Chapter 41: Spider-Sense Warning, The Lurker in the Darkness
Pushing open the heavy bulletproof glass door leading to the terrace, the cold wind of the New York suburbs in November instantly poured into his collar.
"Don't stay outside too long, it's windy." Wanda's cheerful voice drifted from the kitchen, accompanied by the splashing sound of the faucet rinsing bone china plates.
"Just long enough for a cigarette." Lynn turned back and offered an extremely gentle and reassuring smile.
The glass door slowly closed behind him, completely cutting off the warm light from inside the house and the unknown tune that Wanda was humming.
The moment the door lock clicked shut, the mask of warmth on Lynn's face receded like the tide, replaced by absolute calmness and coldness.
"Hum—"
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, and deep in his brainstem, it felt as if a high-voltage micro-current had suddenly been passed through. This feeling was not painful, but extremely clear. The newly fused [Top-tier Spider-Sense] took full control of his nerve endings at this moment.
Lynn did not turn his head, nor did he make any unnecessary defensive moves. He simply walked to the stone railing at the edge of the terrace in an extremely relaxed posture and pulled a pack of special-supply cigarettes he had pilfered from S.H.I.E.L.D. out of his pocket.
"Ding."
The grinding wheel of the Zippo lighter sparked an orange flame, briefly illuminating Lynn's well-defined face. He took a deep drag, and the pungent taste of tobacco rushed into his lungs through his trachea, giving his tense nerves a moment of relief.
Under the cover of exhaling smoke, Lynn closed his eyes.
The power of the Spider-Sense was displayed to its fullest at this moment. It was not just a passive warning against lethal danger; it was more like an invisible, massive web centered on Lynn, extending infinitely outward. Every tiny movement within two hundred meters was constructed into an extremely precise three-dimensional model in his mind.
The friction of branches and leaves caused by the wind blowing through the pine forest, the trajectory of crickets jumping in the grass, and even the sound of water flowing in the drainage pipes five meters underground... every detail was perfectly clear.
And at the very core of this sensory web, just behind the carved stone pillar of the second-floor balcony less than five meters diagonally above his head, there was an extremely intense, highly distorted biological magnetic field, lying dormant like a bomb ready to detonate at any moment.
The fingers holding the cigarette paused slightly.
He "saw" it.
It was a pure white spider silk stuck to the back of the stone pillar. The material of the spider silk far exceeded any known polymer material on Earth, pulled taut in the night wind, even emitting an extremely faint humming sound.
Following the spider silk upward, a slender yet explosive figure was hanging upside down in the shadows in a pose that defied the laws of gravity.
There was no killing intent.
If the other party wanted his life, the Spider-Sense would definitely have delivered a needle-like stinging pain. But at this moment, what Lynn felt was a gaze as viscous, cold, and morbidly possessive as deep-sea mud.
That gaze was like a lone wolf starving for half a month staring at a piece of bloody, fatty meat, or like a paranoid person looking at a peerless treasure they had lost and regained. The gaze pierced through the night, pierced through Lynn's shirt, and licked his back inch by inch, as if wanting to crush him and swallow him whole.
"This golden finger is truly useful to the point of being hair-raising." Lynn gave a silent, cold laugh in his heart and blew a perfect smoke ring.
He was now one hundred percent certain that the person lurking in the dark was the Ghost Spider who had chased him across the Universe—Gwen Stacy.
In the simulated space-time, in order to achieve the highest rating of "Undying Love," in the desperate situation of falling from the Clock Tower, he smiled and kissed Gwen's forehead, then personally cut the spider silk and fell into the bottomless abyss.
He used his own life to carve an unhealable, blood-colored mark deep in that girl's soul. And now, the side effect had arrived. That girl, carrying utter despair and darkened obsession, had torn through the barrier of the Multiverseand hunted him down.
Lynn flicked the ash, his brain running at high speed like a supercomputer.
The situation was clear, but also extremely deadly.
Inside the house, separated by a wall, was the newly awakened, highly territorial, Skyfather-level yandere Wanda, who could twist several helicarriers into scrap metal at any moment. If Lynn showed even the slightest panic at being attacked, or directly shouted Gwen's name, Wanda would absolutely snap instantly and use Chaos Magic to grind the entire second floor, along with Gwen, into mincemeat.
And Gwen, above his head, was clearly on the verge of losing her sanity. She did not pounce down immediately, most likely because she was wary of the terrifying scarlet energy inside the house, and more so because she was observing—observing whether Lynn was "controlled" by Wanda or if he was staying here willingly.
This was an extreme game of intelligence and psychology.
Lynn took a deep breath, deciding to take the initiative and control the rhythm.
He deliberately rested his right hand holding the cigarette on the stone railing, slightly turned his wrist, and using the dim light of the lawn lamp, precisely exposed the inside of his wrist to the view of the second-floor balcony.
There, there was a very faint red mark. That was the scar left from being grazed by the Green Goblin's micro-bomb while trying to save Gwen in the simulated space-time. When the system reshaped his body, it had quite maliciously preserved these "medals of love."
This was a micro-action performed specifically for Gwen to see.
Sure enough.
The moment Lynn revealed the scar on his wrist, the Spider-Sense captured a violent oscillation in the biological magnetic field above his head.
Gwen, hanging upside down in the shadows, suddenly held her breath. Under her white combat suit, her muscles instantly tightened, her fingernails digging deep into the hard stone pillar, and the flaking stone chips fell silently onto the grass.
She was trembling.
That scar was like a rusty knife, stabbing hard into her already riddled memories. She recognized that scar; it was the proof left behind by Lynn to protect her.
"He hasn't forgotten... He is still my Lynn..." In the darkness, Gwen's eyes under the mask were bloodshot, tears uncontrollably overflowing from her eyes, sliding down her upside-down cheeks. But immediately after, when she saw the oversized shirt Lynn was wearing that clearly carried Wanda's aura, that touch of emotion was instantly swallowed by extreme jealousy and madness.
"That old woman... how dare she make him wear her clothes!"
The pressure from the Spider-Sense surged suddenly, and a slight stinging pain came from the back of Lynn's head.
He knew it was enough. If he provoked her any further, this Ghost Spider would recklessly crush her prey.
"Whew—"
Lynn exhaled the last puff of smoke into the night wind and naturally stubbed out the cigarette butt in the ashtray on the stone railing. He straightened his body, patted his clothes, and prepared to turn back into the house.
Just at the moment he turned around.
"Plop."
A drop of cold liquid landed precisely on the back of Lynn's hand, where he had just exposed the scar.
Lynn's pupils contracted violently.
That was not night dew. That was a tear carrying body heat.
Immediately following this, the warning from the Spider-Sense was pushed to the limit in an instant!
Lynn did not look up, but he clearly sensed that the taut spider silk above his head had been silently cut. A white afterimage, like a female leopard locking onto its prey, completely abandoned all concealment, and with suffocating paranoia and madness, pounced straight at his back!
At the same time, inside the house, separated by a door, the porcelain plate that was originally being rinsed in the sink was crushed into powder with a "crack" by a burst of suddenly overflowing scarlet energy.
A Shura field capable of destroying half of New York was completely ignited at the very moment Lynn turned around!
Chapter 42: Gwen's Pursuit, I've Found My World
A White afterimage, wrapped in the cold wind of late autumn, smashed down at an angle that completely defied the laws of physics.
Lynn did not dodge. Or rather, the moment his Spider-Sense blared its highest-level warning, he voluntarily gave up resistance. He leaned backward, his spine slamming heavily onto the cold marble floor of the terrace.
"Bang!"
Amidst the dull thud of the Impact, the two bodies rolled halfway across the ground, finally coming to a stop in the Shadow of the stone railing.
The air was instantly squeezed out of his chest, and Lynnlet out a muffled groan. Gwen's movements were violent to the extreme; her legs tightly locked around his waist, her knees pinning his hips, and her hands, like two hydraulic clamps, gripped his shoulders. That terrifying strength belonging to Ghost Spider nearly crushed his shoulder blades.
The White combat suit mask receded like a tide, revealing a pale, gaunt face flushed with a sickly crimson.
Gwen's blonde hair scattered messily across Lynn's cheek, bringing a cool sensation. Those eyes, once clear, were now filled with web-like bloodshot veins, and deep within her pupils danced a heart-stopping madness and paranoia.
"I've found you..."
