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*****
Thor raised Mjolnir high toward the sky. A pillar of rainbow light descended from the heavens, enveloping both him and Loki. A moment later, the light vanished, taking the two brothers with it and leaving behind only a complex, scorched geometric pattern on the pavement.
The Battle of New York had finally come to an end.
For the Avengers, this "debut" was an absolute failure. Feny had spent the entire time hogging the spotlight. Aside from brief glimpses of Tony, Thor, and a mind-controlled Hulk, the likes of Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow hadn't even shown their faces. In fact, the citizens of New York were still entirely unaware that Captain America had even been resurrected.
However, this battle made Feny more famous than ever. After tomorrow, it was unlikely anyone on Earth would be ignorant of the names "Silver Knight" or "Knight of God's Punishment."
With the crisis resolved, Feny let out a long, relaxed sigh. He glanced at Nick Fury and said, "Alright, if there's nothing else, I'll be heading back."
Tony naturally had no objections. He had lost roughly three suits of armor, and his newly renovated tower had been thoroughly trashed. It was a run of incredibly bad luck.
Nick Fury, however, furrowed his brow. Seeing Feny carve open a portal, he couldn't resist calling out: "What exactly do you plan to do with those two items?"
Fury had no immediate plans to forcibly take the Tesseract or the Scepter from Feny. Even the Asgardians had compromised; without knowing the full story or Feny's true motives, he didn't dare act recklessly.
"Maybe one day I'll dismantle them and mount them on a glove specifically designed for flipping people off!" Feny turned back with a beaming smile, stepped through the portal, and vanished from sight.
Nick Fury stared blankly at the spot where Feny had disappeared. He turned to Natasha and asked, "Did you understand what he meant by that?"
"Maybe... something like this?" Natasha thought for a moment before raising her right hand in a universally recognized international gesture.
Fury's face darkened. He said nothing and turned to leave. Outside the tower, a mountain of alien corpses and abandoned weaponry awaited his attention.
Back at home, despite still being in a weakened state, Feny couldn't wait to tally his spoils. The Avengers' debut might have been a flop, but his harvest was beyond "bountiful"—it was an absolute jackpot. Every possible benefit had fallen into his lap.
He had two Infinity Stones: the Space Stone inside the Tesseract and the Mind Stone mounted on the Scepter. Most importantly, he had gained a staggering amount of experience from wiping out the Chitauri fleet.
Feny hadn't expected that less than a day after drawing his seventh skill, he would have already filled more than half the experience bar for his eighth.
To be fair, the experience gain was actually lower than he'd anticipated—terrifyingly so. There were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Chitauri soldiers on that mothership, yet wiping them out hadn't even maxed out a single experience bar.
He wouldn't have been surprised if the bar had overflowed. The fact that it hadn't even reached the eighth draw was actually the surprising part. Feny had never fully understood the system's criteria for awarding experience, and since the system lacked an AI interface, he couldn't exactly ask.
Still, this windfall of experience was an unexpected joy. He hadn't originally planned on opening a portal to let the Chitauri through in the first place.
With two Infinity Stones in hand, he finally felt a sense of security. He felt that even if he faced the Ancient One now, he could at least manage a "mutual destruction" scenario. Of course, Feny had no intention of testing that theory.
For the moment, he could finally declare himself the strongest man on Earth. As for the Ancient One... she was clearly the strongest bald woman!
However, as Thor had warned, these items were dangerous. Thanos would eventually come looking for them to fulfill his twisted dream. Obtaining them wasn't the most important part; the real challenge would be protecting them.
In truth, the Infinity Stones didn't actually provide a massive immediate boost to Feny's power. Or rather, he couldn't truly use the stones yet, and the functions provided by their current housings—the Tesseract and the Scepter—were redundant for him. For energy blasts, he had "Explosion Magic"; for long-distance travel, he had his portals.
His interest in them was specific: one for brainwashing purposes, and the other as potential "evolutionary fodder." He didn't really need them for combat.
Looking at the Scepter and the Cube, Feny thought back to Thor. He had been prepared to slip away through a portal to recover, but Thor had compromised first. There was clearly a reason for that.
"Is Odin wary of my strength?" Feny wondered, stroking his chin.
If anyone could have witnessed the battle with the Chitauri, it would be Odin or Heimdall. While Odin only had one eye, Feny wasn't entirely sure of the extent of his powers. Heimdall was simpler; his eyes could see across the cosmos. It was entirely possible he had watched the whole thing.
But Feny felt there was more to it. While that "Explosion Magic" was impressive, it shouldn't have been enough to make Odin overly fearful. Asgard possessed the Bifrost, a literal planet-killing weapon. Feny had "only" destroyed a mothership. While few in the universe could do such a thing, he wasn't unique.
He suspected it was more likely that his identity as a sorcerer of Kamar-Taj had been discovered. He had never made an effort to hide his signature orange portals, after all.
"Did they mistake me for the next Sorcerer Supreme?"
It was a real possibility. Feny knew from his past-life knowledge that the Ancient One's chosen successor was Stephen Strange. But Odin didn't know that. Even within Kamar-Taj, there were those who suspected Feny was the heir apparent. He might not be the best at traditional spells, but you couldn't argue with raw power.
Realizing he hadn't visited Kamar-Taj since his return, Feny decided he would head over there that evening once he had recovered some strength.
Lying in bed, Feny reflected on the past few days. The Chitauri, who had once caused him so much anxiety, had been dealt with quite easily. He had once imagined fighting side-by-side with the Avengers in a grueling war, worrying about how to handle the nuclear missile.
Instead, he had soloed the entire alien invasion. Over the past few years, his strength had evolved fundamentally without him even realizing the full extent of it.
"But this is only the beginning," he muttered.
Wiping out the Chitauri didn't mean the end. Earth was still in constant danger. In the long term, the threat of Thanos's snap still loomed. In the short term, the Dark Elves' plan to plunge the universe into eternal night was fast approaching. If Dormammu showed up, he would be even more terrifying than Thanos.
Then there was Ego the Living Planet, who had planted seeds across Earth. One day, Peter Quill would act as a "battery" and trigger an explosion. And then there was Hela, Thor's sister; once Odin died, if Thor didn't trigger Ragnarok in time, Hela would claim Asgard and likely wage war on Earth if it refused to submit.
Thinking of all this, Feny couldn't help but sigh. The future of Earth truly was one disaster after another.
(End of Chapter)