"Good afternoon, viewers. I'm reporter Canberra. As you can see, I'm here on a street in Manhattan's restaurant district in New York, bringing you a live report. Take a look behind me."
A beautiful reporter holding a microphone stood facing the camera. Beside her, panicked crowds raced past with their hands over their heads, fleeing for their lives, while the reporter kept chattering into her microphone without the slightest concern for the people rushing by or the ones who occasionally bumped into her.
As the camera panned, two blurry, enormous figures could be seen fighting in the distance behind the reporter, accompanied by a series of explosions and flashes of fire. But since the camera was focused on her, viewers at home couldn't make out what was happening very clearly.
"Oh! My God! Canberra! Watch out! Get down!!"
The reporter, Canberra, was just about to turn around and describe the distant battle to the viewers when the cameraman suddenly shouted at her.
The camera shook, and the viewers caught a glimpse of a car flying over Canberra's head. Fortunately, the lucky reporter seemed to have escaped without a scratch—though she was definitely a little worse for wear.
Canberra was a special correspondent for a New York TV station. She had been doing a routine live survey on a new federal law on the streets of New York, hoping to bring the station a little much-needed viewership!
Everything had gone smoothly, and they had completed most of the live survey. But just as they were about to wrap up, a gigantic green humanoid monster leaped out of a building. Before Canberra could react, the huge green creature, with bone spikes all over its body and its ribs sticking out, began slaughtering people and wreaking havoc in the street.
At first, Canberra had panicked just like everyone else around her. All she could think about was getting away! But after another green, muscular monster dropped from the sky and began fighting the grayish-green creature covered in bone spikes, she suddenly realized she shouldn't—and absolutely couldn't—run away now!
Because what was happening was major news! If she seized this opportunity, then a promotion, a raise, a boost to her profile, and all sorts of other accolades would be within reach! She could finally escape the awkward position of being a pretty, ornamental reporter whose presence was entirely optional.
If that was the case, then she had to risk her life to broadcast this! Even if it cost her her life, she had to show the world what was happening here! As for the survey she'd been doing? To hell with it!
The camera shook again. The cameraman seemed to have gotten back to his feet and adjusted the camera. Canberra returned in front of the camera, turning halfway to signal that the cameraman should focus on the battle in the distance.
"Viewers, you can see them, right? Look at those two monsters up ahead! Oh! My God!"
Canberra let out a startled cry. One of the two green monsters fighting in the distance had thrown a car door, and it came whistling toward her!
Fortunately, the door struck a lamppost. It knocked the post crooked and changed direction, slicing through the window of a nearby shop and leaving the tidy interior in complete disarray. Canberra had no idea if anyone inside had been hurt. But she couldn't worry about that now. She pushed through the panicked crowd, signaling for the cameraman to keep filming the battle in the distance, and occasionally leaned into the camera to say a few words herself, never missing a chance to raise her profile and get her face on screen!
The bone-spiked green giant fighting the Hulk in the distance had originally been named Emil Blonsky. Before today, the military had injected him with gamma radiation twice. His strength had improved tremendously, but he was still dissatisfied, because compared to the Hulk's strength, his own was nothing! He wanted more!
So, after forcing Dr. Sterns—Mr. Blue—to inject him with the Hulk's Super-Soldier Serum, he finally became what he was now: a giant as huge as the Hulk, with strength to match!
But he hadn't turned into a monster ruled by rage like the Hulk. He was still Emil Blonsky, and his mind was clear. He could feel the enormous changes in his body and the immense, seemingly endless strength coursing through him. It was an extraordinary feeling of expansion! Emil Blonsky felt that right now, he was a god! He was God! He could rule over everything!
Now that he had this new power, he needed to let loose. Partly to unleash the endless strength within him, and partly to show those foolish mortals just how extraordinary his power was!
Emil Blonsky roared and strode forward. A single punch sent the charging Hulk flying. Before his opponent could even hit the ground, Blonsky surged forward again, grabbed the Hulk by the head, and slammed him hard into the ground!
"What's wrong? Is that all you've got?"
With one foot planted on the Hulk's chest, Emil Blonsky laughed contemptuously.
He had not only overwhelming strength and a clear mind, but also polished combat skills honed over years as a soldier and an agent! The Hulk, who was ruled by rage, had lost himself and fought on instinct alone. He was no match for Blonsky! That was why, in the short time since the Hulk had jumped off the plane, Blonsky had beaten him without letting him land a single counterattack.
