infinite animeverse the real monster

Chapter 623 623: The Hunting Operation Begins

The underground drainage network of New York was vast and labyrinthine, processed to handle the immense volume of waste generated by the bustling metropolis above.

Within a specific junction of this subterranean maze, a hidden pocket of space measuring roughly a dozen square meters had been forcefully carved out.

Jin, the blonde youth, leaned against the far wall with a grim and sunken expression, keeping as much distance as possible from the flowing raw sewage.

The blue-haired woman, Monsoon, stood closer to the sludge. A steady stream of concentrated wind currents continuously spiraled out from her palms toward the outer tunnels, ensuring that the suffocating stench remained within tolerable limits. She tilted her head slightly, straining her ears to capture the subtle acoustic vibrations carrying through the wind.

Between the two of them sat Yun Wujiu. The white-haired man was panting heavily, the dark abyss in his eyes receding millimeter by millimeter. Traces of fresh blood stained the skin beneath his nostrils—a glaring indication that he was still struggling against the agonizing backlash of the Cursed Meme.

"Yun Wujiu, if you don't want to end up dead, find a way to rein yourself in," Jin muttered, his voice dripping with undisguised contempt. "Next time, I won't waste my breath giving you time to recover."

Jin had never thought highly of Yun Wujiu. In his eyes, the only reason this man had managed to secure a Title-level rating was because the Snow Witch, Fu Qinghuan, had let her personal feelings blind her, lavishing him with top-tier abilities and survival props.

Now, the Snow Witch was dead. Furthermore, there was a high probability that Solomon would completely sever ties with the Far East Magic Association once this mission world concluded, pursuing whatever he envisioned to be the ultimate pinnacle of magic.

When that happened, Jin would become the sole, undisputed master of the assembly.

Yun Wujiu clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. A violent surge of frost radiated from his hands, instantly encasing both sides of his face in solid blocks of ice. He was using the extreme, numbing cold to forcefully clamp down on his surging emotions.

Even though I knew this world carried immense danger... how could Qinghuan truly be dead?!

Unlike this temporary, fragmented party where information sharing was virtually non-existent, the deaths of the Snow Witch and Trade Wind had been systematically announced directly via the Far East Magic Association's internal assembly panel.

The catastrophic mental shock had violently re-triggered Yun Wujiu's cursed state. He had come within a hair's breadth of completely losing his sanity and transforming into a mindless aberration—a failure that would have prompted Jin to execute him on the spot.

In fact, if Monsoon hadn't stepped in to intervene, Jin would have likely slaughtered the malfunctioning Yun Wujiu right then and there.

"Something is deeply wrong with how this sequence of events played out," Monsoon noted quietly. Her blue hair swayed slightly as she turned her analytical gaze toward Jin, her expression remarkably composed despite the sudden death of her twin brother.

This icy, unshakeable rationalism was precisely why Jin held her talents in such high regard.

"Even if Solomon intended to purge the dissenters, he struck far too early," Monsoon explained, her brow furrowing. "Logically speaking, when he knew for a fact that a monster like Tao Baibai had entered the board, and that this world contains numerous hyper-powerful native heroes, Solomon's optimal strategy should have been to lay low and guide the global chess pieces toward absolute chaos..."

Jin's head snapped up abruptly.

Before he could speak, Monsoon acted first. She made a sweeping motion with her hand, instantly conjuring a violent, concentrated vortex that ripped through the drainage pipe. A ragged homeless man was violently sucked across the tunnel, his limbs snapping cleanly under the sheer kinetic pressure of the wind before he slammed into the concrete floor.

Monsoon dropped the man onto the ground, and Yun Wujiu immediately unleashed a blast of sub-zero frost, sealing the vagrant's entire body in a thick block of ice while leaving only his head free to move.

Oddly, the vagrant merely twisted his frozen neck, methodically scanning the underground environment with a vacant, hollow gaze that possessed absolutely zero biological vitality.

"Jin... I've found you~"

The low, hollow voice of the Tree Herder echoed distinctly from the vagrant's vocal cords.

Bang!

The very next instant, a concentrated spark of pure thermal energy detonated from the homeless man's chest. Amidst a violent spray of flesh and blood, a miniature, wooden stake-like object flew out from the ruined tissue.

That object was the Wedge—the physical anchor the Tree Herder utilized to parasitize and hijack the minds of ordinary humans. His spiritual stats were phenomenally high, allowing him to easily strip away a civilian's consciousness. However, to execute precise, long-range reconnaissance over a massive grid, he still required these physical medium anchors to convert targets into functional puppets.

Hearing the Tree Herder's voice, a savage, furious laugh split Jin's face.

