Dozens of lightning arcs rained down on the ancient cauldron all at once.
The thunder roared, shaking the blood pool beneath them, the very air buzzing with volatile energy. This time, Daniel had changed his strategy, the cauldron's trick of spinning to absorb and redirect force wouldn't work anymore. His lightning struck from every direction, boxing it in.
The cauldron trembled.
Sparks danced wildly over its blackened surface. The clash of energies rang out like the groaning wails of tortured metal — a sharp, skin-crawling sound that made Daniel's teeth grit.
Then, a thick mist exploded outward.
Blood-red, heavy, and alive.
It wrapped the cauldron like a shroud, pulsing as though it had veins. Within moments, Daniel couldn't see the cauldron anymore. But he could feel it, a hateful will stirring inside, preparing for something violent.
Mjolnir crackled in his grip, unleashing bolt after bolt into the scarlet haze. Each strike hissed against the mist like water on fire. The two forces clashed, neither giving ground, each trying to consume the other.
Daniel stood his ground, lightning spiraling around him like a storm's crown. He wasn't in a rush. His energy was steady, controlled, he could fight like this all night if needed.
But the cauldron bled power to maintain its defenses. Power it was drawing from the blood of the innocent prisoners in the workshops above. Time was on Daniel's side.
He tightened his stance.
"Come on, you cursed thing… show me your weakness."
Dawn would change everything. He could already feel the shift in elemental energy. Once sunlight broke over the horizon, this thing's strength would wane. But he couldn't risk letting the Hand's leaders show up before then.
They would wait, like vultures, for him to exhaust himself fighting this relic. Then they would strike, steal the cauldron, and maybe even kill him.
Daniel knew their type.
Which meant he had to end this fast.
The mist churned.
Daniel's senses sharpened, his mental power scanning every inch of the basement, searching for hidden assassins or traps.
The mist thickened, and Daniel knew what was coming — a full offensive.
He moved first.
With a thought, Mjonir tore free from his hand and hurled itself downward. A flash of blue light split the air, and in the blink of an eye, three hammers appeared, all illusions save for one.
They struck the cauldron's three legs with bone-crushing force.
The weakest point.
The mist screamed.
The impact split the haze, revealing the dark iron beneath.
The cauldron tried to spin again, but it was too slow this time. A streak of blue lightning slammed into its underside with a deafening CRACK!
The entire blood pool erupted like a geyser.
The cauldron lurched upward, its contents — blood, bones, and the unconscious Japanese swordsman — thrown into the air.
Daniel didn't hesitate.
Mjonir flew back to his hand, and he leveled it like a killing strike. The body of the swordsman was directly in its path.
Then —
His eyes snapped open.
They burned like two suns of crimson blood. The swordsman's body twisted mid-air, releasing a pulse of mental energy that hit Daniel like a wave of nausea.
For a split second, the world warped.
His hearing dulled, his vision blurred. His five senses twisted out of sync — sight and sound swapped places, touch and taste blended into something unrecognizable.
A powerful illusion.
But Daniel didn't falter.
'You'll have to do better than that,' he thought coldly.
Years in the frozen hellscape of Jotunheim had sharpened his mind to a blade's edge. No illusion could shake him.
The hammer struck.
"Bang!"
The swordsman's head exploded like glass under lightning.
The corpse convulsed. Thunder bolts slammed into it repeatedly, breaking bones to ash. Daniel kept up the attack, determined to obliterate every last piece.
But then —
The fragments moved.
The shattered corpse melted into streaks of blood-light, slipping through the net of lightning like phantoms.
"...What the—"
Daniel's eyes widened.
The blood shadows shot toward him, fast as the Mjolnir itself. Even as he countered, the pool below surged violently.
All the spilled blood in the basement rose at once, forming petals.
A massive lotus, crimson and alive, began to close around him.
He was the prey.
Above him, the ceiling writhed. Red silk threads — impossibly thin — stretched like spiderwebs across the beams, sealing off any escape.
Daniel's jaw tightened.
"So, you're going all in."
The blood shadow lunged.
Daniel raised his wand. Golden lines erupted around him — not lightning, but something older, purer. A barrier of sacred geometry formed, glowing faintly. The blood shadow slammed into it, cracks splintering the shield, but it held.
It was enough.
The gemstone on his wand flared to life.
A blinding golden beam exploded outward, cutting through the blood mist like the sun burning away a storm. The entire basement trembled.
The Scarab Gem — its power finally awakened.
This was no ordinary jewel.
Daniel had taken it decades ago, during a bloody skirmish with Wolverine and Deadpool. Smuggled from Egypt during World War II, it had once rested atop Pharaoh Tutankhamun's golden mask.
But this was alien, not a treasure.
Forged when a meteorite struck the Sahara centuries ago, the heat had fused desert sand into an unearthly glass — a gemstone of power the Egyptians named the Holy Beetle.
A relic of the gods.
And now, Daniel poured its millennia-old energy into the fight.
—
If you want to read 40+ chapters, visit my Ptttn.
pttttn.com/MiniMine352