The blood-red carvings on the floor violently erupted with thick, black tendrils.
Mordo's flesh began to tear as his muscles ballooned, his human skeletal structure snapping and warping to accommodate the sudden, horrific influx of the Elder God's power.
The Staff of the Living Tribunal cracked down on the center, its magical energy corrupted with the chaos magic of Chthon.
"You dare… mock me…" Mordo's voice was no longer his own. "You stand in the presence of the True Order!"
Satoru pulled one out of his pocket to adjust the edge of his new black blindfold. His Six Eyes tracked the rapid structural collapse and reconstruction of Mordo's body. The man was burning his own life force.
"Yikes," Satoru muttered.
"Your looks were tolerable before, but now… sigh, I can't even describe it now."
Mordo slammed his corrupted staff into the tiles, causing a shockwave of chaos energy to tear through the lawn, vaporizing the grass and turning the soil to ash. The curse of the Unmaker expanded and threatened to rot everything within the Kamar-Taj compound.
The gold light of the Mind Stone flared in response, pushing back the dark mist that tried to creep toward his boots.
The golden light also washed through Satoru's entire body, removing him from the effects of the Unmaker spell.
"Wanda! Illyana!" Satoru called out over his shoulder, a maniacal smirk cut through his face as the power of his Cursed Energy flooded back into his veins, completely ignoring the decaying field. "Don't blink, okay? I'm going to show you how I handle the trash."
Mordo roared and swept a hand, manipulating the black tendrils to lunge forward like arms of an octopus.
Satoru didn't even drop his smirk. He crossed his index and middle fingers on his right hand, channeling both the traditional mystic arts of Earth and his own innate power simultaneously through the lens of the Mind Stone.
"Icy Tendrils of Ikthalon: Red! (Jutsushiki Hanten: Aka - Ikataru no Hyōketsu)."
Instead of a simple freezing spell, the crimson, high-pressure repelling force of Red fused into the conjured mystic ice.
Massive blocks of deep red crystal shot out from the ground, freezing the black tendrils instantly in their tracks. The repelling force within the ice expanded violently outward, causing the frozen tendrils to shatter into millions of harmless, frozen black shards.
Satoru didn't stop as he swept his hand horizontally across the air.
"Crystals of Cyndriarr! (Shindoriā no Kesshō)."
The shattered pieces of frozen chaos energy were instantly repurposed.
They transformed into a localized storm of razor-sharp, glowing geometric crystals that zipped through the air like a swarm of angry hornets.
The crystals shredded through Mordo's newly ballooned muscles, carving deep lines into his corrupted form and forcing the monstrous avatar back onto his knees with a wet grunt of agony.
Mordo desperately swung his cracked staff, attempting to read Satoru's position through the blinding golden and red light, but Satoru was already ten steps ahead. He brought his hands together in a complex hand sign, his Six Eyes flaring beneath the black silk.
"Images of Ikkon! (Ikon no Genzo)."
In a flash, the courtyard was filled with dozens of Satoru Gojos.
They stood on the rubbled walls, floated in the air, and casually leaned against the remaining pillars, all wearing the same mocking, cocky grin.
Every single image radiated the exact same physical and spatial presence, completely blinding Mordo's senses and overloading his ability to track the real one.
"Alright, plum face," all the images said in perfect, unified synchronization, their voices echoing from every direction at once. "Let's see you guess which one is about to put you out of your misery."
Mordo swung his cracked staff wildly, sending erratic waves of dark crimson energy tearing through the clones. He smashed through three, then four, but they simply vanished like mist, only for the remaining copies to keep grinning at him.
"Behind you," a voice whispered right into his ear.
Before Mordo could even turn his massive, warped neck, the real Satoru drove a heavy, physical fist directly into his jaw.
CRACK!
The monstrous avatar was lifted off his feet, but Satoru didn't let him fly away. He grabbed Mordo by his mutated shoulder and dragged him back down, delivering a brutal knee straight into his sternum.
Mordo let out an agonizing gasp.
The flesh on his chest tore open from the sheer kinetic impact, but almost instantly, black fibers of Chthon's magic began to knit the skin back together. The laceration closed in a blink, his muscles swelling up again to absorb the trauma.
Satoru's Six Eyes tracked the regeneration through his blindfold, and his smirk widened into something genuinely terrifying. "Oh? You can heal that fast? Perfect."
Satoru let loose a relentless barrage of punches. He didn't use Blue to pull or Red to blast; he used pure physical speed and martial prowess.
Multiple Satoru's fists became a blur of white and flesh tones, hammering into Mordo's face, ribs, and shoulders with the speed of a piston.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Every single strike broke bone and tore skin. Mordo's monstrous face was quickly deformed into a bloody mess, his black teeth flying onto the ash-covered grass. Yet, the moment Satoru's fist left his flesh, the dark entity inside Mordo violently forced the tissue to regenerate.
The damage was being erased just as fast as Satoru was inflicting it.
Mordo tried his hardest to defend himself and counter attack, but he couldn't find a window and was too slow to react. He tried to raise his staff to cast a point-blank spell, but Satoru simply slapped the weapon out of his hand, pivoting on his heel to drive a spinning back-kick directly into Mordo's gut.
The blow sent the massive sorcerer crashing through a stone bench.
"Stand up," Satoru chirped, walking toward him casually while popping his neck.
He didn't mind the regeneration at all. In fact, he was loving it.