She panted heavily, her warm breath hitting the side of Lynn's neck. It wasn't the joy of a long-awaited reunion, but more like a lone wolf, starved for months in the wilderness, finally sinking its fangs into the throat of its prey.
"You... liar."
A cold tear landed on the tip of Lynn's nose.
Gwen's gaze shifted downward, staring fixedly at the faint scar on the inside of Lynn's wrist. It was the mark left by a scratch from a Green Goblin pumpkin bomb fragment when he pushed her away on the Clock Tower.
She abruptly released one hand, her fingertips stroking the scar in a near-spasmodic motion. Her nails left red marks on Lynn's skin.
"Why did you cut it?" Gwen's voice was terrifyingly hoarse, thick with nasal congestion, yet laced with gnashing hatred. "What right do you have to make decisions for me? What right do you have to unilaterally sever our bond? Do you know... when I watched you fall, my World collapsed!"
The more she spoke, the more agitated she became. Her fingers tightened, grabbing Lynn's collar and forcibly pulling his upper body toward her. Their noses were almost touching.
"I traversed the entire Multiverse, searching every timeline." Gwen's tears continued to stream down, yet the corner of her mouth pulled into a hair-raising smile. "I killed three dimensional stowaways who tried to stop me, crushing their bones inch by inch... just to find you."
She leaned down, her teeth gently biting Lynn's earlobe, her voice so low it sounded like she was delivering some vicious curse: "This time, I will never let go. Even if it means death, you must die with me. You are my World, Lynn."
Lynn's Adam's apple bobbed up and down.
He could clearly feel the destructive desire about to spiral out of control within Gwen's body. This Ghost Spider's sanity was teetering on the edge of collapse; if he dared to say a single word of refusal now, or show any intention of trying to escape, she would absolutely wrap him in a cocoon with her webbing and forcibly drag him back to her Universe.
"Gwen..." Lynn slowed his breathing, struggling to raise his right hand, passing it through her messy blonde hair and gently cupping the back of her head.
His movements were slow, carrying the gentleness of soothing a ruffled cat.
"I didn't mean to leave you behind." Lynn looked directly into those bloodshot eyes, his voice revealing a perfectly measured sense of weakness and heartache. "At that time... the webbing couldn't support the weight of two people. If I hadn't let go, we both would have died."
He paused, his thumb gently wiping away the tears at the corner of Gwen's eyes: "I had to let you live."
This sentence was like a precise hammer blow, striking Gwen's most fragile nerve. Her whole body shuddered violently, and the madness in her eyes instantly turned into endless grievance. She let out a whimper, completely abandoning all defenses, burying her face tightly into the crook of Lynn's neck, greedily breathing in his scent.
"Don't lie to me again... don't..."
Lynn gently patted her back, but his eyes were cold to the extreme at this moment.
Because the Spider-Sense in his mind had already shifted from "High-Frequency Warning" to "Countdown to Destruction."
The marble floor against his back was cooling down at an incredibly exaggerated speed. The cold wind around them stopped, and even the chirping of insects in the grass was completely erased. The air was filled with an intensely pungent scent of ozone, mixed with a suffocating smell of blood.
Two meters away, that five-centimeter-thick bulletproof glass door was emitting an incredibly sharp friction sound.
Inside the kitchen on the other side of the wall, the Water in the sink had long since overflowed, dripping drop by drop down the marble countertop onto the floor.
Wanda stood in front of the sink, still holding half of a shattered bone china dinner plate. Sharp porcelain shards had cut her palm, and blood flowed down between her fingers, but she stared fixedly in the direction of the terrace as if she felt no pain.
Her gaze easily pierced through the walls and glass. In her field of perception, her territory had been torn open. A bug that didn't know whether it was alive or dead had not only broken in but was even pressing down on her "World."
"HYDRA treats you as a 'vessel' to control me..." A non-human growl emanated from Wanda's throat. "S.H.I.E.L.D.treats you as a rogue Agent who can be discarded at any time..."
"Only I... only I treat you as the only untouchable jade!"
Scarlet Chaos Particles erupted from her body like boiling magma. The chandelier on the kitchen ceiling instantly shattered, and glass shards hung suspended in mid-air. The beige wainscoting on the walls was stripped away directly by the violent energy, revealing the grey-white reinforced concrete underneath.
The "home" she had carefully arranged for Lynn was falling apart under the Impact of jealousy and rage.
"Who gave you permission... to touch him?"
Wanda turned around slowly. Her feet had left the ground, and she was hovering in mid-air. Those once-gentle eyes were now completely consumed by scarlet energy, to the point where even the whites of her eyes had disappeared.
A violent wind whipped up in the kitchen, sweeping all the cutlery and plates into the air, instantly grinding them into powder.
She walked step by step toward the bulletproof glass door. With every step she took closer, the pressure in the air increased exponentially.
On the terrace, Lynn's hand, which was patting Gwen's back, suddenly paused. He could feel that Gwen, who was pressing down on him, had also sensed that heaven-destroying energy fluctuation.
Gwen snapped her head up, Ghost Spider's instincts causing all her muscles to tense instantly. She turned her head to look at the glass door, the paranoia in her eyes not retreating, but instead igniting a highly dangerous fighting spirit.
"It's that old woman..." Gwen gritted her teeth, and the web-shooters on her wrists emitted a crisp mechanical click.
"Gwen, don't move!" Lynn lowered his voice, trying to forcibly press her back into his embrace.
Too late.
"Crack—" A web-like crack appeared in the very center of the bulletproof glass without warning.
Immediately after. "Boom!" The entire bulletproof glass door, weighing hundreds of pounds, along with the stone door frames on both sides, was blasted into powder by a scarlet tsunami.
A violent Impact swept across the entire terrace, uprooting the landscape lights on the lawn.
Amidst the flying stone debris and glass powder, Wandafloated slowly in mid-air like a god of destruction returning from hell. Scarlet Chaos Magic twisted wildly around her body like countless venomous snakes.
She looked down from above at the two people intertwined on the ground, her scarlet eyes locked firmly onto the hands Gwen had gripping Lynn's shoulders.
The air froze completely at this moment. Wanda slowly raised her right hand, her five fingers slightly spread, and scarlet light capable of annihilating matter danced at her fingertips. Her voice was so cold it could freeze the soul:
"Take your dirty hands off him."
"Otherwise, I will crush you along with your Universe."
Chapter 43: The Witch's Radar, Fury at the Invasion of Her Territory
Scarlet Chaos Particles raged wildly above the shattered balcony, like boiling magma.
The temperature plummeted to freezing in mere seconds, and the pungent smell of ozone, mixed with the scent of blood dripping from Wanda's palms, aggressively forced its way into Lynn's nostrils.
The gale swept across his cheeks like invisible blades, bringing waves of stinging pain.
Wanda hovered in mid-air, her toes three feet off the ground.
Her loose loungewear shirt snapped loudly in the wind; the disguise of gentleness and virtue she had previously worn was completely torn away at this moment, replaced by a brutality capable of making mortals tremble.
Her eyes had been completely swallowed by scarlet—no pupils, no whites, only an endless desire for destruction.
"I will say this one last time." Wanda's voice was no longer the soft murmur of her daily life; it carried echoes from multiple dimensions, slamming onto the balcony like the tolling of a great bell. "Take your filthy hands off my Lynn."
With every word she uttered, the surrounding gravity increased exponentially.
The marble floor groaned with the sound of cracking under the unbearable weight, and gravel floated in mid-air, defying the laws of physics, only to be crushed into powder by invisible pressure.
Gwen, at the center of the storm, bore the most direct brunt of the pressure.
The muscles beneath the Ghost Spider suit were tensed to their limit, and her bones emitted faint sounds of protest.
Yet not only did she not retreat, she hugged Lynn even tighter. Even as her Spider-Sense screamed danger in her mind, she remained like a lone wolf guarding its food, holding onto her prey with a death grip.
"Your Lynn?" Gwen suddenly raised her head; her eyes beneath the mask were filled with dense bloodshot veins, and a terrifying paranoia burned in their depths.
She sneered, her voice raspy but filled with reckless madness: "You opportunist thief, what right do you have to claim ownership? To save me, he cut his own web and fell into the abyss! Our bond transcends the boundaries of life and death, transcends the entire Multiverse! What are you?"
"Thief?" A deeply twisted sneer spilled from Wanda's throat.
