8: Chapter 8 Sky Overlord, the Baron's Ultimate Nightmare

Three thousand meters above Siberia.

A pitch-black, HYDRA-customized stealth shuttle was racing westward at supersonic speeds.

Inside the cabin, Baron Strucker stared intently at the rear-view radar.

On the screen, the coordinates representing the underground Base in Siberia had completely vanished, replaced by a glaring red spot indicating a high-radiation explosion.

"Whew..." The Baron let out a long sigh and slumped back into his leather seat, exhausted.

He raised his hand and touched the titanium alloy briefcase resting on his knees.

It contained all the hard work of the HYDRA European branch over the past twenty years—including all data from the "God-Making Project," the control phrases for the "Winter Soldier," and the preliminary analysis report of Loki's scepter.

Bases could be rebuilt, but as long as this case remained, he, Strucker, would still be one of the highest authorities in HYDRA.

"Baron, we have cleared the nuclear blast's Impact zone," the pilot reported, staring at the dashboard. "We expect to arrive at the secret fortress in Sokovia in four hours."

Just as the Baron was about to nod, a piercing alarm suddenly erupted inside the cramped cabin.

"What's going on?!"

"Radar shows... an unidentified high-energy heat source is approaching from behind!" The pilot's fingers tapped frantically on the keyboard, his voice cracking from extreme fear. "Speed is Mach 2... no, Mach 3! It's still accelerating! It's closing the distance in a straight line!"

The Baron lunged to the rear porthole and looked outside.

Amidst the blizzard, a fireball interwoven with dark red and ghostly green colors was tearing through the clouds, trailing a long plume of flame as it hurtled toward the shuttle.

That was no missile.

That was a person!

A monster spewing nuclear fusion flames, burning a vacuum trail through the atmosphere!

"Evade! Launch all decoys! Open fire!" the Baron roared.

The rear of the shuttle instantly spat out a dense barrage of interference flares and anti-aircraft cannon fire.

However, as those large-caliber armor-piercing rounds came within ten meters of the dark fireball, they were instantly melted into molten iron vapor by the tens of millions of degrees of heat.

"Boom!"

A deafening, muffled thud.

The shuttle shuddered violently, and the gravity system inside the cabin failed instantly.

The Baron was thrown hard against the cabin wall. He looked up in terror, witnessing a scene he would never forget for the rest of his life.

The special bulletproof armor on the cabin roof was turning red and melting at a speed visible to the naked eye. A few drops of scalding molten iron dripped onto the floor, burning with acrid White smoke.

"Sizzle—"

A massive hand, composed of dark rock and ghostly green radiation flames, tore straight through the roof armor!

A second hand followed.

Both massive hands gripped the edges of the breach in the cabin roof and ripped outward!

The aviation armor, capable of withstanding missile strikes, was peeled away like paper. The gale, carrying the freezing cold of forty degrees below zero, poured into the cabin.

Lynn hovered above the shuttle, the ghostly green flames on his head raging in the wind.

He didn't look at the trembling Baron in the cabin but landed directly on the shuttle's right wing engine.

He lifted his foot and stomped down hard.

"Crack!"

Lynn's foot, encased in nuclear flames, stomped straight through the engine casing, pouring nuclear Fire into the turbine.

"Boom!"

The right engine detonated violently. The shuttle instantly lost balance, spiraling like a kite with a broken string as it plummeted toward the ice sheet below.

...

"Bang—crunch—"

The shuttle, weighing over a dozen tons, dove into the thick snow, plowing a hundred-meter-long trench across the ice sheet before finally coming to a stop.

The cabin was severely deformed, and the pilot was dead on the spot.

"Urgh..."

Baron Strucker, covered in blood, limped as he kicked open the deformed cabin door and crawled out of the wreckage.

He clutched the titanium alloy briefcase tightly in his left hand, drew his sidearm with his right, and looked around in terror.

In the snowstorm, the snow ahead was rapidly melting.

Lynn walked forward, step by step, treading on the scorched earth.

The temperature of the flames on his body had decreased, but the dark gold Bloodtrix emblem on his chest still exuded a suffocating sense of pressure.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The Baron frantically emptied his magazine. The bullets struck the black rock on Lynn's body without even sparking.

Lynn walked up to the Baron and looked down at him.

"No... don't kill me! I can give you everything you want!" The Baron completely collapsed, his knees giving way as he knelt in the snow. "Wealth, power, women! Just spare my life!"

Lynn didn't speak; he reached out with his burning hand and snatched the briefcase that the Baron was clutching tightly to his chest.

"That is..." The Baron's pupils contracted.

"Your trump card?"

Lynn looked at the special briefcase in his hand, which claimed to be fireproof, waterproof, and explosion-proof. He exerted force with his palm.

"Sizzle—"

Ghostly green nuclear Fire gushed from his palm.

The titanium alloy casing turned red within seconds and then completely melted.

The micro hard drives inside, the top-secret paper documents, and even those special materials were all reduced to a pile of black ash in the nuclear Fire.

The Baron watched helplessly as his last capital for a comeback was casually scattered into the snowstorm by Lynn.

"You... you demon..." The Baron's face was ashen, his eyes losing focus.

"I didn't intend to kill you."

Lynn's tone was calm, without a trace of emotional fluctuation.

He lifted his foot and stomped on the Baron's intact right calf.

"Crack."

A crisp sound of bone breaking rang out. The Baron's right tibia was crushed into a comminuted fracture by Lynn's stomp, with white bone fragments piercing through his military trousers and exposing themselves to the cold air.

"Arghhhhh!" The Baron clutched his broken leg, rolling in the snow in agony.

"I'm sparing your life so you can go back and tell the others in HYDRA."

Lynn leaned down, his ghostly green flaming head bringing close to the Baron's twisted face. "Hide well. Because I will find you all, one by one."

Having said that, Lynn straightened up, ready to leave.

Just then.

[Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!]

The dark gold Bloodtrix emblem on his chest suddenly erupted with a rapid and piercing alarm.

The red light inside the inverted triangle emblem began to flash frantically, becoming extremely unstable.

[Warning: External nuclear energy consumption overload!]

[Current Bloodtrix level (Lv.1 Damaged Phase), unable to bear stellar-level energy loads for long periods.]

[Forcing cooling protocol startup... stripping mutant genes.]

"Sizzle—"

The radiation flames on Lynn's body instantly extinguished, and the dark black rock skin receded rapidly like a receding tide.

A few seconds later, he had transformed back into that black-haired, black-eyed, well-built human youth.

On his left wrist, the crimson blood watch emblem went completely dim, falling into a dormant gray state.

Cold.

The Siberian cold wind of forty degrees below zero instantly enveloped Lynn's body. Although the Bloodtrix's feedback had pushed his physique to the human limit, being stark naked in such an extreme environment was still not very pleasant.

Lynn walked over to the shuttle wreckage, dragged out the dead pilot, stripped off his thick cold-weather combat suit to put on himself, and casually swiped the tactical knife and a stack of U.S. currency from the man's pockets.

He took one last look at the Baron wailing in the snow before turning and walking into the depths of the snowstorm.

The nuclear energy he had just consumed was too vast, causing the Bloodtrix to enter a forced cooling phase.

He needed time to digest this energy and also needed to find new "prey" to replenish his gene bank and accelerate the Bloodtrix's repair.

Lynn touched the cold Bloodtrix on his wrist and looked toward the southwest.

There, in the most prosperous and chaotic city in the entire U.S., hid countless mutated criminals and arrogant heroes.

That was the best hunting ground.

"New York."