Chapter 439: Thoughts on the Fear Corps

Chapter 439: Chapter 439: Thoughts on the Fear Corps

It was unknown how much time had passed; the barrier set up by Wanda finally dissipated, and the scarlet energy gradually faded, eventually disappearing into the air.

Without the influence of Chaos Magic, the reality-warped facilities around them quickly restored, returning to their original appearance.

Soon, everyone saw Darian and Wanda walking out one after the other.

Both of them looked somewhat disheveled, as if they had just been through an intense battle.

Pietro went up to them, sweeping his gaze back and forth between the two, and asked cautiously, "You... are you guys okay?"

"We’re fine, what could possibly happen to us?"

Darian waved his hand with a calm expression.

It was merely a minor overturn; after Wanda vented her anger, the two of them made up as before.

Although the relationship between Wanda and Darian as husband and wife was fictional from the very beginning, those emotions and memories still remained in Wanda’s mind, and she couldn’t bear to truly lay a heavy hand on Darian, this scumbag.

Coupled with the fact that Darian was very tactful later on, sending a bunch of good things like the Fountain of Youth, more than half of the anger in Wanda’s heart had already dissipated.

The remaining bit of temper completely vanished after Darian administered an injection.

As for the cutscene of the treatment process, knowing that everyone doesn’t like to watch it, it will be skipped here.

After everything calmed down, a system notification suddenly rang in Darian’s mind.

[Detected that Wanda Maximonov’s favorability has reached over 95, do you want to extract this NPC’s skin card]

Wanda’s skin card!

Darian drew a sharp breath.

With this skin card, it was equivalent to him being able to use Wanda’s identical abilities, which was Chaos Magic.

He had personally experienced the terror of Chaos Magic; physical rules were mere decorations in front of it, able to modify reality at will, and even create things out of thin air. It was even more heaven-defying than cheating, practically no different from turning on creative mode.

Even if the skin card could only be used once, it was still a massive profit.

Of course, profit is profit, but he hadn’t forgotten that this guy Pietro had sold him out.

Darian wore a warm smile on his face, reached out and patted Pietro’s shoulder, and said cheerfully, "Although we are fine now, well, you’re going to be in trouble next."

Pietro’s heart skipped a beat, and his intuition told him things were going badly.

Sure enough, he heard Darian say, "Through the battle just now, I found that your combat awareness is still too poor, so I have decided that starting from now, the Quicksilver Sacrifice 2.0 event will be launched."

"From this moment on, you will be subjected to attacks and sneak attacks by all members of HYDRA twenty-four hours a day, including but not limited to frontal assaults, ambushes from behind, long-range sniping, close-quarters combat, poison gas, traps, and so on, without any restrictions."

"As for the event duration... indefinite, we’ll talk about it whenever I’m in a good mood one day."

Pietro: "..."

Using public office for private vendettas, this was definitely using public office for private vendettas!

This petty bastard!

Unlike Pietro’s despair, everyone else around cheered joyfully upon hearing this news, the atmosphere as lively as celebrating the New Year.

Old Steve, as a newcomer who had just joined not long ago, didn’t understand the situation at first. After asking, he learned the specific gameplay of the event, thinking to himself that HYDRA was indeed evil to come up with such a perverted gameplay.

As the righteous Captain America, he really couldn’t bear to watch it anymore.

Old Steve shook his head in grief and indignation, exclaiming where is morality, where is the bottom line, and where is the registration address?

You must know that anyone who successfully attacked Pietro could get corresponding points, and these points could be exchanged for all kinds of good things from the mall.

Among them was the newly launched Fountain of Youth, a single drop of which could make a person revert to youth.

Old Steve could be said to be determined to win this.

Carter had now regained her youth, and the whole person was glowing, while as for him, he was still in an aged appearance with white hair.

The two of them standing together, if called a couple, outsiders looked at it and thought they were more like grandparents and grandchildren.

What’s more, outside there was a younger Steve who had always been eyeing Carter with covetous eyes, that fellow relying on his full chest muscles and pert buttocks, swaggering around in front of Carter, trying to seduce his wife.

In contrast, his whole body was shriveled, with no competitiveness to speak of.

If he could get the Fountain of Youth, he could turn back into his young self, kick that young Steve away, and spend several more decades of good days with Carter.

