American comics: Starting with Luke the Maker

"When will the reinforcements arrive?" Eddie asked, barely holding on.

"Don't ask me! Don't bother me!" During their mental exchange, Venom was hit again by an explosive projectile with peculiar properties. A burst of fire erupted from the point of impact, scorching Venom's face until it contorted. He quickly rolled on the ground, extinguishing the flames, even sacrificing a portion of his body, like a gecko shedding its tail to survive.

"I can't hold on much longer!" Eddie roared weakly in his mind. As the symbiote's host, he had to bear Venom's energy consumption! Even without considering Venom, nearly an hour of intense fighting and running was taking its toll.

Now, both he and Venom were utterly exhausted. Earlier, they could still retaliate, taking down a few trackers. But as time wore on, their numbers didn't decrease, while they gradually entered a state of fatigue. The only reason they had lasted this long was Venom's occasional bursts of strength, breaking through the encirclement that was about to form.

But now, both of them were at their wits' end.

Counterattack?

Their remaining strength could only sustain their escape. If they dared to turn back and fight, it would essentially be a suicide mission. In fact, if it weren't for the hope of reinforcements, Venom wouldn't want to be fleeing for his life so pathetically.

The whirring of helicopters pierced Venom's ears, and two fully armed helicopters appeared in his sight.

"Damn it! This is trouble." Venom felt a chill in his heart upon seeing the two armed helicopters. After all, he was a symbiote who had been with two arms dealers. Those two helicopters in the sky were clearly military! That meant the other side had connections in the military! In other words, influence!

Just as Venom and Eddie were feeling utterly despairing, two cannon shells, humming with high-frequency electricity, trailing faint blue light, struck the helicopters in the sky.

Two dazzling bursts of fire instantly lit up the sky.

This sudden attack startled the trackers. To prevent Venom and Eddie from entering the city, they had been forcing them towards the remote suburbs, intending to drive their prey to a suitable hunting ground, then launch a full-scale attack and capture them.

But now, just as they were about to close the net, a troublemaker hidden in the darkness suddenly appeared, casting a shadow over the leader of the trackers.

"Oh, damn it, what is that!"

Eddie looked in horror at the darkness ahead. Under Venom's protection, he heard a faint rustling and a slight tremor in the ground. Then, before his widened eyes, a mechanical spider the size of a soccer ball suddenly jumped out of the darkness, followed by another, and another, until they formed a swarm.

Mixed among these mechanical spiders were some elite units with spider-like lower bodies and humanoid upper bodies.

This mechanical spider army ignored Venom, bypassing him as if he were nothing, and surged towards the trackers from all directions.

"Is this, reinforcements?" Eddie turned around blankly, looking at the jumping, shadowy figures in the night. Besides the joy of surviving a near-death experience, he could only marvel at the scale of this mechanical spider army, whose size he couldn't even discern.

There must have been at least several thousand mechanical spiders in this wave! No one knew how the reinforcements had managed to bring such a mechanical army here. If they had done so without alerting anyone, it was even more astonishing.

Before Venom could speak, a figure in black steel armor slowly landed in front of him from the air.

"Snoke?" Looking at the familiar appearance of the steel armor, Venom tentatively asked.

"The boss sent me to pick you up." The dense black metal flakes on the helmet receded like a tide, revealing Snoke's calm face beneath.

"Isn't this a bit much?" Seeing Snoke's face, Venom breathed a sigh of relief, but thinking about the commotion this was causing, and the "debts" he might incur, he felt a little discouraged.

"Just testing some new equipment and tactics," Snoke said blandly.

"Mr. Snoke." Eddie also revealed half of his face, looking at Snoke with joy. Just as he wanted to express his gratitude, the sound of explosions in the distance drew their attention.

Boom boom boom!

Continuous explosions lit up the darkness in the distance, the fire particularly eye-catching in the dark. It seemed that the mechanical spiders were being heavily damaged and destroyed.

"That's a lot of losses, is that okay?" Eddie asked uneasily. Along the way, he and Venom had seen many of the mutated individuals' abilities, which were bizarre and powerful.

"Self-destruct spiders are specifically produced as expendable units for clearing out the riffraff. Don't worry, this batch is a castrated version, or rather, a primitive version. The damage is only average. It's just to verify the effect and clear out the inventory," Snoke replied.

In fact, those mechanical spiders weren't just for self-destruction. Depending on the manufacturing process, their functions included radar scanning, data processing, swarm control, and troop production. If needed, different types of soldiers could be added according to requirements. But there was no need to tell Eddie that.

Eddie immediately fell silent after hearing this.

"I like this fighting style. Can Luke modify me when we get back? I've discovered a new form, a mechanical form! My combat power in mechanical form is stronger than it is now. I don't want to be a weak symbiote anymore," Venom grumbled, still obsessed with his mechanical form.

More violent explosions came from the distance, and the shockwaves swept away all the surrounding mechanical spiders. When they reached Snoke and the others, hundreds of meters away, the strong wind still almost blew the exhausted Venom and Eddie away.

A beam of white light shot from the distance, landing on the semi-circular blue energy shield that automatically appeared in front of Snoke. The powerful energy beam splashed visible energy ripples on the surface of the shield.

A tall figure broke through the blockade with a speed exceeding human limits before the mechanical spiders could regroup to form an encirclement, rushing towards Snoke and the others.

"Commendable courage." Looking at the mutated individual who was running towards him at an extremely fast speed, flickering in the darkness, Snoke praised softly, and then activated a crystal blue card on one of the slots on his steel arm.

A tall, heavy steel giant suddenly appeared in front of him, all silver-white, a huge humanoid machine with seemingly rough workmanship.