"You! Don't deserve this power!"
Emil Blonsky grabbed the Hulk by one leg and flung him to the other side of the street. He snatched up a car and hurled it at the Hulk, who had just managed to get back to his feet, only for the Hulk to knock it away with an elbow.
Blonsky didn't mind in the least. He planned to have some fun with the Hulk, toy with him, and get used to his newly acquired strength in the process! There couldn't be a more suitable training partner than the Hulk right in front of him!
He casually grabbed another car and threw it, but, unfortunately, the Hulk knocked that one away with a punch too. The car flew through the air like a toy, propelled by the Hulk's enormous strength, and crashed into a shop down the street, where it exploded violently! Blonsky was about to try again when the Hulk suddenly charged, wrapped both arms around his waist, and lifted his feet off the ground with sheer force and momentum. The two of them rolled together into a corner on the other side of the street.
"You piece of trash!"
Blonsky used a textbook counter that twisted his waist, easily freeing himself from the Hulk's grip and pinning him beneath him instead. He clamped his left hand around the Hulk's throat, raised his right fist, and—BAM!—drove a heavy uppercut into the Hulk's jaw.
Though he had strength to match his opponent, the Hulk knew only how to fight with the instinctive reflexes of a beast. He was clearly no match for Emil Blonsky, who had once worked for the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB! Blonsky had the same immense strength, a clear head, and a wealth of combat experience. After a few uppercuts, the Hulk was already dazed!
"ROAR~!!!"
Just as Emil Blonsky was about to press his advantage and give the Hulk a few more punches, he heard an animalistic roar behind him!
He turned around instinctively and saw a toy bear wreathed in flames, its mouth full of sharp teeth. It roared at him and charged at high speed. Waves of scorching heat rolled from the flames, so hot that both Emil Blonsky and the Hulk could feel the unbearable temperature. The bear raised a paw and swatted them both into the wall of a nearby building, smashing two enormous human-shaped holes into it!
"Whoa! Damn it! What the hell is that thing?"
Blonsky was embedded in the hole in the wall where he'd landed. He stared in disbelief at the fiery claw mark across his chest. That really hurt! The sudden appearance of the Flame Giant Bear had left him completely bewildered!
What was that thing? A toy bear on fire? Oh, God! The damn bear, which had come from who knew where, even curled its paw at him as if to taunt him! He'd make it pay!
After swatting the two green Orcs flying with a single punch, Tibbers tilted its huge, fearsome head and beckoned them over with one claw. Six whole years! It had been six years since Annie had caught it and made it her pet when she was two, and it had spent every one of them trapped inside a teddy bear! At last, it had another chance to come out and stretch its legs! Today, it had decided to have some fun! It absolutely refused to finish the job in a couple of moves like it had with that old dragon back then!
Taunted, Blonsky struggled out of the hole in the wall, grabbed a lamppost, and charged at the Flame Giant Bear with a roar! He didn't care about the Hulk anymore!
As Blonsky charged the Flame Giant Bear, the Hulk struggled out of the half-collapsed wall. The Hulk was clearly still in the feral, confused state of a beast. He knew Blonsky was an enemy and that he had to beat him! And the flaming toy bear that had just swatted him away was an enemy too. Its fire hurt! It was an enemy! Anyone who was an enemy was a target for the Hulk!
Compared to the somewhat smaller, bony green giant Blonsky had become, this taller, more powerful toy bear, wreathed in flames, was far better at taunting its enemies and drawing the Hulk's attention!
So the Hulk overtook Blonsky and charged the toy bear first! Ignoring the pain of the flames scorching him, he hammered one fist after another into the bear's big belly! His immense strength made the bear's stomach cave in under each punch, leaving one fist-shaped dent after another. Under his assault, even more flames spewed from the seams in the bear's stitching and its fearsome mouth!
Seeing the Hulk attack the Flame Giant Bear before he could, Blonsky lagged two steps behind, baffled. After thinking it over for a second or two, he charged in too!
He decided it was safer to take out this strange, mysterious toy bear first! But he also kept his wits about him. Seeing the bear wreathed in flames, he wasn't stupid enough to charge in and risk getting burned like the Hulk. Instead, he grabbed the pole in his hands, roared, leaped up, and brought the hollow steel pole down hard on the bear's head! That single blow flattened its head...
That should've killed it, right? Blonsky thought as he looked at the flaming toy bear with half its head caved in. He didn't know what kind of monster it was, but surely it couldn't survive a blow to the head, its most vulnerable spot? Still, to be safe, he raised the steel pole and slammed it into the monster bear's head several more times! Let's see if you're dead now!
