The arena didn't just change—it transformed, reality rewriting itself at the God's whim. What had been a stable (relatively speaking) training ground became something altogether more hostile.
From a massive rift at the far edge of the arena, space itself tore open like a wound in reality, and through it poured nightmares made manifest.
Gargantuan cosmic predators emerged first—creatures that had evolved in the hearts of dying stars, their bodies composed of collapsing stellar matter held together by force fields that defied conventional physics. They were beautiful and terrible, like sculptures made of supernovas, their forms shifting between states of matter that shouldn't be able to coexist.
Each one was the size of a moon, with hides that could withstand the pressure at the center of a star. Their roars shook the fabric of spacetime itself, sending gravitational waves rippling across the arena.
"Oh, that's not good," Tony muttered, his HUD analyzing the creatures and returning results that made no sense. "JARVIS, those things are... what's the word I'm looking for?"
"Impossible, sir?"
"That's the one."
Behind the stellar predators came energy entities—beings that existed as pure electromagnetic force given consciousness. They moved like living lightning storms, crackling across space, devouring light itself. Stars in their path dimmed and died as these creatures fed on photons like cosmic vampires.
Where they passed, darkness followed. Not the comfortable darkness of night, but the absolute absence of light, voids so empty that looking at them made the eyes hurt.
"Great," Loki muttered. "Things that eat light. Thor, your lightning is going to be useless."
"My lightning is never useless, brother!"
"Famous last words."
And finally, seeping through the cracks in dimensions like smoke through a keyhole, came the dark-matter specters—entities that existed primarily in the hidden dimensions, only partially manifesting in normal spacetime. They slipped between realities like ghosts, their forms flickering, phasing in and out of existence unpredictably.
They were the most terrifying because they were the most wrong. Looking at them made the mind rebel, trying to process something that fundamentally shouldn't exist in perceivable reality.
"Okay," Tony said, his mind already racing through battle strategies, calculating trajectories, energy expenditures, probability matrices. "JARVIS, I need you to coordinate with everyone's systems. Thor, can Mjolnir interface with my armor?"
"I... don't know. It's never come up."
"First time for everything. Black Adam, your lightning is now smart—can it learn our attack patterns?"
Black Adam nodded grimly. "Yes."
"Perfect. Loki, I need you to—"
But the predators didn't wait for strategy sessions. The first cosmic beast lunged forward, moving impossibly fast for something so massive, its maw opening to reveal a throat that led down into a miniature star.
Thor reacted instantly.
"FOR ASGARD!"
He swung Mjolnir with all his might, and the hammer—now infused with dimensional energy—did something spectacular. As it moved through the arc of its swing, it tore reality. Not metaphorically—literally tore it like fabric, opening a rift in spacetime that led... elsewhere.
The cosmic predator, unable to stop its momentum, plunged directly into the rift. Thor flicked his wrist, and the rift moved, repositioning itself millions of miles away, dumping the creature into the cold void between galaxies.
"THAT'S how you do it!" Thor bellowed triumphantly.
But three more predators were already charging.
Black Adam's turn.
He raised his hands, and his sentient lightning responded like an extension of his will. But instead of striking blindly, the electricity calculated, running probability assessments faster than any computer. It found weak points in the predators' force fields, identified structural vulnerabilities in their crystallized star-matter hides.
The lightning struck not at the creatures, but at the space around them, superheating the vacuum, creating pressure waves that hammered the predators from all angles. Then it threaded through their defenses, slipping into their cores, and detonated.
One predator exploded in a shower of stellar fragments. Another collapsed in on itself, its containment field failing.
"Impressive," Black Adam said calmly, as if he hadn't just made stars explode.
Loki's turn to show off.
He spread his hands, and probability itself bent to his will. The dark-matter specters, flickering in and out of reality, suddenly found themselves caught in probability loops—temporal eddies where cause and effect became circular.
