Boom!
The Bifrost's radiance faded away.
The unconscious Loki lay on the ground, looking utterly miserable. The silver armor across his body was cracked and shattered, and a strange eye wandered through the fissures in his flesh.
Then Bant, ghostlike, detached himself from Loki's body.
The Destroyer armor on Loki automatically fell away, pieces dropping one after another like withering petals.
After Loki passed out, the Destroyer naturally stopped moving as well without life force to fuel it.
That made things convenient for Bant to collect.
He transformed back into the Diamond War God. With a sweeping motion of his hand, crystals gathered at once, wrapping up all the fragments. Then he pressed his palm against the massive crystal mass and sent the Destroyer pieces down into the ground.
Honestly, storing things like this carried some risk. On Earth it was fine, because most instruments were crude and might not even detect those crystals. But on Sakaar, scavengers would dig three feet into the ground for anything valuable.
But Bant had no choice.
He didn't have any spatial storage equipment on him. Unless he carried the armor around at all times, there was no other way.
He could store it inside the Diamond War God's body, but then he wouldn't be able to cancel the transformation for the time being.
"Sakaar isn't exactly peaceful. Conquering this place won't be easy." Bant looked around.
Everywhere were broken machine parts. Mountains of scrapped machinery buried Sakaar's original red earth. There was barely a decent path. If you weren't careful, you could step into a gap and get buried by discarded components.
The air wasn't too unpleasant. Almost everything dumped on Sakaar was mechanical waste, so it wasn't like it would stink.
Even if some civilization tried to dump excrement or other filth, it would be vaporized by high temperatures while entering the atmosphere.
On Sakaar, instead of worrying about filthy things falling from the sky, you were better off worrying about the stench of bodies rotting after starving to death, or the smell of those poor bastards beaten to death in the arena…
Speaking of Sakaar's arena, that was Bant's target.
Most aliens who "accidentally" arrived on Sakaar would be sent to the arena, forced by the ruler to fight match after match.
In other words, it gathered the strongest combat power on the planet, and the number of genes the little broken watch could record there was beyond counting.
In the Marvel universe, most alien races weren't actually that impressive. Very few species were strong enough to surpass the thirteen alien heroes Bant currently had.
The original ten basic alien heroes were already enough to handle most everyday crises in their normal states.
In fact, for most races, individual combat power might even be worse than Bant's base body with Spider-Man's abilities.
But the little broken watch was never meant to be a weapon. Even though it was treated like one most of the time, Bant hadn't forgotten Azmuth's original intention when he created it.
So collecting all kinds of alien genes, besides boosting his own combat strength, was also a small sense of responsibility as the wearer of the Ark.
Of course, it wasn't without benefits for Bant either.
The different forms of genes from different species could become research topics for him. After all, Bant still wanted to build his own Ommnitrix based on the little broken watch!
Also, some alien races might not be strong, but they could have special abilities.
For example, both Skrulls and Kree had shapeshifting mimicry. And the species of tree-person Groot could produce a new individual from a corpse after death…
The universe was diverse, and so was life.
You couldn't judge value purely by strength.
"I wonder if there are any Skrulls or Kree in the arena," Bant thought.
But he knew the odds were slim.
First, Skrull civilization and Kree civilization were both extremely powerful in the universe, strong enough to be called empires. It was rare for someone from those races to fall into a place like Sakaar.
Second, even if they did end up here by bad luck, with the combat power of a Skrull or a Kree, surviving on Sakaar wouldn't be easy.
He shook his head, then looked up at Sakaar's pale gray sky.
The planet's atmosphere was similar to Earth's, and its gravity was roughly the same as well. That kind of gravitational environment pleased Bant greatly.
The environment was fairly livable. Combined with its already developed technology, and the constant rain of machine parts from space, Sakaar was even more suitable as a Tiangong Association base.
And those gladiators in Sakaar's arena could become the Tiangong Association's first batch of reserve members.
"But before that, I still need to take over Sakaar and overthrow this planet's ruler."
In the movie, the ruler of this planet was the Grandmaster, one of the Elders of the Universe.
That old bastard would be hard to deal with. Don't let his on-screen combat showings fool you. The Grandmaster's strength wasn't low, and he could even ignore all kinds of physical attacks.
"Better to sneak into the arena first and see what I'm dealing with." Bant thought it over and made his decision.
Trying to seize a planet with just himself would obviously be exhausting.
So he planned to copy the Hulk's method from the comics: dominate the arena, then incite all the gladiators inside to rebel.
His time was tight. Only one month.
Because one month later, Midtown High would start the semester again.
"Seriously. I'm already out here conquering the universe, and I still have to go to school," he sighed helplessly.
Just then, more than ten ships sped in from different directions.
Clearly, Sakaar's scavengers.
Seeing this, Bant quickly canceled his transformation, pretended to be unconscious, and lay down beside Loki. He planned to use this method to slip into the arena.
Whoosh!
The ships' thrusters spat flames as they hovered in midair.
A ship on the east side issued the first warning.
"This is my prey. Get lost!"
The ship on the west side didn't send any communication at all. It simply raised its cannons and launched an indiscriminate attack on the other ships!
Boom!
No one expected that ship to be so lawless, daring to open fire immediately. Usually they avoided using high-powered weapons to start a shootout.
It was dangerous, and it could damage the "treasure." If you weren't careful, you'd get nothing and end up burying yourself instead.
But Valkyrie didn't care.
If you wanted to thrive on Sakaar, it wasn't rules that kept you alive!
Boom!
After a burst of fire, the other ships were shot down in an instant.
Then the hatch of the black ship opened, and a blonde woman in black armor stumbled out, reeking of alcohol.
These past few days I've been desperately writing to prepare for next Monday's release. I finally managed to write two extra chapters, but yesterday I posted the wrong one and accidentally sent this chapter first, sob…
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