Chapter 69: The Sixteen Rings of the Abyss

The smoking crater in the center of the Great Lawn looked like the impact site of a fallen meteor.

At the bottom of the pit, Evil Dr.

Strange lay twisted in the dirt, his jaw completely unhinged.

Slowly, the corrupted sorcerer pushed himself up.

Dark, purple hellfire hissed around his face, and with a sickening, wet crunch, his demonic regeneration forcibly snapped his shattered jawbone back into place.

He looked up at me, floating gently down to the edge of the crater, and his eyes burned with an unholy, absolute fury.

“You dare strike me with your fists?!” Strange roared, his voice distorted by the demonic entity sharing his soul.

“I am a God of the Dark Dimension!”

He didn’t wait for a response.

He threw his hands forward, unleashing a torrent of high-tier, apocalyptic magic.

Crimson tendrils the hellfire-forged Bands of Cyttorak shot from the earth, trying to bind my limbs.

From the sky, jagged, purple Bolts of Balthakk rained down like artillery fire, accompanied by dimensional-slicing energy waves designed to bypass physical durability entirely.

I didn’t even draw a blade.

I didn’t need to.

My eyes glowed with the cold, predictive light of Advanced Observation Haki.

I saw the magical artillery a full three seconds before it was cast.

I dropped my stance, kicking off the ground with a concussive burst of Soru.

I moved with blinding, hypersonic speed, weaving effortlessly through the rain of purple lightning.

When the crimson bands tried to snare my ankles, I swatted them away with hands coated in the pitch-black sheen of Armament Haki, shattering the indestructible magical restraints like dry twigs.

I closed the gap in an instant, proving effortlessly that ranged incantations meant absolutely nothing against a Warlord who could see the future.

I drove a heavy, blackened knee directly into his sternum, sending him skidding backward across the torn earth.

Evil Strange caught his footing, coughing up a spatter of black blood.

He glared at me, panting heavily.

“Your spiritual pressure…

it negates the arcane.

Fine.

If you want to die like a brute, I will oblige.”

He reached to his hip, pulling a small, rune-covered leather pouch from his belt.

He shoved his hands inside and pulled out a handful of metallic gold bands.

“I didn’t just conquer my Earth, anomaly,” Strange sneered, slipping the bands onto his jagged fingers.

Eight rings on his left hand.

Eight rings on his right.

“I slaughtered the Kree Empire.

I butchered the Annihilation Wave to take these from their warlords.

Sixteen Nega-Rings.

Do you know what they do?”

The rings flared to life, glowing with a sickening mix of cosmic gold and demonic purple.

“They convert my bottomless reservoir of magical and mental energy into raw, unstoppable physical devastation,” Strange boasted, his muscles bulging as the cosmic energy flooded his system.

The frail sorcerer was instantly transformed into a physical juggernaut.

He vanished.

He didn’t teleport with a portal; he moved with sheer, Nega-amplified physical speed.

He appeared right in front of me, throwing a devastating right hook.

I brought my forearms up, coated in Armament Haki, to block.

The collision sounded like a bomb detonating.

The shockwave leveled the remaining trees around the crater and shattered the bedrock beneath our feet.

My boots dug trenches in the dirt as I was pushed back, genuinely surprised by the sheer, unadulterated mass behind his punch.

“Got you!” Strange roared, lunging forward.

He didn’t throw another punch; he dropped his center of gravity, shooting in for a brutal double-leg takedown.

He slammed his shoulder into my waist, wrapping his Nega-charged arms around my torso, and hoisted me into the air.

With a roar of exertion, he arched backward, delivering a flawless, earth-shattering suplex that drove me head-first into the concrete ruins of a park monument.

The stone exploded into dust, but I immediately rolled with the impact.

Before he could follow up, I scrambled to my feet, grabbing him by the lapels of his corrupted blue robes.

I twisted my hips, using his own forward momentum against him in a classic Judo throw, slamming the Lord of the Abyss flat on his back.

I dropped my knee heavily onto his throat, but Strange grabbed my leg, using the rings’ immense strength to violently heave me off him.

It devolved into a savage, bloody, close-quarters war.

We traded grappling holds and brutal strikes.

He locked me in a Nega-powered bear hug, trying to physically crush my spine.

I responded by violently expanding the Fa-Jin energy in my ribs, breaking his grip with a concussive shockwave before driving a vicious elbow into his temple.

Strange staggered back, disoriented.

