Tony Stark and Thor were hovering at the very rear of the defensive line. They desperately wanted to save the soldiers below, but faced with the overwhelming, reflected barrage of their own military's firepower, they were completely powerless.
The Iron Man armor's repulsor blasts fired repeatedly, and Mjolnir flickered with blinding electric light as Thor spun it like a shield. However, under such a dense, supersonic net of fire, the two heroes' defensive efforts were like an ant trying to shake a giant tree.
Very few bullets were successfully blocked.
The triple-layered defense system set up in front of the Capitol Building... was entirely incinerated by a single, casual shockwave from Meliodas.
Over eighty percent of the ground defense force was killed or critically injured in an instant, and various wails of sheer agony echoed across the burning battlefield.
"Are you absolutely sure we want to fight this guy?" Tony asked, his voice trembling slightly over the comms.
"We have no choice, Stark!" Thor bellowed, his grip on Mjolnir tightening.
They looked up at Meliodas in mid-air. His entire body was radiating thick, suffocating Demonic Energy. He was a world apart from the cheerful, easygoing boy Thor had known in New Mexico. The previous Meliodas had a face full of innocence. But now, a wicked, emotionless smile curled at the corners of his mouth. He was exuding an apocalyptic, terrifying aura with every passing second.
Tony Stark took the first step, his Iron Man armor's thrusters firing at maximum capacity as he charged fearlessly into the sky. Thor weighed Mjolnir in his hand and followed closely behind, lightning trailing in his wake.
"Meliodas!" Tony yelled through his external speakers. "Wake up already! Snap out of it! Look at what you've done!"
The standard routine before any superhero battle always required a few words of banter or desperate persuasion. Facing Tony's questioning, the dark Demonic Energy swirling in Meliodas's eyes only grew stronger.
"What have I done?" Meliodas asked, tilting his head with chilling innocence. "I've only destroyed a few cities."
"Only a few cities?!" Tony roared, the tone coming from the Iron Man armor becoming increasingly furious. "Do you have any idea how many innocent people you've slaughtered?!"
"Tch."
Although Tony knew Meliodas was being controlled by Nazarick's magic, leading to these horrific consequences... even so, his human heart was still filled with uncontrollable, righteous indignation.
"You talk too much," Meliodas said flatly.
The Demon Sword [Lostvayne] swung in a blinding arc. A massive crescent of sword-light, infused with absolute, pitch-black Demonic Energy, flew out.
Meliodas's strike was too fast, too decisive. Before Tony's advanced targeting systems could even register the threat, let alone react, the demonic sword-light had already struck the armor.
SQUELCH.
Blood sprayed violently through the air. A massive, jagged gash was carved cleanly across the titanium-gold chest plate of the Mark VII armor. Through the sparking opening, one could clearly see crimson blood spurting from Tony Stark's chest.
In the time it took to say a single sentence, the Iron Man armor completely lost its combat capability, its thrusters dying as Tony plummeted powerlessly toward the burning ground.
"You...!"
Standing just behind Tony's flight path, Thor saw the Iron Man armor fall. Only then did the God of Thunder truly realize that the battle had already begun, and there would be no holding back!
Thor's body dove downward, desperately wanting to catch Tony's falling armor.
Meliodas, however, did not give him that chance.
His small body dashed forward instantly, breaking the sound barrier, as he swung the Demon Sword directly at Thor's neck. Thor was forced to stop his rescue movement in mid-air, bringing Mjolnir up in front of him to block the lethal blow.
CLANG!
"What are you looking at?" Meliodas mocked, his dead eyes locking onto Thor. "Focus. Entertain me, 'God'."
The Demon Sword and Mjolnir collided repeatedly in the air, a flurry of high-speed strikes. Blinding sparks flew with every single hit. As Meliodas fought, he closed the distance on Thor with a wicked, predatory smile.
The two exchanged blows continuously in the sky, but it was painfully clear that Meliodas held an overwhelming advantage in raw physical strength.
'It can't go on like this,' Thor thought, his arms vibrating painfully with every parry. 'In terms of pure strength... I am simply not his match.'
The red cape behind Thor fluttered wildly in the wind. He retreated two steps through the air and gripped the leather-wrapped handle of his hammer tightly with both hands. His tactical mind raced, thinking about how exactly he could deal meaningful damage to this demonic entity.
"What's wrong?" Meliodas taunted. "Is this all the God of Thunder has got?"
Thor's eyes shifted, revealing a sudden, tactical smile. He swung his hammer and charged once more.
The exact moment the flat of the hammer and the edge of the Demon Sword met, a massive surge of divine lightning erupted from Mjolnir. It traveled directly along the blade of Lostvayne, straight toward Meliodas's hands.
Seeing the stun take effect, Thor immediately retreated, raising Mjolnir high above his head. The sky cooperated perfectly, dark storm clouds rolling in instantly and letting out a deafening, low rumble.
A massive, apocalyptic bolt of blue lightning struck straight down from the heavens.
