Chapter 191: The Villain Dies from Talking Too Much
Ten kilometers away...
Lynn sat inside the battlefield clinic, calmly holding a cup of Longjing tea.
The All-Seeing Eye continuously projected every detail of the battlefield into his vision.
Ultron's speech had not yet ended.
"...I am that meteor."
"And you are the dinosaurs awaiting extinction."
The instant the final word left his mouth—
The Mind Stone erupted.
A blinding golden radiance burst from the gem embedded in Ultron's forehead.
Unlike the earlier probing attacks...
This was a maximum-output psionic assault.
A multidimensional psychic wave expanded across Sokovia.
Nothing blocked it.
The Chaos Magic coatings had completely dissipated.
The effects appeared immediately.
Clark Kent stiffened in midair.
His entire body convulsed.
He grabbed both sides of his head.
Twin beams of uncontrolled heat vision burst from his eyes, carving jagged crimson scars through the clouds.
This time he did not fall immediately.
He had anticipated another psychic assault.
His Kryptonian will fought desperately against the flood of impossible information.
Even so...
His combat efficiency dropped by well over fifty percent.
His flight became erratic.
His balance deteriorated.
His reactions slowed dramatically.
Thor fared only slightly better.
Asgardian physiology granted tremendous resistance against mystical assaults, and centuries of battle had forged exceptional mental discipline.
Even so...
The Mind Stone was one of the six primordial forces of creation.
Its influence operated on a level beyond conventional sorcery.
Thor remained conscious...
But every motion became slower.
Mjölnir no longer struck three times each second.
Now...
Only once.
Tony Stark suffered an entirely different problem.
His armor's neural interface transmitted the Mind Stone's interference directly into every control system.
Targeting reticles scattered.
HUD displays flickered uncontrollably.
Weapon calibration drifted by nearly thirty degrees.
Repulsor fire missed targets it should never have missed.
The ground forces suffered even more severely.
Steve Rogers dropped onto one knee.
His shield slammed into broken concrete to support his weight.
It felt as though countless needles were being driven into every corner of his mind.
Clint Barton collapsed outright.
He could barely keep hold of his bow.
Several nearby heroes lost consciousness entirely.
Bruce Banner staggered.
Green spread across his skin.
The psychic overload destabilized his emotional control.
The Hulk threatened to emerge.
Behind a collapsed building...
Wanda Maximoff struggled to breathe.
She thrust both hands forward.
Chaos Magic flickered weakly across her fingertips.
Only a few crimson sparks appeared...
Then vanished.
Nothing more came.
She had exhausted herself reinforcing the Avengers' equipment during the previous several days.
She simply had nothing left.
Ultron surveyed the battlefield.
His calculations completed instantly.
Victory probability...
Increasing.
He terminated the psychic pulse.
There was no need to waste additional energy.
A more important objective awaited.
Without another glance...
Ultron accelerated toward the anti-gravity engine buried beneath Sokovia.
Clark forced himself forward.
Despite the pounding inside his skull...
He intercepted Ultron and drove a devastating punch into the android's back.
The impact launched Ultron nearly twenty meters.
Fresh fractures spread across his vibranium shell.
Ultron merely stabilized himself in the air.
He ignored Superman completely.
Mission priority remained unchanged.
He accelerated toward the engine.
Several heroes positioned around the installation attempted to intercept him.
Ultron casually raised one arm.
A concentrated energy beam swept across the battlefield.
The defenders were blasted aside.
His left hand settled upon the activation interface.
The anti-gravity engine awakened.
A deafening mechanical roar echoed beneath the earth.
The entire city shook violently.
Buildings swayed.
Windows exploded.
Concrete split apart.
Dust erupted skyward.
Then...
Slowly...
Relentlessly...
Sokovia began to rise.
Gigantic fractures ripped through the surrounding landscape.
Bedrock split apart.
Entire layers of earth sheared away beneath the city's foundation.
From above...
