The assassination attempt shocked everyone.
Up until now, monsters had never operated like this.
They rampaged through cities, caused chaos, slaughtered civilians, and fought heroes head-on. Coordinated targeted strikes were sothing entirely different.
If Tony Stark hadn't maintained his own Iron Legion and spent the last several months studying Drex Valen's weapon designs, he genuinely might have died under the assault of those three Demon-level monsters.
Even now, thinking back on it left him drenched in cold sweat.
Afterward, Tony spent nearly an hour tearing into the Divine Sword Bureau over their response ti.
"If this had gone any worse," he snapped, "I'd have been dead before you idiots even cleared airspace."
Then sothing occurred to him.
"Where's Drex Valen? Why didn't he show up?"
Tony had actually wanted to show off the weapons he'd developed using Drex's tech as inspiration.
Nick Fury's expression darkened slightly.
"To be honest," he said, "he hasn't appeared in a very long ti."
Fury was starting to believe geniuses were humanity's most exhausting natural disaster.
Imperium.
Drex had just finished watching the footage of Tony's fight against the three Demon-level monsters.
He hadn't expected Tony to reverse-engineer the thermal fusion rifle and electromagnetic weapons so quickly.
Then again, pressure created innovation.
Without enemies breathing down his neck, Tony Stark tended to stagnate.
Now?
He was terrifying.
At this rate, when Thanos finally arrived, Tony might end up becoming one of Earth's primary heavy hitters.
Honestly, Drex had always felt Marvel's technology tree was strangely distorted.
The universe was full of absurdly powerful lifeforms capable of leveling planets with brute force...
Yet many of them seed surprisingly vulnerable to advanced weapons technology.
Take Thanos, for example.
An Eternal Titan with absurd durability. The kind of monster who could withstand direct blows from Mjolnir without flinching.
But what about gravitational collapse weapons?
High-frequency molecular blades?
Positron cannons?
Atomic disintegration artillery?
Most of those wouldn't an much to Drex himself anymore. At his current level, he suspected he could probably ignore even dinsional compression weapons like a two-dinsional foil attack.
But Thanos?
Drex seriously doubted the Titan could shrug off a direct hit from so of those systems.
Then again...
This was Marvel.
There was always the possibility Thanos would simply decide he could tank it and reality would sohow agree with him.
Drex shook his head in amusent.
"The Monster Association at least has so brains," he said. "Targeting Tony first was the right move. But why send three tank-type Demon-level monsters?"
He leaned back slightly.
"Send Withered Sprout and the fight ends instantly. Or at least deploy a speed-based monster like Cockroach. They picked the worst possible matchup."
Psykos' tactical decisions were questionable at best.
Still, Drex was mostly treating the entire situation like a live-action blockbuster at this point.
Once the superheroes finished dealing with the Monster Association, the Chitauri invasion would probably follow soon after.
Until then, watching the Divine Sword Bureau and the monsters outmaneuver each other was entertaining enough.
anwhile, elsewhere in the galaxy...
The Burning Legion had unofficially gone to war with the Kree Empire.
Not openly.
Not yet.
The Legion's primary goal was to abduct Kree scientists and force them into service.
Under normal circumstances, that wouldn't have been unusual. Countless factions were exploiting the chaos created by the war between the Kree and Skrull Empires.
Raiding supply lines.
Hijacking research transports.
Looting frontier worlds.
Most of those opportunists ended up annihilated.
Then the Kree encountered the Burning Legion.
And suddenly things stopped being normal.
Entire Kree strike fleets sent to suppress the Legion vanished.
The Burning Legion retaliated imdiately afterward, capturing wave after wave of Kree scientists.
The researchers had little choice except cooperation.
At first, many still believed the Kree Empire would eventually rescue them.
But as the conflict dragged on, they noticed sothing disturbing.
There were no reports of Kree victories.
Instead, every new battle ended the sa way.
The Burning Legion advancing.
The Kree retreating.
And because of those mounting losses, the Kree Empire's war against the Skrulls began collapsing across multiple fronts.
A colossal Kree warship adjusted its position in orbit.
Missile ports unfolded beneath the vessel in dense rows numbering well over a hundred launch systems. Heavy beam cannons extended from armored compartnts as energy levels surged toward maximum output.
Then the fleet opened fire.
A storm of missiles and plasma beams flooded the battlefield.
Around the capital ship, swarms of smaller attack craft surged forward like locusts, saturating the atmosphere with green energy fire.
Then sothing punched straight through the bombardnt.
A figure shot upward through the storm of explosions using nothing but raw physical force.
In the next instant, she tore through the Kree warship itself.
The sky turned blue.
Shockwaves erupted outward in expanding rings, battering the battlefield like world-ending hurricanes.
The capital ship's shields barely held.
The smaller vessels weren't nearly as fortunate.
Explosions blood across the sky like burning stars. Ship after ship ignited before crashing toward the planet below in flaming wreckage.
Esdeath landed lightly in midair before the massive warship.
With every step she took, the pressure radiating from her grew heavier.
Colder.
The fleet's monitoring systems transmitted her expression directly into the command deck.
Every Kree officer watching felt despair crawl up their spine.
A monster.
The Burning Legion had created an actual monster.
No matter what weapons they deployed, nothing worked.
Missiles.
Beam cannons.
Energy disruptors.
None of it could injure her.
And the truly horrifying part?
The Burning Legion possessed two more warriors on her level.
Above them all stood the Legion's master.
Drex Valen.
Dark storm clouds gathered overhead as violent energy radiation distorted the surrounding magnetic field. Space itself rippled under the pressure.
"General," one officer shouted, panic rising in his voice, "we're detecting an extre energy reaction..."
He never finished the sentence.
A chain of explosions ripped through the ship, throwing the entire command deck into chaos.
The shield barrier finally reached critical overload.
Then shattered.
Esdeath ripped apart the vessel's outer armor and plunged directly into the interior.
The result was catastrophic.
An exploding Kryptonian inside a warship was less a boarding action and more a natural disaster.
Detonations echoed endlessly through the ship's internal structure.
Firestorms spread from corridor to corridor as secondary explosions triggered uncontrollable chain reactions. Massive chunks of burning debris tore free from the hull and rained toward the planet below.
Black smoke engulfed the vessel.
The entire warship tilted sideways as it began falling out of orbit.
Even ergency isolation protocols couldn't stop her advance.
Violent energy collisions tore through the atmosphere itself, producing expanding shockwaves that shredded clouds apart.
The planet's atmosphere descended into chaos.
Thunderstorms erupted across the skies.
Hurricane-force winds swept across the surface.
Dark clouds swallowed the sunlight until the world resembled the onset of an apocalypse.
Then the storm split apart.
Observers watching the battle from a distance stood frozen in disbelief.
Just minutes earlier, everyone had assud the Burning Legion was dood once the Kree fleet arrived.
Now it was the Kree who looked hopeless.
By the end of the battle, Esdeath pursued the surviving ships into outer space and destroyed all eight warships personally.
The footage finally froze on a close-up of her face.
Cold eyes.
Sharp features.
An expression devoid of rcy.
The alien recording quality was absurdly clear.
You could practically count her eyelashes.
...
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