Chapter 349: The First Thanos Dies — Reinforcements Arrive
Whatever the Avengers were feeling right now — their entire army on the verge of total collapse — Thanos couldn't have cared less.
If anything, a smile had crept across his face, because he'd finally shaken Ethan off and had a clear path to the Gauntlet.
The Avengers had tried to stop him along the way, sure, but most of their main force was still tied up fighting Home-Thanos — only a small fraction of them had broken off to try to intercept Thanos himself.
To Thanos, they might as well have been walking into their own graves. He put down every single one of them with a single punch each.
At last, he stood before the Gauntlet. He reached out, slid it onto his hand — and in that instant, he felt raw, boundless power flooding into his body.
He couldn't hold back a snarling laugh, thick with triumph and arrogance.
Home-Thanos, meanwhile, made no move to interfere.
He watched Thanos with pure disdain, obvious contempt written across his face. As far as he was concerned, this Thanos had already lost every ounce of his former majesty and dominance — beaten by some nobody named Ethan, his own forces gutted in the process.
He could barely bring himself to acknowledge this pathetic wreck as the same man as himself.
Disgraceful.
The Avengers, for their part, had sunk into total despair — some of them had already stopped fighting back entirely.
They'd already lost to a single Thanos with the Gauntlet. Now there was a second one? How were they supposed to fight through this?
Not everyone had given up, though — Tony, for one, was still turning the problem over in his mind, searching for any possible way to salvage this.
He shot Doctor Strange a desperate, pleading look, hoping against hope for some kind of answer.
But this time, Doctor Strange only shook his head. No raised finger. No signal that a way through still existed.
Still, Tony refused to fold.
He drew a slow breath and forced himself back to focus.
He started running through every option left in his head, hunting for any scrap of an opening.
That was when a booming laugh echoed across the battlefield. "Hahahaha — every last one of you is going to die!"
Now wielding the Infinity Stones, Thanos felt his old grandeur flood back in full, and he spread his arms wide, sweeping his gaze across the battlefield.
"Hahaha— what—"
That was when the tide of the entire battle turned in an instant.
Disbelief and something almost like joy flickered across the Avengers' faces.
They watched as a sword suddenly burst clean through Thanos's chest.
Ethan had waited for exactly the moment Thanos let his guard down, then driven Gram straight into him with a single, lethal strike.
Moving fast and decisive, Ethan yanked the blade free and delivered a few more cuts for good measure.
Never, in all his long history, could Thanos have imagined this was how his story would end, arriving in this world only to die like this.
He'd believed the Infinity Stones' power would make him invincible against anything. Instead, he'd fallen to Ethan after all. A flicker of unyielding defiance flashed in his eyes one last time — before they finally, helplessly, closed for good.
"Enjoy your little dream while it lasted." Ethan looked down at the fallen Thanos, his voice flat and cold. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket, calmly wiping the blood from Gram's blade.
There was no such concept as a "cheap shot" in Ethan's personal rulebook.
Whatever it took to win, he'd use it.
In the past, his own overwhelming strength had let him afford to look down on tactics like this.
This time, it had simply been the smart move.
After all — a sneak attack was practically a required survival skill for any resident of Hell's Kitchen.
Ethan didn't spare the now-dead Thanos another glance. He turned instead toward the other Thanos — the one from his own universe.
"Your turn." Ethan looked squarely at Home-Thanos.
"Hmph. Don't assume I'm anything like that pathetic waste on the ground. Besides — how much power do you even have left in the tank right now?" Home-Thanos studied Ethan. A fight between the two of them had always been inevitable.
Ethan had something Home-Thanos wanted, after all. And even having watched Ethan kill a version of Thanos moments ago, Home-Thanos still refused to give Ethan any credit — convinced the whole thing had only worked because of the sneak attack.
Besides — a Thanos with the Gauntlet and a Thanos without it were two entirely different animals.
"Before we fight — how about you take a look at your little friends first?" Home-Thanos smiled, wicked and pleased with himself, pointing a finger past Ethan's shoulder.
With the first Thanos dead, the alien army he'd brought — including the surviving Black Order members — had defected wholesale to Home-Thanos's banner. Some were true believers, hungry for vengeance. Others simply understood the math: fall in line with the other Thanos, or die.
With the two armies now merged, and the Avengers already run to the edge of exhaustion, the fight had tipped decisively toward disaster.
Home-Thanos had expected Ethan's composure to crack at that. Instead, Ethan's continued calm genuinely surprised him.
"Care to explain how you plan to fight all of us alone? Or were you planning to slip away quietly while I'm distracted? I know you're strong enough to manage it. Unfortunately, I'm not letting you leave — not unless you hand over your two Stones first." Home-Thanos, honestly curious what was fueling Ethan's confidence, wondered if maybe this man simply didn't care what happened to the allies fighting alongside him.
Ethan didn't answer him directly. He simply tilted his head back and looked up at the sky, murmuring to himself. "About time. Should be here any minute now."
At that, the Avengers' faces lit up with sudden hope. "Hang on, everyone — reinforcements are almost here!"
"On your right!" As Ethan activated his Exclusive Skill, two portal sigils slowly rose into being.
Two Spider-Men stepped through — along with Iron Man, Wanda, and Thor, five figures in total.
"Wait — that's it? Just those two Spider-Men and this handful of others?" The Avengers' hopes crashed instantly.
They clearly didn't believe this small group could turn the tide of the fight in any meaningful way.
"Relax. The rest are coming right now."
The next moment, something happened that left every Avenger present utterly floored: the sky suddenly filled with countless glowing, multicolored wormholes.
And out of them poured Spider-Men.
Dozens upon dozens of them.
"Mom... I think this whole battle's finally gotten to me. I'm hallucinating.
Why is the sky full of nothing but Spider-Men?!"
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