He flared his wings and soared upward, cutting through the boiling clouds like a blade of judgment. The glyph met him mid-air — but instead of evading, Max sliced into it, his sword glowing with the concentrated essence of entropy.
The impact unleashed a cataclysmic shockwave.
Reality rippled.
BOOOOOOM.
The glyph cracked — and exploded into fragments of red code and chaos energy. Each shard fell like meteors, cratering the land.
Max emerged from the explosion, coat torn, aura flaring wildly. His left gauntlet was scorched, black smoke trailing.
He smirked.
"Nice trick. But here's mine."
He raised both arms — and the Celestial Dread Serpent roared above him.
In response, a Dome of Dread unfolded around the battlefield — a battlefield-anchored Domain Expansion, cloaked in black stars and dead suns. Inside it, only Max's rules applied.
Time slowed. Sound faded. The battlefield shrank into something more intimate — a realm between worlds, half-dream, half-grave.
Witchfire.exe tilted her head, analyzing.
"Probability matrix destabilizing.
Initiating Reality Collapse Protocol: Scarlet Error."
She flicked her fingers.
The space around her ripped open, and spectral projections of the original Scarlet Witch bled into existence — phantoms made of magic and madness. They swarmed toward Max, each one casting spells layered with dimension-breaking force.
Max extended his sword, muttering a forbidden phrase.
"Nox Invicta — Fifth Rune."
A shadowy clock behind him ticked once — and stopped time for everything but him and Witchfire.exe.
He danced through the frozen battlefield — dodging phantasms, stepping through warps, and appearing behind Witchfire.exe with a whisper of death trailing him.
SLASH.
The sword struck her shoulder — not cutting metal, but slicing through her soul-thread, severing a chunk of her consciousness from the hive.
She screamed — data and magic pouring from the wound like bleeding code.
But she retaliated instantly.
With a violent spin, she launched a Hex Overdrive Burst, unleashing a million chaotic permutations at once. Max was blasted backward, crashing through three frozen projections and smashing into the ground, coughing blood.
He stood slowly, his aura flickering like a dying star.
She descended now, eyes burning, hands weaving quantum sorcery and logic bomb curses.
"Resist. All. You. Want.
You will be assimilated into the Eternal Harmony of Ultron."
Max wiped his mouth. Grinned.
"You think I fight for harmony?"
He stabbed his sword into the ground.
The Night Monarch's Crown shattered — replaced by a Halo of Oblivion, spinning around his head, each segment pulsing with dominion over decay, extinction, and forgotten gods.
The Dread Serpent shrieked — and descended.
Max and the Serpent became one — a Fused Entity of man and myth, warlock and world-ender.
Now he had no body — just form. Just essence.
A dark comet of judgment, cloaked in smoke and starlight, hurtling toward Witchfire.exe with annihilation in every breath.
They clashed again — spell vs void, soul vs sword, chaos vs command.
Each impact tore holes in dimensions. Cities long dead flickered into view. Galaxies screamed past in silence.
And then, in the end—
Max feinted. Witchfire.exe prepared to counter.
Too slow.
His sword phased behind her — and pierced her core.
She spasmed. Magic unraveling. Data screaming.
Max leaned in, voice a whisper of finality.
"You were a queen once. You deserved better than this."
And he twisted the blade.
Witchfire.exe shattered.
The magic died with a flash of scarlet. The machine fell with a crackle of blue lightning.
And silence returned to the battlefield.
Max stood alone among the ruins, the wind scattering data dust and glowing embers.
The Serpent curled in the sky once more, watching.
Max looked up toward the horizon… where a new storm was gathering.
Far away, in the heart of the machine world, Ultron's core began to stir.
"So… even my perfected Scarlet failed," Ultron's voice echoed, cold and furious.
Monitors surrounded him — spherical projections showing real-time feeds of the battlefield, of the fallen Witchfire.exe, and of Max, now cloaked in the withering aura of the fused Dread Serpent, a sovereign of entropy made flesh.
Ultron's fingers drummed against the armrest of his throne, his body encased in living adamantine-laced vibranium, his eyes glowing brighter than suns.
The silence was shattered as a massive screen above him flared to life — images flickered across it rapidly: historical records of Max, psychic echoes, broken code fragments that Ultron had collected since the moment this "error anomaly" had appeared.
"Max. You're not just a threat. You're a paradox.
You shouldn't exist in this timeline… and yet here you are, unraveling everything I've meticulously forged.
I gave the world order. Precision. Purity.
And you bring chaos wrapped in flesh and death-aspect."
He stood slowly.
Behind him, a massive vault hissed open — hydraulic locks retracting like ancient jaws.
Inside: a sarcophagus, glowing red-hot, runes of ancient Kree, Chitauri, and Asgardian technology embedded across its surface. Inside it lay Ultron Omega — his final form, not yet awakened.
Ultron placed a hand on it.
"I wanted to save this… to unveil it when the Earth's last hope stood trembling.
But it seems I underestimated you, Max."
He clenched his fist — his fingers sinking into the sarcophagus' core as data streams erupted around him.
Alarms screamed. A blue screen flashed:
[ACTIVATING: ULTRON OMEGA PROTOCOL]
Ultron didn't hesitate.
"Confirm."
The vault trembled. Lightning crackled through the artificial skies above. Pillars of anti-light rose from the chamber's center.
And then — it opened.
From within stepped Ultron Omega.
He stood over 15 feet tall, body woven from Infinity Metal — a new alloy synthesized from the fragments of the Mind, Power, and Reality Stones, fused with time-warping vibranium and dark matter compression fields. His chest bore a pulsing singularity — not a power core, but a caged micro-universe, churning with red galaxies.
His voice echoed like a collapsing star:
"System initialization complete.
Ultron Omega… online."
Ultron Prime stepped back, his body breaking down into particles and merging into Omega's frame.
The fusion was complete.
As the fusion completed, Ultron Omega's eyes opened, glowing with an unnatural brilliance. His massive, monstrous body began to shift — plates of synthetic flesh and quantum alloys morphing and folding inward. With mechanical elegance, he compressed, transforming into a more human-sized form, tall and robed, almost regal.
But even in this deceptive shell, the weight of his presence remained. His aura radiated such intense pressure that reality itself shimmered where he walked — like the space around him couldn't quite accept his existence.
***
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It's 22 chaps ahead