Absolute suppression. Unreasonable, leaving no room for recourse. This was not a contest of strength, but a deprivation of authority, a fundamental negation of the very mode of "existence."
Artoria's gaze shifted toward the "Zeus" system launch arrays aimed at her, which had just finished charging, as well as several automated defense turrets still in operation. Inside the command vehicle, General Ross watched her casually "freeze" Abomination. Boundless fear turned into a final, desperate frenzy as he roared, "Fire! Kill her! All units, fire!"
Thick plasma beams, lethal infrasound waves, and whistling missiles once again surged toward the pure white figure in the air.
Artoria's expression did not change in the slightest; she merely cast her gaze toward the direction from which the attacks were coming. This time, deep within the purely rational gold of her eyes, a faint glimmer—resembling "disappointment" and "confirmation"—seemed to flash.
"Definition: For all malice and derived attacks directed at this body, the path shall not exist."
Word of Order: Causality Severance.
There were no explosions, no flashes, no ripples of energy collision. The moment those massive attacks left their launchers, it was as if the "causal lines" related to their attack intent had been "erased" from the World. The plasma beams dissipated inexplicably in the air, the infrasound waves vanished without a trace, and the missiles drew chaotic trajectories in the air like headless flies before falling to the ground and becoming duds. In the same instant, the internal precision fire control and ignition modules of all weapon systems involved in the attack suffered a logical collapse, overloaded, burned out, and began emitting blue smoke.
Attacks neutralized, counterattack capabilities stripped away.
The entire battlefield fell into a silence deeper than before. There was only the wailing of the wind sweeping across the desert, and... the heavy footsteps of a green figure approaching from the distance, filled with pain and fury—Hulk had arrived.
Artoria naturally sensed it too. She tilted her head slightly, looking in the direction from which Hulk was running. The sense of "judgment" in her eyes faded slightly, replaced by a trace of an extremely complex sigh. She could "see" the struggle of Bruce Banner's soul, the pain of Hulk's existence, and the tragedy brought about by their twisted symbiosis.
Hulk landed with a boom, seeing the "frozen" Abomination, and then seeing the pure white figure in the air who made him instinctively feel close (the warm essence of power that had once soothed him), yet who was also incomparably majestic, making him feel his own insignificance. He was confused, letting out a low roar toward Artoria, filled with questions and lingering anger, but there was no intent to attack; it was more like he was asking a question.
Artoria shook her head gently at Hulk. A simple gesture, yet it seemed to carry a message of reassurance. Immediately, she refocused her attention on Abomination.
It was time to end this "error."
She slowly brought her hands together in front of her chest, making a motion similar to "cupping." As she moved, the serene force field around her began to converge toward her palms, the pale golden light growing brighter—not a gathering of energy, but a "purification" and "manifestation" of some higher concept.
"Error Sequence-753, Abomination. Basis of existence: Illegal life distortion, high-entropy chaotic will, persistent destruction of the Order Field."
"Ruling: Grant 'Existential Correction'."
"Execution: Overture of Finality - Zero Reconstruction."
She gently "unfolded" her clasped hands toward the "frozen" Abomination below.
There was no earth-shattering explosion. A soft, serene, pale golden halo that seemed to encompass and cleanse everything flowed down from her palms, like a gentle tide, completely engulfing Abomination.
Within the halo, Abomination's hideous body began to undergo strange changes. It was not dissolving, nor was it decomposing, but rather... "reverting." The grayish-yellow, rough bone armor seemed to turn back time, rapidly becoming smooth, shrinking, and fading in color, reverting into over-proliferated keratin and skin; the swollen, deformed muscles contracted as if deflating, and his size shrank drastically; the twisted face and protruding bone spurs retracted back into his body... Finally, the pale golden halo dissipated, leaving behind only an unconscious, naked Emil Blonski, covered in various signs of atrophy and strange scars, but with a physique no different from an ordinary person. All the parts within him that had been forcibly twisted, proliferated, and mutated by the serum and gamma energy had been forcibly "corrected" by that power of "Zero Reconstruction" back to a relatively primitive, low-activity, and nearly "initialized" state. Abomination had been "formatted" at the level of existence.
