The clash between the Abomination and Adam drew plenty of attention.
"Looks like a pretty intense fight. Who exactly are you battling?" Blade asked, watching from the top of a distant skyscraper.
"I found a Hulk copycat and went over to say hello," Adam replied calmly.
"If you could clean your pets up and heal their injuries, I might actually believe you."
Blade flashed a chilling smile and pointed at the Xenomorphs beside Adam. "Looks like you took heavy losses. That kind of thing makes it easy for your enemies to find an opening to kill you."
"Don't worry, I'm not that easy to take down. If you're talking about the vampires, I hope they send as many as possible," Adam said.
Blade studied the Xenomorphs carefully, deep in thought. He could tell Adam had extraordinary confidence in these creatures he had created. Plus, he still hadn't seen the one with the crown-like crest.
The two men chatted casually until the Abomination... barely recovered... burst onto the street with a furious roar.
Blade's expression shifted to surprise. His sharp instincts immediately sensed the intense threat radiating from the monster. Even he would be in serious trouble if hit squarely by one of those fists.
What really caught Blade's attention, however, was the Abomination's partially healed body.
"You did that?"
"I did that."
"How many of your Xenomorphs died?"
"Nearly half."
"Nearly half dead, and you still have six left? Looks like you've been preparing quite a bit in secret." Blade was genuinely shocked. In such a short time, over a dozen? Among the six survivors, one looked particularly strong, with a more bizarre and advanced design... clearly a new variant.
The heavy price paid to fight the Abomination, only to still fail, spoke volumes about how dangerous the creature was.
Next, they watched the Abomination rampage through Broadway, furiously kicking cars off the street one after another.
As long as they were empty vehicles, Blade could stay put. But the moment civilians got caught in the chaos, he could no longer hold back. He drew his blades and charged in, using his superhuman physique to sprint across building walls and rescue a civilian.
Adam, however, remained motionless. He waited patiently, filled with deep anticipation.
This strange calm surprised those who were watching.
"What is he doing?" Dum Dum pointed at the screen. "People are dying, and he's just waiting?"
"Maybe he's afraid," Fury muttered, shaking his head. "He already fought that monster once and took heavy losses. Now he's too scared to continue."
If that was the case, a little fear wasn't necessarily a bad thing. At least it showed he respected power, which might make him easier to control.
Fury adjusted the computer and downgraded Adam's threat assessment by two levels, placing him in the "usable but not worth relying on" category.
Fury felt disappointed, but Blade did not. He was puzzled by Adam's silence, wondering what critical detail the young man had discovered.
From the beginning, Blade had never sensed any fear or hesitation in Adam.
All of this tension held until the moment Dr. Banner jumped from a helicopter and staggered into his transformation as the Hulk.
Even Fury stopped paying attention to Adam, his gaze locked onto the Hulk on the screen.
With the Hulk present, who cared about Adam? Did they even understand the Hulk's value? Did they know how powerful that thing was?
"Hulk!"
The moment the Abomination saw the Hulk, he grew wildly excited. The rage Adam had stirred within him finally erupted. He abandoned Blade and charged madly toward the Hulk. Each step left massive craters in the asphalt.
BOOM!
The Hulk was sent flying.
Having undergone Mr. Blue's experiments and been injected with suppressant drugs, the Hulk felt weak all over and couldn't exert much of his true strength. As a result, the Abomination quickly gained the upper hand.
The two giants traded blows, slamming and rolling into each other like massive gorillas, turning the entire street into a battlefield of chaos.
The Abomination grew more excited with every punch he landed on the Hulk. Something inside his chest seemed to be building, ready to explode.
"Do you see that, Hulk? I'm stronger than you! I, Blonsky... the Abomination... am the strongest!!" the Abomination roared at the sky.
Countless eyes watched him. The scene was captured through various channels and uploaded online, exploding across the world.
This was destined to be a landmark event: individuals wielding superhuman power openly displaying their might, engaging in destruction and killing.
The two behemoths' fight showed that even ordinary punches and kicks could flatten sturdy cars, while solid buildings crumbled like tofu blocks before them.
At that moment, many people across the Earth who possessed extraordinary powers took notice.