It looked as though someone had cut an enormous circular section from the Earth itself.
A city more than three kilometers across—
Together with its underlying rock strata—
Separated from the planet.
It ascended toward the heavens.
...
At the battlefield clinic...
Scarlet lightning flashed across the entrance.
Barry Allen appeared almost instantly.
In his arms...
Clark Kent.
Superman looked terrible.
His eyes lacked focus.
His pupils remained dilated.
His breathing was irregular.
His superhuman sensory cortex had descended into complete neurological overload.
Every sound.
Every vibration.
Every heartbeat.
Every radio transmission.
Every explosion.
Every microscopic disturbance in the surrounding air...
His brain processed all of them simultaneously.
The result resembled endless white noise.
Barry carefully lowered Clark onto the examination table.
He bent forward, breathing rapidly.
"Doctor Lynn!"
Barry spoke almost faster than ordinary ears could follow.
"Sokovia's airborne! If we don't stop it—"
"I know."
Lynn was already beside the operating table.
The All-Seeing Eye instantly completed a full neurological diagnosis.
Severe sensory overload.
Hyperactive cortical signaling.
Functional cognitive disruption.
No structural brain injury.
Exactly the same pathological mechanism as before.
Nothing new.
Nothing worth copying.
A trace of disappointment crossed Lynn's mind.
His right hand rested against Clark's temple.
Quantum Electromagnetic Dominion entered neural bio-link mode.
Billions of electrical impulses inside Clark's brain became visible.
The chaotic neural storm was reorganized.
Signal pathways were separated.
Sensory overload was filtered.
Background neurological noise was suppressed.
The sensitivity of Clark's super-senses was temporarily recalibrated to manageable levels.
Twenty-eight seconds later...
Clark's breathing steadied.
His pupils contracted normally.
He sat upright.
"Sokovia..."
"I know."
Lynn interrupted him calmly.
"It's already airborne."
"Your brain's functioning again."
"But if you return now..."
"You'll simply be disabled by the next psychic attack."
Clark lowered his head.
His fists tightened.
He understood.
The Mind Stone naturally countered his extraordinarily advanced nervous system.
Without protection...
The outcome would never change.
Lynn turned toward a storage cabinet.
He opened its lowest compartment.
From inside...
He removed a matte-black carrying case.
The lid clicked open.
Inside rested a silver-gray helmet.
Its shape was...
Questionable.
Two thick, uneven antennae protruded awkwardly from the top.
Viewed from the front...
It resembled an upside-down cooking pot.
Clark stared silently.
"...What is that?"
Lynn lifted the helmet.
Without ceremony...
He dropped it directly onto Clark's head.
"Wait—"
"Don't move."
Lynn adjusted the alignment with meticulous precision.
The innermost information-reduction nodes settled perfectly above Clark's frontal cortex, temporal lobes, occipital lobe, and cerebellum.
The instant contact was completed...
The internal vibranium resonance array activated.
Invisible electromagnetic resonance fields expanded layer upon layer.
Nested quantum interference barriers enveloped Clark's brain.
The sensation was immediate.
Clark blinked.
Silence.
Not emptiness.
His hearing remained.
His vision remained.
His super-senses remained.
Only one thing disappeared.
The impossible multidimensional background interference generated by the Mind Stone.
It was as though someone had placed perfect noise-canceling headphones over reality itself.
Clark slowly raised a hand toward the helmet.
"...This..."
"It blocks psychic attacks."
Lynn answered matter-of-factly.
"The Mind Stone won't interfere with your mind while you're wearing it."
Clark glanced downward.
His reflection appeared faintly across the polished surface of his chest emblem.
Blue suit.
Red cape.
Silver helmet.
Two crooked antennae.
The result was...
Not dignified.
"This design..."
"Appearance has no bearing on performance."
Lynn gave him a firm shove toward the exit.
"Go."
"Test it on the battlefield."
"You'll appreciate the engineering more than the aesthetics."
"But..."
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