Green light tore through the sky.
It wasn't so much a beam as it was a red-hot iron rod hurled straight down from orbit, screaming as it ignited the air in its path. Before it even hit, a scorching shockwave slammed downward. The grass on the lawn withered and curled in an instant, releasing the stench of burning vegetation.
Maria clutched Monica, her mind completely blank. The scream stuck in her throat. She was just an ordinary mother—when death pressed down so tangibly, all she could do was shut her eyes and hold her daughter as tightly as she could.
Carol reacted a beat faster.
Every cell in her body screamed. The combat instincts implanted by the Kree kicked in reflexively. Golden cosmic energy seeped from beneath her skin as she bent her knees, ready to hurl herself into the descending death ray with her own body.
But she knew it was too late.
It was too fast. Too close.
At that moment, Levi moved.
Standing on the roof, he simply raised his right hand toward the falling green light and spread his fingers.
No charging. No battle cry. Not even a hint of energy flare. The motion was calm—like snapping his fingers, or catching a baseball tossed by a friend.
Then, he closed his hand.
Humm—
A deeply suppressed, muffled sound rang out, as if it came from another dimension.
Something utterly bizarre happened.
The beam—powerful enough to vaporize the house and everything within a hundred meters—stopped.
It froze less than three meters above the roof tiles.
Just… stopped in midair.
It didn't hit anything. It didn't cause even the slightest ripple. The destructive energy at its tip still churned violently, yet it could not advance even an inch further, as if someone had pressed pause on reality itself.
On the lawn below, Carol's body stiffened mid-motion. Her mouth fell slightly open. She could feel how terrifying the energy inside that beam was—pure, refined destruction, the standard output of a Kree ship's main cannon. Even in Binary form, taking it head-on would cost her dearly.
Yet it had been halted with a single gesture.
Then something even more unbelievable occurred.
The frozen beam began to twist.
It was no longer a straight line of light, but like a venomous snake seized by an invisible hand—folded, coiled, compressed from end to end. The destructive energy screamed as it collided with itself in an impossibly small space, yet could not break free.
One second.
In just one second, the energy column—stretching thousands of meters from the sky—was forcibly kneaded into a violently unstable green sphere no larger than a basketball.
It hovered half a meter above Levi's palm, flashing, swelling, contracting like a heart on the verge of explosion.
Levi looked at the "toy" with a blank expression, boredom even flickering in his eyes. His hand tightened slightly, then he flicked his wrist upward, as casually as tossing out trash.
The compressed energy sphere instantly reversed direction.
Moving more than ten times faster than before, it became a green meteor that shot back along its original trajectory, streaking into the cloudless blue sky.
Three seconds later—
BOOM!!!
A delayed, earth-shaking explosion thundered from the upper atmosphere.
A massive green fireball blossomed above the clouds. The violent shockwave erased all clouds within several kilometers, leaving behind a vast, hollow blue ring in the sky. Sunlight poured down unobstructed, as if the heavens themselves had been punched through.
From start to finish—the beam's descent, its reversal, and the explosion—no more than five seconds passed.
On the lawn, deathly silence reigned.
Maria slowly opened her eyes. She was alive. Her daughter was still in her arms. She stared blankly at the enormous void in the sky, then at the figure on the roof with his hands in his pockets, as if he'd done nothing at all. Her mind simply shut down.
Carol stood there rigid, the golden light that had surged to her skin slowly retreating. She looked at Levi and, for the first time, truly understood what gap meant.
Not a gap in strength.
A gap in existence.
She could block that attack—but only by burning energy, colliding with it head-on, paying a price.
Levi had merely raised his hand.
"Stay inside. Don't come out," Levi said from the rooftop, his voice calm, devoid of emotion.
With that, his figure faded and vanished.
The next instant, he was already thousands of meters up in the sky.
There, six Kree soldiers clad in dark green standard combat armor, metal helmets sealed tight, stood atop hovering boards. They stared in shock at the distant fireball—what remained of their own reconnaissance craft, destroyed by the cannon shot that had been thrown back at them.
They formed a semicircle, surrounding Levi.
At the front stood Yon-Rogg.
His face was ashen. His fingers clenched around his energy rifle, knuckles whitening. He never could have imagined that his carefully calculated opening strike would not only fail, but be casually returned—and take out one of his ships in the process.
This was humiliation. Absolute humiliation.
"Who are you?" Yon-Rogg locked his gaze onto Levi, his voice cold as the winds of Hala.
"This is an internal matter of the Kree Empire—between us and the traitor Vers. Earthman, get out of the way. Now."
Levi kept his hands in his pockets and strolled casually through the air, as if walking through his own backyard. He glanced over the well-equipped Kree soldiers, his gaze like that of a customer assessing goods on a shelf.
