Boom!!
Luma's fist slammed down.
The entire arena shook violently. The ground beneath their feet split apart like a real earthquake.
Yet the Red King, who took the blow head-on, was fine.
He held his double-bladed greatsword horizontally in front of him, like a massive shield, and blocked the strike.
"I told you. This armor is specially made. With your strength, even if you throw hundreds or thousands of punches, it won't do a thing," the Red King said smugly.
He flicked his greatsword and knocked Luma back.
The exoskeleton armor did not just give him incredible defense, it also granted him endless strength.
The Red King originally planned to press the attack and execute Luma together with the Royal Guard.
But at that moment, an urgent report came from the defenders near the capital.
"Your Majesty!"
"We have an intrusion!"
"What?" The Red King never imagined that under his rule, there would come a day when rebels would storm his doorstep.
Before he could ask for details, countless explosions erupted from all directions around the capital!
"Hold her here!" he barked.
In a situation like this, he could not afford to keep tangling with Luma. He left the Royal Guard behind to handle her.
Luma clapped her four hands together, her fighting spirit surging.
"Perfect timing. I was just itching to make a mess!"
On the other side, the Red King was about to contact the capital's garrison, but before he could move, a fighter jet rammed straight into the Totem Tower.
Boom!
A massive gap was blasted open in the towering structure. The shockwave from the explosion sent the Red King flying.
With the armor protecting him, he was not seriously hurt, and he also saw clearly who the attacker was.
"Scavenger Number 142?!"
He looked up.
On the old-fashioned fighter, Brunnhilde, clad in silver armor, held the Dragonfang Sword high. Behind her, the sky swarmed with all kinds of patched-together, outdated aircraft, firing beam after beam as they battled the garrison nonstop.
The moment the Red King saw it, he found it absurd beyond belief.
"You stray dogs crawling through trash heaps, and you dare attack this king?!"
"You won't be king much longer, Anmor A'shan!" Brunnhilde shouted.
At this moment, it was as if she had returned to the era thousands of years ago. The heroic bearing of a Valkyrie once more shone through her.
But the Red King was no easy target.
"Is that so?" He sneered. "With these scraps of broken metal you welded together in a garbage pile?"
He opened his comms and issued a cold order. "Activate the Manxie!"
The person on the other end sounded startled, even frightened. "You mean the Manxie? But, in the capital there are still several million citizens…"
"Shut up!"
"They're just slaves. If they die, they die!"
"Yes…"
The connection cut.
"Manxie? What is that?" Brunnhilde frowned slightly, her beautiful brows knitting as she stared at the Red King.
Of course the Red King had no intention of explaining.
He only smiled faintly. "You'll find out soon enough."
At that moment, a blinding bolt of lightning tore through the sky, crashing down in front of the Red King like divine thunder.
Caiera had returned.
"Caiera!" Brunnhilde called out.
Caiera ignored her. She simply walked toward the Red King step by step, her seemingly calm eyes burning with rage.
Originally, she meant to return and question the Red King about the truth behind the Spikes incident from more than a decade ago. But compared to the lives of millions of civilians in the capital, that no longer mattered.
"Red King, no, Anmor A'shan. I can't believe you're activating the Manxie in the capital. Don't you know that once the Manxie is activated, it will completely destroy the capital? Hundreds of thousands, millions will die. They're your citizens!"
"So what?" The Red King looked utterly unconcerned. "Does the queen ant care how many worker ants die?"
He smiled indifferently, and that smile made Caiera feel cold all over.
"They're just my wealth. Slaves, gladiators, citizens, it's all the same. As long as it wipes out the rebels, it's worth it!"
No, more than worth it.
After all, Anmor A'shan himself had not even lost a single hair.
"You animal!" Caiera trembled with fury. Lightning shot from her body with her rage, slithering across the ground like venomous snakes!
That terrifying sight made even Brunnhilde think of Hela, the Goddess of Death, wielding Mjolnir.
"What do you think life is?!"
A Caiera consumed by wrath charged the Red King like a thunder beast!
Yet facing this furious, terrifying woman warrior, the Red King did not fear her at all. Calmly, he took out a remote control and gently pressed the button.
In an instant, a vicious neurotoxin spread through Caiera's body.
Snap!
"Ah!"
Caiera collapsed to the ground, convulsing in agony.
"Idiot. Don't tell me you forgot I still have this?" the Red King said coldly as he walked to her, then kicked her away.
Brunnhilde reacted fast and caught her.