"You worthless traitor. Do you honestly believe that crawling over to wag your tail for Tao Baibai will somehow guarantee you a victory against me?"

Jin didn't even wait for the Tree Herder to reply through the proxy; a concentrated flare of heat reduced the wooden wedge to fine ash.

Monsoon opened her mouth to speak, but Jin cut her off immediately.

"I know, I know exactly what they're doing!" Jin spat, his body beginning to hover off the ground. "The Tree Herder and Tao Baibai have almost certainly aligned themselves with the Avengers faction. They're planning to use our heads to farm a massive chunk of global reputation stats."

Jin drifted rapidly through the upper curve of the drainage system. Despite his inherent arrogance, he was not stupid enough to engage a martial arts apex predator like Tao Baibai in a claustrophobic, narrow subterranean tunnel where evasion was impossible. To fight a freak like that, he needed to dictate the battlefield under conditions that overwhelmingly favored a long-range spellcaster.

Monsoon whipped up a localized gale, her figure rising smoothly into the air alongside him. Utilizing the sensory feedback from the shifting atmospheric currents, she immediately detected that a dense wave of human signatures—all bearing the exact same hollow spiritual imprint as the homeless man—had begun to quietly blockade the various sewer exits across the sector.

Because the vagrant population was an omnipresent, structural feature of major American cities, Monsoon hadn't paid them any mind initially. But now, the chilling reality set in: the Tree Herder had systematically weaponized the city's destitute to map their exact coordinates. The Avengers, and quite possibly Tao Baibai himself, were closing the net.

Yun Wujiu brought up the rear, manipulating the toxic sewage beneath his feet into a solid sheet of ice, gliding smoothly over the surface. His face remained shrouded in a dark, inscrutable gloom, his thoughts completely unreadable.

Jin didn't waste a single look on a weakling of that tier. Strands of bright, incandescent embers began to drift off his skin, systematically planting themselves at critical intersections throughout the subterranean network.

The Avengers of this current worldline timeline were far from their peak. If it weren't for the looming threat of Tao Baibai, Jin would have happily turned this underground maze into a slaughterhouse, waiting for Iron Man and Captain America to breach the perimeter so he could harvest them one by one.

Slaying core plot protagonists in a robust world like Marvel yielded Singularities that dramatically surpassed the targets' base tier ratings. Furthermore, unlike fragile, low-tier derivative universes, the Marvel universe did not possess an active, aggressive planetary consciousness that would instantly target a Reincarnator for executing a main character.

Jin's mind raced with tactical permutations when he suddenly halted mid-air, refusing to advance another inch.

A suffocating surge of dark, malevolent magical energy had manifested directly in the path ahead.

"Jin, multiple high-velocity signatures are closing in rapidly from our rear. My instruments identify them as either Iron Man or War Machine," Monsoon reported sharply, her voice echoing in the tunnel. "We also have a massive energy spike detonating near the southeast exit... it's Wanda!"

"There's another one to the west—"

Boom!

A catastrophic explosion detonated in the far reaches of the tunnels. The blinding, bright yellow flames carried an incandescent heat wave that instantly ignited the pockets of methane gas trapped within the sewage line, triggering a violent, chain-reaction detonation.

The resulting shockwave ripped through the subterranean network in a fraction of a second. The entire district of Manhattan shuddered violently as geysers of pure, roaring fire erupted skyward from sewer grates and maintenance hatches across the city's most affluent streets.

Pedestrians who happened to be standing near the vents were instantly engulfed in flames, while the homeless puppets stationed inside the drainage lines were incinerated to ash in a heartbeat.

Captain America stood near one of the primary drainage entries. The sheer scale of the blast and the oncoming wall of fire caught him completely off guard; he instinctively threw his vibranium shield forward, but the concussive force still sent him flying backward across the asphalt.

A thick web of dark tree roots erupted from the cracked concrete beneath him, smoothly catching the Captain before he could slam into a building. The Tree Herder stepped forward, his expression entirely unbothered as he adjusted his earpiece and spoke into the tactical channel:

"Captain, the perimeter is breached. You can move in now..."

His voice carried clearly through the comms to every Avenger participating in the operation. Stationed several blocks away, Black Widow watched the columns of fire paint the sky and shook her head in grim disbelief.

These individuals who had emerged from the shadows were deeply mysterious, but their tactical intelligence was undeniably flawless. If it hadn't been for the Tree Herder's explicit, precise warning to clear the immediate radius of the vents, she would have been severely injured, if not killed, by the initial blast.

