The United States was nearly seven hours behind Afghanistan. When Ethan Blake left America, it had been around four in the afternoon, but in Afghanistan the sun had already climbed high into the morning sky.
It was just past nine o'clock.
In most places that might still count as early, but in Afghanistan's desert regions the heat was already brutal. Waves of dry air shimmered across the sand, and the sunlight poured down without mercy. Even at this hour, the temperature had already climbed toward forty degrees Celsius.
Ethan appeared in the middle of that heat in a silent flash of teleportation.
He had been to Afghanistan several times before during earlier missions while working with federal agencies. Because of that experience, he already had a mental reference point for the region. Teleportation required a clear destination in mind, and Afghanistan was a location he could reach without difficulty.
The moment he arrived, he looked around and frowned.
The desert stretched endlessly in all directions. Sand dunes rolled like waves under the blazing sun, and the horizon blurred beneath the rising heat. It was the kind of environment that drained patience almost immediately.
Fortunately, Ethan's body had already been enhanced by the Perfect T-Virus serum. Temperatures approaching forty degrees barely affected him physically. His endurance, metabolism, and internal regulation had all been pushed far beyond normal human limits.
Even so, extreme heat had a way of irritating anyone.
Ethan exhaled slowly and rubbed the back of his neck as he stared across the barren desert. The air shimmered, and the dry wind carried grains of sand that scraped softly across the ground.
Then he remembered something.
Thirty kilograms of Vibranium.
The thought immediately lifted his mood.
"Yeah… this is definitely worth the trip," Ethan muttered to himself.
Finding one hidden man in a desert the size of Afghanistan was normally impossible. Even the United States military and S.H.I.E.L.D. had spent nearly two months searching for Tony Stark without success.
Ethan himself only knew one fact: Stark had been captured somewhere in Afghanistan.
That was it.
He didn't know the exact region, the exact group responsible, or even whether Stark had already been moved somewhere else. Under normal circumstances that kind of search would be worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack.
But Ethan wasn't limited to normal methods.
He slowly opened his palm.
With a quiet thought, something materialized in his hand.
A small square box appeared out of thin air. The box looked old and worn, as if it had survived centuries of travel. Its corners were scratched and its metal edges slightly tarnished.
Ethan flipped the lid open.
Inside the box rested an antique compass.
The design looked like something from the sixteenth or seventeenth century, the kind of navigational instrument sailors might have carried during the age of exploration. However, the moment the lid opened, one detail became obvious.
The compass needle was spinning wildly.
It rotated again and again in chaotic circles, never settling on a direction. It didn't behave like a real compass at all.
Ethan wasn't surprised.
This object had been obtained through one of his summoning abilities.
Captain Jack's Compass.
Unlike an ordinary compass, it couldn't point north, south, east, or west. Instead, it pointed toward the thing a person desired most.
Ethan stared at the spinning needle for a moment before closing his eyes.
When he first summoned the compass, he had thought it would be useless in the Marvel universe. After all, it wasn't designed to track people or locations in a literal sense.
But during his time working for the FBI, Ethan had developed a useful habit—mental suggestion.
By focusing his thoughts and forming a clear internal intention, he could guide the compass toward a specific objective. Once he discovered that trick, the item became incredibly valuable for locating targets.
In other words, it was practically a tracking artifact.
Ethan inhaled slowly.
In his mind, he formed a single clear instruction.
Find Tony Stark.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes again.
The compass needle had stopped spinning.
Instead of whirling randomly, it now pointed steadily toward a single direction.
Ethan smiled.
"That'll do."
He closed the lid and returned the compass to his golden storage space. Once he knew the direction, the rest was simple.
Psychokinesis surged around him.
Invisible force lifted Ethan into the air, raising him dozens of meters above the desert floor. Sand shifted beneath him as the pressure wave from his power rippled outward.
Then the same force pushed forward.
Ethan shot through the air.
His speed increased rapidly as the telekinetic force continued accelerating him. The wind roared past his ears, and the desert blurred below.
A moment later—
"Boom!"
A sonic boom exploded behind him.
A white shockwave cloud burst outward as Ethan's speed surpassed the sound barrier.
Although that wasn't the maximum speed he could achieve, he didn't bother accelerating further. With five hundred tons of telekinetic force pushing him forward, his velocity stabilized around Mach 2.
That was more than enough.
He flew for nearly an hour.
During the flight, Ethan summoned the compass twice more just to confirm that he hadn't drifted off course. Each time the needle pointed in the same direction.
Eventually, something appeared on the horizon.
A settlement.
