Chapter 118

We arrived with a jolt as the space around me twisted, and I found myself standing in front of the research building, surrounded by hundreds of stunned students and faculty, minutes from facing the hardest fight of my life. Domina had confirmed that fact with an indulgent chuckle when I asked if the Telepath was more dangerous than she was.

She killed Charles Xavier, apparently, the mutant Mind-Rapist guy who was making the news a while ago. He was supposedly the most powerful telepath alive, and she scorched his mansion to the ground, along with her paramour.

A lesser man would've been afraid if he hadn't prepared as thoroughly as I had.

I had four squads of elite soldiers enhanced with blood magic from the First Born of Belasco under my control. N'tesh—a demon who specializes in shadow manipulation—and his team of wild demonic dogs and masked swordsmen were also with me.

As impressive as my team was, they weren't the star of the show. I was. It was like Domina said. I just had to be more creative.

"Everyone stop," I bellowed out to the stunned square. I looked straight at my shadow.

"N'tesh, be a darling and help me with my soldiers."

My shadow bubbled and stretched. Dozens of soldiers climbed out of it. Eighteen soldiers lined up behind me, the largest of which dropped two duffle bags filled with knives.

"Everyone, pick a knife and hold it to your throat," I instructed the crowd. "When I yell 'Die,' plunge the knives into your carotid artery."

With palpable dread on their faces, every last person in the square raised the knife to their throat, and I grinned.

"Perfect," I laughed. "N'tesh, get the singers out here. This massacre deserves a score."

Four more demons emerged from my shadow. They were lanky, tall things who wore red masks and had long horns sticking out of their foreheads. They wore blood-red cloaks and spoke as one in a raspy, whispering voice.

"We…not…Singers…We…are…Mind….Breakers."

"Good to know," I said uncertainly. "Pair up with a couple of soldiers before you start. We're going to need the protection."

Ten seconds later, as the psychic blockers were singing, I asked somebody to fetch me a megaphone.

With a smile that threatened to split my face in half, I spoke.

"Would Jean Grey step out of the building, please," I announced. "I've taken hostages. You have five minutes to comply before I start slitting throats."

---

Dante

Following the Hydra agents after they stole the formula was shockingly easy; terminating them without hurting the hostage they'd taken or falling for the traps they'd prepped for me on the road and the building where they were meeting Domina was another matter entirely.

The retrieval team consisted of four people, all of whom hijacked cars with single drivers at gunpoint and directed them from the backseat, where they were less visible to snipers and suspicious law enforcement.

I was following them from the top of a truck several cars back, eyes firmly on Creel's vehicle, which I'd sussed out using my telepathy, racking my mind for a solution that did not end in the death or grievous injury of the hostages.

By reading Creel's mind, I found out that Domina had apparently recruited Kilgrave to her side as well as the Albanians and the Russians, which prompted me to place a call to Jean. When she didn't pick up, I called Rin, who was about to face a greater demon of all things.

Jean had apparently gone out to meet Kilgrave head-on after he demanded her presence. I told Rin everything I remembered about Kilgrave: that his ability was some kind of mutated microbe, and you could disable it by turning off his nervous system.

Rin promised to relay the information via comms.

As for his fight, I was not worried about my unofficial sidekick.

I'd made it a point to bring him along on my third trip to the desert, which happened a few days back. I'd used it as a chance to rack up enough energy to upgrade all of my weapons to their third forms and get a level. Believe it or not, the cost increased by 20% every level up, and the base cost was 10,000, so I knew I'd be grinding my Class for a long, long time.

Rin was just below a supersoldier at his base, with all of his stats likely around the high 40s mark. He also had his new Spiked Kinetic Armor to rely on. I'd succeeded in my mission of creating armor for everybody on the team like I wanted. And while I couldn't quite get runes to work on Jean or Rin's armor, my class skill allowed me to harness the natural advantages of the material used.

The rage armor, for example, granted Rin a 20% buff in physical attacks and a 10% boost in overall defense. Layered on top of the ridiculous toughness of infernal metal, it would take a real monster to truly harm him. 

After the phone cut, I placed a call to Fury.

"Tony Stark is safe, and I'm in pursuit of the Hulk formula, but they have hostages," I said. "I need your help to take them out." 

"Who is behind this?" Fury asked, and I carefully considered my answer. I didn't want Fury getting his hands on Kilgrave. Whatever Nick was cooking up, I had a feeling it was designed for not only dealing with the bad half-demons but me as well as Rin and Jean. He didn't know about Rin's status as a half-demon, but that could change at any point. 

