"My God! How can anyone possess an ability like that?"
"I've never seen anything like this before…"
"You'd need incredibly powerful abilities and an extraordinary mastery of the Law of Time to pull something like this off!"
Watching Karl alter the size of an object while remaining within the same space-time completely exceeded everything they understood.
They had heard before that something like this was theoretically possible, but none of them had ever witnessed it happen in reality.
Now that they were seeing it with their own eyes, they simply stood there, staring without even remembering to blink.
Even Eric O'Grady was dumbfounded.
His belt allowed him to travel freely between different dimensions.
But performing different dimensional transformations while remaining within the same dimension?
That was simply unbelievable!
"How is that possible?"
"That shouldn't work at all!"
"We're all on the same plane, occupying the same space-time. How can you perform a space-time transformation so openly without leaving it?"
"That should be impossible!"
What Karl had just done was even more astonishing than anything they had expected from him.
Every companion present was instantly stunned, unable to believe what they were seeing.
It wasn't merely shocking.
It seemed completely impossible.
Iron Man had countless technological tricks of his own, but after witnessing this, even he stopped thinking about comparing them to what Karl had just accomplished.
"My God…"
Other than expressing his amazement, Eric couldn't think of anything else to say.
Words suddenly felt completely inadequate.
There simply wasn't any language capable of describing how shocked he was.
The cage continued shrinking.
It contracted tighter and tighter around the starship.
As it shrank further, the tremendous pressure finally forced a narrow opening into the starship's hull.
The opening gradually grew wider.
The superheroes trapped inside immediately began climbing out one after another.
At last, the gap became large enough for all of them to escape!
"We're finally free!"
"Just let me see Tothwanwell again!"
The first thing they did after escaping was curse him relentlessly.
The Skrulls had truly gone to extraordinary lengths in their attempt to take Earth.
They had prepared far more than anyone could have anticipated.
Even now, the rescued superheroes could barely believe that they had finally regained their freedom.
Naturally, they weren't about to forget the person who had saved them.
"Look at you. You're all so happy you've forgotten everything else."
"At least take a look at the man who saved you!"
At Iron Man's reminder, Wonder Woman, who was standing near the front, immediately turned around and smiled at Karl.
Karl considered what he had done nothing more than a small favor.
What truly surprised him was how far the Skrulls had been willing to go.
Meanwhile, Tothwanwell knew that once the cage was lost and Karl led the others back into the base, their return was only a matter of time.
By now, he had nearly resigned himself to the situation.
"Divine One!"
"You can't let them shake your resolve!"
"We have to find a way to break out of this situation. Our plan cannot fail!"
"You can't let a few setbacks reduce you to this!"
Her words sounded reasonable enough.
But Tothwanwell understood that he had already reached the end of the road.
What powerful methods did he still have left?
"Enough."
"Look at our base!"
"It's already been destroyed to this extent. Even if I wanted to restore it, how much do you honestly think could be recovered?"
"Maybe this is simply fate telling me to stop forcing this plan any further."
"If we withdraw now, we can regroup and rebuild our strength."
Dotilt had her own motives.
Although their combat strength had suffered tremendous losses, recovery was still possible.
Besides, Dotilt had already become completely consumed by the fight.
"Divine One!"
"We've already prepared this much. How can we simply withdraw now?"
"If you have any concerns, I can deal with every one of them!"
"And forget everything else for a moment. Just think about Ultron."
"If he finds out that we're withdrawing now, he'll believe we used him."
"Explaining ourselves to him afterward will be far more difficult!"
Tothwanwell had already lost much of his desire to continue.
Hearing her argument, he merely gave a cold laugh.
"We were using each other from the beginning."
"If he thinks we're no longer useful, he can carry out the plan himself!"
"This entire operation was built on mutual exploitation from the very start."
"What I never expected was for them to reduce our base to this."
Tothwanwell stood there in his battered armor.
The sight before him left him completely disheartened.
Every one of his plans had fallen apart.
Everything he still had available to use had been firmly suppressed by the enemy.
How could he possibly remain calm?
"It's all Karl's fault!"
"If it weren't for him, we never would have been cornered this quickly!"
"He definitely has some kind of secret weapon, but I still feel that other people must be involved as well."
"That's what worries me."
"I'm afraid we've already become too deeply entangled with all of them. If that's true, escaping later won't be nearly as easy…"
He still had countless doubts and fears.
But after everything that had already happened, Tothwanwell couldn't accept allowing all their preparations to end in complete failure.
"You're worrying too much, Divine One!"
"Leave everything to me."
"As long as we repair the rear section of the base, we can keep the plan going."
"We still have the superheroes' DNA in our possession!"
Tothwanwell understood that if the superheroes realized what was happening—or managed to fully open the starship—then they would need to shift the base into a comprehensive defensive posture.
"Forget everything else for now."
"Leave part of our people behind to repair the base."
"Everyone else needs to prepare our defenses immediately. I'm worried that—"
Before Tothwanwell could finish speaking, Dotilt suddenly realized what he meant.
Of course!
Their enemies reacted extremely quickly.
They had already stolen the starship.
If they managed to crack its systems and then came back to strike against them, it was only a matter of time.
"If there's no other choice, then we'll have to deploy our ultimate weapon!"
The moment she said that, Tothwanwell sharply raised his eyes.
"No!"
"If we deploy our ultimate weapon now, attacking Earth later will only become more difficult."
"We have to proceed one step at a time."
Dotilt knew that they were already running out of room to retreat.
If they continued waiting, the situation would only become more dangerous.
How could Tothwanwell still fail to understand that?
"You know those superheroes are going to come back sooner or later!"
(End of Chapter)
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