Chapter 242: Upgrade! Devour! Evolve!
The blade flashed, and her head rolled free.
The Uru-metal knife, its job done, didn't linger, arcing back through the air in a flash of light and landing in Matthew's palm.
On the other side, even as her head hit the ground, zombie Wanda still seemed not to have registered what had just happened.
Her body still hung bound in midair by the Crimson Bands, black blood pouring from the stump of her neck like a fountain, soaking the rubble below in a dark red stain.
With Chaos energy no longer sustaining her, the lucidity she'd once managed to hold onto slipped back into mindlessness, leaving nothing but a shred of raw zombie instinct.
But even that instinct drained away fast, as the seconds passed.
Before long, her eyes went completely dark.
And finally, faded into nothing.
Only once the red dot in his field of perception had gone out completely did Matthew carefully release the Crimson Bands.
Say what you will, but power borrowed from the extradimensional dark god of the Crimson Cosmos, Cyttorak, really was genuinely useful.
Even just a small borrowed fraction of it had turned out to be perfect for dealing with Chaos energy.
Otherwise, taking zombie Wanda down would probably have taken a good deal more effort.
As the headless body dropped into the rubble like a discarded rag, Matthew stepped forward, his gaze sweeping over what was left of her, now completely drained of life.
Before long, Matthew spoke, flat and even. "Let's see just how far adding Chaos Magic into the mix can push the Blacklight Virus's evolution."
With that, his evolution field snapped open.
The Chaos energy still lingering in the corpse seemed to get caught in some invisible whirlpool, pouring through the evolution field into Matthew's body in a rush.
The instant the crimson energy entered him, it triggered a violent chemical reaction with the Blacklight Virus.
The reaction this time, during the absorption, was far more intense than anything he'd felt absorbing Captain Marvel.
So much so that it brought back memories of the first time he'd touched the Power Stone.
Right now, it felt like something wildly volatile had been crammed straight into his body.
Under that energy, every inch of his flesh was being forcibly twisted and rebuilt, reshaped into a vessel to hold it.
On the surface, his flesh-armor kept cracking open and healing shut under the strain, its overall dark red hue deepening further, giving off a faint, eerie glow.
The blaze pouring off his Binary form had, at some point, taken on a tint of blood-red, shifting from something divine into something distinctly malevolent.
Cracks spread across the corpse beside him.
At the same time, the headless body on the ground, drained of its Chaos energy, was withering away at incredible speed.
Until finally, it crumbled into a handful of grey-white powder.
Time slipped by slowly.
No one could say how long passed before Matthew's body, standing motionless the whole time, suddenly shuddered.
Right then, the Chaos energy had fully merged into his body, achieving a perfect fusion with the Blacklight Virus.
Matthew's body had now become just as perfect a vessel for Chaos energy as Wanda's had once been.
"Hah—" He let out a long, heavy breath.
Fresh off completing his evolution, Matthew turned to look at zombie Thor, who he'd already reduced to a mist of blood earlier.
What was left of him was scattered around like a knocked-over pile of blocks, chunks of him flung a hundred meters off in every direction. If Matthew wanted to absorb him, he'd have to go gather the pieces up first.
Seeing the mess, Matthew's mouth twitched, and he muttered to himself. "...Guess I went a little overboard there."
Even as he said it, his hands never stopped moving.
He crooked a finger, and the gravity field gathered every scattered chunk of flesh back in front of him, and the evolution field swept over it once more.
Compared to absorbing zombie Wanda, this reaction was noticeably smaller. His body only strengthened a bit further, along with picking up the same physiology Thor himself carried.
In other words, Matthew now had not only the ability to control lightning, but could also use Stormbreaker directly to summon the Bifrost.
Once that was done, Matthew didn't rush to head back to his own world.
As far as he was concerned, his job here was technically done, but he still felt like he was coming out a little short.
After all, in this world, neither Odin nor the Ancient One remained, and the entire universe had already been ravaged past recognition by the Quantum Zombie Virus.
Given that, he figured he might as well turn the whole universe into fuel for the Blacklight Virus on his way out, devouring every powerful being he could get his hands on.
Sure, that was exactly the kind of thing a villain would do, but as far as Matthew was concerned—
It didn't matter.
The universe was already a wreck beyond saving anyway. One more villain wasn't going to make a difference.
He weighed Stormbreaker in his hand, took a short rest, then clenched his fingers tight!
The next instant!
A column of seven-colored light dropped down from the sky, swallowing Matthew whole.
By the time the column faded, Matthew had vanished right along with it.
The zombie universe. Asgard.
An immense, invisible force surged out from within the Bifrost's passage!