Ethan slowed slightly as the structures came into view. The camp consisted of crude buildings and reinforced huts surrounded by sandbags and improvised defenses. Weapons crates were stacked throughout the area, and vehicles sat parked near the edges of the camp.
It was clearly a militant outpost.
Ethan hovered in the air for a moment and expanded his perception.
Observation Haki spread outward like an invisible wave.
Within seconds he sensed the presence of people across the camp. Most of them moved around with restless energy, their emotional signals sharp and violent.
There were many of them.
One hundred forty-five distinct presences.
Among those, two stood out clearly from the others. They were located inside a small cave built into the hillside nearby. Both signatures were weaker and more focused, clearly different from the aggressive auras surrounding the rest of the camp.
Ethan immediately recognized the situation.
Tony Stark.
And the doctor who had been forced to keep him alive.
At this moment they were probably still working on the crude Mark I armor.
"No wonder the military and S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't find this place," Ethan murmured as he glanced around.
Technically, the camp had already crossed the border out of Afghanistan.
The location was remote, hidden among desert hills where few people would ever travel.
Ethan shrugged.
He wasn't particularly concerned about the details.
With a casual stride, he began walking straight toward the camp.
He didn't bother hiding.
Before he even reached the outer perimeter, a guard in a watch position spotted him.
The man immediately began shouting something in a language Ethan didn't understand. The words sounded harsh and aggressive, clearly a warning.
Ethan kept walking as if he hadn't heard anything.
The guard grew furious.
He raised the AK-style rifle in his hands and charged forward while shouting again.
"Savage as always," Ethan muttered. "Straight to shooting."
He didn't dodge.
The rifle roared as bullets sprayed toward him.
But twenty centimeters in front of Ethan's body, the bullets stopped.
Invisible telekinetic force caught every single round midair. The metal projectiles lost all momentum and clattered harmlessly onto the sand.
The guard froze.
His expression twisted into something like terror.
After a moment of shock, he hurriedly began replacing the rifle's magazine.
Unfortunately, Ethan had no intention of giving him another chance.
A silver Colt Python revolver appeared in Ethan's hand.
He raised the gun almost casually and pulled the trigger.
The .357 Magnum bullet traveled faster than the eye could follow.
A split second later it punched cleanly through the guard's forehead.
The man collapsed instantly.
Ethan blinked in surprise.
Then his expression shifted to excitement.
He wasn't happy simply because he had killed someone. What truly caught his attention was the progress bar deep within his consciousness.
The summoning progress had just increased by roughly one percent.
That meant something important.
For that single kill to produce such an increase, the guard must have carried at least ten human lives' worth of sins.
Ethan expanded his Observation Haki again and swept across the entire camp.
One hundred forty-five presences in total.
If he excluded Tony Stark and the doctor inside the cave, that left one hundred forty-three others.
Even if each of them produced slightly less energy than the guard he had just killed, the combined result would still be enormous.
Possibly enough for another summoning.
Ethan's eyes lit up.
Now he felt truly motivated.
Another Colt Python appeared in his other hand.
This one was completely black.
With a revolver in each hand—one white, one black—Ethan walked straight into the camp.
The moment he saw someone, he fired.
Every shot hit the same place.
The center of the forehead.
The outlaws inside the camp immediately reacted once they realized someone was attacking them. Weapons appeared everywhere as fighters rushed toward Ethan.
AK rifles.
M16s.
Submachine guns.
Some even carried rocket launchers.
Gunfire exploded across the camp, bullets streaking toward Ethan from every direction.
None of it mattered.
Every single attack stopped short against the invisible barrier of his telekinetic defense.
Ethan walked forward like a silent executioner.
One shot.
One body.
Another shot.
Another corpse.
He moved through the camp like a god of death descending from the underworld. Each trigger pull harvested another life, and with every death he collected the soul energy left behind by people stained with countless crimes.
It didn't take long.
Soon the entire camp fell silent.
Bodies lay scattered across the sand.
Ethan glanced inward at the progress indicator inside his consciousness.
157%.
He couldn't help smiling.
Coming to rescue Tony Stark had turned out to be an excellent decision.
Not only had he successfully squeezed thirty kilograms of Vibranium out of Nick Fury, he had also gathered enough soul energy to activate another summoning.
The speed of this energy collection was unbelievable.
Of course, Ethan understood that opportunities like this were rare. The people who kidnapped Tony Stark were hardened criminals willing to fight against the United States military itself.
Finding another group this extreme wouldn't be easy.
Still, priorities were priorities.
Compared with summoning, rescuing Tony Stark could obviously wait a little longer.
....
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