Chapter 202. The Conundrum of the Dragon
Thump... Thump...
With every rhythmic beat of his heart, the Rune of Bravery etched upon Noah's skin flared with a blinding intensity. It was no longer a mere mark; it was a font of primordial life, pumping waves of revitalizing essence into every fiber of his being. His mana, usually a controlled stream, had transformed into a raging tempest that lashed out at the world around him. His dark hair whipped violently in the invisible updrafts, and his clothes billowed like sails in a hurricane. Behind his eyelids, the verdant energy burned with the ferocity of a newborn star.
Corvus's sneer faltered. Up close, the aura radiating from Noah was suffocating—a weight of pure existence that far eclipsed the power he had sensed when the man was merely wielding the Tesseract. This was something internal, something ancient and hungry.
Panicked, the General tried to wrench his golden Glaive free, seeking to put distance between them and regroup for another blinding assault. But the space between them had become a trap.
Noah's hand shot out, moving with a speed that bypassed the conscious mind. His fingers clamped onto the shaft of the Glaive with the finality of a closing tomb. Runic light bled from his palm, coating the weapon in a protective film that neutralized the Mind Stone's corrosive energy before it could sear his flesh.
Corvus roared, throwing the full weight of his energy-shifted body into the weapon. He pulled with both hands, his face contorting into a mask of desperate effort, yet the Glaive remained motionless. It was as if the spear had been welded to the very fabric of the dimension. No matter how much the General strained, the blade did not budge a single millimeter.
A cold, predatory smile touched Noah's lips. He felt the mana within him reach a boiling point, seeking an outlet. Sensing Corvus's intent to abandon the weapon and flee, the Tesseract hovering at Noah's back pulsed with a deep, oceanic blue. The air around the General curdled, the space itself locking into a rigid, impenetrable cage.
As the Mind Stone's yellow light lashed out to break the Tesseract's hold, Noah drew back his right fist. The green runes on his arm began to shift, the color deepening and intensifying until they ignited into a brilliant, solar gold. His hair stood on end, radiating power like a warrior from legend, as the atmosphere around his fist began to groan under the sheer pressure of the gathered energy. The very air shrieked, crackling with the sound of glass shattering as the spatial boundaries began to fray.
"[Conundrum]!" Noah's voice didn't just speak the word; it commanded the reality of it.
He unleashed the blow. The golden flames wreathed around his fist didn't just strike; they transformed, taking the shape of a colossal, spectral dragon's head that let out a silent, soul-shaking roar.
For a fraction of a second, Corvus saw his death reflected in that golden maw. Shadows, birthed from the deepest recesses of his own terror and amplified by the Mind Stone, flickered around him in a futile attempt to shield their master. In that final moment of clarity, the madness of the stone receded, leaving only the cold, hard realization of his own insignificance.
RAAAGH!
The dragon's roar tore through the silence. The punch connected with the force of a falling moon.
The world went white. For a heartbeat, time, wind, and breath ceased to exist. Reality itself seemed to hold its breath, buckling under the sheer concentrated violence of the impact. Then, the dam broke. A pillar of light erupted from Noah's fist, a miniature sun born in the heart of New York, its radiance so piercing it turned the afternoon sky into a bleached canvas.
The sound followed—a tectonic, bone-jarring boom that made the very foundations of the earth shudder. It was a roar that drowned out the screams of the city, a sound that felt as though the heavens themselves were being torn asunder.
Miles away, the remnants of the population felt the ground heave. Panic, which had begun to settle, flared into a fresh wildfire of terror.
"I thought he said he had this under control!" Nick Fury spat, bracing himself against the side of a battered SUV, his hands clamped over his ears as the shockwave rattled his teeth.
From his vantage point, the explosion bore the unmistakable, terrifying silhouette of a nuclear event. Had Noah actually done it? Had he detonated a tactical warhead in the middle of the skyline? Fury's mind raced through the grim logistics of fallout and exclusion zones, his heart sinking at the thought of Manhattan becoming a radioactive ghost town.
Closer to the epicenter, Thor and Tony Stark groaned as the concussive force dragged them back to consciousness. They found themselves encased in a shimmering dome of azure mist—a protective pocket where the air was unnaturally still. Outside this barrier, a firestorm of debris and howling winds raged, but within, not a speck of dust disturbed them.
Slowly, the blinding radiance began to fade. Noah remained suspended in the air, his fist still extended. Of Corvus, there was no sign—no body, no ash, only the jagged remains of the golden Glaive clutched in Noah's hand.
The strike had been so absolute it seemed to have erased the General from the tapestry of existence. The air hummed with residual energy, the temperature having spiked so sharply that the rising dust and vapor began to form a towering, mushroom-shaped cloud that dominated the horizon.
The secondary shockwave continued its march, sweeping the sky clean of every cloud for fifty miles in every direction. Above New York, the sky was now a pristine, terrifying blue, though witnesses in Jersey and Long Island would later swear they saw the firmament itself crack open like a piece of dropped porcelain.
Noah floated in the center of the devastation, his hair settling back into its natural ink-black. The golden aura of the Rune of Bravery still simmered around him, a low-frequency vibration that turned every movement into a potential thunderclap.
He looked at the broken half of the Glaive before stowing it away in his inventory. Then, tentatively, he closed his fist again. Even that simple gesture caused the mana to swirl into a violent vortex, the air around his knuckles spider-webbing with dark, spatial fractures.
Startled by his own lethality, Noah quickly relaxed his hand. He channeled a sliver of the Space Stone's power, weaving the blue energy through the air to stitch the wounded dimension back together.
This was the first time he had truly tested the limits of the Rune of Bravery since the final seal had been loosened. The legends had not lied; the World Runes were not mere spells, but the building blocks of reality. In his hands, they were weapons that could rewrite the fate of nations with a single gesture.
But as he scanned the settling dust, his eyes narrowed. Despite the devastation, he couldn't shake the feeling of a lingering shadow. The Mind Stone was missing, and where the stone remained, the battle was never truly over.
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