She tilted her head slightly, watching Gwen's posture as she pressed against Lynn, and the last string of her sanity snapped completely.
"His very soul is engraved with my name. You suicidal insect, not only did you break into my territory, but you dare to touch my entire World..."
The scarlet energy storm instantly expanded outward, uprooting a row of thick pine trees a hundred meters away and shredding them in the night sky.
Lynn lay on the cold ground, his back aching from the sharp gravel.
On the surface, he maintained the appearance of being suppressed and weak, but his brain was racing at a speed exceeding a supercomputer.
Damn it. Lynn cursed inwardly.
If he had known the side effects of the simulator were this outrageous, he should have restrained himself a bit more when grinding for rewards. Now, a Skyfather-level Chaos yandere, plus an extraordinary-level paranoid who chased him across the Universe—two active volcanoes had just collided on top of him.
If only he could be sitting at that run-down street corner in Hell's Kitchen right now, enjoying the evening breeze while eating a steaming bowl of Ichiraku tonkotsu ramen, or going to the barbecue place in Queens to quietly grill a few plates of pork belly—how pleasant that would be?
Unfortunately, reality has no 'what ifs'.
Lynn knew very well that if he spoke up to favor either side now, or tried to reason with them, the other side would absolutely go berserk instantly. In the logic of a yandere, there is no "peaceful coexistence," only "exclusive possession" or "destruction."
"Die."
Wanda didn't waste any more words. She raised her bleeding right hand and slammed her slender fingers downward.
Three scarlet tentacles, as thick as buckets, tore through the air, carrying a terrifying heat capable of annihilating everything, and struck directly at Gwen's back!
"Whoosh!"
Gwen's Spider-Sense reacted within 0.01 seconds. She kicked off the floor beside Lynn with both legs, holding him as she rolled to the left in the nick of time.
"Boom!"
The scarlet tentacles smashed into the floor; there was no explosion, only pure annihilation. A pitch-black pit two meters deep formed instantly, its edges smooth as a mirror.
"Let him go!" Wanda roared, spreading her fingers, attempting to use gravity control to forcibly separate them.
While rolling, Gwen used the momentum to shove Lynntoward the relatively safe shadow in the corner, simultaneously flipping her wrists.
"Thwip! Thwip!"
Two high-strength webs shot out, sticking to two huge concrete fragments in mid-air. Gwen pulled hard, and the fragments flew toward Wanda in the air like cannonballs.
But this was just a feint.
Gwen bent her knees slightly, turning herself into a flash of white lightning; not only did she not retreat, but she charged straight at Wanda!
"Useless tricks." Wanda didn't even look, a scarlet shield automatically appeared in front of her, instantly shattering the concrete fragments into powder.
Just as the powder filled the air and obscured her vision, Gwen slammed the overload button on her web-shooters in mid-air.
A giant web over ten meters in diameter covered the sky and descended upon Wanda.
Wanda snorted coldly, and her Chaos Magic turned into flames, instantly setting the web ablaze.
Just as the web turned to ash, Gwen's true killing move arrived!
That giant web was merely a feint, a "decoy" used to obscure perception! Gwen's true form had long since used her webs to swing directly above Wanda's visual blind spot.
Like a hunting leopard, she descended from the sky, sharp barbs extending from her fingertips, aiming straight for Wanda's throat!
"For Lynn, I'm not even afraid of death, so why would I be afraid of a crazy bitch like you?!" Gwen roared.
"You're courting death." A trace of cruelty flashed in Wanda's eyes, and the Chaos shield instantly contracted upward.
"Clang!"
Gwen's barbs clawed against the scarlet shield, erupting with a harsh metallic screech and sparks flying everywhere.
The immense recoil made Gwen grunt, blood spilling from the corner of her mouth beneath the mask, her internal organs churning violently. But the paranoia in her eyes grew even more intense; not only did she not retreat, but she opened her arms, attempting to force her way into the gaps of the shield with her own body.
Wanda's killing intent boiled over completely. Her hands began to weave complex magic seals, the surrounding space twisted violently, and a Chaos ray capable of erasing Gwen along with this entire block was forming in her palms.
He couldn't wait any longer.
Lynn leaned against the corner, taking a deep breath of cold air mixed with dust.
If they kept fighting, Gwen would definitely be blasted to smithereens, and Wanda would trigger a dimensional rift from overexerting her magic.
He had to use the most extreme method to forcibly cut off their killing intent!
Lynn did not hesitate to mobilize the Chaos Magic Affinityhe had just integrated into his body, deliberately bypassing his defense mechanisms and forcibly reversing his magiccircuits.
He voluntarily detonated a trace of residual Chaos energy he had absorbed earlier.
Just as Wanda's destructive ray was about to fire, and Gwen was preparing for a desperate, final struggle—
"Pfft!"
Lynn's face turned paper-white, and he violently spat out a large mouthful of blood. The scarlet blood splashed onto the off-white wall, a shocking sight.
His body felt as if all its strength had been drained, and he collapsed heavily into the pile of rubble, curling up in pain, a muffled groan escaping his throat.
This sudden turn of events was like a heavy hammer, slamming hard against the hearts of the two crazed women.
In mid-air, the World-ending Chaos ray in Wanda's palms instantly dissipated; the scarlet in her eyes faded, replaced by extreme panic and helplessness.
"Lynn!" Gwen, disregarding the severe pain from the backlash, fell from mid-air like a madwoman, stumbling as she rushed toward the corner.
Before his consciousness slipped into a semi-comatose state, the corner of Lynn's mouth curled into an imperceptible, cold arc.
He had calculated using a serious injury to interrupt the deathmatch, but he had never counted on the fact that the mouthful of blood he spat out, containing both Chaos Magic and Spider Gene, would resonate in a bizarre way with the two women's out-of-control energy the moment it touched the air, tearing open a pitch-black rift leading to an unknown dimension right in the center of the balcony!
Chapter 44: Lynn's Cold Sweat, The First Love Triangle Crisis Descends
The air on the terrace was as thick as a lump of glue about to solidify.
That jet-black rift, torn open by blood, hovered in mid-air, its edges jagged like a giant, greedy maw, silently devouring the surrounding light and heat.
A low-frequency hum emanated from deep within the rift, causing the marble floor to tremble slightly.
Lynn lay in the pile of rubble, his back pressed against the cold floor.
Cold sweat instantly soaked through his thin shirt, trickling down his spine.
He cursed that damned system a thousand times in his mind.
The original plan was flawless: detonate a trace of magical backlash, use the posture of being severely injured to trigger the yandere's protective instincts, and forcibly cut off the death match between the two women.
But he had miscalculated one thing—the Chaos affinity constitution he had just fused with in his body, compounded by the cross-dimensional Spider Genebrought by the Gwen Universe, had instantly created an extremely unstable chemical reaction the moment it broke free from physical suppression, turning his blood into some kind of cross-dimensional coordinate!
"I've overplayed my hand." This was the first thought that flashed through Lynn's mind.
"Lynn!" Two shrill screams rang out simultaneously.
Wanda, in mid-air, plummeted like a bird with broken wings, her violent scarlet storm instantly receding into the softest halo of light.
Gwen scrambled over to Lynn's side, her white gloves pressing tightly against the blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, her whole body trembling like a sieve.
"Look at me! Lynn, don't close your eyes!" Gwen's voice was hoarse and cracked, tears falling onto Lynn's cheeks with a warm, salty sting.
"Get your dirty hands off him!" Wanda's eyes were blood-red; she grabbed Gwen's shoulder, attempting to fling her away.
Scarlet Chaos Magic seeped into Lynn's meridians through her fingertips, attempting to repair his damaged cells.
"You're the one who hurt him!" Gwen whipped her head around, her wrist flipping to point her web-shooter directly at Wanda's forehead, the obsession in her eyes nearly overflowing.
"If it weren't for your disgusting magic attack, why would he have been forced to interrupt his magical flow and vomit blood?!"
"You bug that crossed dimensions just to die, you don't understand what he's enduring at all!" Wanda did not back down, the red light at her fingertips acting like a sharp blade, pressing against Gwen's throat.
The crisis of the love triangle had not been resolved at all.
Lynn narrowed his eyes, looking at the two stunningly beautiful faces inches away.
Cold sweat trickled down his temples and into his eyes, the stinging sensation keeping him absolutely clear-headed.
On the surface, he was a dying weakling.
