American comics: Starting with Luke the Maker

Hive's massive body convulsed and contracted violently. Even though he had instantly enveloped himself in a spherical energy shield, the shield began to collapse almost immediately in the face of the surging, ghastly white flames beneath him.

Especially the circular lava zone beneath him, resembling a pool of molten rock, continuously brought him immense pain and damage. The ghastly white flames burned his spirit, his will, his very soul!

Hive endured the immense pain, moving his enormous body with difficulty through the lava pool, desperately trying to leave the area covered by the molten rock. The ghastly white flames clinging to and burning him brought him intense pain from body to soul with every step he took.

His abilities allowed him to bathe easily in lava and even survive cosmic storms. But just a lava pool with a diameter of thirty meters, a mere flash-step distance away, felt like an eternity to escape.

This was a flame unique to the Hell dimension!

It used a person's soul, body, and mental thoughts as fuel. Ordinary people would be burned to nothing in an instant when facing it, unable to escape even their souls.

This flame was different from the Penance Stare possessed by the Ghost Rider. According to Mephisto, the Ghost Rider's power came from a demon named Zarathos, a great demon similar to Mephisto in terms of power and authority. In this situation, the two naturally became rivals. The battle between the two great demons temporarily ended with Mephisto's victory.

Mephisto found a way to erase Zarathos's memories, enslave his soul, and seal his body. This greatly reduced the cost and chance of Zarathos's resurrection. Finally, Mephisto transformed Zarathos's soul into a contract. This meant that the Ghost Riders who signed this contract would have Zarathos's soul attached to them, allowing them to use some of Zarathos's power.

Of course, this was Mephisto's version of the story.

The ghastly white flame, on the other hand, was a natural product of the Hell dimension. Its characteristic was that it burned away the impurities of the soul. When an ordinary soul was burned by this flame for a period of time, everything, including impurities and emotions, would be burned away, becoming a blank sheet of paper. It was the main tool used in the Hell dimension to create materials, just like fire in the hands of humans.

Luke had specially collected this flame seed from Mephisto through exchange and purchase and, using a technique that combined some magical means, sealed it into Nemeget's body, using it as his trump card.

During Hive's escape, Nemeget did not pursue him but instead flapped his wings and landed again, his powerful metal tail swaying gently from side to side.

When Hive left the lava area, Nemeget re-inflated his chest, his upper body leaning back slightly, like a Western mythological dragon preparing to breathe fire. The moment his head lunged forward, the nozzle rotated and spewed out a pillar of ghastly white flame.

Hive, who had crawled out weakly, had not even begun to recover when he was doused in the face by a pillar of ghastly white flame, and his entire brain and soul went blank again. The pain transmitted from his body and soul made it somewhat impossible for him to think. Logically, his emotions should have been extremely angry, but because of the pain and the blankness of his brain, he could not even generate, or was not even aware of, the emotion of anger.

The following period was a cyclical battle of chasing and escaping, waiting and re-engaging. The whole process was not very entertaining. If it were used as a battle spectacle to sell tickets, it was believed that the ticket buyers would either curse and leave or doze off in their seats, listless.

Because the battle between the two behemoths was not exciting at all and could even be described as ugly. Apart from the 'light and shadow effects' and the close-quarters fighting between the two behemoths, which were somewhat interesting, the rest of the time was all about chasing and escaping.

Hive's most powerful ability was not his various superpowers, but his parasitic ability! Once he parasitized someone, everything about the host would become his nourishment. In this respect, he was somewhat similar to Luke's low-profile version of the Data Dimension, except that he replicated and mastered everything about the other party through parasitism, while Luke created it through analysis and research.

While his parasitic ability was certainly terrifying when facing other creatures, Hive could only sigh in the face of a metal construct. Unless he could upgrade his ability to the point where it did not distinguish between carbon-based, silicon-based, or even energy-based creatures, he would have to choose to confront Nemeget head-on.

That is, he was not a creature in the conventional sense. Otherwise, facing Nemeget's attack, he would have already entered hell, rather than being able to go back and forth with the other party and occasionally counterattack once or twice.

[The body is adapting to the burning of Hellfire. Although the magnitude is very low, it is indeed undergoing targeted evolution. That is to say, the path to evolution is not only parasitism and plunder.]

Although Hive hid it very well, showing no difference from the beginning of the battle, the data analyzed by the Data Dimension would not be wrong. His body was gradually adapting to the current energy value of Hellfire.

Energy value is the temperature of human fire.

Luke did not expose him, even though he knew exactly what would happen next. But as the saying goes, the victory or defeat of the battle, at least the victory or defeat of this battle, was not what he cared about. What he cared about was the abilities that Hive showed when he was forced into a desperate situation and the data that was captured.

So Luke did not care that the other party was acting now, pretending to be weak, dragging out time to squeeze his body to restore his peak combat power, and probing Nemeget's weaknesses in occasional attacks. He wanted to see if the other party could get his wish.

Two hours later, as Nemeget continued to increase the intensity of his attacks, Hive realized that if he could not solve the other party as soon as possible, then he would be the one to be solved. Hive then took out all his skills and focused his attacks on all the possible weak areas of Nemeget that he had collected.

In a short period of time, Hive, who had burst out with all his strength, was like a war god! From the little white rabbit who had been hunted by the dragon before, he suddenly transformed into another powerful hunter.

The two behemoths were entangled together in close combat. Hive's tentacles wrapped tightly around Nemeget's metal body, and dense black insects blocked all of Nemeget's nozzles at the cost of their lives, one after another, endlessly. In the end, relying on their numbers and adaptability, they dragged Nemeget into a state of lying prone in one fell swoop.

