Chapter 240: Binary Form Matthew, Zombie Wanda
Facing the knife flying straight back at him, Matthew lightly raised a hand.
The runes etched across the blade's surface flickered, and the knife seemed to take on a mind of its own, curving sharply at the last instant before it could reach him, settling neatly into his palm.
He looked past it, toward Captain Marvel, rocketing up out of the ground right behind it, already turning over in his mind the fastest way to finish her off.
At the same time, Captain Marvel, freshly torn free of the earth, was already burning with rage.
She glared at the prey in front of her, too reckless to know when to quit, and gathered the Binary power surging inside her.
Blazing energy suddenly condensed around both fists, looking for all the world like a pair of miniature suns burning out of control.
"Raaagh!"
Alongside that snarl came the crack of the air itself tearing apart.
BOOM!!
A photon shockwave burst outward from both fists, rocketing straight at Matthew's head.
Anyone else on the receiving end of that would have had their head, and probably their entire upper body, vaporized outright by a beam that hot.
But facing the attack, Matthew stayed completely unbothered, not so much as flinching or dodging.
He simply opened a portal, right in the beam's path, neither too big nor too small.
Then.
Whoosh!
The exact same beam of energy dropped straight down out of the sky, slamming into the zombified Captain Marvel's own head.
Bathed in her own furious beam, her head began to slowly char under that same energy.
It was nothing more than giving her a taste of her own medicine.
Against a monster running purely on instinct like this, with a little thought, there was no shortage of ways to take her down.
Feeling the beam suddenly drop down on her from above, she tilted her head up to look, but her sluggish brain still hadn't caught on, and instead she only cranked up the output even further.
"RAAAGH!!!" She let out a roar, and the beam pouring from her fists thickened by another ten centimeters or so.
Time slipped by, second by second.
No one could say how long passed.
Matthew watched this zombified Captain Marvel, busy killing herself all on her own, and his mouth twitched.
This alone was enough to show just how severe the intelligence deficit in zombies really was.
If that intelligence problem wasn't solved, Umbrella's entire virus lineup would always be garbage.
He walked up to what was now nothing more than a charred corpse.
Feeling the Blacklight Virus stirring restlessly inside him, Matthew didn't let the opportunity go to waste.
Straight to it, while she was still warm.
He activated his evolution field on the spot and drained every last drop of essence out of her body.
After all, this was Captain Marvel.
Sure, her intelligence had taken a hit, but her raw ability was still top-tier.
If the zombification hadn't gutted her intelligence, Matthew probably would have had to go through a genuinely brutal brawl to take her down at all.
Absorbing her took even longer than absorbing Ego had.
About half an hour later, what was left of her bones on the ground finally crumbled into a pile of ash.
Looking down at the ashes, Matthew flexed his fist.
He could feel his own physical strength had taken another massive leap.
And that wasn't all.
As energy gathered inside him, his body began radiating the same blazing light Captain Marvel's had, from the inside out.
Binary form!
In this state, his strength and speed both jumped dramatically, to the point where he could even fly at light speed through the vacuum of space.
"Captain Marvel..." Matthew murmured under his breath. "Back in my own universe, I probably wouldn't get a nutritional supplement this good."
With that, Matthew closed his eyes.
He'd gotten more than just Binary form from her body. He'd also picked up an ability called Cosmic Awareness.
The ability didn't just let him sense danger in advance. It also let him track the movements of threats across the universe, and even see through an enemy's weaknesses.
It was probably this exact ability that had tipped Captain Marvel off to a cosmic-level disaster brewing on Earth, sending her racing there in the first place.
Too bad that the instant she'd arrived, one moment's carelessness let the Scarlet Witch break through her defenses, and she'd ended up like this.
As Cosmic Awareness spread outward across the entire universe, a flood of chaotic, overwhelming information poured into Matthew's mind all at once.
From his own perspective, he found himself standing in the middle of a boundless universe.
As the sense kept spreading outward, tiny red dots slowly began appearing across that pitch-black field of perception.
Those were the so-called danger events.
Some dots glowed faint, others deep and vivid, and a few even carried special coordinates pulled straight from Captain Marvel's own memories.
Take, for instance, one massive red dot that kept shifting position.
In her memory, that one was Ego.
Beyond that, there were heavy-hitters too, including Alioth and Galactus.
