"Is that it?"
The exact moment Peter stepped out of the inferno, the surrounding flames vanished completely.
If not for the scorched, blackened cracks remaining on the pavement, the crowd would have questioned if the entire display had been a collective hallucination.
"Your fire... is a little weak for my taste."
Hearing Peter's blatant mockery, the hot-tempered Human Torch found it completely impossible to endure any longer!
"Damn you! I'm going to make you regret saying that garbage!" Fully enraged, Johnny Storm dived recklessly from the sky, a flame-engulfed fist hurtling straight toward Peter.
Before the punch even landed, the terrifying thermal backdraft caused the surrounding space to warp violently, tinting the immediate air with a blood-red sheen.
Facing the incoming fist of the Human Torch, the nearby Spiders paled, instinctively pushed back step by step by the sheer radiance of the heatwave.
Even the Avengers watching from a distance looked visibly moved. An all-out assault like this was something only Thor or the Hulk could confidently take head-on without sustaining heavy injuries.
Yet, standing squarely in the epicenter of the battlefield, Peter remained unnervingly composed. He didn't dodge. He didn't weave. He simply raised his own fist to meet Johnny's strike directly.
The moment their fists collided, the resulting shockwave resembled the detonation of a miniature asteroid.
A wild, concussive blast rippled outward, shattering every pane of glass in the surrounding buildings and instantly pulverizing the curbside public utilities.
Yet, Peter stood firm, looking completely unfazed. On the contrary, within the cocoon of fire, Johnny's face contorted into a mask of pure terror.
First, a piercing, agonizing pain shot up his arm. Then, a bizarre, irresistible suction force laid hold of him. That mysterious vacuum was rapidly devouring the very flames fueling his body. In stark contrast, the ruby-like armor plates on Peter's Wizard suit began to glow with blinding brilliance.
"Damn it! What are you doing?! No! My fire!" Johnny screamed in panic. He could only watch helplessly as the flames he took so much pride in were aggressively siphoned away like water rushing through a broken dam!
His core temperature plummeted drastically, forcing him out of his plasma-fire state back into a normal human form.
Throughout the process, the screen of the unassuming Omnitrix on Peter's wrist rapidly flickered with continuous streams of data.
[High-energy mutated gene detected...]
[Commencing acquisition... 10%... 30%... 70%...]
[Gene acquisition complete!]
The moment the notification chimed in his mind, the Flame Style Wizard suit sucked the final ember of thermal energy from Johnny.
The Human Torch went completely limp like a sack of wet mud, left dangling from Peter's grip.
"Johnny!"
Seeing this, Ben Grimm—The Thing—felt his eyes nearly split with rage. Letting out a guttural roar, he leaped from a high vantage point, his massive, boulder-like fist carrying the crushing weight of a mountain as it slammed down toward Peter!
Peter remained entirely nonchalant. He tossed the "extinguished" Johnny aside like a piece of common trash. Simultaneously, his right hand swept smoothly across the hand authorizer of his waist driver.
"Land! Please!""Do-Do-Do, Do-Do-Don!"
The brilliant crimson gemstone armor instantly shifted into thick, heavy yellow plating. Now in Land Style, Peter faced The Thing's gargantuan fist without an inch of retreat, throwing an answering punch right back!
BOOM!
The acoustic violence of this collision was far more staggering than the last. The asphalt road beneath them instantly fractured into a massive web of deep fissures, and the terrifying shockwave caused the structures within a dozens-of-meters radius to buckle and collapse.
Crack—
Amidst the settling debris, a sharp, distinct fracturing sound echoed. But what caused everyone's eyes to nearly pop out of their skulls was that the sound didn't come from a changing Peter—it came from The Thing's supposedly indestructible rocky fist!
A massive, visible crack ripped across the arm, entirely composed of organic rock. It was a mere hair's breadth away from shattering into absolute pieces.
"This... how is this possible?!" Staring at his splitting knuckles, feeling a deep, agonizing throb, The Thing's mind went entirely blank.
His eyes were wide with utter bewilderment. His body had been fundamentally altered by cosmic radiation; its density rivaled diamond! Since his debut, he had practically never lost to anyone in a pure contest of raw strength and durability.
Yet this individual clad in yellow armor had cracked his hand... with a single punch? What kind of absurd, monstrous strength was this?!
Facing the stunned behemoth, Peter merely let out a cold smile. At the knuckles of his gauntlet, a layer of nearly imperceptible black substance slowly receded.
No matter how hard your rocky hide is, can it possibly out-harden my Armament Haki?
Shocked and enraged, The Thing instinctively wanted to back away, but suddenly felt something amiss beneath him.
He abruptly halted his retreat, enduring the pain to lunge forward and suppress Peter. But in that exact moment, he realized the ground beneath his feet had vanished! Looking down, he discovered the pavement had transformed into a churning vortex of fine quicksand.
The heavy sand was rapidly swallowing his dense body, causing him to sink uncontrollably.
"What?!" The Thing's face deformed with shock.
During this sequence, Peter tilted his head with flawless, casual timing. A split second later, an invisible ripple of kinetic energy grazed his hair, striking The Thing squarely in the shoulder and causing the giant to grunt in pain.
"Has anyone ever told you that your acting is incredibly subpar? Furthermore..." Peter's gaze sharpened. In the next heartbeat, his fist exploded forward into the empty air.
DON!
A localized shockwave rippled through the atmosphere. Caught within the vibrating distortion, a sweating Susan Storm—the Invisible Woman—was forced to manifest her silhouette.
Her face was equally painted with pure shock. Her invisibility was a perfect optical camouflage; while it couldn't mask heat signatures, it should have been completely uncatchable by the naked eye!
How had this guy spotted her? If she hadn't reacted with extreme reflex to manifest a localized forcefield shield at the final second, that single punch would have killed her on the spot.
"Ma'am, launching a sneak attack isn't a very commendable habit."
As he spoke, Peter noticed the Invisible Woman attempting to use her forcefield to float away. At the same time, the Omnitrix on his wrist chimed, confirming the acquisition of The Thing's genetic blueprint.
Peter let out a sinister chuckle, and in the next instant, his Conqueror's Haki erupted like a localized bomb.
The terrifying wave of raw willpower swept across the entire square. It was potent enough to make weaker superheroes like Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Spider-Woman feel their knees buckle, nearly forcing them to the ground on the spot.
More drastically, Susan Storm—being the closest to Peter—let out a muffled groan as the mental shockwave struck.
The invisible energy fields beneath her feet and in front of her chest shattered into absolute nothingness.
The Invisible Woman's forcefield was renowned as an absolute defense, but it carried a fatal vulnerability: maintaining it required absolute, uninterrupted cognitive focus.
Under the crushing weight of Peter's Conqueror's Haki, maintaining focus was a psychological impossibility.
Consequently, her body plummeted rapidly from the air, her neck falling unerringly right into Peter's extended, single-handed grip.
The framing of the scene... carried a distinct flavor of a definitive, crushing defeat.
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