and unimpeded.
He froze in mid-air, his charging body stopped. Slowly, in disbelief, he lowered his head to look at his chest.
There, a fist-sized, perfectly smooth-edged hole had appeared.
He could even see the floor behind him through the hollow.
No blood, no explosion. The tissue, flesh, bone, and even the tough armor around the wound had been completely vaporized and erased at the molecular level by the extreme heat.
"Uh…"
General Corvus Glaive tried to speak, but only a mix of black smoke and bits of viscera spilled from his mouth. He felt his life force draining rapidly from the void in his chest.
In his once-sharp eyes, all anger, joy, and contempt vanished in an instant, replaced by the purest, most incomprehensible—
Confusion and fear.
How…
How could this be?
I…
I was actually…
The leader of the five Black Order Generals…
Instantly killed?
Thud.
Unable to stand, his body collapsed heavily backward, striking the cold metal floor with a loud crash. His inseparable Immortal Battleblade clattered down as well, its light rapidly fading.
The entire bridge fell silent.
The Chitauri soldiers, guns in hand, stood frozen as if spellbound, still aiming at Lucci. Their faces showed a hundred times more terror than when he first appeared.
So powerful…
General Corvus Glaive…
To them, he was invincible, a god among the five Black Order Generals…
And he'd been…
Killed instantly, with a single glance?
Lucci calmly withdrew his gaze, the crimson light fading from his eyes, returning to their fathomless tranquility. He didn't spare another glance at General Corvus Glaive's corpse.
To him, it was just a noisy fly, lightly swatted to death.
The last bit of interest faded from Lucci's heart. There was no need to waste time dealing with such ants.
Amid the terror-filled stares of all the Chitauri, Lucci took a step and disappeared. In the next moment, he was already above all the warships.
He raised his right hand.
Buzz—
A clear sword hum rang through the starry sky.
A simple longsword, manifesting the cycle of life and death in the universe, appeared in his grasp out of thin air. With a single slash, he struck toward the fleet below.
The energy of the Sword of Time and Space…
Meters, dozens of meters, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of meters…
The sword's aura rapidly expanded!
Invisible like ripples in time, it quietly spread downward…
Then, the strangest and most terrifying scene occurred.
The gray sword aura first brushed past the nearest Chitauri attack ship.
There was no explosion, not even a sound.
The warship's tough alloy shell, upon contact with the sword's energy, seemed to undergo billions of years of accelerated time in an instant. The surface coating peeled away instantly, followed by large rust stains spreading visibly, deepening, blackening, and countless spiderweb cracks appearing…
In less than a hundredth of a second, the entire ugly warship, like an ancient rock weathered for billions of years, completely collapsed and decayed, turning into the most subtle, lifeless…
Cosmic dust.
And this was just the beginning.
The gray sword aura, like the gentlest touch of the Grim Reaper, continued to spread outward.
All ships, regardless of size or class, followed the same fate the moment they touched the sword energy.
The energy shields they relied on were as thin and meaningless as cicada wings before the laws of time embodied in the sword aura. Their hulls, under the power of time, instantly completed their entire lifespan—from new to old, old to decayed, decayed to annihilation.
The Chitauri soldiers aboard the fleet didn't even have time to scream.
Their lives were fragile even in the flow of time.
The sword's energy passed by, and their bio-armor rotted instantly, their bodies and blood aged from prime to old age, then to dry bones, and finally to ash.
The whole process was fast and silent.
…
On the Death Scythe's Bridge
General Corvus Glaive did not die immediately.
His special physique allowed him one final breath.
Lying on the floor, he struggled to raise his head, witnessing through the giant porthole an apocalyptic sight that would make gods and demons tremble.
He saw…
His fleet, his proud, invincible legion—disappeared.
Not destroyed, not vaporized, but…
Decayed.
It was like an ancient oil painting, peeling off piece by piece, ultimately fading into nothing in the river of time.
In his eyes was a terror deeper than death, and shock.
"Time… time…"
A hoarse sound came from his throat. It was a thought that overturned all his understanding, like lightning splitting his fading consciousness.
This Asgardian could ignore the flagship's defenses and teleport directly to the bridge.
That meant he had ultimate mastery over the laws of space!
And now, with a single sword, he turned the entire fleet to ash—a clear sign of absolute mastery over the laws of time!
How could one person…
Possess two such supreme, heaven-defying powers at once?
In his cognition, there was only one possible explanation for all this…
The Infinity Stones!
Space Stone! Time Stone!
"In fact… that's…"
A flash of realization—and a hint of madness—appeared in General Corvus Glaive's eyes.
With his last strength, he raised his arm and slammed the button on his wrist armor.
It was a high-priority life signal, directly linked to the temple—a final message device.
Before dying, he wanted to send this information!
Buzz!
A quantum signal carrying his dying vision and final speculation burst from the battleframe, piercing space-time and flying into the unknown depths of the universe.
Only after all this did the sword's aura of time finally reach him.
In the silence of suspended time, General Corvus Glaive utterly decayed, collapsed, and blew away—
Like dust.