But deep down, the desire to control the whole situation was pulsing wildly.
Both of these women were super-powered forces capable of destroying cities; as long as he could convert their possessiveness into his own shield, no one in this Worldwould be able to kill him.
He had to use his words to lay out a "substitution jutsu," transferring their murderous intent for each other onto that damned rift.
"Cough..." Lynn coughed up another mouthful of blood, his chest heaving violently.
He struggled to raise his hands, his left hand gripping the wrist Wanda had pressed against Gwen's throat, and his right hand tugging at the collar of Gwen's combat suit.
"Don't... fight anymore."
His voice was so weak it could be blown away by a gust of wind, yet every word struck precisely at the weak points of both women.
Wanda stiffened, immediately withdrawing her magic and grasping Lynn's cold hand, pressing it against her cheek.
"I'm here, Lynn, I'm here. I won't let you die."
Gwen also hurriedly retracted her web-shooter, grabbing Lynn's right hand, her nails digging deeply into her own palms.
Lynn gasped for air, his gaze passing over the two women, staring fixedly at the jet-black rift in mid-air that was still constantly expanding.
He kept his breathing extremely shallow, creating a sense of extreme, suffocating weakness.
"That rift... is coming for me." Lynn articulated with difficulty, deliberately adding a trace of desperate tremor to the end of the sentence.
Both women froze simultaneously.
"I saw a top-secret file... in a HYDRA underground Base." Lynn's brain overclocked, lies rolling off his tongue with flawless logic.
"They used some kind of dimensional instrument... to plant an anchor on my soul.
As long as I try to break free from their control, or... or if powerful energy fluctuations appear around me, this anchor will tear open space and drag me into the abyss."
He looked at Gwen, his eyes full of pain and reluctance: "I'm sorry, Gwen... I cut the web not only to let you live but also because... I've long known that I'm a cursed person. I can't drag you into this quagmire."
Gwen's pupils constricted violently, her heart feeling as if it were being tightly gripped by an invisible hand.
So, he had pushed her away because he was bearing so much!
Her paranoid hatred was instantly drowned out by immense guilt and an even deeper love.
"I'm not afraid of the quagmire!" Gwen gritted her teeth, her eyes igniting with crazy fighting spirit.
"Whoever dares to come and drag you away, I will smash their bones into pieces, inch by inch!"
Lynn turned to look at Wanda, his thumb gently caressing the tear stains on her cheek: "Wanda... don't blame her.
She's just a poor person caught up in my tragic fate.
HYDRA's schemes are too deep... our conflict just now happened to trigger that anchor."
Wanda's breathing became completely chaotic.
She followed Lynn's gaze to the jet-black rift, the scarlet in her eyes surging again, but this time, the murderous intent was no longer directed at Gwen, but at that ethereal, elusive "enemy."
"HYDRA..." Wanda gritted her teeth, each word squeezed out from between them.
"They treat you like a disposable item to be toyed with... I will rip their souls out and burn them in the fire of Chaos Magic for ten thousand years!"
It worked.
Lynn let out a long sigh of relief in his heart; the cold sweat on his back felt bone-chilling when hit by the night breeze.
With a half-truth, half-lie, he had successfully managed an extreme balancing act.
Not only did he perfectly explain Gwen's appearance and whitewash his "abandonment" at the Clock Tower, but he also firmly locked Wanda's hatred onto HYDRA and that unknown rift.
Most importantly, he had established a common enemy for these two incompatible yanderes.
"It's expanding." Gwen's keen Spider-Sense detected the abnormal changes in the airflow.
The space at the edge of the rift was collapsing, and a highly corrosive cold wind poured out from inside, causing the potted plants on the terrace to wither instantly.
"If I get sucked in..." Lynn closed his eyes at the right moment, letting out a painful grunt.
"You... both of you must live on well."
"Shut up!" "I won't allow it!" Both women roared in unison.
Wanda stood up abruptly, her hands quickly forming seals in front of her chest.
The violent scarlet Chaos Magic was no longer leaking out without reservation, but was instead extremely compressed in her palms, turning into a blinding scarlet ball of light.
"No one can take you away from me! Not even a dimension!"
She pushed her arms forward, and the scarlet ball of light slammed into that jet-black rift with a boom.
Gwen did not hesitate either.
She half-knelt in front of Lynn, both her wrists flipping simultaneously.
"Swish! Swish!" Two thickened, high-strength webs shot precisely into the void at the edge of the rift, sticking firmly to the collapsing spatial nodes.
"Hold it! I'll seal it!" Wanda roared without turning her head.
"Watch your magic, don't burn my webs!" Gwen retorted through gritted teeth, her arm muscles bulging as she forcibly held back the tearing force of the spatial expansion.
Two women who, a second ago, wanted to tear each other to pieces, had now, in order to protect the man behind them, reached an extremely strange and fragile tacit understanding.
magic and physical force collided violently in mid-air.
Scarlet Chaos Particles spread along the white webs, and like stitching up a wound, they bit by bit forcibly pulled and closed that jet-black rift.
Lynn leaned against the corner of the wall, watching this incredible scene, a genuine arc finally curling at the corner of his mouth.
This was the situation he wanted.
Point the dangerous blade outward, and keep the soft handle in his own hands.
Under the forced suppression of the two Skyfather-leveland superhuman-level powers, the rift emitted an extremely sharp, mournful sound.
Finally, accompanied by a muffled "bang," the space completely closed, leaving only a wisp of faint black smoke in mid-air.
The crisis was resolved.
Wanda swayed as if drained of strength, and Gwen also plopped onto the ground, gasping for air.
Lynn was just about to open his mouth to say a few soothing words to firmly establish his "weak but affectionate" persona.
However, the moment the rift closed, his Spider-Sensestung again without warning.
It was an extremely hidden, faint, yet clearly surveillance-oriented stinging sensation.
Lynn did not turn his head, only using his peripheral vision to scan, very covertly, a huge oak tree a hundred meters away.
In the shadow of the dense canopy, a tiny, faint infrared reflection belonging to a high-powered sniper scope flashed and vanished.
That was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s exclusive tactical equipment.
Natasha Romanoff.
A cold look of amusement flashed in Lynn's eyes.
This Black Widow actually dared to lurk and spy right under the noses of two rampaging yanderes.
How much had she seen? And how much had she heard?
Lynn did not make a sound, simply leaning into Gwen's arms, burying his face in the crook of her neck, while simultaneously reaching out to grab Wanda as she walked over.
Since the audience was already in position, then this play had to be performed on a grander scale.
"System." Lynn issued the command coldly in his mind.
[Ding! Host command detected.]
"Lock onto target: Natasha Romanoff. Initiate the third simulation."
[Ding! Host command detected.]
[Target locked: Natasha Romanoff.]
[Retrieving timeline nodes... Anchoring successful: Budapest campaign.]
[Third simulation, officially initiated.]
The system's mechanical prompt echoed deep in his mind.
The time flow of the real World was infinitely elongated at this moment; the flying dust on the terrace and the broken marble fragments all hung in mid-air in an extremely slow state.
Lynn's tensed nerves, however, did not relax in the slightest.
The life-and-death clash just now, which had almost destroyed half of New York, had indeed been forcibly paused by his "HYDRA dimensional anchor" lie.
But the real crisis had only just begun.
"Hand him over to me." Wanda's voice broke the brief silence.
She took a step forward, the scarlet particles swirling around her fingertips buzzing faintly like a swarm of bees protecting their food.
Those scarlet eyes, devoid of any whites, stared fixedly at the arm Gwen had wrapped around Lynn's waist, the murderous intent nearly turning into solid shards of ice.
Gwen not only didn't let go, but instead pressed Lynn's head even tighter into the crook of her neck. The white fabric of her Ghost Spider suit was stained with the blood Lynn had just coughed up, and the jarring contrast of red and white made the paranoia in Gwen's eyes grow even more intense.
"Hand him over to you? So you can use that out-of-control Chaos Magic to tear him to pieces again?" Gwen met Wanda's gaze without backing down, her voice beneath the mask filled with gritted-teeth coldness. "I am taking him back to my Universe. Only the top-tier medical pods there can repair his damaged internal organs."
"If you dare take a single step off this terrace, I will erase you along with your Universe." Wanda lifted her chin slightly, and signs of distortion reappeared in the gravity field that had just calmed down.
