Chương 88: Chapter 88: Tony's Shattered Worldview and a Potential World War III 

"Tony, step back a bit," Luke waved his hand, guiding Tony several hundred meters away. 

Looking at "The Bus"—which now appeared relatively small from a distance of a hundred meters—Luke expanded his hands, and a surge of dark energy rapidly flew out from his shadow. 

"Maintain flight mode, Bus," Luke extended his hand forward, and the dark energy flew toward The Bus, enveloping it. 

As The Bus hovered slightly in the air, Luke clapped his hands, and the dark energy quickly condensed into a circular spell array in front of The Bus. 

Under Luke's control, this circular array split into two, with one array passing through the body of The Bus to stand behind it. Thus, the two arrays sandwiched The Bus front and back. 

"Ready!" Luke shouted, then lightly twisted his hands. The arrays rotated and expanded, and simultaneously, the body of The Bus continuously grew larger. 

"Whoa." Tony watched with his bare eyes as The Bus slowly expanded, becoming larger than Stark Tower and almost bursting through the hangar roof. 

The uncanny distortion of an object slowly enlarging made Tony's breathing feel heavy. The giant hull less than ten meters away from him and Luke made his eyes widen severely. 

Beside him, Luke didn't notice Tony's strangeness and looked at the giant Bus with satisfaction. 

"Tony, your taste isn't bad. The Bus like this reminds me of those sci-fi battleships in video games," Luke said, but Tony beside him gave no response at all. 

"Hey, what's wrong with you?" Luke patted Tony's shoulder. 

"Uh." Tony snapped back to reality, wiping his eyes which felt dry from staring so wide for so long. "I was... awestruck by that feeling of it slowly enlarging." Tony recalled the first time he saw The Bus transform into a humanoid form around a thousand meters tall. At that time, it was just wonder, but watching an object slowly distort and grow larger—that bizarre feeling made him feel as if something was pressing on his chest. 

It was like seeing an ant squirming and slowly enlarging right before your eyes, eventually growing to the size of a truck, and finally becoming a creature you had to look up to. 

"This magic really doesn't conserve mass," Tony took a few deep breaths to suppress that strange sensation. 

"It's already magic, and you're still talking about conservation of mass?" Luke rolled his eyes. "Coulson, you guys take over from here," he shouted to Coulson who wasn't far behind, then prepared to walk out with Tony. 

"Uh, Luke, the Director might still have some matters for you to handle," Coulson said to Luke, after instructing the nearby agents to follow the initial procedure to guide The Bus to go invisible and take off. 

"Looks like I still have work to do. Will you wait for me or head back first?" Luke said helplessly to Tony. 

Tony felt inexplicably irritated at the moment. "Sorry, I'm feeling a bit unwell. I think I'll head back first." Tony pressed his wristwatch, and soon Saturday flew over. 

"Alright, remember to see a doctor when you get back. Let me know if anything happens, and we'll handle it together in Asgard in a couple of days," Luke said to Tony. 

"Okay, I'll also head back to prepare a formal suit, and have Pepper take a day off. See you the day after tomorrow, be there or be square." Tony pointed his palms downward and flew off steadily. 

Luke watched Tony ascend into the air and quickly disappear from sight. He frowned slightly. Tony looked somewhat anxious, but he didn't know why. 

At that moment, flying in mid-air, Tony felt inexplicably nauseous. Disregarding the high altitude, he opened his faceplate and vomited disgustingly. 

"Uh, Boss, what's wrong with you?" Saturday asked with concern, while the armor's interior began massaging acupoints that could effectively relieve nausea. This was something it had learned off the internet recently while studying massage techniques. 

"I don't know, but I feel my heart is beating very fast. Check my various hormone levels." After vomiting for a bit, Tony finally felt more comfortable. 

"Understood, Boss," Saturday said quickly, and then Tony felt a prick on his finger. 

Hovering at high altitude to get some fresh air, Saturday continually transformed microscopic instruments on its surface to analyze the blood sample just drawn. 

"Uh, Boss, the results show that several hormone secretions regulating emotions in your body are out of balance. Adrenaline is severely elevated, and your heart rate has reached around 140 beats per minute." 

"Sounds far from normal," Tony said weakly. 

"Correct. A normal heart rate should be around 60 to 100 beats per minute. The heart rate just now already posed a risk of sudden cardiac arrest." 

