Magic Matrix Emerges

The laboratory's emergency lights flickered overhead. Lin Xiu rested his knuckles against the tactical panel, staring at the pale violet patterns of light emerging across the armor's wrist guard.

The light resembled phosphorescent fire rising from the deep sea, slowly drifting across the metal surface as if it possessed a consciousness of its own.

The energy shock just now had branded spiderweb-like cracks across the metal, but what flowed through them was not the cold glow of machinery. It was magical light that writhed like a living thing—the Nanite Swarm was seeping through the fractures, repairing the damaged structure through quantum entanglement.

Every repair came with a faint hum, like the whispering of some ancient incantation.

"Fifth stage of Tactical Form confirmed." A trace of electrical static had entered the Oracle System's synthesized voice. "Without external energy, basic operations can be sustained for 9 minutes and 58 seconds."

Lin Xiu tore off his lab coat and threw it onto the operating table. Its metal clasp struck the surface with a sharp clang that echoed through the enclosed space, carrying an almost piercing pressure.

He could feel the Nanocore at the nape of his neck heating up. It was the rejection reaction from the initial fusion of the Balder Armor and the Magic Matrix, like a red-hot iron pressed against his skin, throbbing with pain.

The words Icarus had left behind in the consciousness space three days ago—"A reality anchor needs a bridge"—still buzzed in his ears. Now, the luminous membrane on his breastplate rose and fell with his breathing, as though imitating a human heartbeat. Every pulse brought a faint, warm tremor.

"Activate automatic defense protocol," he commanded the air.

The Vibranium support frame in the corner suddenly unfolded. Twelve sets of miniature particle cannons extended their muzzles from the folds of metal, their crisp scraping like wind chimes.

The surfaces of these temporary defensive units, constructed by the Nanite Swarm, bore pale gold runes—the "Stabilizing Barrier" imprinted from the Dimensional Eye. They could negate 30% of physical impact.

The runes flickered faintly beneath the lights, as though chanting some ancient song of protection.

Lin Xiu bent down and picked up the Dimensional Eye at his feet. The blood-written note tucked between its pages suddenly ignited. As the ashes drifted toward the vent, they condensed once more into a tiny character: "Caution."

A faint scorched smell lingered in the air, mixed with the woody fragrance left behind by burning paper.

"Time to go."

He gently placed the ancient book into a bulletproof safe. His fingertips paused over the keypad for half a second, the cold touch of metal passing through his gloves and reminding him of another equally frigid night.

The energy fluctuations of the Chitauri Mothership-Class Drone had appeared over New Jersey three hours ago. The Oracle System predicted that it would approach Manhattan along the East River route, and Brooklyn Bridge was an unavoidable crossing.

Lin Xiu touched the Nanite Swarm around his wrist. They immediately shot up his arm like silver serpents, solidifying around his elbow into a tactical bracer. The magical runes on its surface glimmered with a deep blue light.

At the touch, he felt the faint tremors transmitted by the swarm, a pulse like a heartbeat.

Three thousand meters in the sky, Icarus Vaughn's black cloak snapped wildly in the airflow.

Wind poured into his sleeves, carrying the piercing chill unique to the upper air.

He pressed one finger to his brow, and a dim green light screen unfolded before him. Lin Xiu's thermal outline floated within it—that pulsing golden spot was rapidly moving along the East River.

"He's setting a trap," Icarus murmured to the air. His Adam's apple shifted beneath the moonlight, his voice low as night rain.

A damp, fishy stench drifted through the wind. The Void Watcher's voice scraped like sandpaper against metal. "Are you questioning Ancient One's judgment?"

Icarus slid his finger across the light screen, and a web-like structure of quantum entanglement immediately appeared around the glowing point.

He saw Lin Xiu's Nanite Swarm crawling along the bridge's lamp posts. When the silver insects burrowed into gaps in the metal, they fit perfectly with the rust patterns inside the posts. It was no simple camouflage—it made a technological creation enter quantum resonance with natural corrosion.

"He's rewriting the rules." Icarus's pupils suddenly contracted. Dark violet cracks seeped across the edge of the light screen. "Not a bridge, but... a Gate Pivot."

The neon lights of Brooklyn Bridge shattered into golden scales across the river. Lin Xiu crouched in the shadow of a bridge pier, looking up at the twelve streetlamps along the bridge.