One specter tried to phase through an attack, only to find itself phasing into the same attack from a different angle. Another attempted to teleport, only to arrive at its starting point. A third found that every path it chose led back to the same trap.
"Paradoxes are delicious," Loki purred, watching the specters tear themselves apart trying to escape the impossible loops.
Tony coordinated it all.
His enhanced perception let him see the entire battlefield at once—not just physically, but temporally. He could see attack patterns seconds before they happened, could calculate optimal responses, could manipulate the energy fields that permeated the arena.
"Loki, probability loop at coordinates 7-4-9, now!"
Loki obeyed without question, trusting Tony's calculations.
"Thor, rift opening in three, two, one—swing!"
Mjolnir moved precisely on time, opening a rift that dumped two charging predators into each other.
"Black Adam, lightning strike at—"
"Already there," Black Adam said, his sentient lightning having anticipated the command and struck before Tony could finish speaking.
But they weren't alone in this fight.
Doremano entered the fray, and the god-dog was magnificent.
His tail wagged, and each wag created gravitational waves that warped space itself. Predators charging in straight lines suddenly found their trajectories bent, sending them careening into each other or spinning off into space.
His bark—his simple, joyful bark—sent out pressure waves that shouldn't be possible, concentrated pulses of force that struck with the power of crashing planets.
When he moved, space moved with him, bending and flowing around his path like water around a stone.
"Good boy!" Tony shouted. "VERY good boy! JARVIS, note to self: need to figure out how to weaponize tail wags."
The Galectors fought with perfect coordination, their movements synchronized like a cosmic ballet. They moved in formation, each one covering the others, their neutron-star weapons striking with devastating precision.
One Galector would engage a predator, drawing its attention, while another struck from behind. A third would provide covering fire, and the fourth would reposition for the killing blow. They fought like a hive mind, anticipating each other's moves perfectly.
"Military precision meets cosmic power," Tony observed. "Beautiful."
And then there was Alien X.
The reality-warper moved slowly, almost lazily, but each movement reshaped the battlefield. When it blinked—just blinked—time paused. Attacks hung frozen in mid-air. The predators stopped mid-charge.
In that frozen moment, Alien X reached out and simply... rewound one predator's timeline. The creature suddenly found itself back where it had been thirty seconds ago, but its momentum from the present remained, tearing it apart as past and present tried to occupy the same space.
Another blink. Time resumed.
"That is profoundly disturbing," Loki said, watching a predator's core obliterate itself from temporal paradox.
The energy entities that ate light made the mistake of trying to consume Alien X's power. The reality-warper simply blinked again, and the entities found themselves becoming light—permanent, unable to feed, forced to simply be the thing they'd sought to devour.
The battle raged for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes (time was weird in the cosmic arena). Predators fell, specters dissipated, entities collapsed.
Finally, the last cosmic beast retreated back through the rift, wounded and terrified. The arena fell silent except for heavy breathing and the crackling of residual energy.
The God appeared above them, its form rippling with what might have been approval:
"You adapt to law-bending. You use intelligence over brute force. You coordinate despite coming from different worlds, different philosophies, different powers."
The God paused, and for the first time, something like emotion colored its voice:
"Fascinating."
Thor collapsed onto a floating platform, Mjolnir resting beside him. "That was... intense."
"That was amazing," Tony corrected, his armor smoking slightly but his voice energized. "We just fought cosmic predators! Predators made of stars! And we WON!"
Black Adam nodded grimly. "The power granted to us is considerable. But it means nothing without strategy."
"Says the guy who punched that thing in the face," Loki pointed out.
"It was a strategic punch."
Doremano barked happily, his tail wagging and sending minor gravitational ripples across the arena.
"Rest," the God commanded. "The next trial will be... more challenging."
"More challenging?" Thor groaned. "We just fought star-monsters!"
"Yes. And you will fight worse."
Tony's grin was audible. "Bring it on."