Dragon-Level monsters were a different kind of nightmare.
Tiger-Level creatures could shrug off most light fire. They were basically tanks with teeth.
Demon-Level monsters were worse. Human weapons alone usually couldn't stop them at all.
Afghanistan's Demon-Level Ice Cream Monster had already forced the strongest military power on Earth, the United States, into a humiliating retreat. Arica's elite Big Red One had been wiped out before S.W.O.R.D.'s heroes finally cleaned up the ss.
But a Dragon-Level monster?
Only Drex Valen had a confird record against one.
At the vampire stronghold, the last of the pureblood nobles were already dead, and Drex was helping himself to their accumulated wealth with the kind of calm, clinical efficiency that made looting look almost elegant.
Gold. Silver. Gemstones. Piles of cash in dollars and pounds. Artwork worth millions apiece.
Van Gogh paintings. The Venus de Milo. Chinese antiques. Even a bronze dragon head.
The treasure room was obscene.
It looked less like a vault and more like the hoard of a fairy-tale dragon, except the vampires had collected it through centuries of predation instead of fire and claws.
Drex ran a hand over a priceless artifact without worrying about fingerprints or dust. A biophysical field shielded him from contact, keeping his skin oils and stray debris away from the centuries-old objects.
"Vampires really do know how to live," he muttered.
The destruction caused by Demon King Piccolo didn't take long to be reported.
S.W.O.R.D. quickly ran the data through Drex's monster classification system and issued the verdict.
Dragon-Level.
That ant a serious disaster.
The governor was shocked. The National Guard was deployed imdiately.
Then the first wave of trouble hit before they even reached the battlefield.
Military trucks stalled. Fuel issues. chanical failures. Radio interference. One by one, the convoy started falling apart on the road.
The temporary commander stared at the dead radio in his hand, then lost his temper and shot it.
"Dragon-Level monster," he snapped. "You want us to go die?"
Everyone on the Guard knew the classification system by now.
Wolf-Level: call the police or the National Guard, and pray you have automatic rifles.
Tiger-Level: evacuate if you can, call the military, and maybe S.W.O.R.D. if you can reach them fast enough.
Demon-Level: run.
Dragon-Level: find the nearest nuclear shelter, or leave the country entirely.
Nobody in the National Guard was stupid enough to think they were ant to fight Piccolo head-on.
That was S.W.O.R.D.'s job.
And once the report reached headquarters, S.W.O.R.D. went into full response mode.
Tony Stark and Nick Fury were among the first to move.
"Where's Drex Valen?" Fury asked as they prepared to deploy.
Tony snorted.
"How the hell should I know? Besides, this doesn't necessarily need him. I'm an S-Class hero too, you know."
His tone had gotten sharper lately, but none of them were surprised. He understood Dragon-Level monsters better than most.
One of them had once killed him instantly.
The "bean sprout" monster had taken Tony apart in a single exchange, and he'd spent a lot of ti after that building counterasures.
This ti, he had them.
On the battlefield, Piccolo let out a savage laugh and spat a giant energy blast from his mouth.
"Hohoho! Humans, I am Demon King Piccolo. Die!"
The attack never even touched the ground.
It detonated in the air instead, erupting across several hundred ters and ripping through the landscape like a miniature catastrophe.
Pureblood guards scattered in panic.
"Move! Get down!"
"Damn it, that's not a normal attack!"
Piccolo clicked his tongue and clenched his fist.
"My body's old," he said in disgust. "And my power's only this much?"
He rembered exactly what had happened.
The Mafuba. The sealing. The long decay at the bottom of the sea inside a rusting electric rice cooker.
He'd been trapped too long.
His body had aged. His strength had withered.
Not enough to matter.
Not yet.
Piccolo bared his teeth in a cold grin and started wiping out the purebloods one wave of energy at a ti.
By the ti the last of them were dead, Drex had already taken the vampire wealth and was retreating with his spoils.
The action, when it finally reached S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, was impossible to miss.
Tony's Iron Legion responded in force.
Thousands of unmanned Iron Man suits launched into the air, all controlled by JARVIS and coordinated as one massive combat network.
On the battlefield, their precision was terrifying.
And that wasn't the only system Tony had prepared.
Veronica was active too, Banner's and Stark's orbital contingency platform, waiting to drop specialized support if needed. Anti-Hulk systems. Recovery modules. Satellite communication. Damage control. Containnt. A full battlefield ecosystem built to answer catastrophes.
Against vampires, it was overkill.
Their losses skyrocketed.
Drex watched the numbers climb and nodded once.
"Good."
Then he turned his attention back to the sky.
No one noticed him floating overhead.
He'd already manipulated the electromagnetic field around himself, making his body invisible to the eye and almost every scan in range. What had once been a dream of his had beco trivial.
Now he had to rember not to take that sort of thing for granted.
"Keep going," he murmured, almost to himself. "If you can survive Dragon-Level monsters, then maybe you won't fold the second Thanos shows up."
He stretched lazily in the air.
At his current level, Thanos himself would get crushed.
But the Infinity Stones were another matter entirely. Those things didn't follow the normal rules.
That was why Drex wanted these heroes tempered under real pressure.
Not to save Earth once.
To survive what ca after.
A heavy impact exploded across the battlefield.
Ben Grimm, the Thing, and the Hulk dropped from the sky like living teors, smashing into the ground and sending shockwaves rippling for kiloters.
Drex felt the tremor even from above.
The damage didn't matter. Nobody was paying the bill.
It was the perfect environnt to let them fight at full strength.
Piccolo felt their energy imdiately.
Two strong signatures.
He looked up and saw Ben Grimm and the Hulk closing fast.
The Hulk launched first, leaping high into the air and driving a fist down toward Piccolo's face.
Piccolo sneered and answered with a blast of raw energy from one hand, aiming to erase the green brute from existence.
The Hulk didn't react like the soft-bodied humans or martial artists Piccolo was used to.
He raised both hands and covered his face.
No dodge. No fear.
He ant to take the blast head-on.
Then a tal claw dropped from above, caught the Hulk, and yanked him out of the line of fire.
"Nice try," Tony called.
"Hulk ball!"
He whipped the claw around and hurled the Hulk back into the fight.
The Hulk didn't care who had thrown him.
He just roared and drove a fist straight forward.
Piccolo t him with his own fist.
BOOM.
The impact detonated the air around them.
The pressure wave cracked outward with the force of supersonic flight, slamming across both fighters and driving them apart for a mont before they landed again.
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