A drop of cold sweat slid silently down Lynn's spine, the sticky sensation soaking through his shirt.
This was the ultimate high-stakes crisis.
He could rely on coughing up blood to forcibly interrupt the fight earlier, but that trick was old now. If these two women started fighting again over something as trivial as "who gets to support the severely wounded patient," he couldn't just cough up another two liters of blood, could he? Even with his Chaos affinity constitution, he couldn't afford that kind of damage.
He had to balance this perfectly and keep the initiative firmly in his own hands.
"Cough..." Lynn coughed with extreme difficulty, the rise and fall of his chest precisely controlled to sit on the threshold between near-death and weakness. He slowly opened his eyes, his gaze falling first on Gwen's mask, then moving extremely slowly toward Wanda.
"Stop arguing..." Lynn's voice was as faint as a breeze, yet his words were exceptionally clear. "My magic circuits... were torn by that dimensional rift earlier. Wanda, I need your Chaos Particles... to help me stabilize my source."
The scarlet in Wanda's eyes faded significantly, replaced by extreme heartache. She hurried forward, kneeling beside Lynn, and pressed her searing palm against his chest, a soft red light pouring continuously into his meridians. "I'm here. I will never let that damn anchor take you away."
Gwen's arm suddenly stiffened, the look in her eyes beneath the mask instantly dimming, even carrying a hint of grievance at being excluded.
Lynn keenly captured Gwen's emotional shift. He reached out and grabbed Gwen's wrist, his fingertips applying slight pressure, his gaze revealing unreserved trust.
"Gwen... my physical bones are severely dislocated." Lynnpanted heavily, pressing most of his body weight onto Gwen. "Your Spider power... is my only support right now. Don't let go, okay?"
The dim look in Gwen's eyes was instantly reignited. She nodded vigorously, her arm muscles tensing as she steadily supported Lynn's back. "I will never let go. Even if HYDRAbrings the entire Hell here, I will block it for you."
One on the left, one on the right. On the left was the searing Chaos Magic, and on the right was the resilient supernatural power.
Wanda and Gwen exchanged a glance across Lynn's body. The air was still thick with the smell of gunpowder, but under Lynn's flawless "dual-need" rhetoric, two top-tier female fighters on the verge of yandere tendencies finally managed to reach an extremely bizarre temporary agreement.
"Stop dawdling, help him inside." Wanda glanced coldly at Gwen. "Keep your magic under control, don't burn him." Gwen retorted unceremoniously.
The two exerted force simultaneously, carefully hoisting Lynn up from the pile of rubble.
Lynn lowered his eyelids, allowing them to support him as they walked into the house. The cold sweat on his back felt bone-chilling when hit by the night breeze. But the belly-black arc at the corner of his mouth, hidden in the shadows, grew deeper and deeper.
The moment he stepped into the broken floor-to-ceiling window, Lynn's head turned half an inch to the right, completely naturally. His gaze pierced through the heavy night outside the terrace, precisely locking onto the huge oak tree a hundred meters away.
...
On the thick branches of the oak tree, the night wind made the leaves rustle. Natasha Romanoff was like a dormant Black Panther, pressed tightly against the bark. Her black tight-fitting combat suit blended her perfectly into the shadows. She held her breath, her right eye pressed firmly against the eyepiece of the high-magnification night-vision sniper scope.
Everything that had just happened on the terrace completely overturned the cognition of this top S.H.I.E.L.D.Agent. The Skyfather-level energy clash, the terrifying scene of tearing open a spatial rift by hand, and that white spider-woman who suddenly descended across the Universe... Any one of these pieces of intelligence thrown back to the ruins of the Triskelion would be enough to give that old fox, Nick Fury, a heart attack.
But what made Natasha feel a chill to the bone was Lynn. From her perspective, Lynn was by no means some bottom-tier cannon fodder held hostage by a Witch. That man lay in the ruins, using just a few ethereal words to manipulate two terrifying women capable of destroying New York in the palm of his hand.
He was like a madman smoking while sitting on a powder keg, enjoying the thrill of being blown to pieces at any moment, yet precisely controlling the burning speed of every fuse.
"Monster..." Natasha gave Lynn her final assessment in her heart. Her finger rested lightly on the trigger, hesitating whether to take advantage of the two women's distraction to put an armor-piercing round directly into Lynn's head, completely ending this uncontrollable variable.
Just then. In the crosshairs of the sniper scope, Lynn's pale and handsome face suddenly turned without warning. Across the hundred meters of night, across the thick canopy, Lynn's gaze actually collided with the lens of the sniper scope without a hair's breadth of error!
Natasha's heart skipped a beat. Immediately after, she saw Lynn's left hand, hanging by his side, move extremely covertly. His index finger curled, his middle finger tapped the outside of his thigh, and his ring finger quickly brushed across the seam of his pants. Tap, tap, tap.
Natasha's pupils instantly contracted to the size of pinpricks, and the hair on her body stood on end. That was the oldest and most secretive assassin code from the Red Room era! It meant: [The prey has entered the trap, maintain silence.]
How could he know the Red Room's sign language?! Who exactly is he?!
Before Natasha could recover from this massive information shock, an extremely violent tearing sensation pierced through her brain without warning! "Ugh—!"
Natasha bit her lip hard, swallowing the scream back into her throat. Her vision instantly blurred, and the surrounding oak trees, night wind, and the lights of New York all twisted and collapsed in that moment. The side effect of the "Die-Hard Simulator," the moment Lynn activated the instance, crossed the barrier of reality and violently stuffed a non-existent memory into the depths of Natasha's soul.
...
[Simulated Space-Time: Budapest, 1999.] The cold autumn rain, like countless steel needles, smashed frantically into the dark back alleys of Budapest. The thick smell of gunpowder mixed with the stench of the sewer, aggressively drilling into her nostrils. The distant sound of sirens and the sweeping fire of heavy machine guns wove into a net of death, which was rapidly tightening.
Natasha leaned against a bullet-riddled brick wall, panting heavily. Her black combat suit had been soaked through with blood, and a deep, bone-visible laceration on her left abdomen was seeping black blood. Her ammunition was exhausted, and there was only harsh electromagnetic static in her communicator.
Clint Barton (Hawkeye) had been pinned down in the next block by the Red Room's heavy firepower ten minutes ago to cover her, his fate unknown. Now, she was a true lone wolf.
"Tap, tap, tap..." The sound of military boots stepping in the stagnant water came from the alley entrance, uniform and carrying a suffocating sense of oppression. Six fully armed Red Room "Black Widow" assassins, holding tactical rifles, were encircling her in a fan formation.
The cold rain slid down Natasha's cheeks. She gripped the only multi-purpose dagger she had left in a reverse hold, her muscles trembling slightly from extreme overexertion. There was no way out. She took a deep breath of cold air mixed with rain, preparing for one last fatal lunge.
Just as she exerted force with her legs, on the verge of rushing out of cover—a powerful hand suddenly reached out from the fire escape above, tightly covering her mouth, while a huge pulling force dragged her whole body backward into an extremely hidden dead-end of a ventilation duct.
"Don't move." A low, hoarse, yet absolutely calm male voice sounded in her ear. The man's chest was pressed tightly against her back, his body temperature transmitting through her soaked combat suit, carrying an inexplicably reassuring heat.
Natasha instinctively wanted to fight back, but when she saw the man's profile, her whole body froze instantly. Lynn. He was wearing a grey tactical suit without any markings, his face covered in mud and blood. Those deep eyes were shockingly bright in the darkness, staring fixedly through the gap in the ventilation duct at the approaching killers at the alley entrance.
"Are you crazy?!" Natasha lowered her voice, her tone carrying undisguised shock and anger. "The headquarters' retreat order was five minutes ago! Why did a Level 3 logistics Agent like you run back into the death zone?!"
"Executing my own orders." Lynn didn't even turn his head, his hands quickly setting up several homemade booby traps at the entrance of the duct. His movements were extremely skillful, not at all like a logistics person who only knew how to type on a keyboard.
"What are your orders?" Natasha gritted her teeth. Lynnfinally turned his head, looking at Natasha's pale yet still stunning face. He suddenly laughed, a laugh that was unrestrained and resolute. "To bring you out of Budapestalive."
Before he could finish speaking, an assassin at the alley entrance seemed to have sensed something and suddenly raised their rifle, the pitch-black muzzle pointing directly at the ventilation duct where they were hiding! "Boom—!"