The Tree Herder followed closely behind Captain America as they descended into the ruined, blackened entry point. The underground tunnels were now thick with the suffocating stench of charred flesh, and the ambient temperature remained punishingly high, suffocatingly depleted of oxygen.

Steve Rogers looked at the blackened, unreadable shapes of the incinerated vagrants littering the floor, his brow furrowing deeply into a mask of disgust.

"Does anyone in your organization ever stop to consider the lives of innocent civilians?"

The Tree Herder kept his pace, entirely ignoring the moral query. His combat compatibility against an explosive fire-caster like Jin was abysmal; in a straight one-on-one duel, he wouldn't stand a chance. But today, with a small army of top-tier assets orchestrating a coordinated hunt, his sole objective was to ensure Jin did not leave this sector alive.

"Civilians... occasionally, perhaps," the Tree Herder replied vaguely.

He had no desire to waste his mental energy debating ethics with a native plot character. The only time a Reincarnator genuinely cared about the survival of civilians was when the parameters of a specific Milestone demanded it.

If a Milestone required them to slaughter a million souls, they would execute them without a flicker of hesitation. If a Milestone required them to safeguard a population, they would display the most profound benevolence. The operational logic of a Reincarnator was always that simple, stripped of all human sentiment.

Suddenly, the Tree Herder's expression tightened. A massive, crescent wave of crimson sword energy tore through the darkness ahead, cleanly cleaving the concrete walls. Captain America lunged forward, raising his shield to anchor himself directly in front of the Tree Herder.

With a deafening boom, the residual shockwave of the sword strike sent the Captain skidding backward as the ceiling began to cave in.

The Tree Herder slammed both palms into the ruptured ground, forcing a massive network of dense, reinforced roots to burst from the stone, straining every nerve to keep the tunnel from collapsing entirely.

"Captain, tell Wanda to accelerate her advance! Miss Artoria's combat style is far too destructive—if she continues to exchange unrestrained blows with Jin down here, the entire sector will cave in on us!"

Boom!

Another cataclysmic eruption of fire detonated deeper in the network, instantly answered by a sweeping, razor-sharp beam of dark magical sword light.

Two distinct domains built for absolute, maximized destructiveness—a corrupted, hyper-tier swordsman and a specialized fire-evoker—were unleashing their full, unmitigated power within the claustrophobic confines of the subterranean world.

The terrifying localized pressure eventually forced the core Avengers back to the surface. His armor heavily blackened by soot and residual heat, Iron Man landed heavily on the pavement. He marched over to the unblemished, black-haired man standing by the edge of the street, his tone sharp with irritation.

"Can't you just go down there and put an end to that lunatic yourself?"

Kaito Shirogane merely stared up at the sky, watching a few stray white feathers drift silently through the air. He shook his head slowly.

"As part of a specific agreement I made, that boy's life has to be preserved for someone else to claim," Kaito replied smoothly, a faint, mocking smile playing on his lips. "Mr. Stark, you might find it hard to believe, but I am a man who holds agreements in very high regard."

While the attention of every hero and agency was completely locked onto the cataclysmic battle raging beneath the pavement of Manhattan, Solomon was walking calmly through the various sectors of New York.

He moved like a ghost through the bustling streets, systematically inscribing complex, hidden geometric patterns at precise nexus points across the city, meticulously laying the foundations for his ultimate endgame scenario.

A true hunter always possessed the fluid capacity to alter his strategy based on real-time field developments.

If one of the beasts on the board proved too monstrously powerful to slay directly, the smartest course of action was to manipulate that beast into becoming a fellow hunter. Rather than exhausting his own lifespan fighting a mutual war of attrition that would allow the weak to escape, it was infinitely more profitable to align his trajectory with the apex predator, allowing each to systematically devour their respective targets.

Solomon methodically traced his runes, carefully regulating his spiritual output to ensure his unique field didn't prematurely interfere with Jin's senses, preventing that arrogant fool from waking up to reality too soon.

And furthermore...

The heterochromatic reflection in Solomon's eyes shifted as real-time variables compiled. According to the predictive data stream, several powerful, black-robed extraterrestrial entities would manifest within the Manhattan grid in a matter of minutes.

Three members of Thanos's Black Order were arriving ahead of schedule. This was a magnificent, chaotic variable. If orchestrated correctly, he might just find the perfect window to cleanly dispose of Tao Baibai as well...

Solomon recalled the sensory feedback his familiar had gathered regarding Tao Baibai's physical condition during their brief encounter. Perhaps... the monster's current combat capacity wasn't as infallible as it appeared on the surface?

A uniquely shaped, jagged ritual dagger slipped silently into his palm from his sleeve.

A Space contract, after all, was never truly absolute.

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