The next instant, Matthew came shooting out of the Bifrost's passage like he'd slid down a playground slide, landing steadily on the faintly glowing surface of the bridge itself.
Even with everything outside in complete chaos, Asgard was still breathtakingly beautiful.
The golden palace still stood in the distance, wrapped in radiant light falling from the sky, looking every bit as divine as ever.
But in stark contrast to that divine grandeur, the air carried a distinct stench of decay.
Where Heimdall should have been standing, dozens of shambling figures now crowded together instead.
They wore the tattered remains of Asgardian battle armor, their exposed skin rotting and crawling with maggots. What had once been Asgardian warriors were now reduced to nothing but raw hunger and madness.
The commotion of the Bifrost opening cut sharply through the silence of the realm, and every zombified Asgardian turned their heads in unison.
Seeing an all-you-can-eat buffet had just walked in, the next instant—
"RAAAGH!!!"
A deafening chorus of roars erupted all at once!
As the roars broke out, a mass of zombies came charging straight at Matthew all together!
Seeing this, Matthew raised an eyebrow and didn't hold back.
His gravity field spread outward from him without restraint, becoming an invisible steamroller that ground its way straight down the Bifrost toward the palace.
The zombies charging across the bridge burst into mist the instant the gravity field passed over them, and the fog and loose stone below the bridge were flattened right along with them.
The entire Bifrost looked like it had been wiped clean end to end by some giant hand, left without so much as a speck of debris.
With that done, Matthew finally started walking, unhurried, toward the golden palace.
After all.
His real hunt had only just begun.
Inside the city of Asgard, zombies drawn by the noise came pouring out, no shortage of so-called Valkyries among them.
Unfortunately for them, what they were facing now was a Matthew fully in the grip of his rampage.
Against power that terrifying, all they could do was become fuel.
Wherever Matthew passed, his evolution field devoured every zombie that came near like some insatiable beast.
Severed limbs of every kind crumbled to ash within the field, streams of life essence pouring into his body like a river.
Every now and then a few strays tried to rush him directly, only to be twisted into knots by the gravity field before they ever got close enough to touch so much as his sleeve.
From the Bifrost all the way to the main hall of the palace, Matthew didn't so much as blink.
The realm, which had still carried the faint echo of roars moments before, went completely silent before long.
The golden palace had taken on a dark red stain, and Matthew stood at the center of the great hall, the Blacklight Virus churning restlessly inside him.
By now, the Blacklight Virus had devoured tens of thousands of Asgardian zombies, well past the point of overfeeding.
Every zombified Asgardian had been completely wiped out by now, and beings that had once looked down on humanity from such a great height had been absorbed down to the last one.
Feeling his body grown stronger still, Matthew nodded, satisfied.
"Guess it's time to move on somewhere else." Matthew murmured to himself.
Cosmic Awareness expanded outward again.
Before long, he'd locked onto a location, a smile crossing his lips.
"Well, well, would you look at that. Isn't this an old friend of mine?"
"Ego."
"You'll do."
With that, he raised Stormbreaker high, and the seven-colored column of light descended once more.
The original universe. The New York Sanctum.
The Ancient One sat cross-legged on her bed, eyes closed, candlelight flickering and swaying in the breeze beside her.
"Still hasn't found her?" she murmured under her breath.
More than a month had passed since Matthew crossed into the zombie universe.
Given how well she knew Matthew, a badly wounded Scarlet Witch was surely no match for him.
The only thing worth worrying about was whether Matthew could actually track her down and finish her off completely before she had time to recover.
"This long without a single word. Could he have run into something even more powerful out there?"
"Or gotten tangled up with something..."
The Ancient One's brow furrowed, turning over possibility after possibility for why Matthew still hadn't come back.
The sun rose and set, and time raced by.
In the blink of an eye, another half a month passed.
Over those two weeks, the Ancient One never once left her second-floor room.
She sat quietly cross-legged on her bed, perfectly still.
During that stretch, Wong came up a few times to bring her tea and food, but every time he opened the door, she turned him down without much interest.
Compared to the confusion in her eyes two weeks earlier, there was real gravity there now.
"Could it be... that Matthew didn't manage to finish off the zombified Scarlet Witch the way I expected?" Her brow knit tight.
She rarely doubted her own judgment.
But this time, she couldn't help but start considering the worst.
Matthew was strong, strong enough that even she couldn't fully see through him, but that universe was, after all, one that had already collapsed entirely.
No one knew what might still be hiding out there.
If the Quantum Zombie Virus could infect the Scarlet Witch, it could just as easily have infected something older, something far more dangerous.
What if, somewhere in his search, Matthew had run into something even she couldn't handle?