Reality. Outside New York, in the canopy of a hundred-meter-tall oak tree. "Bang!" A dull thud broke the silence of the night.
Natasha's eyes rolled back, the sea of fire in Budapest and Lynn's resolute smile intertwining madly in her mind, the massive amount of information instantly crushing her line of rational defense. She, along with her gun, plunged headfirst from the thick tree trunk, slamming heavily into the dense bushes below.
Blood flowed down her forehead, but in the second before she completely lost consciousness, Natasha's lips trembled slightly, uttering a syllable that was almost paranoid. "Lynn..."
Chapter 45: Taking the Initiative, Lynn's Extreme Balancing Act
Inside the living room of Eden Manor, the air was so thick it could be wrung out like water.
Lynn was held up on both sides and dropped heavily into the large leather sofa. The friction of the leather made a dull thud, and the cold sweat on his back instantly soaked the cushion.
The crisis had not been resolved at all.
"Alright, you can crawl back to your Universe." No sooner had Wanda set Lynn down than she turned around and blocked Gwen. The crimson particles swirling around her fingertips emitted a faint, high-frequency hum, the precursor to Chaos Magic entering an offensive state. "The medical facilities here don't need a bug crawling around everywhere to worry about them."
Gwen stood her ground. Although her mask had been pulled down, the paranoia in her azure eyes was thicker than the night. She met Wanda's gaze without backing down, her wrist lifting slightly, and the mechanism of her web-shooters made a crisp sound as it loaded.
"Your magic almost tore him apart just now." Gwen's voice was ice-cold. Her gaze passed over Wanda's shoulder and locked onto Lynn. "I need to confirm that his bones aren't dislocated and his internal organs aren't hemorrhaging. You Witches who play with illusory energy don't understand physical damage at all."
"You're courting death!" The crimson in Wanda's eyes instantly flared, the gravitational field of the entire living room crashed down, and the crystal glass on the coffee table was instantly covered in cracks.
Lynn leaned back on the sofa, his eyelids lowered slightly, his mind frantically weighing the situation.
He couldn't keep playing dead.
Just now on the balcony, he had relied on self-harm, spitting blood, and a fictional "HYDRA dimensional anchor" to force a pause button. But these two women's possessiveness and exclusivity were too strong. Once they were idle, even for something as trivial as "who gets to pour a glass of water," they could tear this Villa down into ruins.
Always being on the defensive would lead to a crash sooner or later. He had to take the initiative and seize control back into his own hands.
The core of this extreme balancing act was not to make them live in peace, but to give them each a sense of exclusive mission—that they were "irreplaceable" and that "only you can save me." By utilizing their pride and specialties, he could form a closed loop of power where they didn't interfere with each other.
"Cough..." Lynn suppressed the surging blood in his throat and forced himself to sit up straight. He didn't try to break up the fight, but instead spoke in a tone that was extremely exhausted yet permeated with unquestionable tenacity, "Wanda."
Wanda shuddered, and her violent magic instantly receded. She immediately turned around, knelt beside the sofa, and pressed her hot palm against Lynn's cheek: "I'm here, my dear. Where does it hurt?"
"That anchor..." Lynn held Wanda's hand in return, his thumb gently stroking the back of her hand, his eyes as deep as a pool. "HYDRA's technology is far beyond our imagination. I can feel that although the rift has closed, that sense of high-dimensional prying is still there. The dimensional barrier of this house is too weak."
He paused, his tone carrying a hint of perfectly measured reliance and fanaticism: "Physical defenses can't stop them. I need you, Wanda. Use your Chaos Magic to completely erase the dimensional coordinates of the entire Eden. Aside from you, there is no power in this World that can protect our 'home'."
The word "home" precisely pierced through Wanda's psychological defenses.
The hostility in her eyes was instantly replaced by an extremely sacred sense of mission. The pride of a Skyfather-level powerhouse, combined with her yandere territorial consciousness, made her fully accept this task.
"No one can pry into my territory." Wanda stood up and glanced down at Gwen, her eyes full of the arrogance of the rightful queen. "I will use Chaos Particles to wrap this place so tightly that not even a high-dimensional bug can crawl in. You stay here, don't go anywhere."
Before she finished speaking, Wanda transformed into a streak of crimson light, passing directly through the ceiling to set up the absolute barrier capable of isolating the Multiverse above the manor.
Only Lynn and Gwen were left in the living room.
Gwen bit her lower lip, her eyes slightly red. Wanda's high-and-mighty attitude, as well as Lynn's reliance on Wanda just now, made the girl who had crossed the Universe to find her husband feel a strong sense of grievance and exclusion.
"So, I'm just a useless extra, right?" Gwen said in a low voice, her fingers tightly clutching the edge of her suit.
Lynn sneered in his heart. The fish had taken the bait.
He leaned forward abruptly, grabbed Gwen's wrist, and pulled her forcefully in front of him. The distance between them instantly shortened until their breaths were audible; Gwen could even smell the faint scent of gunpowder and blood on Lynn.
"Don't say silly things." Lynn looked straight into Gwen's eyes, his tone becoming extremely serious, even taking on a hint of a commanding tone. "magic can defend against high dimensions, but it can't stop physical assassinations. What HYDRA is best at are the snipes and poisons hidden in the Shadows."
He pressed Gwen's hand against his left chest, feeling the steady and powerful heartbeat there: "My body is very weak right now; even a little physical impact could cost me my life. magic is too violent, and I don't dare to completely entrust my back to it."
Gwen's pupils dilated abruptly, and her breathing immediately became rapid.
"I need your Spider-Sense to be my second pair of eyes." Lynn lowered his voice, every word hitting Gwen's soft spot. "Go help me check the outer physical defenses and clear out all the surveillance and sniper blind spots. Gwen, in this World, I only trust your intuition."
Only trust you.
These four words were like a shot of adrenaline, instantly dispelling all of Gwen's grievances and unwillingness. Her paranoid desire to protect once again took the high ground. So he didn't not need her, but rather, he had entrusted the most fatal, the most intimate physical defense line to her!
"Leave it to me." Gwen held Lynn's fingers back, her eyes becoming as sharp as a blade. "Even if it's just a mosquito with a bug, I'll tear it to pieces."
Gwen put on her mask, her figure leaping up like a white ghost, silently flipping out of the shattered floor-to-ceiling window and blending into the night outside.
The living room finally quieted down.
Lynn leaned back into the sofa and let out a long breath. The shirt on his back was completely soaked, cold and clammy against his skin. This extreme balancing act was more mentally draining than fighting Thanos.
But he didn't even have time to rest.
He closed his eyes, and his consciousness instantly sank into the system backend deep in his mind. There, the progress bar for the third simulation was flashing frantically.
The rainy night in Budapest, the cold rain hitting his face, was terrifyingly real.
Lynn's consciousness took over the simulation body, and he was holding the heavily injured Natasha, hiding in a narrow ventilation duct. At the alley entrance, the Red Roomassassin had already raised their rifle.
"Boom—!"
The interweaving sense of reality and simulation caused a stabbing pain in Lynn's brain. He had to leave a mark in the simulation that would be etched into the soul of that suspicious Black Widow in order to completely subdue this chess piece.
Meanwhile.
On the outskirts of the manor, under a huge oak tree a hundred meters away.
Like a nimble cat, Gwen landed silently beside the dense bushes. Her Spider-Sense didn't give a fatal warning, but it did transmit an extremely faint, abnormal fluctuation belonging to biological waves.
She pushed aside the thorny shrub branches and swept her gaze downward.
A woman wearing a black tight-fitting combat suit was lying unconscious in the muddy grass. The woman's forehead was cut, and blood was flowing down her cold, beautiful cheeks. In her hand, she was still clutching a tactical sniper rifle with a high-magnification night vision scope.
Gwen's gaze instantly dropped to freezing point.
She crouched down, her two fingers pinching a miniature communicator that had fallen out of the woman's ear. From the communicator, there came an extremely faint electrical static and the ticking sound of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s unique encrypted frequency.
"A S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent..." The look in Gwen's eyes under her mask became extremely dangerous.
She thought of Lynn's weak appearance just now, and thought of the "snipes and assassinations" that Lynn had mentioned. This woman actually dared to point a gun at her whole World from the shadows!
What made Gwen feel a morbid sense of alertness even more was that this unconscious woman, in her unconscious muttering, moved her lips and actually spat out an extremely clear name.
