Chapter Twelve: The Battle of London Ends! Clearing Out S.H.I.E.L.D.!

No, that would not be safe!

Hao Yun shook his head. “The corrosive power of the Aether is too strong. Your barrier devices are made of ordinary materials. They simply cannot penetrate Malekith’s body!”

“What do we do, then?”

Jane Foster looked tensely toward Malekith. Through the spatial gate, she could faintly see countless worlds being devoured. Asgard’s barriers had already been broken, and the palace roof had turned black. They did not have much time left.

“My nanomachines can pierce Malekith’s skin.”

“But...”

Seeing Hao Yun state the method with an expressionless face, Tony hesitated. Those were Hao Yun’s nanomachines, reinforced and carrying Shockwave’s intelligent weapon system. In terms of materials alone, they were far superior to anything Tony could make himself.

“No buts. Shockwave is of little use to me anymore. Lives matter more.”

“Move!”

The others exchanged glances. Looking at Malekith in the distance, still arrogantly focused on controlling the Aether and ignoring them completely, they each grabbed a stack of anti-program barrier devices that Jane Foster had prepared and charged at him.

“I’ll go first!”

Hawkeye Barton drew, aimed, and fired!

Though it was not an arrow, in Barton’s hands he could still roughly control its direction, sending it straight toward the Aether barrier. The device shot in, and before it was completely corroded by the Aether, it forcibly pushed forward nearly a hundred meters.

“Next is me!”

Natasha swept both hands forward, opening another ten meters by force.

The closer they got to Malekith, the denser the Aether became, and the rate at which the barrier devices were corroded increased exponentially.

“Go back first. It’s my turn!”

This time it was the Captain, charging with shield in one hand and a barrier device in the other. With the shield immune to corrosion, Captain America forcibly carried the group another ten meters forward.

Then came Angel riding atop a wooden dragon, Thor wielding twin hammers, and the Stark couple supporting each other...

With their flesh and the barrier devices in their hands, they carved out, by sheer force, a path straight to Malekith’s body for Hao Yun.

And then, at the very instant the last man, the Hulk, Banner, hurled the dozens of barrier devices he held in his arms with all his strength, clearing away all the Aether before Malekith, Hao Yun finally made his move.

“Malekith, get out of our world!”

All of the one-cubic-meter mass of nanomachines transformed into barrier devices the length of a hand, and under Hao Yun’s electrokinetic control they scattered and shot into the five limbs of Malekith and every vital point of his body.

Then... Shockwave’s automatic program activated, and Malekith vanished from everyone’s sight in an instant.

The sky, blackened by the Aether, returned to normal at once... Malekith had been torn apart and sent by his body parts to various places across the Nine Realms.

Next, all they had to do was hold the void in the sky over London and keep the monsters from coming in... then the London crisis would be resolved.

“Shockwave...”

Looking at the spatial gate where the Nine Realms overlapped in the sky, Hao Yun fell silent.

The nanomachines that had accompanied him for more than ten years had completely vanished at that moment...

“Don’t be sad. When we get back, I’ll give you an even better one!”

Tony walked over and patted Hao Yun on the shoulder in comfort.

Hao Yun shook his head. “No need. It only adds a little to my combat power. To die in battle may well be its best ending.”

“As long as you understand that, it’s fine.”

Tony said nothing more. He simply stood quietly beside Hao Yun, guarding and waiting for the alignment of the Nine Realms to pass.

At that moment, aboard the Helicarrier, Nick Fury once again faced the questioning of the Security Council.

“Nick Fury, we need an explanation! Why not disband the Illuminati? Why not launch nuclear missiles? You must understand, they are an anarchic reactionary organization!”

The one saying this was, naturally, a hidden Hydra member among the council, and he spoke with considerable arrogance.

Nick Fury cast a faint glance at the speaker’s screen, and a mocking expression appeared on his face.

“Oh? Disband them? Then you want your people to handle an alien invasion? Sir, I’m afraid you’ve already forgotten just how miserably your forces just lost! And besides, they only saved the world moments ago!”

The speaker’s face turned livid with rage, yet he could not utter a single word in rebuttal.

Because they wanted to seize power, the troops and agents sent this time were all Hydra’s own. But in that battle just now, Hydra had suffered horrendous losses... In his anger, he had blurted out those words.

Now that his face had been slapped so soundly, he truly had no way to answer.

“But... if they come under SHIELD, they’ll save the world even faster!”

“Heh. Then go tell Tony that yourself. Besides, what gave you the delusion that the members of the Illuminati would join the government?”

The mockery on Nick’s face only deepened. The main reason was that the Illuminati had very strict conditions for deployment. Without orders, they would not move at all; most of the time they stayed home researching technology and their own abilities. This made the government’s preferred public-pressure tactics completely useless.

So they had kept trying to force Nick into bringing them under control and using them for their own purposes.

But they had not expected that Nick had already suffered too many defeats at Tony’s hands, and with the information the Illuminati had revealed about Hydra hidden within SHIELD, Nick was even less willing to accept their proposal.

“Hmph! A bunch of unorganized people who never obey orders! Nick, you’ll regret this!”

With nothing left to say, the Hydra representative senator could only throw out a threat and hurry away.

Nick shook his head. That performance was a hundred percent Hydra, no doubt about it. It seemed that once SHIELD had been cleaned out, the upper ranks of every nation would have to be screened as well.

“Do any of the representatives have anything to add?”

Nick looked at the other UN representatives who had not spoken and asked.

The representatives exchanged glances and shook their heads, taking the initiative to end the call. Nick walked out of the conference room and came to Hill’s side.

“Director, should we return now?”

“Yes. You and the others head back to base. Also, leave me one aircraft. I have something I want to discuss with the people from the Illuminati.”

Hill nodded, showing no dissatisfaction with any of her superior’s actions.

Nick stood at the bow, looking down at the spatial rift that was about to quiet. Perhaps Earth truly needed the protection of the Justice League.

The gap in technological strength was too great. They could only rely on the heroes to hold the line.

Below, Captain Steve Rogers, who had been waiting to celebrate once the spatial rift ended, suddenly received a text message.

“Whose call is it? Captain, looks like you’re doing pretty well after seventy years,” Tony teased. Having won the war, he was in an excellent mood. The man who usually loved to needle the Captain even had the leisure to joke with Steve.

“It’s Nick Fury,” the Captain said, lifting his head to look at Hao Yun and the others, his expression solemn. “He’s asking for our help. He wants us to deal with Hydra...”