The charred, smoking figure finished knitting itself back together in just a few breaths. In moments Corvus Glaive looked exactly as before—skeletal face, witchfire licking the cloak—showing no trace of injury.
"Regeneration? That fast?" Thor's heart sank. The lightning he'd called was god-thunder guided by Odin's power—wounds it left were notoriously hard to heal. Yet this foe had taken a direct strike and recovered in seconds.
That instant of distraction cost him. The vicious war-blade screamed, trailing beads of blood as it hammered Thor across the hall. Armor tore. Blood ran.
The god of Asgard was being suppressed—in his own throne room.
"Damn it! For the honor of the Northern Gods—kill him!"
Thor roared. Endless lightning poured into him. Around him the Asgardian warriors answered with their own bellows and surged like a tide at Corvus Glaive.
Elsewhere—
Knowhere, in the skull of a dead Celestial.
Thanos looked… disheveled. Plates of his armor had shattered—pauldrons and vambraces gone—and a ragged claw mark scored his chest; a hair deeper and it might have been fatal.
But the owner of those claws now lay under his boot.
The Collector.
Even with an Infinity Stone fused into his body, he was hopelessly outclassed by the Titan warlord. It was like bolting a jet engine onto a tractor and expecting to outrun a heavy cruiser—nice theory, same result.
Bleeding from a dozen wounds, the Collector sprawled in the dust. Thanos had ground his hands into pulp. His body was one stomp away from the earth.
"I surrender! I surrender!! Thanos, if you spare me, I'll serve you—don't kill me!!"
The near-immortal Collector had shed the last of his dignity. He'd taken to collecting to numb the centuries, to keep boredom from driving him to end it all—like his wife had done.
But now—
When death finally loomed, he was terrified.
Infinity Stone or not, Thanos's power was too monstrous. Strength, speed, defense—total domination.
"Surrender?"
Thanos glanced at the man pinned under his boot. One huge hand—two fingers and a thumb like girders—closed on the Collector's neck and lifted him into the air as if he were a chick.
"You're saying you yield?"
"Y-yes, yes—spare me and I'll submit. I've lived a long time. I know many things. And now I'm strong as well. Thanos, let me live and you—"
Crack.
The words died. The Collector's eyes bulged in disbelief, as if even at the end he couldn't understand why Thanos would kill him.
A slight squeeze. The frail neck gave way. It was nothing.
"Unfortunate for you. When I offered to accept your surrender, you refused. Now—I refuse."
Thanos's voice was calm.
Had the Collector yielded before the fight, perhaps he might have lived. But now… Thanos was irritated.
His hand crushed the throat—then the skull—into paste.
Saitama would never have guessed it: the man plotting revenge, weaving schemes in the dark… gone. Snuffed out by Thanos without a ripple.
With the head destroyed, an Infinity Stone drifted free of the corpse and hovered serenely.
Thanos's eyes brightened. He let the body drop like trash and pinched the Stone between two fingers.
A flick of his wrist, and it seated into a golden slot on the Infinity Gauntlet, locking in place as if made for it.
"Acquired."
He said it like he'd ticked a box. Then he ground the Collector's remains underfoot and looked around the colossal skull. After two seconds' thought, he raised the Gauntlet and curled his fist.
A wave of unspeakable force rippled outward from him.
The world lit like a torch in the night. Purple fire raced over the surface. The entire planetoid howled as it burned.
A star skull—undone.
Back in Asgard's throne hall—
Corpses carpeted the floor. Thor reeled, a ruin of gashes across his body. One shoulder had been slashed nearly through; his arm hung dead-weight, unmistakably broken.
On even footing, he would not have feared this foe. But this—
No matter how many times he killed the creature—pierced its heart, smashed its skull—Corvus Glaive healed in moments.
He could not die.
What devilry was this?
By the end, Thor was moving on will alone, battered from one end of the hall to the other. His enemy's stamina never dipped. It was obscene.
"Pitiful Asgardian whelp," Corvus said, lounging on the throne as if born to it. Black cloak draped, skull-face grinning, the monstrous blade in one hand. "If your father Odin still reigned, I might have paused. But you are a long crawl from Odin. I'm the strongest of my lord's hands—second only to Thanos himself. Ten of you would bore me."
"Curse you!"
Thor had tried every tactic he knew, and still his teeth ground with helpless rage. How do you fight what won't stay dead?
"Hand over the Infinity Stone. Stop posturing. The other path is death."
Corvus's voice was lazy, superior. He had come because Thanos's senses had marked an Infinity Stone here.
Gather the six—this was their charge.
"And if I give it to you—will you spare me?"
Thor raised his blood-smeared face and smiled bitterly.
"I will kill you either way," Corvus said, almost kindly. "But perhaps I'll make it quick. A dignified death. Consider it a favor. You won't have to taste so much pain. A generous gift for a little god."
Thor laughed, ragged but loud. "I am Thor, God of Thunder, pride of the North! I will not die here!"
Lightning flowered over him again. He looked ready to spend the last of himself in one strike.
"Ignorant child."
Corvus ran a palm down the blade's edge. The skull's grin widened.
"If you hunger for death, I'll feed you. Speak or don't—someone will. The Stones will be Thanos's in the end. He is the master of the cosmos—the king to come."
The butcher's blade rose, edge gleaming like winter.
It drew a bead on Thor's brow—and fell.
God-slayer.
(End of Chapter)
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