Support Me: https://ko-fi.com/arcaneyes123
"Oh, no!" Seeing the large number of soldiers coming, Reed did not show any joy. Instead, he had a feeling of extreme bad luck.
Are those reinforcements coming?
After seeing Doom's current form and feeling his power, he no longer dared to speculate. They still had some understanding of and resistance to psychic powers, and Doom seemed more interested in torturing and toying with them than instantly defeating them. But those ordinary soldiers would probably have difficulty resisting Doom's methods.
Reed's best option now was Harry Osborn, with whom he got along very well. Reed believed that Harry's knowledge and research of psychic powers was more in-depth than his, and he might have a better way to fight Doom.
A threatening voice boomed over the loudspeaker, forcing Reed and Doom, who were bathed in the spotlight, to surrender. Simultaneously, loaded weapons were aimed downwards. In a split second, they would completely cover the area below, annihilating everyone on the field. By then, not even a single intact limb would be found.
"You want to save them?"
Doom once again saw through Reed's thoughts. A strange smile appeared on his mask, and then with a flick of his finger, the armed helicopters in the sky lost control one after another, and fell from the sky to the ground in a spin amid the terrified screams of the soldiers inside.
The tanks and armored vehicles that gathered around them in the darkness also stalled. The fire control system was inexplicably locked. Meanwhile, the communication equipment was severely interfered with, making it impossible to communicate with the outside world.
Soldiers who only had firearms, rocket launchers, and other usable individual weapons jumped from transport vehicles and combat vehicles. Some went to rescue their comrades trapped inside, while others continued to follow orders, surrounding the area and gradually reducing the encirclement.
They had seen the helicopters falling from the sky and had lost contact with their comrades aboard, so their advance was cautious and slow. Many soldiers even felt a slight resistance to moving forward, as if some unknown beast was crouching in the darkness ahead, silently watching them.
"No!" Reed had just shouted when he saw the blazing flames. Even though Susan and Johnny had immediately used their abilities to save the soldiers, under Doom's interference and threats, they were still only able to save a small number of people.
"There are so many soldiers around, how many can you save?" Doom didn't care about the soldiers who were rescued. He just asked Reed with a wild laugh.
"Johnny!" Reed ignored Doom's ridicule and shouted at Johnny.
"Are you really sure you want to do this?" Seeing Reed's crazy and desperate eyes, Johnny, who had never liked or approved of him, immediately understood Reed's determination.
"Don't let them come over here," Reed shouted again. Besides not wanting those soldiers to die, Reed had a vague feeling that if those soldiers really joined in the battle between them and Doom, perhaps the situation would be even worse!
He didn't know where this sudden feeling came from, but he could feel its presence and warning more and more.
Johnny, the fastest maneuverable member of the team, gritted his teeth, turned his head, and drew an arc in the air like a rainbow. He quickly circled the surrounding area, leaving behind a blazing wall of fire. As he flew in circles at a very high speed, he instantly drew out a tornado-like column of fire made of flames.
In the eye of the storm are Doom, Reed and the others, while outside the eye of the storm is a wall of fire built with high temperature that prevents anyone from approaching.
This was the quickest way Johnny could think of to fulfill Reed's request. Without any notification or persuasion, the soldiers wouldn't easily listen to him. The best approach was to simply discourage them.
Facts proved this point true. The soldiers, deprived of their chariots and other tools, could only gaze at the wall in despair. They had no way of getting through the wall of fire until the next batch of reinforcements arrived. Even their weapons were useless against it. The scorching heat was enough to melt their bullets the moment they hit the wall. At least they knew their random shots were useless.
"It's no use, Reed!" Doom looked at Johnny and Reed's actions arrogantly, looking at the rapidly erected wall of fire, and spoke again without any concern. "You can only save them temporarily, but not forever. Besides, this kind of rescue is ineffective."
"That's not necessarily true!" Reed said to Doom in a sharp tone, as the temperature around them continued to rise. Meanwhile, his mind raced, trying to figure out how to truly harm and defeat Doom, who was now firmly protected by a shadow.
"It seems you haven't despaired yet, which is good." Facing Reed's toughness, Doom laughed instead. As a group of shadows wrapped in a ball of flesh and blood were separated from his body, and then exploded in all directions, Reed's sense of crisis in his heart intensified again.
He still didn't understand where the danger came from, but he realized that something was wrong.
Susan, as usual, held up her mental shield, blocking a nearby explosion of flesh and blood. The dark brown flesh exploded into a paste, splattering directly onto the shield. The rest either sprayed onto the wall of fire dozens of meters away, or onto the soldiers escaping from the helicopter and the cold machinery.
The next moment, Susan, who was at the front, changed her expression drastically. She transformed the mental telekinesis shield condensed in front of her into a telekinesis shock wave and launched it in a fan shape forward.
Ben, who rushed over violently, was the first to be hit. He turned into a reef and withstood the surging shock wave. His big feet gripped the ground tightly, and his huge body was pushed by the shock wave to create grooves on the ground that were ten centimeters deep and several meters long.
A figure formed from flames emerged from the wall of fire under the horrified gaze of everyone. Standing a staggering five meters tall, he looked like a flaming giant to Reed and the others. The moment he emerged from the wall of fire, he thrust his claw-like hand into it and pulled out a longsword that continuously absorbed the flames and heat.