The thought made her fingers tighten slightly.
Compared to Baron Mordo and her other students, the Ancient One clearly held Matthew in far higher regard these days.
On one hand, Matthew was the most powerful being on Earth aside from herself, and in some respects had already surpassed her.
On the other, all their time spent teaching and simply being around one another had, without her quite noticing, made her come to think of him almost like a true disciple of her own.
Now that Matthew had gone off to another universe on her own word, if something had genuinely gone wrong out there, the responsibility for it would rest entirely on her shoulders.
And beyond that, there was one more thing weighing on her.
What if, through some misstep, Matthew himself had turned into a zombie, and came back to attack Earth instead?
Would she even be able to hold him off, if it came to that?
The Ancient One's eyes snapped open, light flickering unsteadily within them.
And right as her mind spun through every worst-case scenario, a strange ripple of spatial distortion suddenly appeared in the quiet room.
The ripple was faint, so faint it was almost impossible to notice.
But in a room she'd reinforced with layer upon layer of magic circles, even the smallest anomaly would be magnified a thousandfold.
Almost the instant the ripple appeared, the Ancient One's head snapped up, her gaze locking onto its source.
The next moment, a mass of Chaos energy suddenly materialized in the center of the room!
The energy churned a deep crimson, spreading through the room slowly like some living, breathing mist.
The instant she saw it, her expression darkened.
"Chaos energy?!"
There was no mistaking it. The aura pouring off this thing was identical to the zombified Scarlet Witch she'd fought in that dark space herself.
Seeing it, the Ancient One let out a cold snort, both fists clenching tight, her presence surging to its absolute peak in an instant.
Golden magic circles lit up around her, and the Eye of Agamotto at her chest slowly spun open, revealing the eerie green light within.
She snapped into a fighting stance in an instant!
Her eyes locked hard onto the expanding mass of Chaos energy, her expression that of someone bracing for a genuine threat.
Before long, a hand suddenly reached out from within, tearing the Chaos energy open by brute force.
Right as the Ancient One was about to strike—
A familiar voice came through the opening.
"Ancient One, it's me. Matthew."
"Don't look at me like that. I was just trying out a new ability, that's all."
With that, Matthew stepped out from the Chaos energy.
The presence he carried now was like a completely different person from the Matthew who'd first crossed into the zombie universe.
Over that stretch of time, Matthew hadn't just hunted down and devoured every powerful being in the zombie universe he could beat. He'd also used Fusion Extraction to pull every ability he'd gained from them and pour that nourishment straight into his own Chaos energy.
Compared to Wanda when he'd first crossed paths with her in the zombie universe, the Chaos energy inside Matthew now was leagues stronger, there was no telling by how much.
So much so that once he combined it with the spells the Ancient One had taught him, tearing open the barrier between worlds and returning home had become almost effortless, nothing like the struggle it had been on the way out.
Seeing that it was Matthew, the Ancient One didn't show relief right away.
Instead, she stayed in her defensive stance, the golden magic circles still surrounding her, the Eye of Agamotto still spinning.
Her gaze swept back and forth over him.
As far as she knew.
If Chaos energy wanted to simply alter someone's appearance, or mask the signs of zombification, nothing could be easier.
So she couldn't rule out the possibility that the "Matthew" standing in front of her was actually zombie Wanda in disguise.
The Ancient One's psychic sense reached out without a sound, sweeping over Matthew completely.
Magic, body, soul: all three checked at once.
Matthew simply stood in the middle of the room, letting her sense pass over him without resistance.
A moment later, the tension eased from the Ancient One's face. She'd finally confirmed that the person in front of her really was the same Matthew Lawrence who'd gone into the zombie universe.
Compared to before, he now carried the trace of Chaos energy, sure, but his soul hadn't changed one bit, and his body showed no sign of infection from the Quantum Zombie Virus at all. Genuine, through and through.
Seeing this, the Ancient One slowly drew her magic back in.
"That Chaos energy on you. Where did it come from?" The Ancient One skipped the pleasantries and got straight to the point.
Matthew spread his hands at that. He had no intention of giving away his real secrets, so he just said, offhand, "Just picked up a little something off her, that's all."
"She wasn't going to need it anymore anyway, so I figured, well, I'd graciously inherit it on her behalf." Matthew let out a short laugh, his tone easy, offhand.
Hearing that, the Ancient One gave him a long, searching look.
She could tell well enough that the word "inherit" was covering for something he wasn't willing to share.
But did it really matter?
What mattered most right now was that Matthew had come back alive.
And the crisis in the zombie universe had been resolved along with it. That, on its own, was enough.
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