Of course, beyond these threats scattered across the universe, Matthew also spotted his own current location blinking red as well.
As his field of perception kept expanding, he gradually narrowed his focus down onto Earth.
"Is that... the Scarlet Witch?"
Under his sense of perception, Earth was dotted with red points of every size, all blinking steadily.
And among them, one point of red light glared brighter than all the rest.
That, presumably, was exactly who Matthew had come here to find.
Once he'd locked onto her position, he didn't hesitate for a second.
A single thought, and a portal snapped open instantly.
At the same moment, living flesh-armor spread across his arm in an instant.
Beneath the flesh-armor, his arm had already taken on a faint purple, crystalline texture, a byproduct of replicating the Power Stone.
Almost the instant the portal opened, Matthew thrust a clawed hand forward, faster than the speed of sound.
Meanwhile, in a hidden underground base somewhere.
The zombified Wanda was busy using Chaos Magic to strip away the lingering trace of energy the Ancient One's spell had left on her wound.
Compared to other zombies, whose minds had been wiped clean, zombie Wanda was in far better shape.
At first, she'd been just like the rest, her mind fully under the Quantum Zombie Virus's control, but over a long stretch of time, the Chaos Magic inside her had gradually clawed back a measure of lucidity.
Of course, that lucidity only amounted to a fraction of her original reason, and she was still a far cry from the real Wanda.
Take right now, for instance. All zombie Wanda wanted was to turn the entire world into a kingdom of the undead, not to spare humanity from harm.
Which showed clearly enough that her mind was still being interfered with by the virus.
And just as zombie Wanda was patiently working the Chaos Magic to mend her wound...
Behind her, a portal opened without a sound.
A large hand, covered in reddish-purple crystal, suddenly shot out and grabbed straight for her head!
Had that strike landed clean on the back of her skull, it would have shattered her already-fragile zombie skull outright, bursting it into a cloud of blood mist.
And right as Matthew was about to land the blow.
Zombie Wanda, eyes closed, seemed to sense something all at once. Chaos energy wrapped around her entire body in a flash, and she spun on reflex, throwing herself wildly to the side.
But the situation itself favored the attacker in the dark over the target caught in the open. Even with her instant defensive dodge and the Chaos energy blunting the blow, Matthew's grab still landed a brutal hit, clamping down hard on her jaw.
RRRIP!
Rotted flesh and bone tore away in his grip.
Looking at the flesh in his hand, Matthew raised an eyebrow.
Not one to waste anything, he wrapped the evolution field around it.
Before long, the flesh in his hand crumbled to dust.
Once that was done, Matthew stepped out of the portal.
On the other side, that sneak attack had left zombie Wanda looking even more gruesome than before.
Her already rotting, maggot-ridden face had lost its entire jaw, exposing her esophagus, throat, and upper palate, and even her tongue had been torn away along with it, leaving her unable to speak even if she wanted to.
Zombie Wanda watched Matthew warily, Chaos energy churning around her the whole time.
Her missing leg had already been patched back together, good as new. Though from the look of it, that patched leg had probably been torn off some other zombie.
Zombie Wanda watched Matthew step slowly out of the portal, a flicker of wariness crossing her still-lucid eyes.
She'd clearly already worked out that whoever this was meant her no good, and was seriously powerful.
Otherwise there was no way he could have torn her jaw clean off in a single exchange.
But... where had he come from?
Was there really someone like this on Earth?
Zombie Wanda had inherited her former self's memories, so she knew exactly who the powerhouses on Earth were.
So after turning it over, she figured this person probably hadn't come from Earth at all.
Another thing from off-world? Zombie Wanda murmured the thought to herself, though without much confidence.
After all, this person could use the exact kind of portal magic only sorcerers could use, so for the moment, she genuinely couldn't tell where Matthew had actually come from.
Just as zombie Wanda was busy wondering where Matthew had come from, quietly summoning the zombie horde in the underground base, Matthew suddenly moved.
He raised a hand slightly.
The next instant, an invisible torrent of gravity surged outward in every direction!
The horde converging on the base was slammed flat against the surrounding walls and ceiling the instant it met that gravity torrent, then burst apart entirely.
A steady crackle of small explosions rang out without pause, and zombie Wanda turned to look behind her.
In just a single exchange, the zombie horde she'd been quietly gathering to ambush Matthew with had been wiped out with a single raised hand.
