It was as if an invisible giant hand was gripping Blaine, preventing him from leaving and instead forcing him to move forward in a specific direction.
For a moment, Blaine instantly became alert. After everything he had experienced today, he could no longer blindly believe that this guiding force was beneficial to him. It might just as well be a trap meant to lure him in.
However, after struggling internally for a few moments, curiosity ultimately overcame his vigilance. After all, he had the Hunter space—he couldn't really die. What was there to be afraid of?
Wasn't Blaine here precisely to find answers? If he backed down out of fear now, there was no point in continuing down this path in the future.
With that resolve, Blaine cautiously followed the force, slowly approaching its source.
In fact, Blaine suddenly recalled that when he first arrived in Wakanda, this same force had appeared before, guiding him all the way to the exterior of the metal mountain formed by the vibranium meteorite.
That sensation didn't disappear until Blaine landed beneath the circular magic array—at the altar itself.
At the time, Blaine believed it was the prehistoric Black Panther, or perhaps some residual energy left behind at the altar, that was guiding him. After witnessing his prehistoric self, Blaine had further confirmed this assumption.
But now, this force had appeared once again. That could only mean one thing—something had been blocking it before.
After thinking it through, Blaine arrived at a single conclusion: the circular magic array had been isolating this force, preventing it from directly drawing him in. Likewise, within this vibranium meteorite, there must be something—or some information—that Blaine sought, something even the prehistoric Bounty Hunter had never obtained. Otherwise, the magic array would not have been able to separate the two.
When Blaine reached a small opening once again, he stopped. Not because he hesitated, but because the hole was sealed.
The entrance to this cave lay in the innermost part of the mining site. Without careful inspection, it was almost impossible to notice it. The opening was only about half a person tall. If Blaine wanted to enter, he would have to bend his body and squeeze through. It seemed that Wakandan miners in the past had accidentally discovered this natural cave while extracting vibranium. Then, for some reason—perhaps a death inside, or some supernatural incident—they ultimately decided to seal the entrance permanently.
Blaine carefully removed the metal baffle fixed to the stone wall, tore away the isolation tape, and then barely managed to squeeze inside.
The interior space was surprisingly large—roughly the size of an ordinary room, about twenty to thirty square meters, enough to accommodate around ten people. Because the entrance was so small, the inside was shrouded in darkness. However, under Hawkeye's vision, such conditions were completely irrelevant.
Yet after scanning the area, Blaine found nothing. There was nothing at all inside. Not to mention mysterious objects—he didn't even see a corpse. If not for the oversized chunk of raw vibranium embedded in the wall beside him, Blaine would have thought he had come home to absolute emptiness.
However, without this guiding force, Blaine felt that everything he was seeing was nothing more than a trick. Just as he was hesitating over whether to leave, the extraordinarily large chunks of raw vibranium suddenly emitted a dazzling white light.
In the next second, for some unknown reason, Blaine felt his spirit tremble. The mysterious metal key fragments he had stored were automatically pulled out of the Hunter space.
They floated out on their own and then stopped eerily in front of Blaine.
Blaine immediately reached out, wanting to grab them and stuff them back into the Hunter space. After all, this was the only clue related to his secret that he had worked so hard to obtain. He absolutely could not let it disappear right in front of him in such a strange way.
However, just as Blaine raised his hand, the brightness of the massive vibranium materials on both sides surged dramatically. Each of them released two white beams of light that shot straight toward the metal key fragments. The speed was so fast that Blaine had no time to react.
Watching the white light strike, Blaine was momentarily confused. He subconsciously scratched his head—not because he was worried the beams would destroy the metal key fragments, but because he had no idea what was happening.
The next scene, however, made everything clear.
Under Blaine's focused gaze, the two metal key fragments slowly moved closer to each other and finally adhered together. The two beams of light were like surgical needles and sutures on an operating table, stitching the fragments together with astonishing precision, forcing them to fit perfectly.
Soon, the seam between the two fragments began to fade, gradually disappearing entirely. In the end, they bonded into a single piece of metal.
Pata.
The crisp sound of metal hitting the ground snapped Blaine out of his shock.
He looked down at the metal key on the ground, now transformed from two separate pieces into one. His mind felt blank. What exactly was going on? What was about to happen?
Blaine picked up the metal key and examined it carefully. He turned it left and right, flipped it up and down, inspected it from front to back, and even tried to pull it apart with force. The result was undeniable—it had truly merged into one. What had clearly been two separate objects had become a single, unified whole. There wasn't even the slightest trace of a seam left behind. If Blaine hadn't personally known they were once separate fragments, he wouldn't have believed it at all.
According to what the prehistoric Black Panther had said earlier, there were a total of six metal key fragments of this kind. Apart from the two that had been in his possession, that meant there were still four fragments whose whereabouts Blaine knew nothing about. He couldn't help but wonder whether there was some hidden connection between these six fragments and the six original Infinity Stones.
What Blaine didn't know was that this casual speculation would eventually bring him tremendous surprises in the future.
From this alone, he could already tell that the two fragments that had merged in his hand now resembled a hexagonal starburst, forming a distinct hexagonal shape.
However, the center of this hexagon appeared slightly curved, as if part of a sphere were missing, giving it the appearance of a defective spherical structure.
This suggested that when all six metal key fragments were assembled, they would form a complete hexagon, with a circular void at the center of the hexagonal metal. As for what this ultimately meant, Blaine had no idea.
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