Manhattan Main Battlefield and Queens Sub-Battlefield

Hawk finally suppressed the burning excitement in his heart and chose not to head to the main battlefield in Manhattan to join the fray.

The Leviathan, a biochemical war fortress of the Chitauri that had roared its way out of the space portal, unfurled its massive body, covered in a thick layer of heavy alloy armor.

Let alone whether he could even take on the Leviathan, just comparing their sizes was like heaven and earth.

Besides.

If he had his Saint Cloth, Hawk might have gone to the main battlefield to stir up some trouble.

For now, though, forget it.

Anyway, Queens also had Chitauri soldiers swarming like locusts; there was no need to run to Manhattan.

That was the battlefield for the original Avengers, not his.

He had gotten stronger.

But that was all.

Awakening his Cosmo was just a beginning, a starting point.

Not the end, nor the finish line.

So...

Hawk went nowhere. He didn't even choose to take the initiative to attack. Instead, he just crouched at his own doorstep, waiting like a hunter for the Chitauri soldiers rampaging nearby to come to him when they received word of their comrades' deaths.

This was way easier than charging out on his own.

After all, Chitauri soldiers could fly, and he couldn't.

Most importantly.

The apartment block he lived in was a slum.

What's a slum?

Let's put it this way.

An ambulance called to their block would take at least half an hour to arrive, while in Manhattan's wealthy districts, it took just three minutes tops.

Same with surveillance.

If a trash can in a back alley of a rich neighborhood had a dedicated camera pointed at it, then on the main roads of the slums, there were no cameras at all.

Even if there were, they wouldn't last until the next day—some black kids would find a way to rip them down and sell them that very night.

Soon.

Standing in the shadowy corner, Hawk spotted two Chitauri soldiers flying past in the distance on their hovercraft, having received the death signal of their comrades.

Hawk's eyes lit up.

Two minutes later.

"Thud!"

"Thud!"

On the rubble of the apartment building, two more ugly corpses were added next to the two neatly arranged ones Hawk had laid out earlier, making sure the Chitauri soldiers wouldn't miss them.

And sensing the death of their pilots, the two equally ugly hovercraft automatically turned and flew off in one direction.

Watching this, Hawk silently retreated back into the shadows.

A minute later.

Detecting a sharp spike in Chitauri soldier deaths in Queens, a signal was transmitted from the Chitauri warship inside the wormhole above Manhattan.

The next moment.

Several Chitauri soldiers nearby, who had been going all out, screeching and cackling as they gleefully destroyed buildings, vehicles, and slaughtered Earthlings, all turned around in unison. Receiving the signal, they quickly converged on the roar that had just echoed over Jackson Heights.

They had received orders to fight there.

The Chitauri soldiers roared, gathering behind their leader. Then, led by a captain who was taller and stronger than the rest, and whose hovercraft looked even more menacing than theirs, they arrived above the block.

Instantly.

They saw the four mangled corpses of their comrades lying in a neat row on the apartment rubble.

"Skreee!"

"Hsssss."

At the sight of their fallen comrades, the Chitauri Soldier Captain and the six Chitauri soldiers seemed to freeze in place for a moment.

The next second.

They seemed to snap out of it, as if receiving new orders, and their hovercraft hummed back to life.

In the blink of an eye, the Chitauri Soldier Captain and the six Chitauri soldiers quickly fanned out, encircling the block below. Then, with snake-like eyes devoid of any emotion, they unhesitatingly pulled the triggers on their hovercraft's energy cannons.

Like cold, biological weapons.

In an instant.

Energy bolts rained down like a net from heaven, blanketing the streets below in a carpet of bombardment.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Buildings in the block exploded, roads split apart, and vehicles on the street kept detonating and bursting into flames.

Surrounding the block, the Chitauri Soldiers firing in unison from the sky were expressionless, like machines, their claws gripping the triggers without letting up—until the entire block was bombarded into clouds of smoke and dust, until the energy rounds on their flyers were completely spent, until that Chitauri Captain was the first to stop. Only then did they, like a tightly coordinated machine, release their claws from the triggers.

By now, the entire block had been reduced to a complete ruin.

Old apartment buildings crumbling apart.

Vehicles still burning with occasional explosions.

This place looked more like Iraq than Iraq did after war's devastation.

The Chitauri Captain, seated on his flyer, swept his large, pea-green eyes—bigger than the others—once more over the block that seemed quiet and deserted, then withdrew his gaze. Receiving the latest orders, he prepared to pull out.

Under such a devastating blanket of firepower from the Chitauri Soldiers, no life could survive by luck.

Let alone these low-level lifeforms on Earth who couldn't even leave their own planet.

So...

The Chitauri mothership, which had been controlling and issuing commands from the other side of the wormhole, relayed new instructions to the Chitauri Captain through the soldiers' line of sight.

As the Chitauri Captain turned around, the six Chitauri Soldiers also pivoted their flyers in unison.

But just as those six Chitauri Soldiers were turning one by one, abruptly, one of the companions riding a flyer had his body arch backward like a cooked shrimp. With a pfft, his armored chest burst open in an instant.

The next second.

One, two, three, four, five.

The remaining five Chitauri Soldiers, before they could react, followed in the footsteps of the first.

The moment they turned their backs to the block, their chests split open with a crack, leaving a fist-sized hole.

Their chests tore from back to front, as if someone had punched straight through from behind.

Almost at the same instant those six Chitauri Soldiers' chests burst open, six thunderous punches rang out!

"Boom, boom, boom!"

"Boom, boom, boom!"

The Chitauri Captain, who had turned on his flyer the moment his six squadmates' chests exploded, heard the sounds blasting by his ears. He jerked his head up, leaped to the right without a second thought, and jumped off the flyer without any hesitation.

The next moment.

His exclusive flyer—more menacing-looking than the others—seemed to be struck by something and exploded in midair with a crack.

Boom!