"Lynn..."
Gwen's fingers tightened abruptly, and the communicator was instantly crushed into a lump of scrap metal under her immense grip.
A murderous intent, even stronger than when she faced Wanda, erupted from within Ghost Spider.
"Another one who wants to snatch him?" Gwen grabbed Natasha by the throat, lifted her from the mud with one hand, and pressed her web-shooter directly against Natasha's temple.
Chapter 46: Strike Under the Night, Gwen's Suffocating Embrace
Cold muddy water slid down Natasha's pale cheeks.
Gwen gripped the neck of this top-tier S.H.I.E.L.D. Agentwith one hand, lifting her entire body into the air. The white fibers of the Ghost Spider suit shimmered with a cold light in the night, and the eyes beneath the mask, filled with paranoia, stared fixedly at Natasha's constantly moving lips.
"Lynn..."
Natasha, in her unconscious state, squeezed this name out of her throat once again.
Creak.
Gwen's fingers tightened abruptly, and the sound of grinding bones was exceptionally harsh in the silent night. Natasha's complexion instantly turned purple from oxygen deprivation, the veins on her forehead throbbed, and she fell into a state of extreme, dangerous suffocation.
"Do you even deserve to say his name?" Gwen's voice was like a cold wind blowing from the Siberian ice fields, carrying undisguised killing intent.
She knew this look all too well. That pathological obsession, where one clings to someone tightly even in a coma, was exactly the same as her own, and the same as that high and mighty Witch.
Another one here to snatch him away.
A fire of jealousy seemed to be burning in Gwen's chest. She flicked her wrist slightly, and the cold metal nozzle of the web-shooter was pressed directly against Natasha's temple. In just a tenth of a second, the high-pressure compressed web fluid could pierce this woman's skull like a bullet.
Just at the same moment Gwen prepared to pull the trigger—
[Simulated Space-Time: Budapest, 1999.]
"Boom—!"
The pungent smell of gunpowder mixed with the stench of the sewer instantly flooded into the narrow ventilation duct.
The instant the Red Room killer at the alley entrance pulled the trigger, Lynn pressed the detonator in his hand without hesitation. The homemade booby trap he had planted at the duct entrance exploded with a roar, and the violent fire, mixed with broken bricks and rubble, instantly swallowed those few killers.
But the shockwave from the explosion also overturned the duct they were hiding in!
A sensation of weightlessness struck suddenly. The rusty iron duct collapsed inch by inch under the immense tearing force, and Lynn and the heavily injured Natasha fell like two leaves, plummeting straight toward the ruins below, which were filled with barbed steel bars.
"Lynn!" Natasha's eyes widened in the weightlessness.
In the assassin code of the Red Room, there is no such word as "bond." They were trained to be emotionless killing machines, and any superfluous emotion would become a fatal weakness. This was the survival creed she had always adhered to.
But at this moment, this creed was brutally torn to shreds by the man before her.
In mid-air, Lynn did not hesitate at all. He flipped his body violently, his arms locking around Natasha's waist like iron hoops, pressing her entire body firmly into his embrace.
This was a suffocating embrace that left no room for anything else, bordering on madness.
He used his own chest to protect Natasha's vital parts, leaving his own back unreservedly exposed to those rusty steel bars below that were sharp enough to impale a person.
"Hold on to me." Lynn's chin rested on the top of Natasha's head, his voice still terrifyingly steady amidst the whistling wind.
His originally dry tactical suit had already been soaked through by the black blood from Natasha's abdomen, the scalding blood pressed against their skin, as if trying to forcibly fuse their souls together.
"You're crazy! You'll die!" Natasha's eyes were red, her fingers clutching tightly onto the corner of Lynn's clothes. She could smell that reassuring scent of gunpowder on Lynn, and she could feel the trembling of this man's muscles as they tensed up.
"I said..." Lynn pulled his lips into a determined arc, "I would bring you out of Budapest alive."
Squelch!
A dull sound of flesh being pierced rang out.
A rusty threaded steel bar accurately pierced through Lynn's left shoulder blade, and the immense Impact force slammed them heavily onto the ruins. Lynn spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, the scalding blood foam splattering onto Natasha's pale cheeks, burning her so much that she shivered all over.
"Lynn!!" Natasha let out a shrill scream like a dying Beast.
...
The real World, outside of Eden Manor.
"Urgh—!"
Natasha, suspended in mid-air by Gwen's grip on her neck, suddenly erupted into an extremely shrill scream.
This was not a sound that an unconscious person could possibly make. Her tightly closed eyes snapped open, the whites completely taken over by web-like bloodshot lines. Tears mixed with muddy water uncontrollably gushed out from the corners of her eyes.
The tragic scene from that rainy night in Budapest, that man who had been pierced by steel bars for her sake, carrying the real pain of crossing dimensions, burned into the depths of her soul like a red-hot branding iron.
"Let... go of me!"
Natasha squeezed a hoarse low roar from her throat. Her body, which had previously gone limp from oxygen deprivation, unexpectedly erupted with unimaginable strength at this moment. She didn't try to pry Gwen's hand off her neck, but instead violently raised her right leg, the steel heel of her combat boot whistling with a harsh sound as it kicked viciously toward Gwen's knee joint!
This was an all-out, life-risking move that completely abandoned defense.
The pupils beneath Gwen's mask S-Rank slightly. The stinging pain from her Spider-Sense made her instinctively release her hand and backflip to create distance.
Bang!
Natasha fell heavily into the muddy grass. She greedily gasped for the cold air, her violent coughing causing her whole body to spasm. But her eyes were like two poisoned blades, staring fixedly at Gwen a few steps away.
"You... want to kill me?" Natasha stood up slowly, wiping the muddy water from the corner of her mouth. Her voice was no longer the cold Agent tone from before, but instead carried a hair-raising, pathological paranoia.
"You are peeping at my man; it is only right that I kill you." Gwen lowered her center of gravity, aiming both wrists at Natasha as her web-shooters entered rapid-fire mode. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s lapdog, don't think I don't dare to touch you."
"Your man?" Natasha seemed to have heard some huge joke, and suddenly began to laugh in a low, neurotic tone.
Her shoulders shook with laughter, pulling at the muscles in her abdomen. In a trance, she felt as if she could once again feel that steel bar from Budapest that had pierced through Lynn's body. That heart-wrenching tearing sensation made her possessiveness grow wildly like weeds.
"He would even give up his life for me." Natasha's gaze changed completely; it was the absolute lock-on of a hunter targeting its prey. "No one... is going to take him away from me. Whoever touches him, I will kill."
Gwen's scalp tingled.
She was crazy. This woman was absolutely crazy. That look in her eyes was exactly the same as Wanda, who had wanted to erase everything on the terrace just a moment ago!
"Then go to hell!" Gwen could no longer suppress the killing intent in her heart, her fingertips exerting force as she prepared to shoot the fatal web.
Just at this critical moment.
"Cough..."
An extremely faint, yet incredibly precise cough echoed directly in her mental landscape, traveling along the "bond" line in Gwen's mind that belonged to Lynn.
Gwen's movements froze in mid-air.
In the second-floor living room, Lynn leaned against the leather sofa, his face as pale as paper. He had just endured the extreme pain of being pierced by a steel bar in the simulator; although his physical body in reality was undamaged, the mental tearing sensation made him nearly faint.
He forced himself to endure the buzzing in his mind, attaching a trace of Chaos energy to the frequency band of the Spider-Sense to send a one-way telepathic message to Gwen on the perimeter.
"Gwen... stop." Lynn's voice was so weak it sounded as if he might stop breathing at any moment. "Don't kill her... she is a lure sent by Fury... if you kill her, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heavy firepower will immediately blanket this place... my current body cannot withstand a second bombardment..."
Gwen's fingers trembled violently.
Lynn's weak gasping sounded like needles pricking her heart. Reason finally overcame the killing intent.
"Consider yourself lucky, old woman." Gwen gritted her teeth and put away her web-shooters, staring coldly at Natasha. "If it weren't for fear of alerting the S.H.I.E.L.D.flies and disturbing his rest, you would already be a corpse right now."
Natasha did not speak. She simply used that extremely dangerous gaze to look over Gwen's shoulder, staring fixedly at the shattered floor-to-ceiling window on the second floor.
That was the location where Lynn was.