"Lowly traitor." The Red King cast a pitying glance her way. "You betrayed your race, and now you've betrayed your master too!"
"Caiera, you're pathetic."
"The pathetic one is you," Brunnhilde shot back at once.
"Anmor A'shan, look outside. How many people are fighting you? Even your closest subordinate is standing against you now, and you're still stubbornly refusing to wake up!"
She laid Caiera down to the side, then raised the Dragonfang Sword, ready to fight Anmor A'shan.
To be honest, Odin's whole family was already more than enough to make her sick, but this Anmor A'shan was even worse.
"They're just ants under my feet," he said lightly.
"Even if everyone on this planet dies, new slaves will still come through the Sacred Gate, and I'll enslave them."
As he spoke, his face shifted into something like regret and sudden enlightenment. "Maybe I should've done this a long time ago. Trash like you needs to be cleaned out every so often, or it starts to stink."
He glanced at the aerial battlefield with pure disgust.
"It stinks to high heaven!"
"What a lunatic!" Brunnhilde cursed.
At that moment, the battlefield changed again.
In the distance.
A massive battleship drifted into view.
At the top of the ship, Loki, wearing a green robe and a golden horned crown, spread his arms and shouted:
"Sakaarans, welcome your savior!"
"That Asgardian? He's not dead?" The Red King also saw Loki, and shock flashed across his face.
On the battleship.
The resistance leader punched Loki hard in the face, annoyed. "You're not our savior!"
"That's right!"
All the resistance fighters raised their weapons and roared in unison, "We fight for the Son of Sakaar!"
"But the Son of Sakaar wants you to fight for yourselves," Loki said with a smile.
He grabbed an energy weapon, stomped one foot on the deck, and shouted:
"Whatever you think, I'm fighting for myself! Charge, brothers! Let that disgusting red ant know how well we hold grudges!"
The resistance leader immediately slammed him with the butt of a rifle. He was red-skinned too.
"I'M a red ant too!"
With that, tens of thousands of people lifted their weapons and prepared to fight.
As a resistance army, their weapons and gear were far better than the scavengers'. They had spent years collecting materials and making arms for this day!
With the resistance joining in, the scavengers, who had been at a disadvantage, instantly gained powerful support, driving the garrison back step by step.
But before Brunnhilde could feel any relief, the situation reversed again.
She felt the ground begin to tremble. The towering arena shook violently.
"What's happening?"
"The Manxie is here. Prepare to die!" the Red King laughed loudly.
The moment his words fell, in a corner of the capital, a gigantic machine drilled up through the surface and shot into the sky!
Countless house fragments were flung upward with it. The innocent red-skinned Sakaaran civilians were scattered through the air like worker ants being shaken loose.
They screamed, not knowing it was their own king who had shoved them into the abyss.
That machine called the Manxie was a monster robot, built entirely from enormous metal parts!
It stood dozens of meters tall. With a weight of tens of thousands of tons, wherever it pressed down, everything along its path was crushed into powder!
Brunnhilde stared, dumbstruck.
Now she finally understood why Caiera said activating the Manxie would leave civilians in the capital with no chance of survival.
A monster of that scale, even a single step could tear the surface apart.
And the Manxie was not just one.
Countless monsters rampaged. Their destructive weapons fired into the sky like fireworks.
The dense barrage instantly made it impossible for the scavengers and the resistance, with their pitiful aircraft, to get close.
The Red King looked mockingly at Brunnhilde and at Caiera, still sprawled on the ground.
"Go on, tell me. How are you going to win?"
At that moment, the entire capital became a hunting ground for beasts. The Manxies trampled through everything with their huge, merciless bodies, not caring which side the dead belonged to.
Not only that, they were armed with powerful weapons, bombarding the sky without restraint!
War was not a fight between one person or two people.
It was no longer even a simple fight of manpower.
Technology and weapons decided victory.
"And I control Sakaar's most advanced technology and weapons, along with an incomparably powerful army. What do you have to fight me with?"
Hearing that, Loki, in his green robe, leapt down from above and fired a shot at the Red King's head.
Before the beam could hit, an energy barrier stopped it.
Loki was not surprised. He was only greeting him. After dropping from the heights, he smiled slightly.
"We have the Four-Armed Overlord!"
Boom!
As soon as he spoke, a thunderous crash followed.
Luma charged the Manxie, the colossal machine many times larger than her body, like a crimson war chariot.
She threw a punch.
Like a falling meteor!
Boom!!
/-\
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