N-A-A Chapter 141 Defense Network
Chapter 141 Defense Network
During the four-day hyperspace jump, Wanda spent most of her time on the bridge of the Sanctuary.
The flagship's interior was far larger than it appeared from the outside. The circular command console in the center of the bridge could simultaneously display information from over twenty different star systems. The Chitauri certainly had a knack for warship design. It's just a pity that their shipbuilding skills far exceeded the intellect of their users.
On the third day after the jump, Thanos gave Wanda a detailed battle briefing in the tactical conference room.
"Icarus's basic combat ability is about the same as mine, but he's faster and a level below me in strength." Thanos sat at one end of the conference table, on which was spread a battlefield analysis diagram he had drawn three years ago. It was hand-drawn and not very precise, but the annotations were very detailed: "For the first two hours, I was on the defensive against him. His kin tried to intervene three times, but I blocked them all."
"Where is the turning point?" Wanda asked.
Thanos's finger pointed to the last segment of the analysis chart: "At the two-hour and seventeen-minute mark, I delivered a powerful blow, piercing his left shoulder. According to normal combat logic, he should have entered a defensive stance after this attack."
But he didn't.
"His wound healed in three seconds, and then that power erupted from him." Thanos paused here, "It lasted for less than five seconds. In those five seconds, he punched me four times. I blocked the first two punches, and the third punch hit my chest armor, which shattered. I dodged the fourth punch."
Wanda leaned back. She had seen Thanos's chest armor before; it was forged from Uru alloy, which ranks among the top three in hardness among known materials.
"What happens in five seconds?"
"He was exhausted," Thanos said. "That burst of power took a huge toll on him; he could barely stand. If I had chosen to continue fighting, I probably would have won."
Wanda stared at him: "But you didn't."
"Because I'm not sure if he can do it a second time." Thanos's answer was direct: "If he can, how long will the interval be between the second outbreaks, and will the duration be longer? There are no answers to these variables, and I'm not betting."
Wanda did not comment on the decision. From a purely military perspective, Thanos's judgment was flawless. Pushing forward with insufficient information is foolish, especially when the opponent's capabilities are unknown.
But that's Thanos's problem, not Shendu's.
On the fourth day, when the fleet jumped out of hyperspace, Wanda was the first to arrive at the bridge.
Olympia appears on the main screen.
A terrestrial planet nearly twice the size of Earth, with a large area of blue-green vegetation and white clouds on its surface, and an ocean coverage of about 40 percent, it looks like an ordinary habitable planet, nothing special.
But Wanda's perception told her another story.
The entire planet was covered by a layer of something.
It wasn't a shield, a force field, or any defensive mechanism she could categorize. That layer had no clear boundaries, no visible light spectrum, and the Chitauri warship's scanners didn't even sound an alarm. Wanda's chaos magic could sense it; it was like a net, extremely thin and dense, stretching from the top of the atmosphere all the way to the depths of the Earth's crust.
The Holy Lord emerged from behind the bridge and stood in front of the command post.
Wanda noticed that Shendu's right hand moved slightly, a very subtle movement, his fingers clenching and unclenching, as if in response to something.
"Do you resonate with it?" Wanda asked.
The Holy Lord nodded: "Tiger Talisman, but it's very weak; it's been diluted."
Thanos walked to the star map control panel and pulled up the scan data of Olympia: "Three years ago, this layer wasn't this dense. When I came here last time, I only detected faint energy fluctuations near the surface."
"They've reinforced their defenses," Corvus Glaive added, standing behind Thanos.
The Holy Lord walked to the observation window at the very front of the bridge. An invisible sense spread out from his palm, passing through the vacuum and touching the transparent net that covered the entire planet.
The moment of contact, Wanda felt a response—neither rejection nor acceptance, but more like a kind of "recognition." The energy field was examining the identity of the person making contact, and then gave a vague signal: of the same origin, but not a match.
The Holy Lord withdrew his hand.
"The power of the Tiger Talisman has been dismantled." His tone was a statement, not a guess: "It wasn't stored in any one person; it was shattered and embedded into the structure of this planet. The crust, the oceans, the atmosphere, the magnetic field—it's all there. That defensive network is woven from fragments of the Tiger Talisman."
Thanos frowned: "So the power Icarus unleashed during the battle..."
"He temporarily extracted a portion from the planet beneath his feet," the Holy Lord said. "Standing on this planet, he can access the fragments of the Tiger Talisman. Outside of this planet, he is nothing."
The bridge was quiet for a while.
Wanda spoke up: "Master, let me try."
Before Shendu could answer, she had already walked to the control panel, her hands hovering above the surface, dark red chaos magic emanating from her fingertips. Her perception was far superior to Shendu's, adept at finding gaps in complex energy structures—a talent bestowed upon her by the Mind Stone, and a skill she had honed under Shendu's tutelage.
Threads of chaotic magic drifted from her fingertips, passed through the outer wall of the bridge, pierced through the vacuum, and pierced the defensive net like needles.
“This field wasn’t created by the Eternals themselves.” Wanda looked back at the Holy Lord. “The structure is too intricate. I found traces of foreign weaving in the underlying code, or rather, someone disassembled the master’s power and embedded it into the entire planet for them.”
"Who did it?" Thanos asked.
Wanda shook her head: "The traces are too old; I can't trace their origin. But what's certain is that the design logic of this system is completely different from how the Eternals use energy. It's like putting a nuclear reactor in a primitive tribe; they can use it, but they can't build it."
The Holy Lord turned and walked out of the bridge.
"Master?" Wanda followed.
"Since the Tiger Talisman has been removed from the planet, let's remove it from the planet." Shendu's steps did not stop: "Have Thanos deploy the fleet, block the orbit, and prevent anything from leaving this planet."
Wanda paused for a moment, then asked, "Are you going down?"
"Come with me."
Wanda quickly followed and walked to the side of the Holy Lord. The lights in the corridor swept over their heads, casting alternating light and shadow on the two of them.
"Master, Icarus can use the power of the Tiger Talisman on the planet's surface. If we go down there, it will be like stepping into their home ground."
The Holy Lord glanced at her: "Are you afraid?"
"I am assessing the risks."
"Your task is not to assess the risks," the Holy Lord continued walking forward. "Your task is to ensure that the Eternals don't cause trouble while I dismantle the planet's defenses. Eight thousand people, can you control them?"
Wanda didn't say anything more. The range of the Mind Stone's coverage had already been verified in Titan's orbit; suppressing over four thousand Chitauri simultaneously was a relatively easy task for her. The mental strength of the eight thousand Eternals was unknown, but with the Holy Lord by her side, she had nothing to worry about.