Chapter 354: Ethan Doesn't Understand Women
"What in the world is going on? Why is Thanos attacking his own soldiers?"
"Isn't Ethan right there behind him? Can he not even see Ethan?"
Watching from a distance, the Avengers couldn't make sense of Thanos wailing on his own troops — because what they were seeing and what Thanos himself was seeing weren't the same thing at all. As far as Thanos was concerned, he was busy pounding Ethan into the ground.
Strange, taking pity on their confusion, helpfully explained. "That's one of Ethan's illusion spells — Kyōka Suigetsu. What you're seeing and what Thanos is seeing aren't the same picture at all."
The instant the words left his mouth, the Avengers erupted in a chorus of gasps.
They were genuinely stunned by the ability itself — and more than a little unsettled thinking about what could happen if it were ever misused.
None of them wanted to imagine what it might look like if Ethan ever turned an illusion like that on them.
"That's... that's genuinely terrifying. If Ethan ever used that on us, wouldn't we just end up killing each other?" Steve said, visibly unsettled.
"Is there any way to defend against something like that?" Tony jumped in immediately, his mind already racing through possibilities. Thermal imaging? My satellites? Maybe there's a way to counter magic like this with technology.
"Is that actually magic, though?" Doctor Strange asked, frowning. He hadn't detected any magical signature at all.
"Is there anything Ethan can't do? The man's basically an omnipotent god at this point," Natasha said, wonder in her voice.
Strange found himself genuinely turning that thought over.
She had a point, actually — was there anything Ethan couldn't do? Ever since they'd first met back in college, nothing had ever seemed to stump the man. Was he just one of those people born knowing everything?
Then Strange's gaze happened to land on Wanda, sulking quietly off to the side.
Oh — wait. Actually, there IS one thing this guy's clueless about: women. Yeah, that's it. When it comes to women, Ethan's got nothing on me! The thought struck Strange as so satisfying he actually laughed out loud.
Ethan rubbed his nose, a little embarrassed. He had no idea who was gossiping about him from a distance, but the sound had unwittingly betrayed the subtle crack in his own concealment.
Thanos's violet eyes glinted cold in the darkness. He'd caught a faint disturbance ripple through the space around him.
Illusion wasn't exactly his specialty, but the perception granted by the Soul Stone was sharp enough that something had registered as wrong. Combined with the sudden sound Ethan had let slip, it clicked into place instantly — he'd been played, made a fool of by Ethan's own illusion magic.
That was the spark that lit Thanos's fury completely. He roared, a sound that rolled across the empty battlefield and shook the very air around him.
No matter how he attacked, Ethan always slipped away with some clever trick or another — and the sheer, grinding frustration of it had finally overwhelmed him.
A cold, vicious gleam crossed Thanos's eyes. He'd decided: it was time for the most extreme option available to him.
If Ethan was going to be this slippery, then fine — he'd blow up the entire planet and see where Ethan hid from that. He refused to believe Ethan could just ignore the fate of every human on Earth, and every last one of those little spiders too.
"Damn this cunning ape. Is this really all you've got?" Thanos roared. "Fine, then. I'll take the entire Earth down with you!"
The instant he finished speaking, an unprecedented violet glow erupted from every inch of his body — a light so brilliant it seemed to swallow the surrounding darkness whole. Clearly, this time, he intended to push the Power Stone's capability to its absolute limit.
He drew a deep breath, channeling two hundred percent of his strength into his right fist. In an instant, that fist swelled to a monstrous size, as if it alone could tear straight through space itself.
Watching it happen, Ethan's expression turned grim.
He knew, without a doubt, that this strike carried a threat he couldn't afford to underestimate.
And he understood something else too: this time, he'd have to meet it head-on. Every trick he'd relied on so far — portals, Space Stone displacement — none of it would work here.
Pulling Thanos into the Mirror Dimension was off the table entirely; a strike this powerful would punch straight through the Mirror Dimension itself, and probably straight through the planet on the other side of it too.
Right now, Thanos's attack had already exceeded even his own personal power ceiling, pushing into territory approaching multiversal-tier.
Ethan hadn't quite expected to actually rattle the man this badly. In the source material, film-canon Thanos would never have resorted to a scale of destruction like this — for all his ideology, Thanos genuinely believed in a kind of mercy; his whole philosophy was built around erasing half of all life, never obliterating an entire world outright.
But the Thanos standing in front of Ethan right now had been repeatedly humiliated, toyed with over and over, and had finally been pushed past the point of restraint. Naturally, this version was playing by different rules entirely.
Understanding exactly what that meant, Ethan decided it was time to commit fully himself. Facing an attack that had clearly exceeded Thanos's own normal limits, Ethan didn't feel fear at all — if anything, he felt something closer to genuine excitement.
His eyes blazed with pure battle-hunger. Fine — let this be the moment he finally found out exactly where his own ceiling actually sat!
"Then let's see what you've really got, cosmic overlord!" Ethan bellowed, his own presence surging upward in response.
Energy in every color began swirling around his body — the accumulated power of every skill he'd ever mastered.
"Ultra Instinct!"
"Chaos Magic!"
"Dark Magic!"
"Thunder God Form!"
Ethan poured out nearly every technique he currently had access to, fusing them all together into a single, colossal orb of energy.
The orb spun violently in his grip, blazing with a light so intense it seemed ready to consume everything in its path.
Then Ethan hurled it straight at Thanos.
The orb tore through the air like a shooting star, carrying boundless power straight at him.
Thanos, having already charged his fist to two hundred percent capacity and prepared to bring it down on the planet, had no choice but to change tactics — bracing that same massive fist to intercept the incoming orb instead.
Fist against energy orb. Point against point, blade against blade.
The two overwhelming forces collided in midair, detonating with a deafening explosion.
The shockwave rippled outward from the point of impact in every direction, and in an instant, the entire region for a hundred miles around vanished beneath a blinding wash of white light.
The light was so brilliant it felt as though it swallowed time and space themselves whole — consuming everything in its reach, including both armies and every last Avenger present.
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