High above us, the heavy-hitters of Earth Thor, Captain Marvel, and Cyclops were struggling to break through the three-headed demonic dragon’s thick scales.

The massive beast was preparing to unleash a torrent of hellfire from all three maws.

I looked at the dragon, then at the staggered sorcerer in front of me.

“Hey, Doc,” I growled, stepping in close and grabbing Evil Strange by the thick fabric of his robes and the heavy leather of his belt.

“Why don’t you go check on your pet?”

Channeling maximum kinetic force into my arms and back, I spun like a hammer-thrower.

With a massive roar of exertion, I hurled the Nega-powered sorcerer into the sky like a human missile.

Strange shrieked as he sailed through the air at supersonic speeds, entirely unable to right himself.

He crashed directly into the center head of the gigantic demonic dragon.

The colossal impact knocked the dragon’s jaw shut right as it was about to breathe fire, causing the hellfire to detonate inside its own throat.

The beast roared in agonizing pain, reeling backward.

“Now!” Captain America’s voice echoed over the comms.

Thor and Captain Marvel didn’t waste the opening.

They launched a synchronized, devastating barrage of divine lightning and binary cosmic energy directly into the dragon’s exposed, burned chest, dropping the leviathan out of the sky.

A split second later, a golden blur crashed back into the dirt in front of me.

Evil Strange was furious, his robes scorched and his face twisted in pure hatred.

“You insolent worm!” he screamed, lunging forward with a Nega-charged spinning backfist.

I ducked, but he immediately followed up with a brutal knee to my ribs.

The impact bypassed my exterior Haki, shattering three ribs on my right side.

I coughed up blood, stumbling backward.

Strange smiled, stepping in for the kill.

But I didn’t fall.

I forcefully pumped my stored Fa-Jin kinetic energy inward, hyper-accelerating my cellular mitosis just as I had done for the good Doctor Strange earlier.

The bones snapped back into place with a sickening pop, healed in an instant.

I stepped straight into his guard, burying a Haki-coated fist directly into his stomach.

“Internal Destruction.”

The invisible shockwave bypassed his Nega-shield entirely, crushing his liver and spleen.

Strange vomited black blood, but his dark magic immediately flared, forcefully knitting his ruptured organs back together.

It was a terrifying war of attrition.

He had infinite stamina fueled by the Dark Dimension, and I had a finite reservoir of kinetic energy.

I needed a flawless, fight-ending opening.

Through my spiritual link, I reached out to the Obsidian-Gorilla, who had just finished pummeling the downed dragon alongside the X-Men.

Evil Strange wiped the blood from his mouth, raising both hands, the sixteen rings glowing like miniature suns.

He let out a deafening roar, charging forward to deliver a massive, two-handed execution strike.

Right as Strange planted his lead foot to deliver the blow, the Obsidian-Gorilla violently shifted its focus.

For exactly one-tenth of a second, the massive jade beast dropped its 20x Gravity Well directly onto the corrupted sorcerer.

The sudden, crushing, localized gravity hit Evil Strange like a falling mountain.

His forward momentum was instantly killed.

His knees buckled, and his arms were dragged downward, completely dropping his guard.

He looked up, his eyes widening in sudden, absolute terror as the gravity vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.

The opening was flawless.

I stepped fully into the Warlord’s stance.

I channeled the absolute maximum output of my Advanced Conqueror’s Haki and the last dregs of my stored Fa-Jin into my right arm.

The red-black lightning didn’t just crackle; it roared, screaming like a dying star.

I delivered a catastrophic, fight-ending uppercut directly to the center of Evil Strange’s chest.

The red-black lightning violently bypassed the Nega-Rings’ defenses.

The sound of his sternum shattering echoed across the park.

The sheer, overwhelming Willpower of the Warlord flooded his system, completely severing his spiritual connection to the Demon Lord.

The impact launched Evil Strange backward, ripping him off his feet.

He flew through the air, crashing brutally into the ruined earth fifty yards away.

The dark magic surrounding him instantly dissipated.

The sixteen Nega-Rings went entirely dim, sliding off his limp fingers into the dirt.

I stood there, my heavy coat in tatters, my chest heaving as I gasped for air.

I wiped a streak of blood from my chin, the red-black lightning fading from my skin.

Above us, without the sorcerer’s power to sustain it, the demonic vanguard began to crumble into ash, and the World-Borer went completely limp in my telekinetic web.

I walked slowly over to the smoking trench, looking down at the unmoving, defeated body of the corrupted Sorcerer Supreme.

The war was over.

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