Chapter 536 Champagne at Halftime
Inside the Earth network livestream, the bullet comments instantly flooded the screen, countless people cheering for Nebula.
"Miss V! Crush him!"
"Come on! Miss V! Burn him to ashes!"
"Next up, terrain selection!" the Grandmaster shouted.
Dozens of terrain options appeared on the screen, the vote counts jumping wildly.
A few seconds later, the votes locked in.
"Terrain confirmed! Heavy Core Arena: No cover, 5x gravity!"
"A pure sanctuary for melee combat!" the Grandmaster laughed.
The ground in the center of the entire arena began to deform violently, the metal floor collapsing downward to form a huge sunken circular gladiatorial pit.
There were no extra obstacles, only cold alloy walls.
Nebula leaped, landing steadily in the center of the gladiatorial pit.
On the other side, The Hood walked slowly into the arena, his hands hanging low, black Hellfire miasma lingering at his fingertips.
The two stood fifty meters apart, quietly confronting each other.
The red countdown above the gladiatorial pit began to flash.
Three.
Two.
One.
The buzzer sounded.
The battle began!
The Hood had just raised his hand, his twin guns not yet having time to fire Hellfire projectiles.
Nebula vanished.
The latest model of the "Sandevistan: Apogee" started at full power.
In the eyes of ordinary viewers, Nebula had disappeared into thin air.
In bullet time, Nebula had already appeared in front of him, her arms instantly popping out Vibranium Mantis Blades.
In less than 0.1 seconds, she had completed a dozen cross-cutting slashes.
Time resumed.
Nebula appeared behind The Hood, maintaining a half-crouched posture, slowly retracting the Mantis Blades.
And The Hood behind her remained standing in place.
The next moment, his body, like building blocks—torso, limbs, head—scattered into dozens of pieces, hitting the floor with a "thud, thud".
One-hit kill.
The entire arena fell into a long silence.
A dozen seconds later, the spectator stands erupted like a detonated gunpowder barrel, bursting into crazy screams that threatened to blow the roof off.
"Holy sh*t! What happened?!"
"What did that blue-skinned woman do?!"
"I bet on a duration of one Universe-hour! It ended in less than a second? Give me my money back!"
"What kind of sh*tty Black Order is this! What kind of trash did Thanos find!"
Countless gamblers on the stands were cursing madly.
For them, this one-hit kill had caused them to lose everything.
"V! V! V!"
And those gamblers who had bought Earth to win were waving their ticket stubs wildly, roaring at the top of their lungs.
On the Black Order platform.
Thanos looked at the scene before him, his face turning purple.
"Trash!" He turned his head and growled at the empty shadow: "Is this the deal you gave me? Garbage that couldn’t even last a second! Mephisto!"
The shadows twisted, and Mephisto’s figure, dressed in a crisp suit, slowly emerged.
He looked at the dismembered Hood on the field, his face showing no panic, but instead revealing an indifferent smile.
"Don’t be so quick to get angry, Thanos. Everything has just begun; I have already bestowed upon him the power of Hell..."
Mephisto grinned, revealing his stark white teeth.
"And Hell never disappoints."
...
On the Earth platform, everyone was high-fiving and celebrating.
"Well done, V!" Steve breathed a sigh of relief.
"I told you my upgrade pack was invincible," Tony said triumphantly.
Peter Parker was jumping up and down excitedly, imitating Nebula’s slashing movements.
Almost everyone was celebrating this successful start.
Only Homelander and the Ancient One stood in place, the expressions on their faces surprisingly identical.
"Stop celebrating at halftime, everyone," Homelander said slowly, interrupting their celebration.
Tony was stunned: "What do you mean? Buddy, we won. Isn’t that obvious?"
"Obvious?" Homelander pointed at the big screen, "Then you tell me, why hasn’t the end of the match been announced yet?"
Everyone realized it, too, and turned their attention back to the field.
Sure enough.
In the center of the field, The Hood, who had been torn to pieces and dead as a doornail, suddenly had his scattered remains begin to burn.
The gushing dark red flames actually pulled those pieces together.
The flames expanded violently.
Two seconds later, The Hood stood in place, completely unharmed.
Not only that, his body was undergoing a terrifying mutation.
His bones elongated, his skin shed, turning into a hard red cuticle layer.
Rows of fangs grew from his split mouth, sharp claws grew from his ten fingers, and lava-like liquid flowed beneath his skin.
Just like a demon that had just crawled out of Hell.
Along with his twin guns that had fallen to the ground, they were also reshaped by Hellfire, turning into two menacing demon hand cannons.
On Earth, the viewers watching the broadcast also saw their revelry come to an abrupt end.
The screen was full of explosive emotional venting.
"What the f*ck is that? Did Little Red Riding Hood merge with the Big Bad Wolf?"
"Rigged! The referee is dead! This counts as an illegal resurrection!"
"That fire looks wrong, Miss V, run!"
...
Back to the field.
Nebula looked at the demon-transformed Hood, without a hint of panic in her eyes.
She took up her combat stance again, the blue light at her spine flickering, preparing to activate the second round of Sandevistan.
At this very moment, The Hood disappeared first.
Nebula was suddenly alarmed, a sense of crisis sweeping through her entire body!
The reinforced tendons in her legs had instinctively exploded!
"Bang!"
Relying on the terrifying thrust generated by her legs, Nebula instantly performed a double jump and leaped into mid-air.
And almost at the same time, the position she had been standing in was covered by a dense barrage of lava bullets.
With a series of loud "booms," the Hellfire exploded, melting that area into a lava pit.
Nebula, in mid-air, had a faint glint in her eyes. Kiroshi Optics, activated.
In her vision, a red highlighted humanoid outline was marked; The Hood had nowhere to hide. Target locked.
The thrusters under her feet in mid-air exerted force, and she activated the Sandevistan again.
Nebula turned into a blue meteor, charging straight at The Hood, her Mantis Blades aiming straight for his head.
But this time, The Hood did not sit and wait for death. His eyes flared with fire, True Sight opened.
At this moment, he seemed to have seen through Nebula’s trajectory in advance.
In an instant, a Hellfire flame several meters high exploded from his entire body.
Nebula, who had already rushed to the front, hurriedly adjusted her flight posture, forcibly changing her momentum, kicked her legs forward fiercely, and ejected herself backward.
But she was still too slow. The rolling tongues of fire licked her body.
But the Protection Spell left by the Ancient One turned into a layer of golden shield, helping her withstand the erosion of the Hellfire.
Nebula used the force to land, sliding back more than ten meters. The light of the Protection Spell flickered a few times, its color fading significantly.
She looked down, her expression sinking.
Although the Protection Spell blocked the damage to her body, the Vibranium Mantis Blades that had popped out of her forearms had their blades coated in flames when she penetrated the wall of fire.
Not only did they not extinguish, they began to erode like a virus. The blades gradually twisted, with faint signs of demonic corruption.
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