"First," Levi said calmly, his voice carrying clearly to every ear,
"her name is Carol Danvers. She's an Earthling. Not 'Vers.'"
He paused, then looked directly at Yon-Rogg, a trace of mocking amusement in his eyes.
"Second, didn't your emperor ever teach you basic manners when visiting another planet?" Levi continued.
"Opening fire on someone's house without asking questions first—that's a bad habit. It makes your empire look… embarrassing."
"You're courting death!" Yon-Rogg snapped, completely enraged. As commander of an elite Kree squad, he had never been insulted like this. The soldiers behind him immediately raised their energy rifles, dark green muzzles glowing ominously as they all locked onto Levi.
"So you've chosen death," Yon-Rogg hissed.
"Then die. Fire!"
At his command, five green energy beams erupted from different angles, forming a lethal net that sealed off all possible escape routes.
Levi didn't even consider dodging.
He stood there, unmoving—his hands never leaving his pockets.
When the beams reached within one meter of his body, something that shattered every Kree's sanity occurred.
They slowed.
Dimmed.
Then, less than half a meter from Levi, they vanished—like cigarette embers pinched out in midair.
No explosion.
No shield.
Not even a ripple in the air.
Spatial Curvature Absorption.
A technique Levi had refined over the past few days—micro-folding space around himself at extreme frequency, forming an invisible energy-grinding field. Any energy entering it was instantly decomposed by countless spatial folds into its most primitive particles.
"That's it?" Levi clicked his tongue, disappointment perfectly measured on his face.
"This is the Kree Empire's elite squad? Feels like a massage."
Yon-Rogg and his men were stunned.
Their attacks… had been eaten?
Impossible. Those were pure energy weapons—not physical projectiles! Absorbing them outright violated everything they understood about physics.
"Monster…" one Kree soldier finally croaked in terror.
"Figured it out a little late," Levi replied softly.
His voice seemed to echo right beside each of their ears.
The next second, he vanished.
Yon-Rogg's pupils shrank to pinpoints. His battle-hardened instincts screamed a warning. His mind hadn't processed it yet, but his body reacted—activating the energy shield on his wrist and retreating at full speed.
Too late.
No alarms sounded. His tactical visor showed no enemy proximity alert.
He only felt his shoulder sink.
A hand—an ordinary, ungloved hand—rested lightly on it.
The energy shield he was so proud of, capable of withstanding direct blaster fire, popped like a soap bubble—soundless and effortless.
Every hair on Yon-Rogg's body stood on end.
There was no force. No energy fluctuation. Yet that casually resting hand felt like an immovable mountain pinning him in place. Moving even a finger was impossible.
He watched as Levi's form solidified in front of him, a harmless smile on his face.
"See?" Levi grinned, white teeth showing.
"I caught you."
To Yon-Rogg, that smile was more terrifying than any demon from the abyss.
Then Levi's fingers tightened slightly.
Crack—
First came the crisp sound of metal shattering. Yon-Rogg's shoulder armor—crafted from special alloys—collapsed like a biscuit under a hydraulic press, exploding into fragments.
Crunch…
Then came the nauseating sound of bone being pulverized. His shoulder, clavicle, and scapula were crushed into a slurry of flesh and bone under irresistible force.
"AAAGH—!"
A scream ripped from Yon-Rogg's throat, no longer human in tone.
Behind him, the remaining four soldiers didn't even have time to process their commander's scream before death arrived.
The closest one saw a blur—then his energy rifle twisted like a corkscrew, the barrel smashing back into his helmet. Darkness took him instantly.
Another felt like he'd been hit by a speeding truck. An invisible force crushed him and the hoverboard beneath his feet, slamming him bodily into a teammate.
Bam!
The two merged into a mangled mass of flesh and metal, plummeting from the sky.
The last soldier, witnessing this, panicked and fled. The moment he turned, something cinched around his neck.
He looked down.
His own energy rifle—bent into a U-shape—had become a collar clamped tightly around his throat.
He tried to scream. No sound came.
Darkness swallowed him.
Four elite Kree soldiers were eliminated in under two seconds—each in a different way.
Only Levi remained in the sky, along with Yon-Rogg, who dangled from his grasp like a rag doll, convulsing in agony, barely breathing.
Everything had happened in a blink.
On the ground, Carol hovered midair, staring in shock at the one-sided slaughter.
She hadn't even seen Levi move.
One moment he vanished—the next, the Kree soldiers who had once terrified her were corpses.
Yon-Rogg—the mentor, the nightmare etched into her memories—was now so fragile in Levi's hand that he wasn't even as resistant as an infant.
Levi descended slowly, carrying Yon-Rogg, and landed in front of Carol with a faintly amused smile.
"Now," he said, tossing Yon-Rogg onto the lawn like trash and planting a foot on his chest, looking down at him coldly,
"we can have a proper talk about what you did to Carol."
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