Before that, they could only wrong Pietro a little bit.

The actual losses caused by this storm were not very large.

The most severely damaged part of the entire area was Darian’s king palace, with nearly more than half of the walls collapsed.

However, for the now wealthy country of Sokovia, this little loss was simply not worth mentioning.

It just so happened that the entire old palace could be demolished and rebuilt, creating a larger and more magnificent new hall, and it would be the golden glittering kind.

At first, Darian felt that this style was too nouveau riche, completely lacking that low-key, luxurious, and connotative flavor.

But ever since he went to Asgard, his thoughts had changed.

For a powerful country, it was very necessary to properly display its own strength, and showing off wealth was the most direct and effortless method.

This was like someone advertising everywhere that there was a lot of money in my house; such a person was either a fool or had enough confidence not to be afraid of being targeted at all.

As for why it was displayed through vulgar things like gold.

That was nonsense, how could ordinary people understand higher-grade stuff?

Just like Mjolnir in Thor’s hands.

Who could have imagined that a hammer was actually forged using the core of a dying star as the main material, supplemented by the extremely rare uru metal. It could be said to be priceless, and on the interstellar black market, it could casually buy several Planets.

But in the eyes of ordinary people, that was just a hammer, at most a hammer with electricity.

Precisely because he understood this truth, Odin would build the palace magnificently, even the floor tiles under his feet were golden and glittering, and Asgard’s soldiers were every single one wearing golden armor.

Anyone who looked at it for the first time would have to exclaim that Asgard had strong financial resources, and various forces naturally rushed to cooperate with them.

Sokovia did not have the family foundation like Asgard, but it wouldn’t be too bad either. At least plating a layer of gold on the surface and doing some face projects was more than enough.

Darian only mentioned a few general requirements and threw the matter to HYDRA’s construction department to handle.

As soon as he finished giving instructions, Zemo walked over, the expression on his face somewhat solemn.

"Divine Lord, there is an important matter that I need to report to you in person."

"What is it?"

Zemo organized his phrasing and began, "It’s like this, according to the detection of the technical department, during the previous outbreak of Chaos Magic, that force produced a certain resonance reaction with the Mind Stone on Loki’s Scepter, causing a certain range of commotion."

"News sent back by the intelligence department shows that the United States government and relevant agencies of multiple countries have already begun to cast their eyes on Sokovia. Developing according to this trend, they are likely to reach their hands into our place to probe through diplomatic channels or other methods."

Darian cheerfully said, "It’s fine. At that time, send a few diplomats to sit at the international conference, and then cry poor and sell misery hard, saying that our poor little country lacks resources, has a tight budget, and can barely maintain even basic people’s livelihood. Appeal to other countries to fund and rescue out of humanitarian spirit, and I guarantee they will immediately withdraw their attention and directly play dead."

Zemo: "..."

Could it still be played like this?

What he didn’t know was that their ally Wakanda had been playing this exact set externally for so many years, which was why it could remain hidden until now.

Of course, Darian didn’t intend to let Sokovia completely copy Wakanda’s approach, such as specially arranging a poor and backward area on the periphery of the national border to deceive people.

He felt it was too much of a hassle and unnecessary.

If it were really discovered, the one that should be nervous at that time would definitely not be Sokovia, but other countries.

Darian suddenly remembered something and said, "Right, help me find a batch of talents over."

"Alright."

Zemo didn’t ask much and turned around to have people handle it.

HYDRA’s work efficiency had always been very high.

Not long after the order was passed down, a batch of personnel wearing prison uniforms was sent in front of Darian.

Because Sokovia’s local talent reserve was really not enough, Zemo had long used HYDRA’s power network to specially transfer a batch of death row inmates from major prisons.

Every single one of these prisoners was heinous, with sentences of at least decades, the kind whose buttocks got hemorrhoids from sitting.

Speaking of this, one had to mention that these death row inmates were actually a type of hot special resource in America, and the specific uses would not be elaborated in detail.

Only because HYDRA’s power network was spread wide enough and penetrated deep enough could they transfer so many sources of goods from major prisons.

Zemo always did things thoughtfully. Long before escorting the people over, he had people seal the mouths of this gang of prisoners, so there was no segment of cursing and clamoring.