At that moment, thousands of Nanobots lay curled inside every lamp base. Their shells were etched with the "Chaos Runes" analyzed from the Dimensional Eye, capable of causing 1.3 seconds of logical disruption in electronic devices—enough for him to launch a surprise attack.

The air carried a faint ionized scent mixed with the rusty smell of oxidized metal.

"Target has entered range."

The Oracle System's prompt made Lin Xiu's earpiece vibrate. He looked up toward the clouds.

Thunderclouds churned in the distance, with flashes of violet lightning faintly visible within.

Moonlight was suddenly swallowed by a shadow. It was a Chitauri drone as long as three football fields, its surface covered in living metal with a sickening purple-black sheen. Dim blue plasma seeped from the plasma cannon beneath its belly.

The air immediately filled with a rotten stench, like decaying seawater.

Lin Xiu pressed his thumb against the activation button on his bracer. A thin layer of sweat coated his palm, making the metal surface slightly slick.

The pain from fusing the Magic Matrix three hours ago suddenly surged back into his neck. He remembered Icarus's words before disappearing: "When technology touches magic's bones." Now, the resonance between the Nanite Swarm and the runes drilled through his nerve endings toward the depths of his brain, as though a fire were burning in the sea of his consciousness.

"Now."

He shouted low and drove his thumb down.

All twelve streetlamps flared at once. Streams of silver-violet light erupted from their bases, gathering in midair into twelve rotating high-frequency resonance blades.

The intense light made him squint. The hum of the swarm rang in his ears, mixed with the chanting of runes like some ancient battle hymn.

The drone's living metal shell had barely registered the threat when the plasma cannon beneath its belly began charging. But the instant its muzzle lit up, every electronic device fell into dead silence—1.3 seconds of chaos, enough for all twelve blades to pierce its energy core.

Boom!

The blast wave sent Lin Xiu staggering backward. The armor's energy shield rippled violet the instant it met the shockwave.

Scorching wind slammed into him, carrying the smell of burning and the sharp sound of flying metal fragments.

He looked up at the flames in the sky. The drone's living metal shell was disintegrating, yet the fragments that should have reassembled were stuck in midair by magical runes, as if invisible hands had pulled them into threads of metal.

"Sixth stage of Tactical Form unlocked." The Oracle System's voice carried obvious excitement. "The swarm has acquired magical interference capabilities. It can forcibly interrupt the reassembly process of non-native magical or technological energy."

The corner of Lin Xiu's mouth lifted, only to freeze the next second.

He smelled burning pine needles—the scent unique to Kamar-Taj magic, carrying the cold breath of the deep forest.

Looking up, he saw a band of green light rise in the eastern sky. Like an emerald serpent come alive, it was approaching at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"You have opened a fissure in the laws."

An old yet steady voice exploded above him, and Lin Xiu's pupils shrank sharply.

He saw a vague figure emerge at the center of the green light. Though its face was veiled in mist, its gaze pierced his armor as though tangible, making even the Nanite Swarm let out uneasy hisses.

"Next, you must learn how to close it."

Before the words had faded, the green band of light suddenly dispersed, leaving behind only a wisp of smoke drifting toward Kamar-Taj.

Lin Xiu touched the crack in his breastplate. He could feel magical energy leaking from it and condensing into pale violet starlight upon the ground.

The light radiated warmth, as though some unknown life-form were breathing.

He bent down and picked up a piece of drone wreckage. Several silver Nanobots were wrapped around the surface of its living metal—they were devouring the Chitauri energy within, while the runes on their shells glowed with an eerie red light.

"Technology lets me survive," he murmured to the night wind, his fingertips lightly brushing the magical membrane over his armor. "But only magic..."

His words were cut off by a sudden wave of dizziness.

Lin Xiu braced himself against the bridge pier and crouched down. The scene before him began to warp.

He heard pages turning. Not the Dimensional Eye in the laboratory, but a book far older and heavier.

Icy liquid dripped onto the back of his hand. Under the moonlight, he saw that it was dark red blood—blood flowing from his nose and dripping onto the violet glow on the ground, blooming into an eerie flower.

"When quantum strings..."

His consciousness gradually blurred. The last thing he heard was the Oracle System screaming, "Temporal-spatial distortion detected!

Detected..."

The final sight before darkness descended was the streetlights of Brooklyn Bridge coming back on.

Inside the base of one lamp, a Nanobot was using its metal forelimbs to carve a new rune into the rusted steel—a blood-red character meaning "Awaken," one that had never appeared in the Dimensional Eye.