Magneto lowered his head to look at the sharp claw that had burst out slightly to the left of his chest.
The slender, scale-covered blade shimmered with a dreamlike golden luster against the backdrop of fresh blood. Between the five sickle-like talons was a lump of inverted cone-shaped flesh that was still beating.
"Tsk..."
Seeing this, Esdeath shook her head with a sigh.
She did not know why, but someone seemed particularly fond of appearing behind others and stabbing them. If the target had a heart, it became a true hand-over-heart "gesture." If they did not, then they were disemboweled and bound by corrosive erosion, ground down bit by bit until nothing remained.
And Magneto was clearly the former.
"Hiss... s-so cold..."
"Bobby, can you even handle this? Aren't you Iceman?"
"Keep talking and you do it!"
On the battlefield, split apart by ice, Professor X—who had been watching his old friend's condition the entire time and had only just recovered from the temporary snowfield created by Esdeath thanks to Phoenix Jean Grey's flames—suddenly turned pale.
"Erik!"
Before his eyes, the metallic storm domain collapsed in an instant. The monstrous figure that had abruptly appeared behind Magneto spread its brilliant golden wings like a griffin. Beneath the crystalline scales were savage claws, and countless sinister, cold tentacles writhed and stood upright, hissing like king cobras with a hundred eyes.
What a being—like a god, like a demon.
Flesh was flesh. It could be killed by a pistol, frozen to death, felled by sickness. But Professor X's psychic ability was truly formidable—the pinnacle of mutant telepaths.
At the moment he tried to influence the attacker's behavior—instinctively releasing psychic waves to save Erik—his psychic powers vanished.
"Everyone, be careful."
A vast pressure condensed into tangible force. It was not any superpower, but the sheer difference in lifeform hierarchy. The air compressed continuously, emitting a dull shriek as it spread in all directions.
Rumble—
With the collapse of the magnetic field, the twisted metal objects that had gathered to thousands of tons lost power and fell apart, smashing onto the hardened ground. Dust billowed everywhere, and the thunderous crashes were endless.
The old mutant's eyes widened. The muscles of his lungs and chest cavity contracted instinctively. Then—"cough—ugh—puh—"—he vomited blood incessantly, hacking up chunks of alveolar tissue and fragments of organs that clogged his mouth and nose as they spilled from his throat.
"Mutants, in the end, are merely a side path."
Her breath was scorching. The beautiful figure leaned forward slightly. Reflected phoenix flames shimmered across her face in the ice crystals. Her flawless eyelashes, her crimson lips, her bewitching features—exquisitely beautiful. Her magnificent scarlet serpent eyes glimmered with deep, seductive light.
"Heh... heh..."
Unable to speak, blood seeping from his mouth and nose, Magneto's bloodshot, bulging eyes rolled frantically to the left, as if trying to etch the monster before him into memory. His once-ambitious green eyes were now shattered glass filled with cracks and veins of red.
As though refuting her.
Selene (Gorgon) smiled faintly.
With every smile and frown, she radiated charm and deadly beauty—like the monstrous goddess of mythic epics, the heart-bewitching serpent enchantress.
"Even at death, you still refute my words. Mutants are the grand path? You truly are the vanguard fighting for mutant rights and honor..."
Slash.
A serpent-headed energy tentacle extended, its jaws opening wide. In Magneto's dimming eyes, it bit down and tore off his head in a single motion. With a violent yank—rip!—white spinal bone flashed amid spraying blood.
She squeezed the heart she had been weighing and crushed it. Slowly withdrawing her left hand as bloodflames ignited and spread, Selene opened her immaculate five fingers—sharper than lightning claws at a glance—and caught Magneto's severed head, already processed by the crystallized energy particles emitted from the serpent tentacle.
Whoomph!
Touched by the bloodflames, Magneto's headless corpse ignited instantly. Before it even hit the ground, it had turned to ash.
She said nothing, but the meaning was clear—What? I killed him. So? Are you going to avenge him?
"..."
Watching all this, Professor X breathed heavily, veins bulging across his smooth temples. It almost seemed as though sheer urgency might make him overcome his paralysis and stand up.
Seeing his flushed, reddened bald head, Selene bared her snake fangs in a grin.
What refinement? What elegance? What rationality? When it came to his old friend, Professor X's white egg head was nearly turning into a red one.
To be honest, Selene could not understand the relationship between Professor X and Magneto.
Clashing ideologies, a falling-out, theft, being crippled into lower-body paralysis, decades of scheming against each other. Their organizations had fought and slaughtered one another for more than half a century. And yet it was still you torment me a thousand times, I treat you like my first love?
