That was one enormous bastard.
Drex Valen rested his cheek against his hand, watching the fire demon's soul churn inside the Black Hole Dinsion like it was trying to tear its way free. The thing was so juicy the dinsion itself seed to stir, hungry enough to swallow it whole.
Not that he needed to force the issue. He did not have to absorb souls only while standing in the outside world. If he really wanted to, he could drag Earth straight into the Black Hole Dinsion and go to war with the Vishanti and their little celestial fan club. Then all those billions of souls would belong to him.
But that would be a waste of ti.
What, because he was already a dinsion lord, already a god of destruction and ruin, he was supposed to keep obsessing over the souls of one planet in one universe?
That was not how a real dinsion lord operated. A being like phisto road across multiple universes, opening branches, expanding business. That was the correct way to live as a dinsional overlord.
Of course, so dinsion lords preferred a more direct approach and went to war with other dinsions just to harvest souls.
The only reason Drex was still paying attention to this film universe and had not gone looking for a different one was simple.
He was waiting for Heaven's reaction.
Those winged freaks were probably going to notice soon enough that no souls were arriving in their dinsion. Once that happened, they would descend to Earth and investigate.
By then, the Ghost Riders Drex had created would not show them any rcy. Angel souls were as valuable as this fire demon's, maybe even more so.
Both were rare tonics.
And if he managed to follow the trail all the way to Heaven's location, Drex would not hesitate for even a second. He would ram the Black Hole Dinsion straight into it and start a war on the spot.
He knew Marvel's setup. The Jehovah of the Heaven Dinsion had vanished without a trace, and in most single-universe settings, Heaven had no master at all. Even if it did, Drex could handle it.
Just then, Johnny Blaze arrived on the scene too.
The two Ghost Riders locked eyes.
Johnny's gaze flicked to Barnes's chanical arm. Why the hell did that guy have such a cool piece of hardware?
Drex had kindly modified Barnes's arm into an Adamantium shell with a Vibranium core. Not even Thanos would be able to chop through it.
Well, the movie-universe Thanos, anyway.
"Yeah. There really are two Ghost Riders..." Nick Fury muttered.
He stared at the pair of flaming skulls glaring at each other, then at the giant fire demon and the swarm of monsters around it. For the first ti in a long while, he had the strange, ugly feeling that he no longer understood the world he lived in.
Aliens had already co out of the woodwork. Humanity had spent decades worshipping science, and now the universe was apparently telling him it had all been theology the entire ti.
The fire demon roared and whipped its flaming chain toward them.
This ti, Barnes finally managed to catch the chain with his chanical arm.
Johnny Blaze, who had only just arrived, drew his heavy pistol.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The gun had been boosted by hellfire, and its power was monstrous. Bloody holes burst open across the demon's body.
But the thing abandoned its chain without hesitation, charged forward, and kicked Johnny Blaze clean off his feet. Barnes dropped the chain too and went in with his chanical arm, trading blows with the demon head-on.
With hellfire reinforcing it, that arm could probably go toe-to-toe with an enraged Hulk. And Ghost Riders themselves possessed super strength, the kind that started at one hundred tons and only got uglier from there.
Then, suddenly, a streak of fire dropped vertically from the sky at terrifying speed.
A few seconds later, everyone outside the periter felt the ground shake with a deep thunderous rumble, like a brief earthquake had ripped through the earth. Then, in the center of the cordon, a massive cloud of smoke and dust surged upward.
Chunks of dirt, stone, and broken concrete exploded outward from the impact point, most of them landing within a hundred-ter radius and never even reaching the first line of the periter.
The strike had co from high altitude.
The U.S. Air Force had entered the chat, and from a position invisible to anyone on the ground, they had delivered a brutal air strike.
The giant fire demon was blown to pieces, half its body erased in an instant. The dense swarm of monsters was reduced to fragnts the mont the blast hit, scattered into the sky like torn scraps.
All that remained was a crater, ten ters deep.
Drex received the fire demon's soul. As for the other dinsion, it had either given up or decided to back off. No new monsters ca through after that.
Barnes, frowning, dug himself out of the collapsed concrete ruins. With hellfire burning around him, the concrete lted apart with almost insulting ease.
By then, Coulson and his team had already moved in, one group handling cleanup while the other tried to make contact with the newly appeared Ghost Rider.
Barnes did not bother with them. He simply got on his motorcycle and rode off.
Coulson and the others did not dare stop him by force. All they could do was morize every feature they could catch before he disappeared.
Fury was a little disappointed that he had failed to make contact with this new Ghost Rider, but there were more important matters.
"How is Tony Stark?" he asked.
That was the real question. The genius's life or death mattered far more than the rest of the ss.
"Not good," Coulson said, clearly excited despite himself. "Tony Stark is being rushed to ergency surgery right now. His armor split clean in half, and whatever was in his chest seems to have gone out. The doctors are working on him now!"
To make sure the genius survived, S.H.I.E.L.D. had even gone straight to the future Sorcerer Supre, Stephen Strange, and brought him in.
After all, he was the most authoritative surgical specialist available at the mont.
And so, in this universe, Tony Stark experienced a major shift in his fate.
The shards threatening his heart were removed with ease by Stephen Strange. Other doctors would not have had even a fifty percent chance.
But Stephen Strange had a ninety percent confidence rate.
Normally, he would still have refused. Anything short of a full guarantee could damage his reputation for surgical success.
Unfortunately, the patient was Tony Stark, and the people who ca knocking were from the governnt's CIA and FBI.
God only knew why those two all-powerful agencies had decided to show up for this.
There was no way around it. Strange had to do the job.
Fortunately, he succeeded. Otherwise, he might have ended up in prison.
anwhile, Barnes rode his motorcycle straight into the Black Hole Dinsion, cutting off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ability to track him.
"Nice work," Drex said.
Barnes gave a blank nod.
Then Drex dropped him off at a location he had already chosen.
The Steel Citadel.
Why there?
Because there was a terrorist base belonging to Chaos Land right there.
Chaos Land had originally been a mid-sized nation wedged between several major powers because of its geography.
Then, at so point, Russia had lost its mind and invaded the country.
That was how Chaos Land was born, a battlefield state shaped by endless war.
There was no single unified governnt left. The roads, however, connected everywhere. That made the place a perfect breeding ground for all kinds of underground factions.
It was basically a criminal city-state wearing a national flag.
There was no evil that could not appear openly in a place like that.
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