Let’s Begin

Tony, wearing his latest armor, was fighting the Chitauri above New York. Although his armor was extremely powerful, he could barely hold on against the endless stream of Chitauri pouring from the portal, especially with those half-mechanized armored Golden Dragonfish in the mix.

Those Golden Dragonfish were not only large combat units, but troop carriers as well. As soon as they appeared, Chitauri infantry hidden beneath their side armor sprang out and began slaughtering panicked civilians.

Iron Man truly could not handle everything at once, but fortunately, reinforcements had arrived. Hawkeye piloted a plane carrying several heroes into battle. Working with Iron Man, they used the aircraft’s cannons to destroy large numbers of Chitauri flyers.

But they were getting way ahead of themselves. The portal was still open, and they had not even cleared out the regular mobs and elite mobs before flying straight to Stark Tower’s rooftop to challenge the boss.

Still, Loki finally got to show off properly this time. With the bamboo pole in his hand—ah, no, his scepter—he jabbed the Quinjet out of the sky in one blow.

Unfortunately, his moment of glory did not last. Thor descended from the heavens, saw that his little brother was still stubbornly obsessed with that thing beyond the door, and immediately flew into a rage, starting some brotherly domestic violence on the spot.

Naturally, Loki would not surrender without a fight, so he rose up and resisted. Unfortunately, when it came to combat ability, he was still far below his older brother, who had spent years fighting outside.

But while his stamina could not compare, his brain worked quickly. He pretended to be shocked by what he had done and seemed willing to repent. Yet the moment Thor affectionately wrapped an arm around him, he immediately stabbed him…

Ow, my damn kidney! Loki landed a critical kidney strike, sending Thor into an instant fury. He grabbed Loki and gave him a savage beating. Damn it! Did he not know that a man’s kidneys were the most important thing? If he ruined Thor’s precious kidney, did Loki think he would ever have a good life again?

Loki saw that he had stabbed the wrong place and knew he had messed up. He rolled across the ground, leapt off the building, boarded a Chitauri flyer, and took off on his own. Thor, with his injured kidney, was left above to grieve alone.

Bang! The hatch of that crashed Quinjet was kicked clean off. This was seriously unscientific. By all rights, even a car flipping over in the United States should explode, so why had this plane not exploded after crashing? Truly baffling.

"This was so boring." Sif, the cute greatsword girl, was the first to step out of the plane, looking thoroughly unsatisfied.

"What?" The others emerged one after another. Carter did not understand what Sif meant, so she asked.

"I mean, this crash wasn’t exciting at all." Sif curled her lip. "Back home, whenever I got drunk and raced boats with those idiots, every crash was more thrilling than this."

"Remind me next time." Natasha, who came out last, said, "Whenever you’re driving any kind of vehicle, I definitely won’t be riding with you."

"Tch. Someone who doesn’t understand fun." Sif silently rolled her eyes. The Asgard boat-racing crowd believed that if they died while racing boats, their ashes should be scattered into the sea. Even in death, they would keep riding the waves!

"Evenson should have arrived long ago. Why haven’t we seen him?" Captain America said after observing the area for a while. Teleporting with magic had to be faster than flying, so why was there no sign of him fighting? Had he gotten stuck somewhere?

"He should be preparing a spell. His fighting style is different from ours." Seeing the Chitauri gradually surrounding them, Carter took up a combat stance. "But we’re about the same. Ha!"

Before she could finish speaking, the Chitauri had already prepared to fire. Carter used Fel Rush and charged out, slicing the enemies along her path cleanly in half at the waist.

She was so fast that the Chitauri had only just managed to turn their heads when they saw Carter behind them perform a clean backflip and hover in midair.

With a whoosh, enormous demonic wings spread from her back. Curved horns grew from Carter’s head, her skin turned black, and several of the demonic markings on her body lit up with Fel light.

Her eyes, burning with demonic fire, were especially bright. Fel beams shot forth from them, and every Chitauri swept by those beams was instantly burned to ash by Fel flames.

"Now, it’s time for us to fight." Still in her demon form, Carter announced to the group in an ethereal voice.

It was the first time the others had seen Carter’s demon form. Shocked, they could only nod blankly while simultaneously casting looks of deep sympathy toward Captain America.

Captain America wore a miserable expression as he cursed inwardly. Damn Evenson, you’ve ruined my happiness for the rest of my life!

Achoo! Evenson sneezed heavily. Rubbing his nose, he muttered to himself, "Why do I suddenly feel such powerful resentment?"

Just as Carter had said, he was preparing a spell. With his current strength, wielding an artifact was not so simple.

After the Eredar Twins finished applying the demonic markings to him, he came out trembling with his sleeves rolled up. Yes, his sleeves were rolled up. More accurately, he had torn off both sleeves they had given him. Of course, it was not for some reason like making combat easier, but because… it hurt!

The demonic markings on his arms had been branded onto him by Aurelles using a red-hot shortsword, and without anesthetic at that. The pain had nearly sent him into shock. At the time, he thought King Zhou’s bronze-pillar torture must have been something like this.

And for some reason, that female demon had applied different amounts of heat to his two arms.

One arm had been heated more lightly, about medium-rare, and its demonic markings were blood-red. The other had been heated much more heavily, to the point of charring, and its demonic markings were charred black.

She had even claimed that the two colors represented the marks bestowed by her and her sister. Damn it! It was clearly the same person branding him, all right? Different temperatures could represent two people?

So Evenson could not put his arms into sleeves at all right now. Otherwise, the searing pain would be unbearable.

But this was not the time to worry about that. Besides, without some 300-strength burn ointment, there was no way to stop the pain caused by Aurelles’s flames.

"Whew, finally made it." Evenson let out a long breath as he arrived at the rooftop of a large building. What had he been doing just now? Climbing stairs, obviously! He could not fly, so how else was he supposed to get up there? And taking an elevator in this situation would have been suicide.

"Let’s begin." Evenson stomped heavily on the ground, and a purple magic circle immediately appeared. Then he took out Usaless and tossed it into the circle. The scythe-shaped staff immediately floated at the center of the magic circle.

"Sacrifices," Evenson said coldly. Tyler and the others immediately placed the Chitauri they had just captured, who were not quite dead yet, at various points around the magic circle.

"Mentor, look over there!" Just as Evenson’s spell began, his actions immediately caught the attention of another force.