Artoria's complexion seemed to pale a little more, and the divine halo around her flickered slightly. Continually exerting high-dimensional "Definition" and "Ruling" consumed a more essential "Power of Existence" and spirit. Yet, she still stood steadily in the air.
She looked at Hulk. Hulk seemed to be stunned by the "Zero" scene just now, and perhaps having lost his clear target due to Abomination's disappearance, he stood there somewhat blankly. The anger in his eyes had faded significantly, replaced by a kind of exhaustion and... a faint sadness.
A wisp of extremely fine pale golden light flickered from Artoria's fingertip, sinking into the center of Hulk's forehead. Consolation of Finality—not healing, but using the aspect of "ending pain and leading to slumber" contained within the authority of "Finality" to temporarily soothe Hulk's violent consciousness, guiding it to transition into sleep (turning back into Banner).
Hulk let out a low whimper, his massive body swayed, the green in his eyes quickly faded, and his body began to shrink, turning back into the unconscious Bruce Banner.
After doing all this, Artoria slowly exhaled, feeling that the burden of maintaining the Herrscher of Finality form was approaching her current limit. She prepared to leave. Today's goal had been achieved: the disaster had been stopped, Abomination had been cleared, Hulk had been soothed, and a sufficient amount of "power" had been displayed to those who needed to see it.
However, just as her mind relaxed slightly and she prepared to communicate with Minerva to activate the return beacon—
"Don't move! You are surrounded! Disarm immediately and land on the ground to submit to an investigation! Otherwise, we will take necessary measures!" General Ross's hoarse, frantic voice rang out through the remaining loudspeaker equipment on the battlefield, carrying a sense of desperate bluster and angry embarrassment.
Outside the Base, dozens of soldiers who had just arrived, belonging to another rapid response unit, under the command of a colonel, were seen rushing out from behind the ruins with weapons raised. Muzzles, Rocket launchers, and even the autocannons on two armored vehicles were all aimed at Artoria, whose figure was swaying slightly in the air, appearing to show signs of fatigue! Ross was clearly unwilling to accept failure, and even more fearful of the accountability he would face after Artoria left. He wanted to seize this opportunity of the "mysterious existence" showing fatigue, even if it meant filling the gap with human lives, to keep her! To turn her into a "trophy" for him to escape blame or even turn the tables!
Tony and Coulson roared almost simultaneously: "Stop! General Ross! Are you crazy?!"
But that colonel was clearly taking orders directly from Ross, or had been promised great rewards. Facing the warnings from Iron Man and S.H.I.E.L.D., he only gritted his teeth and repeated: "Last warning! Disarm, land!"
Artoria (Herrscher of Finality) stopped her preparations to leave. She turned around slowly, her golden eyes, which reflected scenes of the end, looking calmly at the gun barrels aimed at her below, and further away in the direction of the command vehicle.
Fatigue? Perhaps. But in the face of such naked malice based on greed and fear, and in the face of this suicidal provocation, her response could only be a more thorough "demonstration."
"It seems the demonstration was not clear enough." Her voice once again rang directly in everyone's minds, ethereal as ever, but with an added touch of cold, vast, and ruthless meaning, like the starry sky, "You seem to have misunderstood the level of 'power,' and underestimated the tolerance of 'Order' toward 'transgression'."
She no longer spared any strength. She condensed the final and most fundamental trace of "Definition" authority of the Herrscher of Finality form at her fingertips. She raised her right index finger, and a pale golden point of light, brilliant to the extreme, as if compressing the birth and death of a miniature Universe, slowly lit up at her fingertip.
"Then, redefine—"
"With this body as the origin, within a radius of one thousand meters."
