100. What Is It Like to Take on the God of Thunder...? (Five updates, 15,000 words—please subscribe!)

With the anti-Thor Bat Shield in hand, Su Ye looked up and lifted his chin at Thor in the sky.

“Come on then. Prove yourself.”

Suspended in the air, Thor suddenly found himself at a loss.

As the saying goes, the first burst of spirit carries one far, the second weakens, the third drains it dry.

Just now, when Thor had regained his identity as the god of thunder, he had borrowed the storm clouds, lightning, and thunder above to build up his momentum. At that moment, even if Su Ye had told him to challenge Zeus, he would not have so much as blinked.

This world actually had Zeus in it, and he was Thor’s childhood idol. The son of Odin, king of the gods and wielder of lightning, had his own childhood hero turned out to be the Zeus next door. That was rather surprising.

Maybe because Zeus had more lovers?

Zeus had also appeared in Thor 4, as an old fat man dressed in a gold vest and a short white skirt that barely covered him.

But his pomp was far greater than Odin’s. He lived in an immense city where even the most ordinary sight surpassed Asgard, a city of omnipotence inhabited by countless gods of every stripe.

Among those gods, besides many bizarre cosmic oddities, there was a golden Eastern dragon coiled around a huge red pillar, and the dumpling god sitting inside a spoon with an adorably cute expression. Believe it or not, that was real.

When Zeus traveled, he needed at least four female companions at his side. In addition, there had to be male favorites and elderly musicians to fill out the atmosphere; the guards did not count.

Yet those attendants, who seemed never to have seen the world, all fainted at once, whether male or female, young or old, when they saw the stripped, disarmed Thor, bare from head to toe.

No one knew why. And no one dared ask.

By the way, Thor’s idol shattered not long after. As king of the gods, when Zeus learned that the godslayer had appeared, his first reaction was not to hunt him down and kill him, but to gather all the gods and hide together in some turtle shell.

Perhaps the older one gets, the more timid one becomes.

He was terrified of the godslayer, yet when dealing with mortals who were about to forget the gods altogether, he still put on a lofty and superior air.

The gods were nothing but garbage—cowardly alien bullies who preyed on the weak and feared the strong.

Setting Zeus aside for the moment, Thor’s momentum had just begun to rise when Su Ye caught a slip in his words and threw a question back at him, dealing a hard blow to that hard-won spirit.

Then, for the second time, just as the fight was about to begin, Batman appeared.

After being interrupted twice like that, Thor could barely remember whether he had shouted a battle cry just now, let alone whether he needed to shout it again.

If he had shouted before and shouted again now, wouldn’t that look foolish? But if he had not shouted before and did not shout now, wouldn’t that seem too casual?

To hell with it. Just shout something.

Thor tightened his grip on the hammer, ready to speak, when he saw Su Ye extend one finger and curl it toward him.

“You. Come here!”

At that shout, Thor instantly got fired up. Why bother with all those fancy battle cries? Just fight!

Still in midair, Thor raised his arm and swung hard. The hammer in his hand was hurled instantly, crackling with lightning and surging with thunderous force as it shot toward Su Ye at tremendous speed.

Su Ye had his shield in hand, but he had no intention of meeting it head-on. He was no Captain America. Even with a shield, one should not casually try to catch Mjolnir. The material of this shield was nothing special; it could not trade blows evenly with Mjolnir. If it took that strike directly, it would only end up being smashed into a draw with itself.

Whoosh.

Su Ye shifted aside, letting Mjolnir’s charge pass by, but his feet never stopped. Shield in hand, he charged straight at Thor.

Thor’s first strike missed. He clenched his hand into a phantom grasp, and Mjolnir, which had shot past, came to an abrupt stop in midair, then turned and sped back the way it came.

The hammer handle was aimed precisely at Su Ye’s rear along the flight path.

Mid-charge, Su Ye relied on his spider-sense to detect the handle stabbing toward him from behind in an instant. He sidestepped the hammer without slowing in the slightest.

Trying to get behind me? Not a chance.

The two were not far apart to begin with. By the time Thor once again had Mjolnir in hand, Su Ye had already closed to within a single step of him. At that distance, they could even see the wrinkles on each other’s faces clearly.

Thrown off by Su Ye’s almost supernatural dodges, evading both the hammer’s direct strike and its rearward thrust, Thor was plainly stunned. He had seen people evade the hammer before, but never anyone so agile, so fluid, and so aesthetically pleasing in their movements.

Still, he knew this was no time to admire his opponent’s technique. He raised Mjolnir again, linking it to the thunderclouds above, preparing to draw down lightning with the hammer.

And at that very moment, Su Ye, still charging forward, suddenly flickered and appeared in front of Thor as if by teleportation.

Shadow-Splitting Fist.

Su Ye had no habit of shouting his moves before using them. The Shadow-Splitting Fist was unleashed silently. His body flashed forward in a near-instant step, both arms coming together, the elbow of the unshielded arm driving forward like a battering ram as he slammed into Thor.

Thor had not expected Su Ye to be this fast. Caught off guard, he took the full force of the Shadow-Splitting Fist head-on. His body stiffened, and the connection between Mjolnir and the thunderclouds was broken at once.