Full Metal Armor.

Luke's trump card from his early days. But now, although it could still be considered a powerful card, Luke, who had better options, considered it dispensable.

"Arming?" The Full Metal Armor emitted a buzzing, low engine sound, its eyes instantly lighting up, and its entire bloated body stood up straight. Its main control system issued an inquiry to Snoke.

"Free mode, capture the enemy ahead, require the opponent to survive," Snoke ordered.

The Full Metal Armor had two modes: armed mode, in which the Full Metal Armor could exist as another layer of armor for Snoke, giving him higher protection, higher attack power, and more enhanced functions! It was somewhat similar to Stark's anti-XX series of external armor.

The second mode was free mode, in which the authority holder issued an order, and then the entire process was handed over to the Full Metal Armor's intelligent system to act autonomously. In addition to freeing up his hands to deal with other troubles at critical moments, it could also be used to delay time, hold off the enemy, and allow the authority holder to safely escape the battlefield.

When Snoke first obtained the authority to use the Full Metal Armor and tested and learned about it, the only thing that amazed him was its defense system. The materials used in its manufacture and the technology used in its configuration made the Full Metal Armor's armor incredibly strong. The thick layer of armor and its built-in energy defense mode were simply a nightmare for any attacker.

But thinking that this was the armor that Boss Luke used to protect himself in the past, Snoke was relieved.

"Thump!"

The person who came was a mutated individual nearly two meters tall. One thing that made him superior to other mutated individuals was that he could control the mutated parts of his body. A height of nearly two meters was dwarfed by the Full Metal Armor's massive body, like the comparison between an adult and a child. Even though the opponent's body was more agile, his attack methods more varied, and his movements more nimble, he was repeatedly at a disadvantage when facing the seemingly bloated but equally agile metal monster that was the Full Metal Armor.

Beam cutting, electromagnetic bullets, pulse energy cannons, the person had used all the most destructive weapons he could, but to his despair, these attacks landed on the tall metal monster in front of him, and the electromagnetic bullets only caused some pitted bullet marks on its metal surface. As for the beam cutting and pulse energy cannons, they were directly absorbed by the other party. Obviously, the material used to create this monster not only had excellent performance in resisting physical attacks, but also had superior absorption properties when facing energy attacks!

To defeat this monster, he could only grind it down to its limit little by little, but this process would obviously be a very torturous one.

Eric wanted to retreat.

The methods the other party had shown so far were no longer something he could handle now. He had to tell his boss what had happened here. However, the Full Metal Armor would not allow him to retreat. Its order was to capture the person in front of him alive. Without a higher authority intervening, or the authority holder changing the set order, it would carry out this task until it exhausted its last bit of energy.

The metal arm swept across.

Eric agilely bent over to dodge, but as if it had analyzed the opponent's dodging pattern, the other mechanical hand reached down precisely, grabbing his mechanical right arm, which had startled him and wanted to dodge, but was still caught.

The Full Metal Armor did not use the offensive weapons that Luke had installed inside its body, but its steel body with its amazing defensive power was enough to suppress the opponent to death at close range.

Based on the Hulk's data that Luke had obtained from the military earlier, the Full Metal Armor's defensive power was enough to engage in a melee with the Hulk for at least an hour! This was the closest Hyperion had come to vibranium in terms of metal material strength when it was manufactured.

Bang!

Eric felt his right mechanical arm being completely crushed. Although it was already a mechanical body, the mechanical body was still connected to the human body's neurons during transformation. After the pain passed, he had already been locked in the waist and arms by the Full Metal Armor's two metal arms, held in the air, no matter how desperately he struggled.

The thick metal plate in front of the Full Metal Armor slid open to both sides, revealing a space inside large enough to accommodate one person. Eric only felt his whole body suddenly paralyzed, unable to move, and his brain lost command of his limbs.

Miniature sonic weapon.

The Full Metal Armor stuffed Eric into the space inside its chest and abdomen. The heavy armor plate in front of his chest closed again, locking him in.

"Task complete," the Full Metal Armor returned to Snoke, its metallic mechanical voice sounded.

"Very good, stand by." After Snoke finished his instructions, he turned his gaze to another battlefield not far away. A group of mechanical spiders emerged from the shadows, and several cocoon-like prisoners were returned to Snoke's side, supported by a group of mechanical spiders.

"The battlefield has been cleaned up." One of the elite units moved its eight spider legs and stepped forward to submit the task to Snoke.

"Come back." Metal baffles on Snoke's black armor lifted, revealing slots below the baffles, each with a crystal blue chip inserted. Under the illumination of clusters of azure blue light, a batch of mechanical spiders disappeared from the spot, then the next batch of mechanical spiders actively stepped into the realm of azure blue light, and then the next batch.

After more than a dozen times, all of the 2,100 remaining mechanical spiders disappeared, returning to the space device inside Snoke's black armor. Only a few elite units remained temporarily.

At this time, a black ghost-like aircraft appeared in the sky, slowly landing in front of Snoke and the others, the cabin belly opened, and the remaining elite semi-humanoid spider arms each grabbed a prisoner, held them high above their heads, and stepped onto the deck of the cabin, moving both steadily and quickly.

"Let's go, the boss is still waiting," Snoke looked at Venom, who had already shrunk back into Eddie's body to recover.

"Oh, okay." Eddie's condition at the moment was somewhat like severe insomnia, fatigue, and listlessness, and even his body had become thinner. He forced himself to respond to Snoke, and was helped by the other party into the cabin.

PS: Thanks to the rewards from book friends Fenghuo Mantian, Yushu Linfeng Xuanyuan Cang, and Huabei Daoke.