"Go back and tell Nick Fury," Gwen flashed, leaping onto a thick tree branch and looking down at Natasha from above, "If you dare to send anyone here again, I will plow the ruins of the Triskelion all over again."
After saying this, the white Ghost Spider merged into the night and quickly retreated toward the Villa. She had to return to Lynn's side immediately to confirm his safety.
Under the oak tree, dead silence was restored once again.
A cold wind blew, sweeping up a few fallen leaves.
Natasha stood alone in the muddy water.
Her black combat suit was soaked and dirty, but her back was held straight.
She had not retreated according to Gwen's warning, nor had she reported to her superiors.
She slowly lowered her head, looking at her mud-stained hands.
"Bait?" A strange curve appeared at the corners of Natasha's mouth.
She knew Nick Fury's style all too well.
If she lost contact here, Fury would undoubtedly launch the backup plan without hesitation, leveling this place with missiles.
And Lynn was very weak right now.
He could not withstand any physical bombardment.
A flash of resolute madness crossed Natasha's eyes.
Since the assassin's creed of the Red Room had been broken by him, she would use her own way to protect this bond forged in blood.
She slowly opened a hidden compartment in her tactical belt and pulled out a thumb-sized, red-flashing micro detonator.
This was the highest-level locator tracker from S.H.I.E.L.D.that she carried.
As long as she crushed it, Fury would immediately lock onto the coordinates here.
But Natasha did not crush it.
She looked up, taking a deep look at the second-floor window, as if to carve that man's shadow into her bones.
Then, without hesitation, she shoved the locator into her mouth and swallowed it with force!
Gulp.
The locator slid down her esophagus and into her stomach.
Immediately after, Natasha pulled that large-caliber tactical pistol from the holster on her outer thigh and, without a moment's hesitation, aimed the muzzle directly at the artery of her left thigh.
"Bang!"
The muffled gunshot tore through the night sky.
Blood splattered everywhere.
Natasha let out a muffled groan and dropped to one knee in the muddy water.
The intense pain made her brain exceptionally clear.
She wanted to use her serious injury and moving vital signs to forcibly divert S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention away from Eden Manor.
As long as she was still moving, and as long as the locator was still sending signals from within her body, that suspicious old fox Nick Fury would absolutely never rashly launch indiscriminate firepower coverage on this place.
"Hiss..."
Natasha bit through her lip, enduring the excruciating pain of her torn thigh artery.
She tore a strip of cloth from her tactical suit and roughly tied a tourniquet at the Base of her thigh to prevent herself from going into shock due to excessive blood loss.
She took one last look at the dimly lit window on the second floor, her eyes interweaving with extremely twisted fanaticism and tenderness.
"Wait until I finish clearing out those scumbags who tried to hurt you... I will come back for you, Lynn."
Natasha turned around, dragging her bloody, crippled leg like a mother wolf protecting her cubs, and plunged into the deep forest in the exact opposite direction of the manor without looking back.
...
Second-floor living room.
Lynn, leaning on the sofa, opened his eyes abruptly.
His Top-tier Spider-Sense outlined a clear picture in his mind—a hundred meters away, a silenced gunshot, accompanied by the strong smell of blood rapidly receding.
Lynn's mouth curled into an extremely dangerous arc in the shadows.
[Ding! Detected irreversible change in the mental state of target 'Natasha Romanoff'.]
[Third simulation 'Budapest campaign' settlement complete.]
[Rating: SSS-Rank.]
[Congratulations to the host for receiving the reward: Top-tier camouflage and stealth mastery, Super Soldier Serum physique (incomplete version), Red Room ultimate combat arts.]
As the system's mechanical voice faded, an extremely domineering surge of heat instantly exploded throughout Lynn's limbs and bones.
The feeling of mental tearing from the simulation was quickly smoothed over by this heat, and his muscle fibers let out faint popping sounds under the transformation of the Super Soldier Serum, his sense of power surging exponentially.
Chaos Magic affinity, Top-tier Spider-Sense, Super Soldier Serum physique.
With the three major trump cards combined, Lynn's current physical strength had completely surpassed the so-called "human limit."
But his face still maintained that weak and pale look of a patient.
Because he knew that this play was far from over.
"Swish!"
A white figure nimbly vaulted over the floor-to-ceiling window and landed on the living room carpet.
Gwen took off her mask, walked quickly to the sofa, her azure eyes full of eagerness to claim credit.
"The outer physical defenses have been cleared."
Gwen knelt halfway by Lynn's legs, her hands tightly gripping his cold fingers, "A female fly from S.H.I.E.L.D. has been driven away by me.
She absolutely won't dare to come within half a step of here again for a long time."
Gwen concealed the detail that Natasha had shouted Lynn's name.
That pathological desire for exclusive possession made her instinctively reject any woman who might form a bond with Lynn.
"Well done, Gwen."
Lynn held Gwen's wrist in return, his fingertips gently rubbing the pulse on her wrist, "I knew it, trusting my back to you was the most correct choice."
This sentence was like the most potent hallucinogen, causing the paranoia in Gwen's eyes to instantly turn into pleasure.
She couldn't even help but press her cheek against Lynn's palm, rubbing against it like a cat that had successfully guarded its food.
Just then, the air above the living room suddenly twisted violently.
The thick smell of ozone instantly filled the whole room.
The solid wood ceiling was forcibly melted into a large hole by a scarlet energy, and Wanda descended from the sky like a god of destruction.
Her feet did not touch the ground but hovered in mid-air.
Scarlet Chaos Particles surged wildly around her, and the entire Villa had been completely wrapped in an absolutely isolating high-dimensional barrier.
"I've erased the coordinates."
Wanda's voice carried high and mighty arrogance, but when her gaze landed on Gwen's cheek pressed against Lynn's palm, the scarlet in her eyes instantly flared, "But it seems, I missed a bug in the room."
A violent gravitational field pressed down with a boom!
Gwen's Spider-Sense went off wildly; she jerked her head up, her muscles under her suit instantly tensed, and she met Wanda's gaze without backing down: "What? Barrier finished, and you want to burn the bridge after crossing it?"
"Who gave you permission... to touch him?"
Wanda raised her right hand, the red light at her fingertips having condensed into a tangible blade.
The tension reached a critical point again.
Lynn cursed inwardly, preparing to act again to interrupt this deadly Shura field.
But at that very second, his Spider-Sense suddenly captured an extremely distant, strange fluctuation belonging to an electronic signal.
...
At the same time, inside a temporary safe house hundreds of meters underground in Washington.
Nick Fury's only remaining eye stared fixedly at the tactical large screen in front of him.
On the screen, the red dot representing Natasha was moving toward the New York State border in an extremely strange route.
"Director, Agent Romanoff's heart rate has exceeded 180 beats per minute, and her blood pressure is dropping rapidly!
She has suffered a fatal injury!"
Agent Hill stood to the side, her voice filled with unconcealable anxiety, "And her locator signal source... is in her stomach!
She swallowed the tracker!"
Fury's face was so gloomy that water could drip from it.
Natasha had gone to investigate that Zero-level taboo named Lynn.
Now, not only was she seriously injured, but she was running wildly after swallowing the locator, which completely violated S.H.I.E.L.D.'s infiltration and retreat protocols.
"Connect to her encrypted communication channel."
Fury ordered coldly.
"Bzzt... bzzt..."
A harsh sound of electricity came from the communicator, accompanied by Natasha's heavy, near-death gasps.
"Natasha, report your situation.
Who hurt you?
That Witch, or Lynn?"
Fury clenched his fists.
The other end of the communicator was silent for a full five seconds.
Then, an extremely cold voice, filled with crazy killing intent, was transmitted back to the underground Base via the radio waves.
"Director, if S.H.I.E.L.D. dares to fire even a single bullet at Eden Manor..."
Natasha's voice carried a chilling smile, "I will stuff whatever ruins are left of the Triskelion, along with your head, into the sewers of HYDRA."
Click.
The communication was completely cut off.
Inside the underground safe house, there was a deathly silence.
Agent Hill gasped, her face full of disbelief.
Nick Fury's only eye trembled violently, and the tactical pen held between his fingers was snapped in two by him.
He finally discovered the terrifying truth that broke all his perceptions—Lynn had not only leashed that Skyfather-level Witch like a dog, but he had even, unknowingly, turned S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top ace Agent into a mad dog protecting its master!