Selene felt it clearly. When Professor X witnessed her pluck off Magneto's head, his gaze flicked repeatedly toward Rogue, Shadowcat, Cyclops, Storm—especially Phoenix.
He had wanted to awaken the dark personality within Jean Grey. To let the Phoenix Force run rampant. To drive Phoenix into berserk fury, kill everyone, perhaps even blow up the Earth.
Though it lasted only a fleeting instant—quickly suppressed by his rationality and conscience—the thought had existed.
That alone showed the depth of the bond between him and Magneto.
Both of them were already half a foot in the grave, well into their twilight years. If they died now, it would not be a loss. And yet they clung to each other as if they wished to die on the same day. Just because his "terrorist" best friend had fallen, he even harbored a momentary impulse toward self-destruction.
Then they could go together.
No special meaning. I, Selene, have always been generous and helpful.
She tossed Magneto's head toward Leonidas, who stood solemnly. It had been his prey to begin with.
With a light shake of her head, her silver-violet long hair—radiant like a shimmering galaxy, glowing softly like sunlight—fluttered. She stretched her body, revealing the elegant, smooth lines of her slender neck.
Her gaze swept across the Brotherhood elites now fleeing in terror, across the X-Men who had only just realized Magneto was dead, and finally settled on Professor X—his wheelchair and bald head especially conspicuous in the snowfield.
With great interest, Selene raised her hand. Thumb and middle finger rubbed together—snap!
In an instant, a dim yellow halo flickered.
Bzzz—
"All right... General Esdeath, accompany—cough—come with me to meet the President."
After nodding thoughtfully, Selene—now in the reduced, leg-grown heroic form of the demon goddess—extended an invitation to Esdeath. Then she turned and addressed the four-star Pentagon general who was still standing there in stunned silence.
"Lady Gorgon... why not use your Beast Goddess form?" (Imperial Common Tongue)
Landing smoothly, her high heels striking the ground with a crisp sound after dispersing the force, Esdeath dispelled the maintained snowfield and walked steadily at Selene's side, asking with a faint smile.
"Do you want me to dismantle the solar system? I will use the Beast Goddess form—but not on Earth."
Esdeath had no interest in what would happen to these people or how they would be handled. The Secret Service agent leading the way and the general beside them could not understand the language—and did not dare to ask.
"And this body—how is it?"
"Passable. I was fortunate enough to obtain two Infinite Energy singularities. Barely enough to sustain it. Supplying and anchoring multiple high-divinity, heavenly-tier gods is still beyond John's current capacity. There is only one Master. When—when he transforms, I will kick those pleasure-seeking gods off the Throne of Heroes and make them work."
"The next step?"
"No rush. I must first fulfill my contract with Kamar-Taj. Mm. I gave her an excellent candidate. Not you."
...
After the group had walked far away—
Bang!
A Secret Service agent cleaning the scene flinched instinctively and turned toward the sound. One of the Brotherhood members who had been standing there blankly was slowly collapsing to the ground. Brain matter mixed with fragments of skull sprayed through the air and splattered everywhere.
As if triggered by a signal, the mutant attackers who had been standing in a daze suddenly pulled out their guns. Those without guns used their own abilities. With feverish excitement at the corners of their mouths, they shoved the barrels into their mouths and pulled the trigger.
Half a minute after sounding the horn of renewed attack for the second time, the Brotherhood of Mutants disintegrated.
Bang bang bang...
Amid the bloody carnage, the X-Men seemed to enter a kind of sage-like emptiness. They ignored the horrific spectacle of collective suicide, listless and increasingly vacant-eyed. Some even slumped onto the ground. One after another, they tore the X insignia from their chests.
"Everyone... what happened?"
Only Phoenix was the first to awaken from the shallow psychic suggestion. She asked her teammates, her mentor, her lover... none responded.
Rrrrk...
The sound of wheels turning. Phoenix looked over and saw that Professor X's complexion had turned rosy. He closed his eyes peacefully, reclining in his wheelchair as if asleep. His breathing grew fainter... until it vanished entirely. With a faint smile, as though dreaming a pleasant dream, he slept forever.
As the current host of the Phoenix Force—even in a suppressed state—Phoenix still possessed telepathy, telekinesis, and numerous other abilities.
After examining him, she discovered in despair that Professor X's body was entirely normal. No external injuries. Not even a trace of psychic manipulation or mental trauma. It was as though he had simply passed away from natural causes—dying here because of Magneto's death.