Ultimately, I decided to risk it. Besides, I was fairly certain that Kilgrave would not survive the fight with Jean; whether or not there'd be collateral was another question entirely.

"The better question is who is not out to get us?" I said to Fury. "Domina is the ringleader, but she's rallied everybody I've wronged, from the gangs of New York to Hydra. She's even placed a bounty on my head and recruited some type of mutant who can control people."

"Control people how?" Fury questioned.

"Haven't the slightest clue. All I know is that it has something to do with his voice," I said. "Clairvoyance is not very particular." 

"That must get on your fucking nerves," he said.

"I manage somehow," I said. "So, I'm thinking snipers and a blockade." 

---

Over the next ten minutes, I worked with SHIELD to thin out the number of drivers on the road, eliminating as many potential casualties as possible. Fury set up a blockade a quarter mile ahead on the straightest path to their destination. All other paths were strategically cut off using one bogus excuse after another.

They didn't not the change at first, but the drop in car density was extremely telling. We were ready for them to switch to more desperate tactics, but by then we reckoned we'd already be too close to the blockade and snipers. What we hadn't been counting on was just how dirty these monsters were willing to play.

It turned out Yao's warning about Domina loving collateral damage was not an exaggeration. 

The soldiers decided to turn the cars into bombs, crafting a rudimentary pressure-activated bomb using the accelerator and the grenade on them.

Lucky for us and the passengers, we didn't have to find out how powerful the bombs were. 

We reached the threshold for the roadblocks, and the snipers fired when I gave the order. They all carried scopes with infrared lenses so they hit the right targets.

The gun muzzles flashed as one, but only two of the four Hydra agents died. Creel obviously survived due to his mutation. He rapidly warped his skin to infernal metal, while the last one survived by sheer fucking luck.

I moved as soon as I noticed I could still identify him, but he already acted. He grabbed the panicked driver's head and twisted it, jerking it 360 degrees. He kicked the door off the hinges and tossed his dead body out of the car while he floored it.

"You asshole."

Wild wind buffeted my body as I sped up, turning intangible. I entered the car and jabbed my dagger through the driver's seat, stabbing the shit straight through the heart, with a precision rune burning on the edge of my shortsword. With a brutal swipe left, I tore his heart out and pulled the car aside.

Paramedics rushed over to the downed body of the passenger, but it was too late.

Creel took one look back at me as he clambered on a motorcycle he stole from a tourist and floored it.

"Oh no, you don't. I'm not losing the formula, not after that."

The ground exploded under me as I rocketed forward using Burst and Gust, closing the distance between us before I suddenly felt the world slow down around me.

I flipped mid-air, coming to a complete halt as a bullet whizzed past the spot where my head formerly was.

The origin was a sniper in an SUV barreling down the street to my side. The man unloaded a shell and pointed the gun at one of Fury's snipers. The gun went off, and Fury cursed.

"He just took one of our snipers down."

Before the mask-wearing sharpshooter could cut down another SHIELD agent, I fired two slightly charged bullets with Ebony and Ivory.

The two contrasting energies generated a sort of gyroscopic effect that propelled them even faster. Before he could react, there was a fist-sized hole in his chest, and he slumped over.

Jackpot! I grinned as I summoned one of my latest inventions—demonic bombs. They were retrofitted standard grenades without the usual 4-second delay. These bombs went off when thrown with sufficient force. Inside were gunpowder, a long piece of metal lined with the storage rune containing a chunk of demonic energy.

I chucked the grenade at the approaching truck. It erupted in a ball of Nether fire and shrapnel, eliminating a chunk of the Russian ambush team. 

I dashed after Creel, catching up with him almost immediately, and flung Ophion out. Just before it gripped the bastard, a Dreamrunner materialized in front of the claws, saving him.

What the fuck was this shit?

I flung the Dreamrunner to the side with a brutal lash, using my over hundred strength stat, releasing Ophion's grip at the very last moment, but he dematerialized and materialized behind me, trying to skewer me with his twin blades. He got a shotgun blast to the head at the last possible moment for his trouble.

When I inspected his fallen body, I noticed that his blades glowed blue, lined with the same runes designed to cut me when I went intangible.

Ten other Dreamrunners materialized around me, alongside ten hand assassins, and two more trucks. They drifted onto the scene, offloading a motley group of mercenaries, assassins, and gangsters, some pulsing with the sick demonic enhancement of Corvus. Others seemed savvier and rejected the gift entirely.

My eyes shone purple as angelic energy poured out of me, escaping in swirls of howling blue wind.

"I hope the money was worth it. Your families are going to need it."

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