Chapter 2010: Setting a Trap, Interception
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
At the very least, Thor still adhered to the basic laws of the human body, and just used a standard one-handed attack with his short hammer, which just had additional recall and lightning attack functions.
Luke’s stretchy arm, on the other hand, twisted and turned like an electric cable, and alternated between short- and long-ranged attacks with the hammer.
The attack range was so wide that even Thanos’s three-meter-long blade couldn’t keep up.
A normal long-range attack with a chain weapon just relied on inertia to smash into a person, so it wasn’t hard to predict where the attack would land.
Luke, on the other hand, could do whatever he wanted with this ‘manual muscle chain weapon.’ He could twist his arm however he wanted and the hammer would hit whatever he wanted it to hit.
!!
If it wasn’t for the fact that Thanos had a huge physical advantage, he would’ve long been brought to bear by this cheat-like attack.
However, he soon discovered something odd about Luke’s attack — there was no lightning.
Compared with Steve, who had been able to call down lightning when he wielded the hammer earlier, there was no lightning on Luke’s hammer.
It had to be pointed out that the Mjolnir hammer was Thor’s ‘exclusive divine weapon,’ and had been created with lightning runes.
Using it in battle without the lightning was as funny as eating a bun without tasting the stuffing.
Sensing this anomaly, Thanos immediately changed part of his attack strategy. He no longer guarded against Mjolnir’s lightning discharge, and simply treated Luke’s attack as a purely physical one.
In less than ten seconds, Luke lost ground.
He couldn’t help but admire how shrewd Thanos was; the latter had immediately realized that Luke wasn’t making full use of the Mjolnir hammer.
That was because Luke really couldn’t lift this divine weapon on his own.
He had already tried it when he first saw Mjolnir in Shackelford; he had no affinity with it.
But once the system started acc.u.mulating the power of faith, which the ancient Enchantress had called ‘divine power,’ it had given Luke some ideas.
At that party, he had secretly tried it out in front of everybody.
As long as he wrapped his hand in the power of faith, Luke could easily lift the hammer.
But this was clearly a cheat, and was equivalent to using the power of faith to bypa.s.s Odin’s ‘workshop setting.’
A proud divine weapon like Mjolnir naturally wouldn’t cooperate with him.
Steve could call down lightning and throw the hammer at people, but Luke could only use it as a dumb hammer.
In any case, Luke was a grand old ‘magic insulator’ – wasn’t it very normal for him not to be able to release electricity when he was holding the divine artifact?
As someone who used free, ‘pirated’ versions, it made sense that his user experience was worse than the real deal.
As for the proficiency with the hammer which astonished Thanos, that was naturally Thor’s Advanced One-Handed Hammer Proficiency ability.
As a combat master, Luke spent two million credit points to buy this ability, which was the only Advanced ability in the system, and he practiced and studied it repeatedly.
Magical traits aside, Luke was slightly better at using the hammer than the 2023 beer-bellied Thor.
If he wasn’t confident, he wouldn’t have charged at Thanos with Mjolnir.
Unfortunately, his clone’s stats were too weak. Even with a cheat and all sorts of tricks, he couldn’t last long.
Thanos finally broke through forcefully, and Luke could only defend himself with the hammer for ons moment. The huge blade lashed out to cut him in half.
Luke’s body twisted out of the way in the shape of a C to buy himself some time.
Clang!
The huge blade struck the hilt of the hammer and cut off three of Luke’s fingers.
Swoos.h.!.+
The blade swept upward diagonally to cut a huge gash from the left side of Luke’s abdomen to his chest. He was sent flying, and blood rained down.
A relaxed expression appeared on Thanos’s face as he chased after Luke with the giant blade.
Spending a few more seconds to cut this d*mn muscle monster into pieces was definitely worth it.
Swoos.h.!.+ Bang!
A slender figure fell from the sky, and scarlet energy rippled out, causing Thanos to stop.
A young woman in a dark red leather jacket glared at him with bloodshot eyes.
Wanda had finally broken through the blockade of gunfire and soldiers and found an opportunity to fight her archenemy one-on-one.
Her eyes burned with the red fire of revenge. “You took everything from me!”
Thanos: ???
He was confused. “I don’t know you at all.”
Wanda said, “You will.”
As she spoke, she made a grabbing motion with both hands, and two mounds of rubble floated upward. With a wave of her hands, they flew at Thanos.
Thanos swung his giant blade and easily cut through them
Wanda put her hands together, and a huge ball of scarlet chaos energy hit him.
Thanos felt his armor creak as the energy corroded it.
With a fierce expression, he spun the giant blade in his hand so that it acted like a s.h.i.+eld and charged at Wanda.
Undaunted, Wanda threw out b.a.l.l.s of scarlet energy.
Even though the spinning blade blocked them, Thanos was still hit by a violent rain of ‘chaos missiles.’
Luke, who had used Elementary Concealment and was lurking again, smacked his lips. A sorcerer throwing missiles at the face? That was ridiculous.
Sure enough, losing control of your emotions really affected a battle.
However, Wanda wasn’t losing at the moment. Her turbulent emotions gave her strength.
At that moment, Luke’s body had returned to normal, but he had lost three fingers on his right hand, and one third of his chest and abdomen had been split open.
These injuries were insignificant. They weren’t even as bad as when he used his clone in experiments.
However, he couldn’t take out Life 1, so his three fingers couldn’t regenerate for the time being, which would affect his combat ability.
The gash on his chest and abdomen, on the other hand, hadn’t affected his bones or internal organs at all, and was almost healed.
He had been able to twist his body into a C earlier; manipulating his muscles and stacking them on the left side of his body was too easy.
All it took was a thought to contract his muscles to stop the bleeding, which ensured that he lost no more than 10ml of blood.
So, what Thanos had cut was basically muscle; even the blood from the injury was something Luke deliberately squeezed out to dupe Thanos.
Unfortunately, Wanda was too vengeful and ruined Luke’s trap.
Luke cursed inwardly, but wasn’t in a hurry to attack again.
The previous 80% → 100% → 120% power outburst + weapon fight was nothing more than a basic combat test as Luke took a rough measure of Thanos’s strength.
Thus, when his trap failed, he stopped pus.h.i.+ng.
Now, Luke was just waiting for Thanos to enter a range of 100 meters from the Infinity Glove, which was under less bombardment from his aerial troops.
That would be the best time to grab the glove and end things once and for all.
Charge in? What a joke.
Tony, who was wearing the Mark 85, had been knocked unconscious. Even if Luke wore Knight’s armor, he might instantly lose an arm or a leg, or even be smashed to pieces.
Luke wouldn’t take a gamble before the very last moment.
Not far away, Thanos finally reached Wanda. In fact, she had covered the remaining distance herself.
But that didn’t stop Thanos from attacking, and the giant blade directly slashed down.
Luke tensed, ready to rush forward to save Wanda.