Blonsky stopped only when he had broken the pole. He looked at the strange bear with its head caved in, then at the idiot Hulk still attacking its belly. He had no idea what to do next. Should he keep attacking and tear the bear to pieces, or turn back and kill the Hulk?
"ROAR~!!"
While Blonsky stood there dumbfounded and the Hulk kept attacking, the toy bear let out a loud roar and struck out with the same flaming paw. One swipe sent both green giants flying again! As they went sailing through the air, the terrifying dents in the bear's head and belly puffed back into shape like balloons. Its head rounded out again, as if it had never been attacked at all.
Hmph! Annie was sitting on a sign marked "GG," swinging her legs as she watched the battle in the distance and curled her lip in disdain!
Of course she knew her little bear Tibbers was playing with the two green giants. No one knew Tibbers's strength better than she did! But if Tibbers wanted to play, she'd let him. Annie hated those two green monsters anyway! She'd let Tibbers have his fun first!
Tibbers was a Shadow Bear. Its true form was a pure energy of shadow and flame; the toy bear's outer skin was just a magical covering Annie had forcibly sewn onto it! The covering was not only a container for Tibbers, but also a seal that restrained him at all times! Under the combined influence of the covering and the contract, it could transform from the motionless teddy bear Tibbers into the huge, powerful, freely moving Flame Giant Bear Tibbers only when Annie allowed it!
Those two idiots! Were they green trolls? Were they stupid? Did they think they could take it on with their fists and iron poles? How ridiculous! Tibbers opened its mouth wide and casually patted its belly with a flaming paw! Their attacks hadn't even damaged the enchanted magical covering that restrained it, let alone its true Shadow form!
Everyone in Valoran knew that all Shadow Creatures were immune to physical attacks! Destroying a Shadow Creature wasn't exactly easy, but it wasn't that difficult either. Whether you were dealing with a Shadow Creature, Magical Creatures, or an Elemental, the best way to fight them was with magic. Any type of magic they weren't immune to would do, as would a magical weapon or a weapon temporarily enchanted with magic!
But it was obvious that the two green giants in front of it were pure physical tanks, also known as tank-plus-physical-DPS. They had no magical attacks, no magic weapons, and no support team of healers or druids to enchant their weapons or buff them!
If you looked at it from a game's perspective, it was easy to see what was going on: when the Hulk and Blonsky's attacks hit the toy bear, they sounded powerful, but they were all resisted! Resisted! Resisted! Whether they punched it or swung a lamppost at it, the result was always the same: total immunity!
The toy bear's counterattacks, on the other hand, left them battered and bloody, while its Shadowflame roasted them mercilessly! The damage might not have been much compared to the Hulk's tremendous vitality, but it added up. No matter how high their defense or how strong their life force was, even if they were supposed to be impossible to kill, there was nothing they could do against the Shadowflame creature that had appeared out of nowhere. Tibbers could swat them away again and again, until, after a series of claw swipes, each of them ended up pinned under one of the bear's flaming hind paws and ruthlessly mauled by its claws...
After half an hour of fighting—or, more accurately, being beaten—the knockoff Hulk, Blonsky, had passed out beneath Tibbers's enormous claws and flames. Since Blonsky still had a human consciousness, the unbearable pain of the flames seemed to burn his very soul, triggering his body's automatic defense mechanism and putting him into a protective coma!
As for the original, factory-made Hulk, ruled by rage, he curled up in a hole, hands clamped around his head, and lay still. He only grunted when Tibbers attacked him. The Shadow Bear couldn't do anything to him, and he couldn't do anything to the Shadow Bear. So he might as well leave it at that!
That was what the feral Hulk thought: his opponent's attacks couldn't hurt him badly, anyway. The claws cut his skin and hurt like hell, and the flames were annoying, but neither was enough to kill him! His countless counterattacks had done nothing to his opponent, either. So he'd just stay put and let it beat him up. Maybe it would leave on its own in a while?
That was what the feral Hulk looked like when he gave up. When a stray dog lost a fight, it tucked its tail between its legs and played dead; there was nothing strange about the Hulk curling up and accepting defeat. Could pride or shame put food on the table? He was already green from head to toe, so it wasn't as if he had any dignity left to protect! Besides, the beast's instincts still dominated the Hulk's mind. For now, he'd just stay like that!
Before you continue