And with that single successful strike, Su Ye followed immediately with a combo.

Not long ago, he had used the same chain against the Abomination, and now it was on display once again before the crowd. This time, though, the combo was longer, fiercer, and far more brutal.

Thor’s whole body hung in the air like a sandbag, beaten until he could not move for a long while.

In the end, perhaps even Mjolnir could not bear to watch anymore. It drew down thunder on its own. With a thunderclap like a cannon blast, a bolt of lightning fell, striking Mjolnir and exploding into a ring of crackling bolts around Thor.

Su Ye, having sensed the danger early, flipped backward and withdrew before the lightning struck.

Within that storm of electricity, Thor, who had just been battered black and blue by Su Ye’s combo, miraculously returned to normal again.

It was like the little cosmos of a Saint Seiya character: so long as the cosmos did not die out, Thor seemed able to revive at full strength in an instant, every time.

This time, Thor seemed to have learned from the earlier lesson. He no longer treated Mjolnir as a final trump card and gamble on Su Ye’s evasive speed. Instead, he pointed the hammer, brimming with lightning, directly at Su Ye from a distance.

A thick bolt of lightning burst forth from Mjolnir at once, blasting toward Su Ye.

But Su Ye had already raised the shield in his hand long before the lightning touched him.

Boom!

The lightning slammed into the shield and unleashed a piercing, buzzing shriek. Shockwaves and heat rolled outward in waves, blowing the watching agents in the distance so hard they could hardly keep their eyes open.

“So that’s the power of the god of thunder? Pretty impressive.”

“Wonder if the Martial Sage can block it.”

“Should be fine. Trust the Martial Sage—and trust Batman’s gear!”

Amid the agents’ chatter, Mjolnir continued unleashing powerful current for a full ten seconds before clearly beginning to weaken, the lightning slowly dimming.

Only then did everyone notice that Su Ye was still standing where he was, shield raised, unchanged except for the brighter glow at the center of the shield.

“A shield actually blocked such powerful lightning? Batman’s gear is terrifyingly strong!”

“Gear is only strong if the person using it is strong enough. That combo the Martial Sage just hit Thor with, the one that had the so-called god of thunder frozen in place—that’s the real strength!”

“No need to argue. Batman and the Martial Sage together? A dream team.”

The dispute was snuffed out before it could even begin, though in truth no one was determined to decide whether Batman or the Martial Sage was stronger. Whoever defeated Thor, it was a source of pride for Earth.

“That’s all you’ve got?”

Su Ye poked his head out from behind the shield, saying teasingly, “I thought with power like that you could keep blasting all day. Didn’t expect you to fold after only ten seconds. That’s not very good, is it?”

Then he glanced at the arc reactor on the shield, whose brightness was almost unbearable, and his eyelid twitched violently.

Since this shield had been designed, its maximum load had never been tested. Looking at that eye-searing glow now, it did not seem like it would blow up immediately, did it?

If that thing had exploded while Thor was charging it just now... the consequences would have been unimaginable.

Thinking of the Destroyer blown to pieces, Su Ye could not help feeling a chill of lingering fear. He had made a dogmatic mistake.

In the first Avengers movie, when Iron Man fought Thor and his reactor was charged in reverse, he had used a new-element core, which had a much stronger capacity. But Su Ye’s reactor was still a palladium core. Any closer, and it might really have burst.

Holding a small nuclear bomb in his hand, Su Ye did not dare delay. He snapped the switch on the back of the shield, and in an instant the shield transformed into a laser cannon. A bright column of energy shot straight toward Thor.

To return a favor is only proper.

Thor was still stunned that his lightning power had been blocked by a mere shield. He never imagined his opponent would suddenly open fire. Taken completely unprepared, he was blasted in the chest by the beam. His whole body was sent flying, and with a loud crack, he slammed into the wall behind him, leaving spiderweb fractures across the stone.

Su Ye lowered the shield, the corner of his mouth twitching.

Did that count as shooting the god of thunder into the wall?

Across from him, Thor slid down from the wall to the floor, then stood firm. That sort of attack did not seem to mean much to him at all. After all, he was the kind of being who could send Iron Man flying with a headbutt.

As fellow Asgardians, Thor, who wielded the power of thunder, was stronger by who knew how many times than Sif and the others.

At that level of intensity, he really could fight all day without tiring.

As for Su Ye, though his physical abilities had also been greatly enhanced, he still could not compare with Thor holding Mjolnir.

And even if he could, Su Ye had no intention of really fighting for an entire day. It would be meaningless.

On the surface, today’s battle was about letting Thor prove the might of a true Asgardian warrior.

But in truth, Su Ye was using it to prove to Thor that Earthlings were not as weak as the Asgardians imagined. They should put away that lofty posture as soon as possible—nobody liked it.

So, just as Thor was about to continue attacking, Batman suddenly spoke from the rooftop.

“That’s enough. You have both proven yourselves. There’s no need to keep fighting.”

Thor twirled his hammer for a moment. “Why should I listen to you?”

Batman’s voice remained utterly flat. “Because the giant metal man who came riding in on a rainbow was defeated by me.”

Thor frowned. “You mean the Destroyer? I remember now. You’re the guy who showed up in a car that night?”