"Do you know the cause?" 

"It should be caused by excessive physical stress, emotional tension, and anxiety. Boss, did you encounter something just now?" Saturday asked in confusion. 

"Uh, it might be megalophobia combined with cognitive dissonance. Damn it, in a couple of days I need to go to Kamar-Taj, which Luke mentioned earlier, to learn a few things." Tony felt Saturday gently massaging his temples and slightly closed his eyes. He roughly knew the cause of his condition. 

Unsurprisingly, it was his cognitive framework being shattered by magic, leading to anxiety. Healing it would be very simple: just understand the magic that caused this symptom. 

People only fear what they cannot master. 

"Added to the to-do list. Boss, take a sleep first, I'll bring you back to Stark Tower." Seeing Tony close his eyes, Saturday closed the faceplate, massaging Tony while playing relaxing music, as it flew steadily toward the Big Apple. 

Back here, Luke didn't know what happened to Tony. He thought Tony was simply awestruck by the massive Bus. 

Following Coulson all the way, Luke soon arrived at the door of Fury's office. 

"The Director is inside. I have other things to attend to, so I'll take my leave first," Coulson said to Luke, then hurried off briskly. 

Looking at Coulson's busy back, Luke twitched his mouth. Truly a model worker. 

Pushing the door straight open, Luke saw the braised egg standing before the glass, leaving a back view. 

"To be honest, if you put on a black tight suit, you could go star as the 'black shadow person' in Detective Conan," Luke walked over beside him, just in time to see The Bus taking off. 

"Doesn't Tony feel like a genius?" Luke said with a smile. Although the formation of this battleship was inseparable from The Bus's mechanical transformation ability, Tony also put a lot of effort into it. 

"Indeed, Tony is a genius, just like his father," Fury nodded, watching The Bus turn invisible and soar into the sky. 

"We will put a few monkeys inside and let The Bus take them on a trip to space. If nothing goes wrong, this might be our humanity's first space battleship." An inscrutable light shone in Fury's single eye. 

Though in Luke's view, his bald head was even more blinding. 

"Alright, stop praising Tony. He's not here right now anyway," Luke jumped backward and lay down on Fury's executive chair. "Why did you call me here?" Feeling the comfort of this chair, Luke estimated Fury must have embezzled a lot of funds to make this thing. 

Fury turned around, looked at Luke with disgust, and didn't bother with him turning over the files on the desk—after all, anything displayed directly wasn't confidential. 

"First, I must state that S.H.I.E.L.D. has no intention of targeting you," Fury walked over to the desk and looked at Luke on the reclining chair. 

"So, someone will target me later?" Luke nodded, remembering Ancient One saying someone would come talk to him about things, and nodded. 

Fury didn't continue on that topic. "Regarding the previous battle against the Chitauri, you didn't let a single human die in combat. On this point, the World Security Council is very satisfied." 

Pausing for a moment as if to let Luke prepare psychologically, Fury continued: "However, regarding the handling of the Tesseract and the equipment of those alien freaks, they are very dissatisfied. Meanwhile, earlier Loki and those two guys destroyed one of our bases, causing the deaths of over a thousand agents, and subsequently harmed many prominent social figures, making public opinion very terrible. All of this requires an explanation." 

Luke nodded, roughly understanding the development, but shook his head helplessly. 

These politicians were truly disgusting. 

When capturing Loki and fighting the Chitauri, he didn't see these guys outputting verbally to kill a few enemies. Now they were shooting at him first. If he didn't lack resources, Luke would smash Avengers 1 onto these politicians' faces right now, let them see the original plot, and then talk about this event. 

"Those guys really can't be fed enough. The Chitauri equipment wasn't even touched by Tony, all left for them, and they're still not satisfied," Luke said without hiding anything from Fury: "As for the other equipment, they just don't know their origin, otherwise giving them ten times the courage they wouldn't dare take them." 

"Oh, this equipment has a strange origin?" Fury asked directly. 

"The two guys who attacked the Helicarrier—their boss is a bloodthirsty lunatic," Luke said faintly. 

"A bloodthirsty lunatic? That's actually not rare," Fury crossed his arms, saying casually. 

Luke burst out laughing. "That's not a simple lunatic." 

