The moment Medusa's harsh, rasping voice fell, her true attack began.
The countless giant snakes atop her head shot out like a living net, lashing through the darkness and wrapping themselves around the four Miracle Nation contestants before they could properly react.
In an instant, all of them were yanked off the ground and suspended in midair.
The livestream exploded.
"This is bad! Medusa's going to turn them all into stone!"
"Magneto, whatever you do, don't look at her face!"
"She's completely broken! They can't open their eyes, so they can't fight back. They're basically helpless!"
"Wait, wasn't Venom supposed to be immune to this? How did he get caught too?!"
"Venom can only rely on Eddie as a host! If Eddie gets trapped, Venom's stuck too!"
"Then what do they do now?!"
The Miracle Nation audience immediately started flooding the chat with panic.
No matter how they looked at it, the group had no way to counterattack. With their eyes shut, all they could do was endure being crushed by Medusa's serpent hair—or worse.
Then, suddenly, Magneto spoke.
"Did anyone find her weak point?"
That one sentence made people freeze.
So he had noticed something.
Joker answered first, still hanging in the air.
"She's been using her tail for wide sweeps," he said, his voice surprisingly calm. "But when it came to restraining us, she used the snakes on her head instead."
He gave a low laugh.
"That means she has blind spots. She's mobile, but not truly flawless."
Eddie, who was being strangled so hard he could barely breathe, still managed to force out a reply with his eyes squeezed shut.
"Are you seriously treating this thing like an ordinary snake?"
Even in a life-or-death moment, Eddie's tone was absurd enough to make people want to laugh.
But he had a point.
Who could really look at a monster like this and reduce it to "just a snake"?
Magneto said coldly, "Her eyes are her greatest weapon. Aside from that, there has to be something else."
The next instant, Medusa herself laughed—a shrill, hateful sound that echoed through the cave.
"You foolish men," she hissed. "Did you really think all I could do was bind you? Did you think shutting your eyes would save you?"
The dark cavern seemed to hum with her voice.
Then Joker's expression changed.
He was the first to realize it.
"The snakes," he said. "Their skin is releasing venom."
His tone sharpened at once.
"She isn't trying to kill us quickly—she's poisoning us, wearing down our minds, and turning us into puppets."
At that moment, Eddie finally felt it too.
A burning pain had already started spreading through his body.
Inside him, Venom was frantically devouring and suppressing the invading toxins, but that only made Eddie's body feel even worse, as if two different forces were tearing through his insides at the same time.
The viewers nearly lost it.
"She's insane! She trapped them first and then started poisoning them!"
"This is over—they don't even have the chance to fight back!"
"Miracle Nation is finished!"
In Miracle Nation's command room, Li Dapu was already roaring.
"A bunch of trash! You can't even beat one damn snake?!"
But even he knew the situation was bad.
If the core Miracle Nation contestants died here, the country's entire position in the Divine Domain would collapse.
A subordinate tried to speak carefully.
"Mr. President… the bigger problem is that if they all die here, Miracle Nation—"
"Shut up!" Li Dapu snarled. Then he switched to the private channel and barked directly at the contestants, "I don't care what it takes—kill Medusa! If you still want to come back alive, then stop acting like garbage!"
Even now, all he knew how to do was threaten them.
Joker burst out laughing.
"Our dear president really is the same as always."
But this time, no one paid attention to him.
Because the situation had changed.
Magneto's eyes suddenly shifted.
Though he still kept them shut, a layer of metallic film spread over them from the trace minerals around him, forming a thin substitute structure—an artificial vision method of his own making.
At once, the metallic force around him surged.
Clang!
With a violent tearing sound, the snakes coiled around him were ripped away one after another.
The livestream immediately caught the sound—
and then, a heartbeat later, another ripping noise followed from somewhere else.
Wet.
Violent.
And definitely not from Magneto.
The audience froze.
"What was that?!"
"Did someone die?!"
"Can somebody tell me what's happening in there?!"
Then came Medusa's scream.
A shrill, furious shriek tore through the cave.
The entire livestream fell silent for half a beat.
That scream hadn't come from a human.
It had come from Medusa.
And then the cameras finally caught what had happened.
In the darkness, Joker stood there covered in blood, his face split by a twisted grin.
He had used brute force—raw, savage brute force—to tear apart one of the giant snakes that had been binding him.
Not cut.
Not burned.
Ripped open by hand.
The comments exploded.
"It's Joker?!"
"He tore one of Medusa's hair-snakes apart with his bare hands?!"
"I knew he was dangerous, but what the hell?!"
"Everybody calm down! He only tore apart one of them!"
"Look at Medusa's head—she still has a whole nest of them left!"
That was the cold truth.
Joker's counterattack was horrifying—
but it was only the beginning.
Medusa's remaining snakes were still everywhere, writhing through the darkness, hissing and lashing like a storm of living whips.
Her voice came down from above, trembling with fury.
"You filthy little insect!"
The next instant, her enormous body lunged straight toward Joker.
The giant serpent tail smashed across the stone floor, sending shards flying everywhere. Her upper body twisted downward, and the snakes on her head erupted at once, all of them aiming straight for him.
Joker laughed again, blood still dripping off his sleeves.
"Now that's more like it."
His eyes were still shut.
But somehow, in the absolute dark, he still moved with eerie precision.
He dodged sideways.
A dozen snakes slammed into the ground where he had stood a moment earlier.
Boom!
The floor cracked.
Venom roared from within Eddie's body.
"Magneto! Get us loose now!"
Magneto didn't answer.
But the iron hidden in the walls, floor, and even scattered debris around them had already started moving under his control. Thin shards and jagged slivers rose silently and flashed outward, slicing through the snakes that still bound Eddie and Venom.
At the same time, Eddie dropped hard to the floor, coughing violently.
"Damn it—"
Before he could recover, Venom surged out in full, black tendrils exploding from Eddie's back like spears.
This time, Venom didn't bother with subtlety.
He launched himself directly at Medusa.
The darkness became total chaos.
Joker was weaving through the snake barrage.
Magneto had finally rejoined the fight.
Venom had gone on the offensive.
And Medusa, enraged for real now, no longer looked like some cursed beauty from myth—
but like a true apex nightmare of the Divine Domain.
The bloody battle had begun in earnest.
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