At the same time.
RUMBLE!!
The underground base let out a series of groaning shudders, as if caught in the middle of an earthquake.
Right before zombie Wanda's stunned eyes!
In an instant, the entire underground base was wrenched bodily upward by an invisible force, rocketing into the sky!
And with a sudden clench of Matthew's fist!
An overwhelming, near-irresistible gravity field completely swallowed zombie Wanda!
Even with Chaos Magic soaking up most of the force, the crushing, invisible weight bearing down on her was still more than she could comfortably handle.
It reminded her, involuntarily, of facing that bald sorcerer.
Facing him, she'd felt like his tricks never ran out. He could do more with just a portal alone than most people managed with an entire arsenal of spells, let alone everything else he had.
If she hadn't been fighting on hostile turf, and if that bald sorcerer hadn't seemed to be holding something back, she probably would have gone down the moment she crossed the barrier between worlds.
And facing Matthew now, she felt the exact same thing: whoever this was, his methods were every bit as troublesome.
That invisible, intangible force made even basic defense a struggle, and a single moment's carelessness could get her caught off guard.
Watching zombie Wanda work her Chaos energy nonstop to offset the gravity crushing in on her, Matthew figured he might as well add a little more fuel to the fire.
He clapped both hands together in one sharp motion!
RUMBLE!!
The ground and buildings surrounding the underground base were instantly swept up by a massive pull, as if caught by a miniature black hole, drawn inward from every direction!
"Have a taste of my 'Earth-Shattering Starfall'..."
With that, Matthew vanished from inside the base in an instant.
By the time he blinked back into view, he was already hovering in midair outside the base, calmly watching the massive sphere, packed tight with rock and rubble, hidden within the clouds.
Under the constant external force Matthew kept applying, the enormous sphere kept compressing further.
In the blink of an eye, a sphere a full kilometer across had been compressed down to a hundred meters, and it kept shrinking further as time went on.
As far as he was concerned, the most troublesome thing about the Scarlet Witch was Chaos Magic's ability to rewrite reality outright.
But as long as he stayed at a distance Chaos Magic couldn't reach, she became a whole lot easier to fight.
As Matthew kept squeezing, the sphere's size finally settled at fifty meters.
Just as he was wondering whether zombie Wanda had actually been taken care of, the sphere hanging in the sky suddenly trembled.
A moment later, red light leaked out from within, then tore the whole thing apart in a single burst!
Through the smoke and dust, zombie Wanda came flying out from inside.
Their eyes met.
A flash of red light crossed zombie Wanda's eyes!
In the next instant, Matthew felt the world flicker, his entire body wrapped in a thick red mist, and the sound of zombie groans began rising up all around him.
"This scene... looks kind of familiar, doesn't it?" Matthew glanced around.
What he saw now was nearly identical to the scene when Wanda invaded Illuminati Universe 838 and snapped Professor X's neck outright.
The only difference was the added chorus of zombie shrieks all around him.
"Going for a psychic attack, huh."
"How convenient." Matthew let out a short laugh.
His molecular manipulation ability kicked in instantly, rewriting his skull into the exact same material as Magneto's helmet.
The instant the transformation finished, the red mist around him vanished at once.
The moment his vision cleared, Matthew realized zombie Wanda had already closed the distance, right in front of him.
Seeing that, Matthew held nothing back either. The gravity around him churned into chaos, while several rings of magical shielding lit up in front of him one after another, guarding against a sudden Chaos-energy sneak attack, the kind that had turned into that infamous scene of Black Bolt getting his body rewritten by Chaos Magic in Universe 838.
Once that was set, Matthew's focus sharpened, and several spikes of pure gravity shot straight for zombie Wanda's forehead.
At the same time, a throwing knife slipped quietly out of his palm, and under his control, drove straight down into the ground.
Just as Matthew had suspected, zombie Wanda really had been trying to use Chaos Magic to rewrite reality directly, to make his body horribly weak.
But the magical shields that had suddenly appeared blocked the incoming Chaos energy cold, right at the edge.
Sure, the shields could only hold for an instant, but that was enough to serve as a warning, letting Matthew pinpoint exactly where the attack had come from. This, in fact, was exactly why Matthew had wanted to learn magic in the first place.
A raw superpower attack might be simpler, blunter, easier to throw around.
But when you're up against magic, you need magic to counter it!
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