Chapter 183: Complete Collapse
"Permanent," Wanda added calmly.
"It won't return to its original state unless someone with equivalent or greater power deliberately restores it."
Silence settled over the command room.
Three full seconds.
Barry Allen slowly approached the conference table.
He cautiously reached out and tapped the "water."
Clink.
It was solid.
Not frozen.
Not an illusion.
Actual glass.
Barry blinked.
"...Wow."
Thor stepped away from the window.
He examined the impossible sculpture inside the cup before turning his attention toward Wanda.
His expression became noticeably more serious.
"This resembles sorcery."
Bruce shook his head.
"Not exactly."
"Kamar-Taj magic manipulates extradimensional energy through precise spells and intent."
"What Wanda does bypasses that entire process."
"It directly rewrites physical reality."
"Probability itself changes."
"From a scientific standpoint..."
"...and from a mystical standpoint..."
"...it's operating beneath both."
Thor continued studying Wanda.
Even by Asgardian standards, abilities capable of rewriting existence itself were extraordinarily rare.
Finally, he nodded.
"I understand."
Steve looked at Wanda.
His reservations had not disappeared.
But neither had reality.
An enemy capable of controlling an Infinity Stone now existed.
Earth needed every capable ally it could find.
"Welcome to the team."
His tone remained cautious.
Wanda simply nodded.
Beside her...
Pietro had already discovered the snack cabinet.
...
Southeastern Sokovia.
The abandoned industrial city.
Dark clouds blanketed the sky.
Smoke poured continuously from countless factory chimneys.
The furnaces had not stopped burning for three straight days.
When the combined strike force arrived overhead...
They didn't see Ultron first.
They saw his army.
The streets were completely occupied.
Mechanical soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder in perfect military formation.
From the city's outskirts...
To the massive central steel complex...
Every avenue had become an ocean of steel.
Each combat unit stood over two meters tall.
Industrial-alloy armor.
Repulsor-style maneuvering thrusters mounted around the joints.
Arc-powered miniature reactors embedded inside their chests.
Every reactor emitted the same synchronized pulse.
Like the heartbeat of a single organism.
Barry stared through the Quinjet's window.
"...How many?"
Tony's HUD immediately calculated the estimate.
"Surface scan confirms more than eight thousand."
"They're still manufacturing more."
"The assembly lines haven't stopped."
Steve tightened his grip on his shield.
"Eight thousand..."
Bruce's voice entered through the encrypted communications network.
"That's only what's visible."
"My thermal scans detect at least three underground production complexes."
"Estimated output..."
"...roughly four hundred additional units every hour."
Steve answered immediately.
"Then we don't fight a war of attrition."
"Primary objective."
"Destroy the manufacturing facilities."
"Secondary objective."
"Neutralize Ultron."
Tony highlighted a bright energy signature.
"Located."
"The Mind Stone's energy output is impossible to conceal."
"Main factory."
Steve began issuing orders.
"Formation Alpha."
"Air assault from the east."
"Ground teams advance through the southern industrial district."
"Destroy every production facility encountered."
"Copy."
The strike force separated.
Iron Man.
Thor.
Superman.
The three strongest aerial combatants attacked first.
For approximately thirty seconds...
Everything appeared to go according to plan.
Tony's repulsors carved through multiple rows of drones.
Armor shattered.
Power cores ruptured.
Thor hurled Mjölnir.
Lightning erupted across an entire city block.
Dozens of machines collapsed beneath divine thunder.
Clark accelerated into the battlefield.
Breaking the sound barrier instantly.
His first punch reduced one mechanical soldier's torso to twisted fragments.
Then...
The battlefield changed.
Every destroyed drone remained motionless for less than two seconds.
Their chest reactors suddenly brightened.
Tony noticed first.
"No..."
Each damaged reactor entered overload.
High-density plasma compressed inside the miniature energy cells.
"Everyone pull back!"
"They're going critical!"
Too late.
The first reactor detonated.
Then the second.
Then dozens.
The explosions weren't conventional explosives.
Each was essentially an uncontrolled Chitauri-style plasma discharge.
The overlapping shockwaves transformed entire streets into expanding walls of fire.
Tony's armor tumbled violently through the air.