Seeing Fury adopt an attitude of listening attentively, Luke also sat up straight forward. 

"That lunatic is called Thanos. He has a strange viewpoint: that the population of this universe is simply too large, and only by reducing the population by half can the universe develop better. So, he took his fleet and killed people on countless planets." 

"And he doesn't just kill everyone simply. He divides everyone evenly into two groups. Don't ask me what happens if the count is odd! Anyway, he kills one group and leaves one group." 

"The key is he actually thinks he's right?" Fury was a bit unsettled now. 

If he just killed everyone on a planet, that would be one thing, but this style of flipping a coin to decide who dies was truly ruthless—not to mention this guy actually thought it was the right thing to do. 

"Wait," Fury suddenly asked curiously, "since he's bent on eliminating more population, why does he still use human-wave tactics?" 

Using cannons and robot troops would fit his philosophy better. 

"Who knows? Maybe he didn't realize it. Want me to send you over to talk to him?" Luke lay back down, saying leisurely. 

"Forget it, I don't want to flip a coin for my life. The last one who called me an ant was annoying enough," Fury shook his head helplessly. 

Luke laughed out loud twice, wiped the physiological tears from laughing, and continued: "And that Tesseract thing—please, that thing was originally a collectible of the Asgardian All-Father Odin, just placed on Earth. After all, nominally the Nine Realms are all his, so treating Earth as a safe box isn't very strange. It's just that the Tesseract was later dug out of a hole by Hydra, and strictly speaking it's not called the Tesseract either." 

Luke looked at Fury, who adopted a listening posture again, but left a cliffhanger. 

"That thing is a treasure far more precious than you think. I can put it this way: if you hold that thing without the protection of Odin and a big boss in the shadows, within a few minutes there might be dozens of interstellar fleets visiting Earth as guests." 

"Sounds very severe," Fury said. 

"In fact, it will only be more severe." Luke slightly closed his eyes. The Infinity Stones—each one possessed extremely powerful force. Gathering six could even grant others' wishes, an infinite wish machine with almost no physical requirements, the kind that could fundamentally alter universal rules. 

Unfortunately, he couldn't use them, otherwise right now he would... he would go home and play games peacefully. 

Fury nodded. "So is this everything you want to tell the Council?" 

Luke shook his head. "I'm not going to deal with those old sly foxes, otherwise I'm afraid everyone will have a hard time when I flip the table." 

"So telling me so much—you want me to go talk to those guys?" Fury shook his head helplessly. Dealing with those guys, even he found it uncomfortable, and he might lose a few... oh, wait, he had lost all his hair long ago. 

"Otherwise do you want me to follow the network cable over to beat them up and trigger World War III?" Luke gave him a smile. 

Fury didn't doubt whether Luke had this capability. Before knowing Luke's strength, just his status as an Asgardian Prince was qualification enough. 

"So I'll head back first. I still have a huge stack of games to sign in and clear stamina for," Luke said as he stood up. 

"Looks like I need to tell the Council a few more things, to have them abolish these rules, lest someone flip the table when they can't play games comfortably." 

Luke shook his head. "No need for that, just tell those gacha game companies to increase my account's gacha drop rate." 

Those many ninjas in the first-floor gaming department weren't useless. Games could be more grindy, anyway it wasn't him doing the grinding. 

After speaking, Luke disappeared directly inside the office. 

Fury shook his head, walked out of his office, and soon arrived at Pierce's office. 

Pierce was rarely not wrangling with the Council, sitting there reading some reports. 

"Looks like he didn't come with you." Pierce looked up, didn't see Luke, and continued reading the report in his hand without any surprise. 

Fury looked enviously at Pierce's hair volume. As expected of a former S.H.I.E.L.D. Director, dealing with the Council every day and still having so much hair. 

"He didn't come over, but he told me quite a bit of inside information. I think it's enough to handle the Council. Are they all online now?" 

"They have been waiting for a long time." Pierce signaled him to go straight in to have a video conference with those guys, while he himself sat in his chair without moving. 

Fury also went straight in to start wrangling, while Pierce took a look at Fury from outside. 

Luke was still so afraid of trouble. In that case, there would be an opportunity to try recruiting him. 

Now Luke's strength and status were both valued very highly by Pierce. If necessary, he wouldn't mind ruling Earth together with Luke.