Usually, opponents died too quickly, but this monstrous form meant he could treat Mordo like a permanent punching bag until he was completely satisfied. "Don't tell me you're tired already. We're just getting started."
"Why you…!!"
Mordo scrambled up on all fours, his black eyes wide with a mix of fury and growing horror.
He dashed at Satoru head on, intending to take the initiative and turn the battle around into his favor by forcing Satoru to defend.
Satoru side-stepped the blast effortlessly. This time, he decided to turn up the heat.
He relaxed his posture, his focus narrowing down to the exact millionth of a second as he used the Mind Stone to amplify his Six Eyes.
Then, he threw a punch.
Within 0.000001 seconds of his physical impact, his cursed energy flashed.
Black lightning violently sparked around his right fist.
"Black Flash! (Kokusen)"
BOOM!
The sound was like a thunderclap ripping through the courtyard.
The spatial distortion of Black Flash slammed into the side of Mordo's torso, completely vaporizing the flesh and shattering the ribs on his left side. The sheer power of the blow sent the shockwave through and behind Mordo.
Before Mordo's regeneration could even begin to pick up and knit the damage back together; Satoru was already moving, entering his exposed front while cocking a fist on the ready.
"Black Flash! x2 (Kokusen)"
He drove a left hook directly into Mordo's jaw. The black lightning erupted again, snapping Mordo's head upwards and shattering the lower half of his skull.
"Black Flash! x3 (Kokusen)"
An upward strike caught Mordo in the stomach, lifting his massive mutating body into the air as the black sparks tore through through Chthon's magic like paper.
"Black Flash! x4 (Kokusen)"
Satoru spun mid-air, bringing his heel down onto Mordo's chest in a final, brutal axe kick. The black lightning exploded outward, blasting Mordo straight down into the stone tiles, creating a deep, smoking crater.
The dark magic of the Darkhold scrambled frantically, pouring an immense amount of vile energy into Mordo's broken body to force it to knit back together. The shattered bones snapped back, and the missing flesh rapidly reformed, but Mordo lay in the center of the crater, gasping for air, completely terrified.
Satoru landed lightly on the edge of the pit, his hands sliding smoothly back into his jacket pockets
The gold light of the Mind Stone on his forehead pulsed gently, perfectly regulating his mind while he stared down at the trembling avatar.
"Wow, you're really sturdy," Satoru laughed. "Ready for the finale?"
Mordo picked himself up from the dirt, trembling as he spat a thick mouthful of black blood onto the shattered stone of the crater.
He didn't respond to Satoru.
Knowing he couldn't beat the teenager in a physical contest, he pooled every ounce of the remaining dark lifecycle and Chthonic chaos energy circulating in his body.
A massive, volatile sphere of pitch-black and crimson chaos magic rapidly expanded between his outstretched palms, threatening to take the entire compound down with it.
"RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Seeing the catastrophic build-up of energy, all the lingering images of Satoru in the courtyard blurred and converged back into a single body.
Satoru stood at the edge of the pit, casually pulling his right hand out of his pocket to prepare his own signature countermeasure.
A few yards away, the Ancient One felt the binding chains of the Elder God of Chthon dissolve as Mordo completely redirected his concentration toward Satoru.
Breaking free and instantly recognizing the sheer scale of the blasts that's about to erupt, she didn't waste a second and reacted.
She raised her hands, weaving a wide, shimmering orange gateway beneath the battered Avengers, Wanda, and Illyana.
"Everyone, drop!" she commanded.
Before Tony, Steve, or the girls could protest, the massive spatial rift opened up directly beneath them. The portal swallowed the entire rescue squad whole, retreating them safely away from the material world and dumping them into safety of the Mirror Dimension including herself.
Mordo screamed, a sound of pure madness as he thrust his hands forward, unleashing the massive sphere of chaos magic. The sky above Kamar-Taj split open with red lightning as the apocalyptic wave of dark energy surged toward the rim of the crater.
"Hmm," Satoru floated into the sky while still staring down at Mordo and his spell. "I was thinking of another kind of finale... This is too cliché, no? Oh well…"
He raised his left hand, crossing his fingers into a mudra while the Mind Stone on his forehead shone brighter than ever before.
Behind the blindfold artifact, his forehead flashed with the mark of Dormammu, Satoru was evidently using the Dark Dimension's energy to fuel whatever spell he was going to conjure.
"Maximum Output: Imperial Purple! (Kyokuban: Teiō no Murasaki)."
The space in front of Satoru collapsed completely.
A massive, towering sphere of deep, majestic purple energy erupted violently from his hand.
Then… he fired it.
...
[ Author's Notes ]: I hear you, and I'm here to deliver!
I promised that if readers ever called me out on things that I failed to take notice of, I'll provide a remedy.
You were absolutely right about it being dragged out, so I'm dropping this chapter early as a remedy.
Don't worry — this won't affect the regular schedule or promised bonus chapter milestones. I'll just be working extra hard to drop two chapters for Patreon tonight.
Well... That's a problem for future me to handle.
Stone me?
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[ PowerStone Goal (Thursday Release)]: 600 PowerStones (Valid Until the end of Wednesday, Extra Chapter + Scheduled Chapter = 2 Chapters Posted on Thursday.)
[ PowerStone Goal (Saturday Release)]: 1,200 PowerStones (Valid Until Friday, Extra Chapter + Scheduled Chapter = 2 Chapters Posted on Saturday.)