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Chapter 61 - A Mere Mortal Pushed Me So Far

The ruins of Stark Tower no longer existed.

The world around Tony Stark twisted and fractured into an impossible landscape—a warped battlefield sculpted by the raw, unrestrained power of the Tesseract.

Buildings folded inward like paper, the sky spiraled into an endless vortex of deep blues and crackling cosmic energy, and the laws of physics had simply... stopped.

Tony's boot thrusters flared as he adjusted midair, his HUD struggling to make sense of the chaos.

The city was gone, replaced by a kaleidoscope of infinite reflections—each one showing a different version of himself, moving at different speeds, all slightly out of sync.

"Alright. I'll admit it," Tony muttered, his voice laced with wry amusement as he flexed his fingers.

The nanites in his suit shifted, adjusting to the spatial distortions. "This is officially the weirdest acid trip I've ever been on."

A slow, mocking clap echoed through the void.

Loki stood atop an inverted skyscraper, arms crossed, his emerald cape billowing despite the absence of wind.

His smirk was pure arrogance. "Still so flippant, Stark? You stand in the palm of a god's hand, yet you jest."

He spread his arms, and the very fabric of space trembled in response. "Welcome to my dominion."

Tony's suit vibrated with a warning pulse—dimensional instability rising off the charts.

'He's rewriting reality itself. Cute.'

"You know, you keep calling yourself a god," Tony quipped, tilting his head.

"But real gods don't need a glowing blue cheat code to make their point."

Loki's smirk twitched.

Then he moved.

A blink—no, a flicker—and Loki was suddenly everywhere.

Tens. Hundreds. Thousands of Lokis, all grinning, all converging on Tony in an overwhelming wave of emerald energy and golden blades. Each one radiated a different magical signature, each one felt real.

Illusions layered on illusions. A perfect, impossible attack.

Tony reacted instantly.

His neural enhancements after his evolutions kicked in, processing at inhuman speeds.

The Mark Infinity Suit glowed as his dimensional awareness expanded, filtering through the deceptions like a supercomputer analyzing a million variables at once.

'Not real. Not real. Not real. There you are—'

The moment he locked onto the true Loki's signature, Tony acted.

He didn't dodge. He didn't retreat.

He attacked.

His repulsors flared—except instead of a straight energy blast, he triggered the Infinity Chamber Protocol.

Reality around him fractured as he vanished.

For a split second, the battlefield froze. The wave of Lokis passed through empty air—no impact, no collision, just a void where Tony Stark had once been.

And then—

BOOM.

Tony reappeared mid-air, mere inches from the real Loki, his gauntlet crackling with compressed Starktonium energy.

His fist slammed into Loki's jaw like a meteor strike, sending the Trickster God hurtling backward through his own warping constructs.

The illusions shattered. The battlefield quaked.

Loki twisted midair, eyes wide with genuine surprise before regaining control, landing smoothly on nothingness itself.

He wiped the blood from his lip, eyes narrowing. "Interesting…"

Tony twirled his gauntlet as his nanites reconfigured, forming intricate golden rings around his wrist—the Mandarin's rings, integrated seamlessly into his suit.

Meanwhile Tony was secretly glad he integrated the 10 rings of the Mandarin into his Mark infinity suit. With his genius intellect it wasn't so hard to perform.

Not to mention his Quantum A.I Assistant, M.A.R.V.E.L.

Stark's voice was casual, but razor-sharp.

"Guess the god of mischief isn't used to people skipping his little parlor tricks."

Loki's gaze darkened.

"You amuse yourself with cheap tricks, Stark, but you do not comprehend the true vastness of power."

The air hummed with malevolence as Loki extended his hand.

The space between them collapsed.

One moment, Tony was standing on the twisted remnants of reality—the next, the distance between them ceased to exist.

Loki's hand was on Tony's arc reactor before he could fully register the shift.

A surge of pure, unfiltered Tesseract energy coursed through Tony's body, an overwhelming force of reality-warping chaos meant to erase him at the fundamental level.

His armor screamed with warning alerts.

But Tony Stark had prepared for this.

Loki's smirk faltered as his magic backfired violently.

A ripple of energy rebounded from Tony's arc reactor, surging backward into Loki's arm. The god recoiled, eyes momentarily wide with pain as blue sparks crackled up his fingers.

"Yeah," Tony said, exhaling as his suit stabilized. "Turns out I don't like people poking around in my head. Built-in countermeasures. Hope that stings."

Loki snarled.

His patience snapped.

He raised the Tesseract, his entire form pulsing with celestial light. The void around them trembled, shattering into a cosmic abyss.

"You think yourself my equal?" His voice echoed, layered with something ancient, something titanic. "Then let us see how you fare when I stop holding back."

Tony's HUD dimmed.

For the first time in this battle—Loki terrified his sensors.

The battlefield collapsed.

Gravity inverted. Light bent. Space twisted into impossible angles. Stark Tower, the city, even the concept of "up" and "down" ceased to exist.

They now stood in an endless cosmic void.

Loki hovered above, radiant with Tesseract-fueled supremacy, his very presence distorting the fabric of the universe.

Tony, still grounded—still human, still defiant—exhaled sharply as his HUD recalibrated.

"Friday?"

"Sir, this is... problematic."

"Yeah, no kidding."

Tony rolled his shoulders. Then he grinned.

"Alright, Reindeer Games. You wanna go full god mode? Fine."

His armor shifted.

Nanites surged as his Iron Infinity suit expanded, the Starktonium core flaring to life. The Mandarin's rings pulsed with ancient power, aligning into battle mode. Dimensional stabilizers activated, locking him in reality even as the world around them collapsed.

"You just made this fun."

Loki sneered. "You still dare to—"

Tony moved.

He didn't just fly.

He teleported.

The battlefield exploded into a flurry of motion—Tony flickered across space, dodging Loki's cosmic blasts with impossible precision, countering with Tesseract-infused repulsor beams that warped the very air.

Loki swung his scepter—reality bent with the motion—Tony phased through it, nanite-driven Stark particles shifting him between dimensions at will.

Blow for blow. Strike for strike.

A god versus a man who refused to lose.

Loki clenched his teeth, frustration creeping in.

'He's… adapting too fast.'

A mortal should not have been able to keep pace with the raw power of the Tesseract.

And yet—

Tony dodged another warp-blast, closed the gap, and punched Loki across the battlefield.

The Trickster stumbled.

His magic flickered—just for a moment.

Tony landed, raising a gauntlet, a new energy signature surging through his system. He had been absorbing the Tesseract's energy. Analyzing it. Converting it.

"You're losing control," Tony noted, watching Loki's stagger with a smirk. "Bet that stings more than my punch."

Loki glared.

Then—he smirked.

"Do you think so?"

A pulse of Tesseract energy surged from his form, brighter than ever.

And with a snap of his fingers—

The battlefield shattered.

Tony's vision blurred. His sensors collapsed.

Reality reformed.

And when it did—

Loki stood tall, untouched, composed. Smirking.

He was still confident of his winning.

Still.

'I never thought a mortal could push me so far.'

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