Melee

"Alex, it’s been a long time!" Just as Alex prepared to strike and wipe out Strucker for good, another voice rang out behind him. The sinister voice sent an involuntary shiver through his body.

Though Alex’s attention was divided, his hands did not slow. The steel balls transformed into a thin blade that swept toward Strucker’s neck at high speed.

Thirty years of upheaval had taught Alex a profound lesson: "If you don’t pull the weeds out by the roots, they’ll come back to haunt you." If he had dealt with Red Skull, Sebastian Shaw, and the others back then, X-Mansion might not have suffered through those thirty miserable years.

Alex’s attack was extremely fierce, but Strucker was not completely helpless either. Taking advantage of Alex’s distraction, he evaded the blade formed from steel balls at the cost of his right arm and immediately fled.

Seeing his attack miss, Alex was unwilling to let it go, but he could only set it aside for the moment and turn to face the newcomer behind him.

"Well, quite a crowd showed up!" When Alex turned around and found more than one person behind him, he froze for a moment before smiling faintly. With a hint of mockery in his greeting, he said, "Red Skull, Sebastian Shaw…" As he called out the names, his gaze swept across the group before finally settling on the last person. His voice abruptly stopped, and a complicated expression appeared on his face.

"Erik!"

Erik—now Magneto—looked at Alex expressionlessly, then casually turned sideways and refused to look at him again.

After staring at Magneto for a long while, Alex let out a quiet sigh. With a sorrowful expression, he shifted his gaze to the Black Queen standing beside Sebastian Shaw. The calmness on his face suddenly gave way to towering fury, and his black eyes turned bloodshot.

"Black Queen!!!"

Alex practically ground out her name through clenched teeth. Without pausing in the slightest, he flashed forward and appeared beside the Black Queen. He could remain indifferent toward Red Skull and Sebastian Shaw. But toward the Black Queen, he truly wanted to skin her alive and grind her bones to dust. Thirty years of accumulated hatred ensured that Alex would show no mercy.

Alex reached out and grabbed her. Before the Black Queen could even react, her slender neck was already in his grasp, and he lifted her high into the air.

"Alex!" Sebastian Shaw roared and immediately charged forward. At the same time, he shouted to the others beside him, "Everyone, attack together! We have to take him down!"

Red Skull and Magneto exchanged a glance, their eyes full of surprise. Neither had expected Alex to be so ferocious, almost impulsive.

While the two hesitated, Sebastian Shaw shouted again, accompanied by the Black Queen’s terrified scream. "Why aren’t you two attacking already? Do you all want to die?!"

Hearing Sebastian Shaw’s shout and the Black Queen’s shrill cries, Red Skull and Magneto immediately came to their senses. Turning to look, they found that although the Black Queen had escaped Alex’s hand, she was still firmly under his control and unable to move. Sebastian Shaw was in even worse shape, nearly being beaten senseless by Alex and only able to defend himself miserably.

Seeing this, Red Skull and Magneto panicked. They did not dare delay for even a moment and immediately rushed in as well. Moreover, the ambushers who had been stationed in hiding emerged at their command.

In an instant, nearly a hundred people—mutants as well as Hydra soldiers wielding strange weapons—surrounded Alex layer by layer like ants swarming over food. All kinds of attacks rained down on him indiscriminately.

Alex was not afraid of mutant attacks. Whether energy attacks or Physical Attacks, his abilities gave him nothing to worry about. What concerned him more were the Hydra soldiers Red Skull had brought.

After all, the Marvel universe was primarily a science-fiction world. Although all kinds of superpowers were eye-catching, technology remained its true foundation. Take the Nova Empire, for example. With a super living computer, it had forcibly created the Nova Corps, a force that shook the universe. That was the power of technology.

However, the facts proved that Alex’s worries were unnecessary.

After cautiously testing them a few times, Alex discovered that while the Hydra soldiers’ weapons were indeed powerful and caused him some trouble, they could not truly harm him. At most, they were little more than a tickle.

Alex confirmed this fact, and Red Skull noticed it as well. His expression immediately became incredibly ugly. These weapons had been painstakingly created by Red Skull and Hydra, yet in the end they were completely useless. Anyone would have found that humiliating.

Red Skull was not the only one humiliated. Sebastian Shaw and the Black Queen felt equally miserable. The two had always thought highly of themselves and never regarded other mutants as worthy of notice, but now they realized that there was always someone stronger. Even working together, they could do nothing to Alex.

The only person who could pose even a slight threat to Alex was probably Magneto. Alex’s body could absorb energy, but Magneto’s magnetic fields could weaken that ability to a certain extent. If Magneto ambushed him again, Alex might very well stumble into disaster.

Fortunately, Alex possessed the ability to control magnetic fields as well. With the two forces offsetting each other, Alex could relax somewhat, though he still had to remain vigilant.

Faced with this situation, both Red Skull and Sebastian Shaw began to consider retreating. They exchanged a look and silently made their decision.

Alex’s telepathy could not sense their thoughts, but he still read something in their eyes and expressions. "What? Planning to run?"

With a cold snort, energy surged wildly from Alex’s body. The Energy Impact Beam copied from Alex burst out of him like a sphere, then rapidly exploded.

Alex had been accumulating energy all this time. When it suddenly erupted, the powerful energy shock exceeded everyone’s expectations. Red Skull, Sebastian Shaw, and the others bore the brunt of it and were sent flying. Fortunately, their bodies were fairly tough. They suffered only severe injuries from the impact and narrowly kept their lives.

The Hydra soldiers, however, were far less fortunate. They were ordinary people to begin with and had no way to protect themselves from the shockwave. One after another, they exploded like bursting balloons, turning the scene into a bloody mess of flesh and gore.

Red Skull made a prompt decision. Without saying a word, he used the momentum of his flying body to escape at high speed. No one knew what method he used, but he vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye. By the time Alex reacted, Red Skull was nowhere to be found.

The moment Red Skull chose to flee, Sebastian Shaw and the Black Queen made their choice as well. With the help of a Teleporter, they left the battlefield in the blink of an eye, taking most of the mutants with them.

Within only a few breaths, the once brutal battlefield had been reduced to just a handful of people: Alex was one, and Magneto was another.