"Professor, we can still make it if we leave now."
"No. We cannot intervene. At its core, this is a human conflict. Acting rashly would strike a sensitive nerve in certain people."
The X-Men watched the breaking news on television, opinions divided, and finally turned to the man in the wheelchair... Professor X.
But Professor X looked troubled. "Something feels off… That Abomination isn't alone. There's another consciousness inside him, and it rejected my psychic link. A very strange feeling."
It was the first time Professor X had encountered anything like this.
Another independent consciousness inside the Abomination was unusual enough, but the strangest part was that this entity seemed deeply connected to a third unknown psychic presence?
Was the Abomination really just the result of a failed experiment? Or had someone deliberately created him…?
Professor X hesitated and ultimately decided not to act. He could use his powers to calm both the Abomination and the Hulk and end the fight, but considering the precarious situation of mutants…
"Destiny once said that in many possible futures, mutants are wiped out. I must remain vigilant. It's better not to do anything extra and focus on improving relations with ordinary humans."
Professor X felt deep inner pain. He didn't dare share the countless futures Destiny had seen with the others.
No matter how mutants developed, was extinction their only outcome? What was the right thing for him to do?
Some people were far more carefree than Professor X.
The Ancient One sat atop a snowy mountain peak, sensing information from countless dimensions across the universe and evaluating potential threats to Earth from various cosmic entities. She spared a glance toward New York.
"Hmm. Reality has shifted direction once again. But this isn't the work of an extra-dimensional demon god... it's the natural development of Earth itself."
As a being at the Father level, wielding the Time Stone, the Book of the Vishanti, the Book of Cagliostro, and many other powerful artifacts... giving her combat strength that approached single-universe level... the Ancient One keenly noticed the subtle changes on Earth. She had little desire to interfere.
She didn't possess the Reality Stone and couldn't casually rewrite established facts into things that had never existed.
Compared to that, she was more concerned with her debt ceiling.
"The Vishanti haven't demanded payment from me, nor has Cyttorak. So using white and chaos magic remains safe for now. The biggest problem is still black magic…"
In the entire multiverse, all magic used by sorcerers ultimately came from borrowing power from magical entities across the infinite dimensions. Each of these entities was a multiversal god... terrifying existences capable of erasing countless universes with a gesture.
Since it was borrowed, it had to be repaid... with all kinds of costs. No one dared to owe a multiversal entity.
What exactly had to be paid depended on each entity's preferences.
The Vishanti were relatively reasonable. As a magical entity formed by three multiversal gods, they supported Kamar-Taj across many universes and offered low interest rates.
The Ancient One had long maintained the habit of training ascetic monks, as they could help the Sorcerer Supreme share the burden. But for now, she decided to save them for Strange.
Cyttorak was also manageable. As the greatest demon in the multiverse, an extreme terror residing beyond it in the Crimson Cosmos, he was usually quite laid-back. Rather than chasing debts across the multiverse, the great demon preferred to lounge. Borrowing a bit of his power usually went unnoticed.
The problem lay with black magic.
The Ancient One drew her black magic from the Dark Dimension's ruler, Dormammu. And Dormammu's black magic, in turn, was borrowed from the God of Black Magic... Chthon.
Chthon was notoriously ill-tempered, stingy, and overwhelmingly powerful. Even while sealed, a mere breath from him could slaughter countless universes and erase debtors from the multiverse.
So the current issue was that while the Ancient One used the black magic, it was mainly Dormammu who had to repay the debt to Chthon.
This put her in a difficult position. She wanted the goods but didn't want to pay the price. What was she supposed to do?
She could only continue making things difficult for Dormammu.
The Ancient One could almost hear Dormammu's hysterical curses.
Look at what Chthon had reduced the noble Dormammu to.
"The future of this diseased universe is destined to be grim. Even without those strange, meaningless entities, there's still Strange… I wonder how much longer I can delay things."
The Ancient One murmured softly and casually cast a black magic spell to extend her lifespan once more.
Deep within the Dark Dimension, Dormammu... who constantly plotted to kill the Ancient One and devour Earth... suddenly opened his eyes, seething with resentment.
Damn it. The debt had increased again.