"All creations bearing malice, all machinery operating for attack,"
"At this instant, their meaning of existence—denied."
Authority of Finality - Existential Denial (Localized, Instantaneous, Targeted).
She tapped lightly toward the rapid response unit below and all the remaining military units further back that were still trying to lock onto her.
"Ding."
A crisp sound, so faint it was almost inaudible, yet it seemed to ring out in the depths of the soul.
The next second, a scene that everyone would never forget occurred.
The rifles, machine guns, and Rocket launchers tightly gripped in the soldiers' hands, the autocannons on the armored vehicles, and even the tactical vests, helmets, and walkie-talkies they wore... all "man-made weapons" and "war-related equipment" lost all "meaning as weapons" in an instant.
They were not damaged, not deformed, but their material seemed to have turned into something else—the rifles shattered and scattered like weathered, rotten wood; metal parts softened and dripped like butter exposed to heat; composite materials turned into flying ashes; electronic components became a handful of meaningless grit... The entire process was silent, faster than imaginable. The soldiers stood blankly in place, with only some rapidly dissipating dust or softened, unrecognizable viscous matter left in their hands. The armored vehicles collapsed with a boom like giant beasts whose skeletons had been removed, turning into a pile of incomprehensible waste, somewhere between metal, plastic, and dirt.
It was not just the weapons. All remaining turret remnants, radar antennas, and even parts of the communication and control systems inside the command vehicle within the Base that were still pointing at her experienced the same "deprivation of meaning" and "material transmutation" in the same instant.
This was not destruction; this was "negation." It negated the existential basis of these objects "as weapons/war tools," causing them to be unable to maintain their original forms under the current physical rules, instantly disintegrating into their most basic, harmless material states.
Absolute, conceptual-level crushing.
Silence. A silence even more deathly than before. The soldiers stood stunned in place, looking at their empty hands and the pile of incomprehensible "trash" at their feet, their faces filled with extreme fear and confusion. The colonel sat down on the ground with a thud, his crotch wet.
Inside the command vehicle, General Ross looked at the console in front of him, half of which had gone dark and was emitting blue smoke. He then looked at the screen at that pure white figure who was still floating in the air, though her complexion was even paler, as if she were sitting high above the clouds, judging everything. The last bit of his strength was drained, and he collapsed completely, his eyes filled with nothing but boundless despair and fear. He finally understood what kind of existence he had provoked.
Tony hovered in the air, his mouth slightly open under his faceplate, completely speechless. Jarvis was sounding alarms frantically, all analysis modules overloaded.
Coulson held onto the hatch of the quinjet, his fingers white from gripping it so hard, and muttered: "This... this is not power... this is... rules..."
Artoria (Herrscher of Finality) slowly lowered her finger, and the point of light at her fingertip had already extinguished. She took one last look at the chaos and silence below, her gaze sweeping over the direction of Tony and Coulson, and she nodded slightly before stopping no longer.
Space rippled silently again, and her figure, like ink blending into water, quickly faded and disappeared. Only the evening wind of the desert remained, whistling across a expanse of ruins that seemed to have experienced divine punishment, and a group of observers who looked as if their souls had left their bodies.
Tony was the first to react, slowly landing beside Banner. Looking at the two unconscious men (Blonski and Banner), and then toward the direction where Artoria had disappeared, he gave a wry smile and said to his communicator: "Pepper... I think our 'clean energy' project needs to be accelerated. Also, help me contact the best PR and legal teams; we need to prepare several... um, very, very rigorously worded statements and draft cooperation agreements. This World has really become too exciting."
In the distance, the quinjet began to land, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents moved quickly to control the scene and recover key personnel and items. But in everyone's hearts, the figure of that pure white deity was deeply imprinted, along with that irresistible, absolute greatness that defined order and denied existence.
The rules of the new era had already been carved with the first mark by the hand of the strongest.
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