The wall of fire that divided the battlefield became thinner, and finally all the flames were swallowed up by the flaming sword held high by the fire giant like a whale swallowing water.
Johnny, maintaining the wall of fire, seemed to have lost contact. The flames on his body flickered twice before losing momentum, spun in a semicircle, and plummeted to the ground. If his sister Susan hadn't used her telekinesis to delicately dissipate his inertia and safely land him on the ground, the acceleration from inertia alone would have been enough to send him crashing to the ground, leaving him in a mess.
Click, click.
Following the flaming giants came the helicopters. Like Transformers, they rose from the ground amidst the flames of the exploding fuel tanks. They had humanoid forms, their metal skins woven with flesh and blood. It looked as if they had merged with the corpses of the soldiers within them, forming a monstrous mixture of flesh and steel.
These monsters, standing three or four meters tall, resembled Doom's form, possessing a certain uncanny and insane beauty, like iron knights swooping from hell. Their steel torsos held either a large, blood-red eyeball that swirled in its socket like a real eyeball, or a ferocious, tooth-filled maw. Others, like tentacles transformed from propellers, swayed nimbly behind the iron knights like hair.
As for the soldiers who were caught off guard and covered in blood and flesh, they were groaning, with expressions of extreme pain on their faces, and their bodies were hunched over as they underwent a strange transformation in front of Reed and the others.
Hideous bone spurs pierced the flesh, the skin turned deathly gray, the palms grew larger, and evolved into sharp claws, the body grew larger and taller, or simply crawled on all fours, turning into a hunter that moved as fast as a gecko.
Some were standing, some were lying down, some were twisting and crawling on the ground like snakes, and some were even living in the shadows. The mutated soldiers almost ran straight towards the encirclement with a strong breath of life, and their colleagues ran towards them madly.
"Stop them!" Reed instinctively stretched out his arms to stop them, but their immense strength nearly sent him flying. Furthermore, Reed's rubberized skin felt like it was being branded by a branding iron. After retracting his arms, he was completely powerless to stop the mutants.
"Don't worry about them. Let's find a way to solve our problem first, okay?" Johnny, who was rescued by his sister, tried anxiously many times before he made the flames that made him feel at ease appear on his body again. He quickly dodged a blazing sword, dodging and circling around the fire giant, and roared at Reed in frustration.
There were more and more bizarre monsters now. Who knew if more of Doom's creations would appear next? Thinking of the mutants charging towards the encircled soldiers, Johnny no longer dared to imagine the worst. He wanted to help those soldiers, but he really couldn't spare the time!
The fire giant before him showed no fear of his flames or heat; it even absorbed them and their energy. The surrounding heat was absorbed into its body, bringing the previously rising temperature back down. The fire giant's massive body possessed incredible agility, drawing him in like a magnet. Whenever he tried to distance himself from it, some inexplicable pull would cause him to sink into a quagmire, slowing him down to an incomparable speed. Often, a single stride of its long legs would easily close the gap, and then the flaming sword that even Johnny felt threatened would descend upon him.
The sword continuously devoured the flames and energy of the Flame Giant, its surroundings, and Johnny himself, causing its energy to accumulate and rise. The energy fluctuations within it became increasingly terrifying. If the sword suddenly exploded, the energy contained within it would be released in an instant. He didn't know whether Doom would die, but he was afraid that none of the surrounding soldiers would survive. The chances of their survival, including theirs, were slim; it depended on timing and luck.
This only made Johnny feel more restrained and irritated. As his irritation grew, an inexplicable whisper echoed in his heart, making it even more difficult for him to calm down.
The encirclement was filled with the howling of soldiers, as if a massacre was going on. The sound of gunfire rose and fell in a chaotic mess, but it did not kill the enemy and did not reduce the casualties of the soldiers.
The gunshots continued, and the screams continued.
"Doom!" Reed shouted in Doom's direction, and a black, Rubik's Cube-sized cube appeared in his hand.
"Don't be so angry. This is just the prelude to a new world. Look, giving life to dead things! This is the method of the gods and the creator! Humans should abandon their weak bodies and eventually merge with me to become gods together!
There's no need to worry about death, and don't resist it. They will eventually survive with everyone else in another form forever! Reed, Susan, Ben, Johnny, you will also be one of them, and will eventually become a part of me. Your abilities, your brains, will all be mine!" Doom glanced at those creations made of a mixture of elements, steel, and flesh, his expression becoming somewhat frantic.
"Do you want to make me despair?" Reed took a deep breath, gave Susan a look, and immediately started attacking Doom.
Susan immediately understood Reed's intention and cooperated with him to restrain Doom's movements. Of course, completely restraining Doom's movements was impossible, but Susan could still manage to slow him down, as if he were in water or a swamp. She had completely abandoned everything else and, after blocking the attack for a moment, launched a full-scale mental attack on Doom.
Her mental power was drained away in an instant, and the huge amount of mental power fell into Doom's mind, causing his body to be shocked and his mind to be dizzy. Although this caused Susan to feel dizzy and stumble to her knees, she did create an excellent opportunity for Reed.
Reed certainly didn't miss this opportunity. With almost brutal force, he shoved the black cube in his hand into the gaping hole in Doom's chest.
The expression on Doom's mask froze, and a fierce and unmatched explosion exploded within him.
Psychic bomb.
A dangerous item that Reed secretly created in Osborn's laboratory.