Because all the nozzles were blocked, the ghastly white flames burned inside Nemeget's body. The high-dimensional energy triggered Nemeget's internal defense mechanism and caused some damage to the internal parts.

However, Hive's desperate pounce was also exchanged for a counterattack from Nemeget's defense mechanism. Multiple Hellfire hot springs spewed out one after another within a 50-meter radius around Nemeget, with a much higher energy value than before.

By the time Hive crawled out of the lava-covered area, his body was tattered and full of wounds, and even his huge mountain-like size had shrunk by half compared to before, looking like he had suffered heavy losses.

But Hive, who had escaped from death, was full of luck. Although he had lost a lot of power and body, he had finally removed the huge metal monster that had been threatening him with death.

He was no longer thinking about controlling Midgard or humans or anything like that. His greatest wish at the moment was to find a way to escape from here and return to his planet, where he had lived for thousands of years, and, in the next few hundred years, he must completely close the transmission channel from here to there, even if he could never come back again.

Anyway, he would definitely not come over to suffer in person again!

Clap clap!

Luke's virtual three-dimensional projection reappeared in front of Hive, just a short distance away from him. Luke clapped his hands while looking satisfied at Hive's scarred body, which was still trying to heal itself.

"Human, let me leave. I guarantee you that as long as you are here, I and my subordinates will never set foot on this planet again! I can also transfer all the subordinates on this planet to you for your disposal," Hive's body continued to shrink, eventually returning to a human form. The tentacles on his octopus head twitched, and he opened his mouth to guarantee Luke.

"No hurry." Facing Hive's somewhat urgent and humiliating guarantee, Luke shook his head seriously.

"Why not?" Hive looked at the Luke projection not far away, and a thick shadow flashed in his heart. He had decided that if the other party really did not give him a way out, then he would at least struggle with all his might, even if it was to destroy some more things and buildings!

"There is still the next test to be done. Be good, finish it first, and then we'll talk about leaving or not, and letting you go," Luke pointed to Hive's back and comforted him in a warm voice.

Hearing the sound of mechanical rotation coming from behind him, Hive's whole body stiffened for a moment. He slowly turned around, his eyes instantly turning into a dead silence, and a pile of messy swear words in his chest did not know where to start.

The metal walls of the circular square opened one by one, revealing one identical Nemeget after another inside. Roughly glancing at them, the number that instantly caught his eye was about twenty! What was even more terrifying was that in a series of metal humming sounds that made Hive feel familiar and numb, the total of more than thirty activated Nemegets flapped their wings twice in unison and walked out of the opened metal doors with their metal bodies, moving in an orderly manner.

You thought that defeating one Nemeget would give you victory and the right to negotiate?

Sorry.

I have thirty-nine more Nemegets waiting to join the battlefield!

Do you understand how much defensive power I have set up around to protect the Rainbow Bridge!

Hive despairingly turned his head to look at Luke, who was not far behind him, looking at him with an expectant look, clenching his fist in one hand as if he was encouraging and cheering him on. Even with his mind that had lived for thousands of years, he finally could not help but feel completely defeated.

Are you completely inhuman?

Are you! Are you! Are you!

It was difficult for Hive's octopus face and tentacles to show such rich and intuitive expressions. Luke silently added fuel to him again in his heart, while unhesitatingly issuing attack commands to the Nemegets.

As long as they don't die, there is no need to hold back!

This guy is durable.

The next battle was also ugly.

Hive, as always, showed tenacious vitality, powerful self-healing power, and numerous superpowers, but these, apart from allowing him to last longer and be a sandbag for a longer time, did not have any decisive effect.

Moreover, the thirty-nine Nemegets had at least four versions of high-dimensional power, and even his adaptation power could not keep up. In the end, after only ten minutes, Hive completely gave up resisting. Facing the nearly forty Nemegets' all kinds of saturated, blanket-like attacks, he just used all the remaining power in his body to maintain and strengthen his self-healing power. His brain was even about to lose its ability to think.

Another ten minutes passed.

Hive had become a pile of rotten flesh, completely losing the breath of life.

Of course, this was only what it seemed on the surface. But according to the Data Dimension's detection, although the other party's life force had disappeared to the outside world, according to the detected information, Hive was only near death at the moment. It could not be said to be death.

Hive was not a creature in the conventional sense. Each parasite could be said to be a Hive. The one in front of him could only be said to be the other party's main body, but even if the main body really died, it would not affect the survival of those parasites, unless they were subjected to a high-dimensional soul chain attack.

"Store and seal it up," Luke gave the final order with some regret. He did not know whether he regretted that the other party had not lasted longer or that the second half of the battle had ended somewhat anticlimactically. But in any case, a lot of data about Hive's battle, abilities, and body was still analyzed by the Data Dimension. With this data, Luke could also improve the Reversal Crystal to make it effective against Hive as well.

The next research would be more in-depth and more detailed, and some would be somewhat inhumane.

After reading the data, Hive's parasites seemed very similar to a certain creature in his memory.

Zerg?

Xenomorph?

Both?

Luke needed more experimental materials, such as those parasitized hosts?

This should not be difficult to find. Nick, who sent him a distress message, should have a lot of unlucky people. In order to cut the weeds and eliminate the roots to avoid future troubles, Luke decided to take action himself and help Nick solve those tricky troubles!

PS: Thank you to Ye Zi Botao for the reward! It's the end of the month, students with monthly tickets can vote, mua!