Tiamat Awakened, Worldline Collapse (3K)

Falcon staggered back several steps. Seemingly unable to believe it, he lowered his head and looked at his chest. There was indeed a hole the width of a finger there.

Blood poured from it, and Falcon Sam’s legs finally gave out beneath him as he collapsed to the ground. The metal wings on his back had now become a weight he could no longer bear.

He opened his mouth to say something, but only spat out blood once more.

"Sam!"

Captain America Steve was panicking as well. His face was visibly bruised, and his body was covered in crisscrossing wounds.

Steve lunged to Sam’s side, trying to stop the blood with his hands, but it was completely useless. Sam raised a hand as though trying to grab the captain, but it ultimately slipped down limply.

Avengers member Falcon Sam had died.

Farther away, Fandral, Volstagg, and Hogun had tried several times, but none of them could get back up.

Loki kept coughing. Hela’s hand strike had hit his throat, nearly robbing him of the ability to breathe.

Thor’s eyes bulged, nearly popping from their sockets. He was furious. His sister had actually begun slaughtering people with such cruelty.

"Ah!"

Thor let out a savage roar and yanked his right hand free from the sharp spike in the ground. Ignoring the haze in his mind and the pain in his body, he summoned Mjolnir with one hand and hurled it at Hela with all his strength.

Hela’s eyelids hung low, and she wore that half-smiling expression throughout.

She looked down on Thor, and she looked down on Loki. Even Odin, her father, who had grown weaker and weaker with age, was beneath her contempt.

This battle nearly made her laugh aloud.

Such a weak Thor was actually Odin’s chosen heir?

Ridiculous.

Bang!

Before Mjolnir, blessed with the Odinforce, could strike Hela, she casually caught it with one hand.

Everyone froze.

Neither the Avengers nor the Asgardian Warriors Three had ever seen Mjolnir caught head-on.

With contempt on her face, Hela clenched her right hand. As the power of death erupted, the Odinforce upon Mjolnir was utterly extinguished. In the next moment, amid an explosion of lightning, Mjolnir shattered with a series of cracking sounds.

Hela tossed the hammer fragments, now stripped of divine power, onto the ground. Her arms hung at her sides as she slowly walked toward Thor, who was still frozen in shock.

This time, those so-called Avengers did not foolishly rush forward again.

Hela lowered her eyelids. So-called heroes and courage—before death, nothing remained of them.

This world had always been like this. It had been so since time immemorial.

Hela slowly aimed the blade in her hand at Thor and was about to thrust it down when a clear cracking sound rang out.

The next moment, an incomparably immense force erupted.

Hela felt an impact erupt from the ground beneath her feet like a supernova explosion. Amid the groaning of the earth’s crust, the entire world overturned in an instant.

Creak—boom!

Heaven and earth changed dramatically. Terrifying shockwaves arose from every direction, as if a black hole had appeared underground and everything was being drawn by an even more dreadful force.

Captain America held Sam’s corpse when he suddenly felt the ground beneath him shudder. The violent impact made him cough up blood in an instant. In the next moment, he lost his footing and slid downward together with Sam’s body.

Downward? Steve looked up, only to see that the world had tilted. The ground of New York’s inner city, which had been relatively intact just moments ago, along with the surrounding skyscrapers, had all tilted and begun falling downward.

Loki immediately stabbed a dagger into the ground, hanging himself from the concrete, while Thor cried out and slid straight down.

Only Hela slowly floated up, leaving the area.

From her perspective, all of New York was collapsing. Near the ocean at its center, a purple giant’s body was twisted almost sideways, while a man with white hair streaming upward drove a fist into the ground.

Boom!

The land began sinking irreversibly, while seawater and the atmosphere raged downward together.

That strike had shattered the tectonic plates beneath the ground. Everything began to sink.

This was… continental subsidence!

Asgard had treated Earth like a dusty "garbage dump" for millions of years. The gods of Asgard had never regarded it highly.

The reason Odin hid various secret treasures on Earth was because it was so weak that it virtually possessed no remarkable cosmic power.

He believed that none of the other beings in the Nine Realms would turn their attention here.

Yet now, an ordinary human in the mortal world had sunk a tectonic plate with a single punch?!

Boom!

The ground was still breaking apart. A massive vortex began to form. Amid the terrified wails of countless people, everything was collapsing.

Not only humans—even the endless stream of black monsters emerging from that enormous spaceship were swept up by the irresistible pull and fell toward the collapsing ground.

"Ha… hahaha…"

Bai Cangshu clutched his right arm. Everything below his elbow had completely vanished, yet at this moment, he could still feel the unmatched destructive power before his fist.

There was no need to rely on Myriad Death Intent. Anyone who dared appear before this punch would be utterly blasted to death!

Bai Cangshu panted heavily. Qi, blood mist, and turbid vapor-like breath continuously burst from his nose and mouth.

Only now did his heartbeat begin to slow. His brain throbbed as though he were about to pass out, and at some point, the Limit Break Spiral had already been pushed to its limit.