Knock knock—
"Jean Grey of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, member of the civilian charity organization known as the X-Men. Under Article Two of the New York Treaty—Conscription Act—you are hereby drafted into our forces. You have no right to refuse."
A massive figure cast a shadow over Phoenix as a Demon Judge warrior handed her an official notice.
This had been destined from the start.
Other Demon Judge warriors likewise approached the many former moderate X-Men.
...
"So the extremists are eliminated, and the moderates are handed to us under the conscription clause proposed by John... impressive. They've turned us into a hazardous waste collection point."
Taking the copy of the treaty amendment handed over by an accompanying auxiliary officer, Esdeath chuckled.
"Magneto was right about one thing. The North American authorities sold them out. Sold out all the mutants."
Folding her wings, Selene flicked the official document lightly.
Old Magneto's thinking had not been wrong—only extreme.
Disrupt the summit. Kidnap and terminate negotiations between the American authorities, North American officials, United Nations representatives, and the 'Divine Empress Order.' Kick them aside and replace them as the negotiators.
In one sentence, Magneto's idea was simple:
If you ordinary humans are allowed to sell out your country, why aren't mutants?
In truth, genuine colonizers do not care who acts as the proxy in a colony, nor their background.
They only care about sustainable exploitation. Whether the proxy is diligent or tyrannical matters little. Meet the quota—that is enough.
Based on that logic, Magneto wanted to seize the final window of opportunity. Demonstrate mutant superiority over ordinary humans, then become the extraterrestrial civilization's recognized representative of Earth—replacing humanity with mutants as the mainstream.
Unfortunately, mutants were ultimately a side path.
Look at it closely—among the truly powerful mutants, which one derived their strength purely from mutant genes?
Every single one either hosted some alien monstrosity, served as a container for cosmic energy, acted as a key to open a higher-dimensional universe, or possessed bloodlines of other races.
Professor X and Magneto were almost the limit of what normal mutant genes could achieve.
The destruction of the extremist mutant organization had been inevitable from the start—regardless of whether Magneto attacked. It had been written into the additional clauses by the North American authorities. As for the moderates, they had already been designated as the first wave of conscription targets once the recruitment clause took effect.
Across society, all latent or externally manifested mutants would be sent immediately to the 'Divine Empress Order' recruitment stations on Earth. After selection, they would be shipped off-planet as cannon fodder.
At least America preserved some semblance of face and did not implement a blanket purge. But the role of villain would fall squarely on the 'Divine Empress Order.'
Inside the venue, with the alert lifted, flower petals drifted through the air. Merlin had already arrived with the fugitive Steve Rogers, Sam, and Natasha.
"Captain?"
The Black president was momentarily stunned. The half-dead, scruffy man before him—was that truly Captain America? The change was so drastic he could hardly be sure. Only the silver star on his chest and the familiar striped design at his waist felt recognizable.
"Jarvis..."
With one arm in a cast and leaning on a crutch, Tony Stark looked with complicated emotion at the dim, lifeless body of Vision—his Mind Stone violently torn from his forehead, his skull caved in—and at the unconscious Scarlet Witch, Wanda, beside him, her limbs injected with suppressants.
The Avengers—aside from Thor, who had returned to Asgard (as Tony believed), and the missing Dr. Banner—were effectively annihilated.
Of course, if one counted a pajama-clad kid who only bombarded them via phone calls, Black Panther T'Challa who had returned to Africa to inherit his throne, and Ant-Man still serving his sentence, one could stubbornly claim they were not entirely wiped out.
"So tell me, Ross—is the next step to sell us out the same way you sold out the mutants? To purge the Brotherhood, dissolve the X-Men, and finally dismantle the Avengers? And then use this so-called Conscription Act to draft me with a single notice—send me to some unknown interstellar battlefield to die in a foreign land...?"
"No, no, Stark. You're overreacting..."
Secretary Ross, who had also returned, gestured for him to calm down.
"Overreacting? When I'm dead, will you carve up Stark Industries? Swallow my armor, my private assets? I know how you operate..."
Stark had seen the other side of the Conscription Act.
Perhaps the 'Divine Empress Order' had no ulterior motive—perhaps they simply wanted cannon fodder. But governments loved their own games.
Through this opportunity, they had effectively listed previously uncontrollable civilian superhuman groups, so-called supervillains, and independent elements under the draft category.
That had been the final determination made after discussions between the Black president, Secretary Ross, and other officials.
Namely—dissolve illegal organizations.
"That depends on whether you are illegal, Tony Stark." The voice was slightly hoarse.
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