Under Harvey's calm gaze, two minutes passed.
He watched with his own eyes as Hermione's face turned from white to black, then from black to a livid green.
Finally, her expression became completely erratic.
After using Legilimency to view the memories of a S.H.I.E.L.D. field agent, Hermione said through gritted teeth, "These people all deserve to die!"
"So, do you finally understand now why I kill without hesitation?" Harvey asked, staring at Hermione, who had just performed a masterclass in rapid facial expression changes.
"Although the people from Hydra indeed deserve to die, Steve is innocent. You have to let him go," Hermione said, not forgetting the main purpose of her trip.
Harvey considered that the experimental data samples he had acquired were sufficient; the test subject wasn't all that important to him anymore.
But this was a matter of pride. He couldn't just release the guy just because Hermione told him to, could he?
"Are you really going to fight me to the bitter end over a Muggle?"
"How much did S.H.I.E.L.D. pay you, or do you just want to teach me a lesson?"
Harvey spoke with a very tough tone, displaying an attitude of not yielding a single inch.
Hermione subconsciously tried to wave her wand, only to realize it had been confiscated by Harvey long ago.
Without her wand, she lacked a sense of security.
She no longer dared to question him loudly. Her tone softened, and she started to negotiate.
"If you just want someone to test potions on, why did you have to kidnap Steve?"
"I can help you find heavily sinful Muggles, but Steve is innocent. Can you please let him go?"
Harvey mulled it over. It seemed Hermione was dead set on saving the man today.
"Miss Know-It-All, don't tell me you made some sort of promise to those S.H.I.E.L.D. idiots, and now you're afraid of losing face, so you absolutely have to bring him back?"
Having her thoughts accurately guessed, Hermione's face darkened. "Even if you luckily guessed right, so what?"
"Do you think everyone breaks their promises as often as you do?"
"Oh?" Harvey clicked his tongue and said, "Miss Know-It-All, when you make a promise, do you never consider the consequences?"
"Then I have no choice but to teach you a lesson today, so you'll know how foolish it is to make promises so easily!"
With that, Harvey silently chanted 'Stupefy'.
A red beam shot out from the tip of his wand, accurately hitting Hermione, whose combat effectiveness had drastically dropped without her wand.
From the perspective of the S.H.I.E.L.D. special agents watching from below.
They could only see two highly dangerous individuals flying in the sky, pointing wands at each other in a standoff, and then suddenly vanishing from sight.
When they reappeared, one figure was falling from the sky.
The other, still hovering in the air as the victor, was the person S.H.I.E.L.D. least wanted to see.
"Arresto Momentum!"
Harvey cast a Slowing Charm on the falling figure. He only wanted to teach Hermione a lesson, not sit back and watch her splat into a meat pancake.
Immediately following that.
Harvey looked down at the agents hiding in the dark corners of the villa, holding their guns and glaring like tigers watching their prey.
"Thunderstorm!"
Waving his wand, Harvey cast a large-scale offensive spell maxed out with audio-visual special effects.
The pitch-black night sky suddenly lit up, followed by a succession of thunderbolts from the clear sky.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM..."
Bolts of lightning as thick as thumbs materialized out of thin air. As if locked on by radar, they chased down the surviving S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, striking them repeatedly.
"Ah... FUCK!"
The elite, fully armed agents were electrocuted by the lightning strikes falling from the sky, howling in pain. Even hiding inside the house or behind cover was useless.
The lightning serpents, radiating a scorching aura of death, always found some tricky crack to slither through and attack the agents.
Half the night sky was constantly flashing with white electrical light, looking like a short-circuiting lightbulb, flashing brightly.
When everything returned to silence.
Harvey could no longer sense any living beings below, and only then did he nod in satisfaction.
At this time, Natasha had evacuated to the edge of the battlefield with a few heavily wounded agents, hiding behind a rockery cover two hundred meters east of the villa.
As she witnessed her former field ops comrades being killed one by one by lightning from the sky, the screams on the comms channel ringing out in succession.
The situation was extremely chaotic.
With no time to grieve, Natasha calmly pressed her earpiece, switched to the rear command channel, and began calling for air support.
The Apache attack helicopters circling the airspace outside the villa received the order immediately.
As the radar locked onto the target with a series of "beep beep beeps," the helicopter pilots pressed the red missile launch buttons, firing ten AIM-92 Stinger short-range air-to-air missiles in rapid succession.
Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh!
The exhaust flames of the high-speed missiles tore through the night sky, leaving trails of brilliant white streaks as they flew straight towards Harvey.
"Hmph!"
Harvey sneered disdainfully, casting a Levitation Charm to forcefully seize control of the incoming missiles.
The ten missiles rushing towards him at high speed suddenly slammed on the brakes in mid-air.
Immediately after, the missiles rapidly turned around and flew towards the five Apache attack helicopters flying low at the edge of the battlefield airspace.
"Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!"
Without exception.
All five Apache attack helicopters were hit by the Stinger missiles they had just fired, bursting into five brilliant fireworks in the sky.
Watching the five burning Apache helicopters, trailing black smoke, plummet rapidly to the ground, accompanied by another series of explosive roars.
Harvey shifted his gaze, casting the Far-Sight Charm to magnify his vision twenty times.
Under the pitch-black night, he could still clearly see Natasha hiding behind a rockery on the outskirts of the villa.
"Still got a few little mice left?"
When Harvey's gaze turned towards her, Natasha, who was observing the battlefield through her night-vision binoculars, suddenly felt a chill in her heart and hurriedly said, "This is bad, we need to relocate..."
Before she could finish her sentence, a tangerine-red spell hit the rockery.
"Rumble..."
The terrifying power of the Blasting Curse forcefully blew the five-meter-tall rockery clean in two, and a massive amount of tumbling debris completely buried the area around it.
"Finally, some peace and quiet. But this isn't over yet."
The raging fire in Harvey's heart was far from quelled.
"These scumbags dared to bombard my house with rocket launchers. If I don't teach S.H.I.E.L.D. a lesson, the Black Egghead might actually think wizards are a bunch of cowardly, useless trash!"
Thinking of this, Harvey mobilized the magic within his body, using a curse he had learned from 'Secrets of the Darkest Art'.
Using a name as a medium, he planted a Blood Curse on Nick Fury, who was hundreds of kilometers away.
Every night of the full moon, Nick Fury would experience the curse's effects: his blood boiling, unbearable agonizing pain all over his body, and limbs convulsing.
"It worked!" When Harvey sensed that a third of the magic within his body was instantly depleted, he knew the curse had taken effect.
"This is the consequence of pissing off a wizard. Black Egghead, take your time and enjoy the torment of the curse!"
"Hehehe..."
Harvey had just revealed a sinister, triumphant smile when a roaring "rumble" suddenly echoed from above his head.
"Whoosh, whoosh!"
A gold-and-red Iron Man suit approached rapidly, bringing with it two high-speed Stark miniature missiles.