Yet Bai Cangshu only wanted to burst into laughter. He was certain that had been the Serious Punch—or rather, the supreme punch he had thrown by imitating the essence of the moment Saitama had blasted him apart in his memories!

At the final moment, his mind had awakened, causing him to lose that final step of compressing all power to the absolute limit. As a result, the force had leaked out early and gone out of control. Even so, no one could rival the power of that punch.

Among the reincarnators Bai Cangshu had encountered, he believed that even Eternal Destiny or Great Sun of Finality would have been unable to block it, provided their unknown Title Abilities were not taken into account.

Below, Thanos was shaken. He had nearly been killed outright by that punch. Though he did not know why his opponent had lost control at the last moment and the fist had exploded right in front of him—

At this point, Thanos was afraid.

It was like when he had faced Odin and Ancient One. No, he had been wary of those two and unwilling to make enemies of them, but this man had genuinely made even Thanos feel a trace of fear.

Looking at the white-haired, one-armed man, Thanos did not even ask for the Mind Stone.

Yes, Thanos had attacked Bai Cangshu directly because Ebony Maw had deduced that the Mind Stone had been taken by this man.

And Odin and Ancient One had both already fallen, but…

Thanos looked at Bai Cangshu, whose body seemed on the verge of collapse after that punch. Rather than pursue him, Thanos rolled downward amid the powerful pull of the descent.

How could Bai Cangshu allow that? His left hand shot out, and golden qi instantly pierced through Thanos’s body. Then Bai Cangshu raised his fingertips.

That powerful qi seemed to become tangible as it lifted Thanos into the air.

Thanos gave a muffled groan. His arms, twisted apart by the wind pressure from that terrifying punch, hung limply at his sides. He could only look up at his opponent.

At that moment, Solomon, whose head had been blown apart, finally finished regenerating. By regenerating his head, he had released his Automatic Record Cursed Technique.

Solomon opened his eyes. Spiral markings appeared within his heterochromatic eyes, one blue and one red, as though they were observing something. Only then was he stunned by the scene before him.

Mercenary Tao’s black body markings flowed across his skin, while his white hair danced behind him. An intense, horrifying pressure bore down without obstruction.

Just as Super Saiyans did in Dragon Ball, Mercenary Tao was now using qi alone to lift this world’s Thanos.

Though this was Thanos without the Infinity Stones, though this was Thanos at the power level of the movie universe, he was still unquestionably a powerful foe capable of overwhelmingly defeating Hulk, Thor, and the other Avengers head-on.

"Yo, you’re finally awake, Solomon~"

The severed arm of the one-armed Mercenary Tao had not regenerated, but Solomon still felt himself enveloped by an aura of death.

The black-and-white wings behind him stopped beating. He had been only a step away from ascending to the eighth step of the Stairway of Light and Darkness.

But… what did that matter…

Mercenary Tao, now practically a Super Saiyan, possessed overwhelming power. Even if Solomon entered the upper rank of Fierce-tier, it would be of no use.

Once Mercenary Tao’s qi enhancement surpassed reincarnators of the caster type in sheer magnitude, it would be a disaster.

He did not even need to check the Space Panel to know that, even if he unleashed Saint’s Collapse: My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me, he could not possibly suppress Mercenary Tao in this state.

When qi became strong enough, it could negate such abilities!

There was no other way. He had lost…

Solomon had not expected that after activating the Stairway of Light and Darkness, he, who was nearly a fusion of saint and demon, would be beaten into Automatic Record mode.

In truth, he had long prepared for the possibility of being killed by Thanos, Hela, or Captain Marvel. He had only been doing everything possible to avoid provoking Wanda. As long as his existence was not erased, death was not a problem for him at all.

But…

Solomon’s gaze swept around, yet he did not see Satoru Gojo anywhere on the collapsing land below.

Bai Cangshu was about to speak again when he suddenly sensed something. He lowered his head and looked below.

He looked at the black hole where his "Serious Punch" had struck the ground.

As seawater, buildings, and chunks of land collapsed inward, a terrifying aura emanated from within.

Bzz!

Golden light flashed in the sky. In the next moment, a golden cosmic energy beam struck Bai Cangshu.

Bang!

As the force field of the Three Parts Return to Origin Force exploded, Bai Cangshu drifted backward, while Thanos in his grasp spun as he fell to the ground.

A figure radiating golden cosmic energy hovered in the air, level with Bai Cangshu. His Heat Vision had just faded.

Then, accompanied by a roar, a burly Eternals member leaped high from New York’s crumbling ground. Golden cosmic energy gathered around his clenched fist as he smashed it toward Bai Cangshu.

Below, more Eternals members were using their abilities to hold as much of the sinking New York as possible back from the black hole.

Solomon’s expression did not change, as though he had long anticipated the Eternals’ arrival. Before him, the blonde Eternals member Tina formed a longsword from cosmic energy and held it across his throat.

Bang!

At the dull impact, Tina’s eyes shifted, only to go blank the next moment. Gilgamesh, the strongest among them in physical strength, had been seized by the face and held aloft in the air.

Seeing this, Ikaris fired another burst of Heat Vision, but the response was a Ki Blast that pierced straight through his body.