"These mummies have been resurrected by dark magic!" Strange swung his Magic Whip, shattering a mummy in pieces. "Watch out for the curses and corpse poison on them!"
The fight grew even harsher. The cramped tunnels and burial chambers left little room to dodge, the mummy warriors seemed endless, and the dark magic had vastly amplified their strength. Hawkeye's explosive arrows often took two or three shots just to fully put down a single one, and Peter's webbing struggled to bind them completely.
Strange and Wanda's spells were clearly effective, but their magic reserves were draining fast.
Saitama, as always, remained steady—any mummy that reached him was settled with a single punch. But he also noticed something: whenever a mummy shattered, a wisp of black smoke would spill out, only to be drawn back into the pyramid, as if it could keep producing more without end.
"At this rate, it'll never stop!" Peter shouted, ducking a bronze battle axe that hacked down at him.
"We have to find the core!" Strange snapped, lashing out with Crimson Bands of Cyttora to bind a wide swath of mummies. "I can feel it—the dark power is converging toward the deepest part of the pyramid! They're definitely doing something down there!"
The team forced their way through wave after wave of mummies, pushing south along the main passage. On the way, they encountered more ancient Egyptian traps that had been corrupted by darkness—light-devouring dark rooms, cursed corridors that drove the mind mad with hallucinated whispers, pits crawling with scarab-shaped dark magic insects…
At last, they arrived at an enormous underground cavern directly beneath the pyramid. At its center there wasn't a pharaoh's coffin, but a massive, ominous altar forged from obsidian mixed with gold. Its design wasn't ancient Egyptian at all—it looked far closer to the summoning array they'd seen in the South American ruins, only more intricate, more complex, and on a far grander scale.
Around the altar knelt rings upon rings of dark believers in black robes. They chanted with fanatic fervor, pouring their own dark magic—and every kind of energy they'd collected (including the black smoke reclaimed from the mummies)—into the altar.
Above it floated a pharaoh mummy wrapped in dense black miasma, wearing a golden mask, and a golden book radiating an ominous black glow—what should have been the Solar Golden Scripture, a symbol of light, now completely tainted and twisted.
Vast torrents of dark energy surged out of the pharaoh mummy and the corrupted scripture, feeding into the altar. One by one, the runes on its surface ignited, and a passage to some utterly black dimension began to open—slowly, inexorably. From within seeped a presence even more terrifying than what they'd felt at the icefield base: older, darker, and immeasurably more evil.
"They're not summoning reinforcements…" Strange's voice turned hoarse with shock. "They're using the pyramid's accumulated energy spanning thousands of years, and this pharaoh's remaining divinity—combining it with the will of a dark demon god—to directly mold and awaken a… a dark demon god avatar that carries a portion of the true body's power!"
If that avatar successfully awakened and stepped into reality, its strength would be enough to casually wipe out a nation—maybe even an entire continent.
"Stop them!" Wanda cried. She thrust both hands forward, chaos magic erupting like a red tidal wave as it slammed into the dark altar and the chanting believers around it!
But in an instant, a solid black energy barrier rose around the altar. Wanda's surge crashed against it, sending violent ripples through the shield—yet it didn't break right away. Worse, part of the force rebounded, jolting Wanda back a step.
(End of Chapter)
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