With a single axe strike, Thanos's head fell to the ground, yet none of those present felt victorious.
There was no time to discuss the situation either, because everything began moving in reverse without anyone noticing, at impossible speeds.
In reality, the battle had not started that long ago. Just a little over an hour had passed since Thanos's army landed, and roughly three hours since its first attack.
Defeating in such a short time a universally known criminal like Thanos proved the current power of Earth.
But that no longer mattered.
What mattered was that those hours unraveled in only a few seconds.
Back on his ship, Thanos rose and headed straight for the control room of the energy cannon.
Without saying a word, he stepped forward and placed his wrist into the device.
Now that he knew of the existence of the Mirror Dimension shield, he decided to destroy it from the start, attacking with the only available resource capable of doing so, a shot enhanced by the Power Stone.
Before his eyes, the cannon released its most powerful beam before completely destroying itself.
Earth's shield withstood the entire attack, exactly the same as the last time, before collapsing.
With his ships now powered by energy weapons, Thanos decided to change tactics, splitting his fleet across the entire Earth and threatening to destroy everything.
Thanos's deep voice echoed across the planet, demanding the surrender of the stones or the total annihilation of Earth.
But it did not work.
The only response he received was Captain Marvel tearing through his ships one after another, destroying them.
In fact, when Carol learned that the ships had separated and had not landed, she could not have been more satisfied. Destroying them individually was not only easy, it also automatically eliminated all their crews.
Realizing this, Thanos immediately ordered all remaining ships to fire upon Earth.
But when the bombardment began, he discovered something he had not noticed in the first loop.
Earth has three shields.
The first was literal, a planetary shield that had already been destroyed by the Power Stone enhanced attack.
The second was S.H.I.E.L.D., present all over the world, tasked with neutralizing any threat that surpassed the human level.
But there was a third shield.
One created by Tony Stark a long time ago.
One that, despite its power, was not meant to attack, but to protect the defenseless civilian population.
When people in the shelters panicked, believing they were about to die, they discovered they were being protected by hundreds of automated iron armors.
Vision moved immediately, deploying the Iron Legion to protect humanity, ensuring that there would not be a single death across the entire planet.
Seeing that he had lost most of his army without even landing, Thanos reset the loop once again.
Once more he destroyed the shield, and this time, without prior threats, he landed on Earth with all his ships at maximum output.
Now the initial battlefield included ships armed with maximum energy weapons on Thanos's side.
The battlefield no longer tilted immediately in humanity's favor.
However, although the fight lasted longer than in the first iteration, Thanos once again lost to the combined strength of the human and Asgardian forces.
But Thanos did not despair.
Each round, each reset, allowed him to better understand his enemies, and that, in the end, could only lead him to victory.
That was what he believed during the first ten rounds.
And during the next twenty.
Only after more than a hundred did he understand that something was not working.
When they reached the hundreds, he found what kept going wrong.
And the problem was not him.
After so many rounds, he knew his greatest enemies perfectly.
He knew how to exploit Thor's pride to kill him.
He knew every function of Tony's armor and how to bypass it.
He mastered Steve's fighting style.
Bringing Surtur onto the battlefield taught him that he had to sacrifice him to get rid of Wanda and keep Hela away for a time.
He also knew that without his ships to distract Carol, she would defeat him.
Strange had defeated him in so many different ways that Thanos memorized each of his spells in order to counter them effectively and avoid being surprised in battle.
He knew he must never neglect the gauntlet, because there were people fast enough to take it from him.
He knew there was one warrior he had to go all out against from the very beginning, or his suit would absorb kinetic energy and become a problem if he joined the others.
He dedicated an entire round to finding a cure for a strange virus thrown at him by a man with dark skin and a dark suit, making him vulnerable to sunlight in some way.
He even knew how long the battle had to last before the self proclaimed Guardians of the Galaxy appeared, seeking vengeance for Gamora and aware of the danger Quill posed if he lost control.
But no matter how many he defeated.
They kept appearing.
Because Thanos was only one.
Even if he killed one Avenger, two more appeared.
If he defeated ten, twenty emerged behind him.
And they did not surrender.
Even as they watched their comrades die before them, they kept fighting, willing to die, but never to surrender the stones.
At last, Thanos understood the true problem, the absence of his most powerful subordinates and being the sole dominant force of his fleet.
"If only my children were still alive", his voice echoed, filled with a frustration uncharacteristic of him.
The Avengers before him were surprised, not understanding what he meant, but Thanos was already tired of explaining himself.
He reset the loop once more.
"Earth… I will destroy Earth", he finally decided.
If he could not defeat them, then he would destroy the entire planet.
Perhaps some, like Captain Marvel, would survive, but Thanos trusted that he could defeat them if they were alone or few.
However, a problem arose.
The combined firepower of his entire fleet was not enough to destroy a planet.
They could annihilate most life and devastate entire continents, but not destroy Earth completely.
Because Thanos never designed his weaponry to destroy planets.
With the number of strange abilities present on Earth, he did not trust that he could find the stones if they were hidden through any of them.
It would be far easier to find them floating in space among the remains of a destroyed planet.
The only attack capable of destroying Earth was the one enhanced by the Power Stone, but that had to be used to destroy the shield. Without it, there was no way to directly attack the planet.
As he reflected, Thanos noticed the enormous white sphere floating nearby.
Earth's natural satellite.
The Moon.
An idea emerged in his mind.
Although the energy of his ships could not destroy Earth, it could destroy the Moon.
Thanos's plan was simple, destroy the Moon and let its remains destroy Earth on their own.
Isolated lunar meteors would not be enough, but Thanos could manipulate their trajectories.
If they all struck the same point, the result would be inevitable.
______________________________________
+3 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)