Darian ignored the prisoners’ various gazes, and a white robe suddenly emerged out of thin air on his body, enveloping his entire person within it.

Following closely, the color of the white robe began to change, dyeing yellow little by little, exuding a creepy and eerie aura that made people shudder all over.

The death row inmates all widened their eyes, looking at this scene in terror.

Darian could clearly feel that clusters of fear emotions were gushing out from these people, being slowly sucked in by Parallax in the sealed space, and then transformed into fear energy.

It’s just that this amount was pitifully small, not even enough for him to squander a few times.

"Not enough."

Darian narrowed his eyes slightly.

As the words fell, the surrounding lights gradually became dim.

His face was completely hidden in the shadow of the hood, leaving only a yellow garment strikingly dazzling in the dimness.

At the hem of the yellow garment, strips of pitch-black tentacles wriggled and reached out.

The surface of the tentacles was covered with dense, tiny suckers, and the inner wall of each sucker grew fine, barbed teeth, making eerie creaking sounds when rubbing against each other.

Absurd, twisted, grotesque...

This scene before their eyes, no matter how one looked at it, didn’t look like something that should appear in the real World.

What the hell kind of monster is this!?

The prisoners were simply scared to death.

A buzzing sound came from their blocked mouths, and they began to struggle desperately wanting to escape, but their bodies were tied up tightly, and they could only watch helplessly as those tentacles wriggled towards them.

Under despair, the emotion of fear gushed out crazily from every prisoner like a breached flood, continuously pouring into the yellow garment.

"Awesome!"

Darian felt the fear energy soaring rapidly, at a speed more than ten times faster than just now.

The more frightened the target was, the more fear emotions he could absorb.

However, good times didn’t last long.

After about a dozen seconds, the fear gushing out from the prisoners began to decrease sharply, becoming thinner and thinner.

Darian looked down, and on the ground, a patch of people had already collapsed crosswise.

Most of the prisoners curled up on the ground, repeatedly chanting some incomprehensible words in their mouths, with vacant eyes and completely out of focus.

There were a few more serious ones, with manic expressions, constantly hitting the walls and ground with their heads, occasionally making one or two meaningless chuckle sounds.

[Status: Insane]

Under the erosion of the fear energy, these prisoners saw scenes beyond their tolerance limit, their minds directly collapsed, and all of them went crazy.

Darian shook his head: "There is indeed a lot of fear, but it’s just a bit costly in terms of people."

Although he could continuously capture people to absorb fear emotions, such output was still too low.

Moreover, a person’s sanity was limited. Once it exceeded the threshold, their mental state would collapse, turning into madmen just like this group of prisoners, unable to squeeze out even a bit of fear.

"How can we widen the collection range a bit?"

Darian touched his chin, pondering this question in his mind.

Parallax could only passively receive fear emotions in the sealed space, and had no way to actively run out to absorb fear emotions. Although he himself could act as a carrier, it was impossible to fly around the World to scare people, which would be too degrading.

Suddenly, Darian thought of a very good reference object.

That was the Dimensional Demon God.

Those big shots entrenched in various dimensions lent out their own power, and when the other party repaid the loan, they took it all back together with principal and interest.

Darian’s eyes lit up.

He could completely follow this model to do it, lending out the fear energy and letting others collect more fear emotions for him.

Just like the power rings of the Green Lantern Corps, he could completely manufacture a batch of fear rings, build a Fear Corps, endow them with the power of fear, and then collect fear emotions of the entire Universe for him.

Once the train of thought opened up, various details automatically popped out.

The more Darian thought about it, the more reliable he felt this matter was.

But the problem came again, who should he make serve as his fear collection servant?

With his current reserve of fear energy in hand, he couldn’t manufacture many fear rings at all.

Under the condition of limited initial production, the user of every single ring must be carefully selected to ensure that capital could be recovered at the fastest speed.

Therefore, it must be those who are inherently good at manufacturing fear.

Darian first thought of Bruce.

Speaking of manufacturing fear, there should be no one better at it than Batman.

But the problem was that Bruce had a superpower mysophobia, rejecting all superpowers. In the comics, he didn’t even bother to look at a Kryptonian’s ability, let alone the power of fear.

"Besides Bruce, who else can I find?"

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