Luke slowly raised his right hand.
Cracks had formed across the surface of his skin—not physical fractures, but something deeper. Thin black lines crawled beneath the flesh like veins filled with ink. Faint, oily energy leaked from them, writhing unnaturally before stopping at his wrist joint, as if something invisible was containing it there.
Luke stared at it, expression hardening.
"That is definitely not good," he said quietly.
He hadn't expected the Avatar of Corruption to bypass his Arcane barriers. His mana defenses weren't passive—they were layered, instinctive, and absolute against anything that tried to invade him directly.
Yet that thing hadn't attacked his body.
It had gone for the system itself.
And the damage had reflected outward.
Luke flexed his fingers. They still responded normally. Strength intact. Control intact.
But he could feel it.
Restrictions.
The system's response echoed faintly in his awareness, like sealed doors.
His skills were locked.
Divine Cataclysm. Fire Dragon Manifestation. Meteor Invocation. High-tier spell constructs.
All inaccessible.
Good thing the system had reacted when it did. If the corruption had spread any further…
Luke glanced again at the blackened cracks.
"…It wouldn't have stopped at my hand."
Still, not everything was lost.
His traits remained active.
Arcane mantle. Infinite Mind. Telekinesis. Spiritual Sense. Physical augmentation. Regeneration.
Luke lowered his hand slowly.
The real problem wasn't the damage—it was that the enemy didn't seem to have a fixed body. It could slip into other hosts, discard a ruined vessel, and continue on as if nothing had happened.
Destroying the body meant nothing if the presence inside could simply move on.
That made it far more dangerous. An enemy without a permanent form had no true point of death—only bodies it temporarily wore.
At the sea, everything was frozen into a silent apocalypse.
Warships stood trapped in thick ice, their massive hulls locked in place mid-motion. Fighter jets lay half-buried in frozen waves, their metal frames twisted and lifeless. The ocean itself had stopped breathing, transformed into a white, endless grave.
Bodies of soldiers remained where they had fallen, sealed beneath layers of frost—preserved in the exact moment their lives ended.
At the center of it all stood Esdeath.
She let out a slow yawn, stretching her shoulders slightly. The fight had been entertaining—for a moment. Their weapons had been loud, their desperation amusing. But in the end, they were still weak.
Still fragile.
At least they had managed to relieve her boredom a little.
Then she felt it.
She turned her head and saw Luke descending from the sky, landing lightly on the frozen sea behind her.
Her eyes immediately fell on his right hand.
Dark cracks spread across his skin, faint black energy lingering around the fractures like something alive, something wrong.
Esdeath's expression sharpened slightly.
"What happened?" she asked.
Luke glanced at his hand once, his face calm but colder than usual.
"A very troublesome opponent appeared," he said.
His eyes lifted to meet hers.
"I may need your help in the next fight."
***
After that, Charles and Erik came to check on Luke, who was inside Hank's lab. Hank stood beside him, carefully scanning Luke's arm with a medical device. The machine emitted soft pulses of light as it analyzed the unnatural black cracks spreading along his skin.
Erik stared at the injury, his expression hardening.
"What the hell did that?" he asked. "That doesn't look like any weapon."
"Yeah," Luke replied. "A nasty thing did it."
He looked at his arm for a moment before continuing.
"And I may know why mutants are being targeted."
Both Charles and Erik immediately focused on him.
"The enemy we are facing seems to have the power to occupy bodies," Luke said. " He can strip mutant abilities and use them as his own. And he has some level of mind control. That might be the reason why the entire world suddenly turned against mutants."
The room fell silent.
Luke continued, his tone calm but certain.
"From that fight, I can tell this isn't random. He's collecting powers. Mutants are the source. Humans are just the tools he's using to hunt them efficiently."
Charles' eyes widened slightly.
Erik's jaw tightened.
Neither of them had expected the truth behind the global persecution to be something like this—not governments, not fear alone, but a single entity deliberately harvesting mutants.
Now Erik finally understood.
Why every mutant prison he attacked was empty.
Why none of their captured people were there.
"And in future, we may get attacked again," Luke said. "And next time, the outcome may be far uglier than this."
Erik's expression darkened, anger rising to the surface without restraint.
"Let that bastard come again," Magneto said coldly. "I will sink him into the bottom of the sea myself."
He had spent his entire life fighting for mutant survival. Watching thousands of their kind hunted, imprisoned, and erased for someone else's gain wasn't something he could accept quietly.
Luke shook his head slightly.
"Not to burst your bubble," he said, raising his cracked arm, "but that guy is dangerous. One touch from him, and you may end up under his control. This is what he did to me."
Charles sighed.
"So what can we do?"
In his long life, Charles had encountered countless mutants—but Luke was the most powerful he had ever seen.
And if even Luke had been injured, even forced to retreat, then the enemy they were facing wasn't just dangerous.
It existed on an entirely different level.
Luke looked directly at Charles.
"I may need your teaching," he said.
It was time he mastered his Infinite Mind trait to counter this psychic, body-stealing enemy.
Until now, he had only used it passively. It strengthened his thoughts and protected him instinctively, but he had never trained it properly.
*****
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