Meliodas, who had just been momentarily stiffened by the conducted electricity, regained his senses only to find the giant lightning bolt already upon him.
"This is my tactic!" Thor roared.
The moment Meliodas was blasted by the heavenly lightning, Mjolnir in Thor's hand also began to release thick, jagged bolts of continuous electricity. The two currents of divine lightning merged and converged directly onto Meliodas's body. A brilliant, blinding ball of blue light illuminated the entire sky over Washington D.C.
"You really think..." a voice echoed from the center of the storm, entirely devoid of pain. "...that this is enough to defeat me?"
Meliodas, completely engulfed in divine lightning, still spoke with a voice full of terrifying vigor.
The pitch-black Demonic Energy—**Hellblaze**—on his body suddenly surged outward like a tidal wave. With a single, dismissive wave of Meliodas's hand... the divine lightning in the air was instantly eroded, swallowed by the absolute darkness, and vanished without a trace.
"Impossible!" Thor gasped, his heart racing as the words escaped his mouth. He looked at Meliodas's completely unharmed figure, his demonic mark glowing brighter than ever.
"Nothing is impossible," Meliodas whispered. "You are simply too weak."
Meliodas's figure flickered instantly, bypassing Thor's perception entirely to appear directly beside him.
Thor panicked, hurriedly raising Mjolnir, desperately wanting to release a burst of lightning to push the demon back.
However, a small, bare palm clamped down firmly onto the square head of the divine hammer, making it impossible for Thor to move it even an inch.
Thor's pupils constricted, while Meliodas's smile became increasingly wild and unhinged.
As Meliodas's fingers exerted more and more impossible pressure, jagged spider-web cracks began to surface on the indestructible Uru metal of the hammer's head.
CRACK.
With a crisp, horrifying snap that echoed across the battlefield, Thor's heart shattered right along with Mjolnir.
'No...'
Thor raised his trembling hand to his eyes. But in his hand, only a jagged, empty leather handle remained. The fragments of the legendary Mjolnir had been effortlessly crushed into dust by Meliodas's bare hands, falling uselessly toward the earth.
'This isn't real,' Thor's mind screamed, his entire reality crumbling. 'This has to be a hallucination.'
Thor was trembling, his gaze shifting constantly between the useless handle in his hand and the divine shards raining down to the ground.
But before his emotions could even begin to process the loss, a sharp, agonizing pain shot through his chest.
"Trash," Meliodas spat.
Meliodas smoothly swung his arm backward, effortlessly pulling the blade of the Demon Sword out from where it had just pierced directly through Thor's chest. He flicked his wrist, casually shaking the Asgardian blood from the dark metal.
Looking at Thor, who was coughing up blood but still possessed just enough fading strength to stay afloat in the air... Meliodas raised the Demon Sword once more to deliver the final, decapitating blow.
FWOOSH!
But just then, a brilliant, five-colored light violently illuminated the sky.
A massive beam of the Bifrost Bridge slammed down from the cosmos, entirely enveloping Thor's bleeding body and whisking him away into the stars in an instant. Only an intricate, scorched runic mark left on the asphalt below proved that the Bifrost had just been there.
"Rescued?" Meliodas tilted his head, lowering his sword. "Whatever. You weren't my primary target anyway."
Meliodas looked up at the sky, his demonic eyes piercing through the fading rainbow light. Far away, on a golden throne in a distant realm, an old man with one eye, clad in full golden armor, seemed to be looking back at him with profound, ancient sorrow.
After pausing for a moment, Meliodas withdrew his gaze. He didn't care about the old man.
Instead, he looked down toward the massive, green beast on the ground that was currently roaring at him with earth-shattering fury.
Earlier, while Meliodas and Thor were clashing in the sky... when the heavily damaged Iron Man armor fell from the clouds, it was Dr. Bruce Banner who had leaped from the Quinjet, allowing his heart rate to spike and transforming into the Hulk mid-air.
He had caught the falling Tony Stark perfectly, saving the billionaire's life and cushioning the impact against the pavement.
However, after transforming, Banner could no longer control his own body. After his fading consciousness managed to coax the Hulk into putting a bleeding, unconscious Tony down in a safe place behind some rubble... Banner's mind fell into a deep slumber, handing over full, uninhibited control of the body to the Green Goliath.
The brutal battle between Meliodas and Thor high above had made the Hulk incredibly anxious as he watched. He wanted to smash the little blonde boy. But since he couldn't fly, he could only stomp the ground and keep jumping up like an angry, frustrated gorilla, repeatedly failing to reach the aerial combatants.
By the time the sky battle ended, Mjolnir was destroyed, and Thor was whisked away... Hulk's heart was already bursting with a localized, apocalyptic level of pure gamma rage.
The exact moment Meliodas touched down, landing lightly on the cracked asphalt...
"HULK SMASH!!"
The Hulk let out a deafening, terrifying roar that shattered the remaining glass in the Capitol Building. At the same time, he charged forward like a runaway freight train, raising his massive, green fists to completely obliterate the demon.
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