His energy shield instantly dropped by thirty-seven percent.
Ground forces suffered worse.
Steve's strike team had already entered the industrial district.
Several disabled drones detonated around them.
The chain reaction tore through nearby buildings.
Three supporting heroes were thrown off their feet.
One struck a reinforced concrete wall with enough force to lose consciousness immediately.
Steve raised his shield just before another plasma wave reached him.
The impact reverberated through vibranium itself.
Even his arm went numb.
Then...
The battlefield fell silent.
Something emerged.
The roof of the primary factory exploded upward.
Ultron rose slowly into the sky.
His vibranium body reflected the burning city beneath him.
The Mind Stone glowed brilliantly from his forehead.
Its golden radiance eclipsed every artificial light around him.
He surveyed the battlefield without emotion.
Then...
The Stone activated.
A column of golden energy erupted skyward.
It wasn't heat.
It wasn't plasma.
It wasn't even conventional energy.
It was information.
Higher-dimensional psionic information encoded directly within the Mind Stone itself.
The wave propagated across the battlefield almost instantly.
Electronic systems failed first.
Tony's HUD disappeared.
Targeting vanished.
Flight stabilization shut down.
Communications collapsed.
Every computerized subsystem inside the armor ceased responding simultaneously.
Tony lost lift.
His armor became nothing more than dead metal.
He dropped from the sky.
Thor suffered differently.
The psionic wave struck his mind directly.
For approximately three-tenths of a second...
Every conscious thought disappeared.
His grip relaxed.
Mjölnir slipped from his hand.
Three-tenths of a second.
Against ordinary opponents...
Meaningless.
Against synchronized combat drones...
Fatal.
Four mechanical soldiers accelerated simultaneously.
They struck Thor from four separate directions.
The combined kinetic force launched the God of Thunder through two factory buildings.
Clark ignored everything else.
His objective remained Ultron.
He accelerated to maximum velocity.
Every muscle in his Kryptonian body unleashed its full strength.
His fist could shatter mountains.
Ultron didn't evade.
Instead...
He calmly raised one hand.
The Mind Stone projected a circular psionic barrier.
Clark's punch collided with it.
The resulting shockwave shattered every remaining window across multiple factory blocks.
Concrete fractured.
Steel supports bent.
Yet...
Ultron did not move.
Not even one centimeter.
His free hand reached forward.
Placed itself against Clark's temple.
Golden light flooded directly into Clark's mind.
The Kryptonian's eyes widened.
His superhuman brain...
Capable of processing incomprehensible quantities of sensory information...
Was suddenly forced to interpret the Mind Stone's multidimensional informational structure.
For the first time in years...
Clark couldn't process what he was seeing.
His consciousness stalled.
His body froze.
Gravity took over.
He fell.
Five hundred meters.
Straight down.
The impact excavated a crater nearly ten meters deep.
"Clark!"
Diana immediately charged toward the impact site.
The battlefield collapsed with astonishing speed.
Within thirty minutes...
Air superiority was gone.
Communications were disrupted.
Ground formations had fragmented.
The mechanical legion continued advancing.
Ten kilometers behind the front line...
Hidden among hills and dense woodland...
A temporary field hospital stood fully prepared.
Tony Stark's newest autonomous medical pod had already deployed every surgical module.
Portable operating tables unfolded beside it.
Emergency pharmaceuticals.
Gene-repair agents.
Quantum surgical instruments.
Everything had been organized with meticulous precision.
A wooden sign stood beside the medical tent.
Miracle Clinic.
Lynn sat calmly in a folding chair.
White coat.
Gold-rimmed glasses.
A thermos of Longjing tea rested beside him.
Nothing about him suggested someone observing the collapse of the world's strongest heroes.
The All-Seeing Eye had already expanded across the entire battlefield.
Every energy fluctuation.
Every vital sign.
Every mechanical soldier.
Every trajectory.
Every casualty.
Everything existed as a complete three-dimensional model inside his consciousness.
He watched Clark fall.
He watched Iron Man lose control of his armor.
He watched Thor disappear beneath collapsing factories.
He watched Steve's defensive line disintegrate under overwhelming numerical superiority.
Lynn quietly took another sip of tea.
Then...
The first casualties reached the field hospital.
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