After climbing into the vehicle, Luke was still agonizing over how to talk his way out of this with Fury.
"Thinking about how to talk your way out of this?" a voice came from behind him.
Luke shook his head. "Dealing with mind readers like you is such a pain."
"Have you met other mind readers?" Fury stood up and sat beside Luke.
Luke rolled his eyes and couldn't be bothered to answer. With someone like Fury, the more he said, the more he exposed.
"Your background is quite mysterious. You suddenly appeared in New York, then settled down in Hell's Kitchen, making a living by killing people." Seeing that he remained silent, Fury changed the subject.
"I don't consider those things people," Luke retorted.
"But you're a person. You're not the law, and you're not God. Just because you have superpowers and those portals, you think you're qualified to judge them? Do you think you're Batman?"
"That's right. So what? I'm sorry I was born human. Happy now?"
Luke simply gave up trying. This guy looked angry, but he was really just trying to get more information out of him.
"All right, enough of that. Now talk your way out of how you found Tony Stark," Fury said, suddenly letting Luke off the hook.
"Nothing much to it. My ninjas found a bunch of armed men in the mountains, so I went over to take a look and found Tony Stark." Luke turned his face away, not wanting Fury to glean any more information from his expression.
Something suddenly occurred to Luke. "Wait, you're not actually Nick Fury, are you? Why would that sly old bastard show himself to someone who nearly tore up S.H.I.E.L.D. last time?"
"You're a Skrull."
The Fury before him frowned. "What are you talking about? What Skrull?"
"Don't bother denying it. I know more than that. For instance, your blood should be green, and there's Carol Danvers."
Nick Fury wanted to say something else, but the driver suddenly spoke.
"That's enough. Get out for now," the driver suddenly said, pulling over and switching off some equipment.
The driver removed his wig and mask, revealing the egghead beneath, while the Nick Fury beside Luke obediently got out of the car and disappeared into the woods.
"All right, Luke. Now there's a lot I need to discuss with you."
"Including how you know these top-secret matters, and exactly how you found Tony Stark."
Luke looked him over and thought for a moment. "Fine. Looks like I can't keep pretending anymore."
He simply crossed his legs and stared at Fury... at the egghead on top of him. "The truth is, I'm an Earthling who finally managed to return from outer space. Aliens abducted me and took me into space decades ago."
Luke kept his face expressionless and his eyes fixed on Egghead's head, speaking rapidly without any gestures. "A few years ago, I met a Captain Marvel. Her name was Carol Danvers. She told me the way back and gave me some information about Earth."
Fury went still for a while, and silence settled over them. "How is Carol doing?"
Luke froze. Carol hadn't appeared in Avengers Three. How was he supposed to make this up?
As Fury's expression gradually grew suspicious, Luke improvised, "She's still going around helping the Skrulls find somewhere to live. She's running around every day, so I can't see her every day either. But..."
Looking at Fury's suspicious eyes, Luke thought for a moment. "She really misses her kitty. When I decided to come back, she also asked me to check how your eye was doing."
At that last sentence, Fury reflexively touched his eye patch.
Fury fell silent for a while, then finally nodded. "All right. You can go back."
Luke turned and left. He hadn't expected to actually bluff his way past Fury this time.
"You don't have any bad intentions toward Earth, do you?" Fury suddenly called out.
"Of course not. I'm an Earthling too!"
"Good. You should know I can call Carol back at any time."
"Of course. That pager. Speaking of which, have you really never used it once all this time?"
Hearing that answer, Fury finally relaxed completely. After all, only the two of them had been present when Carol gave him that thing.
"She told me not to make nuisance calls."
Without saying anything else, Luke made it safely back to his little home.
"Dealing with that sly old bastard is such a pain. Exhausting, too!"
Luke shook his head and opened the foundation of his livelihood, the Mining System.
He now had more than 470 Shadow Ninjas, each mining 0.4 energy per minute, and thirty Blade Soldiers, each mining 2 energy per minute. That came to roughly 230 energy per minute, with recovery also around 230. After checking his savings, Luke bought enough Ninja Soldiers to bring their number to 500.
There it was: a stat upgrade!
He checked the requirements. This upgrade cost 100,000 energy, which worked out to three hundred minutes, or five hours. But Luke still had some savings, enough to offset more than an hour.
Luke thought for a moment and checked his balance, then simply watched an ad to save three hours. After waiting another half hour, he gathered 100,000 energy and successfully upgraded.
After the upgrade, his physical abilities reached eight times those of an ordinary person. His mining and recovery rates both doubled, reaching 480 and 480 respectively.
Stretching, Luke moved his body with satisfaction. His resources had doubled again, giving him even more confidence when facing Egghead.
But Egghead had plenty of 084 items and who knew how much technology left behind by Hydra. His strength still couldn't be underestimated.
Looking at the Ninja Soldiers, whose price had now risen to 70 energy each, Luke felt that life was growing ever more comfortable.
He could now handle six micro dimensions a day. Flipping through the notebook Ancient One had given him, he found roughly thirty or so micro dimension coordinates remaining. Once he used them up, he would probably have to ask Ancient One for small dimension coordinates.
Seeing that this little dimension still had over ten thousand energy left, Luke waited twenty-odd minutes to mine it dry, then switched to a new dimension.
"Oh, I didn't expect over a hundred thousand energy!" Luke exclaimed in surprise. He had originally thought this micro dimension would also contain less than 100,000 energy.
But the system suddenly issued a notification: "Enemies detected within the target dimension. Please eliminate them, or the target dimension's energy cannot be mined."
Luke froze. There were actually enemies inside the target dimension.
"Warning: the target dimension has connected to the Shadow Dimension. Please organize a counterattack immediately!"
Luke was still a little dazed when he suddenly noticed his maximum energy slowly dropping!
Frowning, Luke hurried into the Shadow Dimension.
The Shadow Dimension was now like a cube with a volume of over ten thousand cubic meters, and a rift had appeared at the top. Luke was like a god within this space, so he flew to the rift and discovered some goblin-like creatures using strange devices to collect dark energy.
With a wave of Luke's hand, the rift moved from the ceiling to the ground. Over a hundred Shadow Ninjas appeared in the dark space and lunged at the panicked enemies whose way home had vanished.
Looking through the rift into the target dimension, he discovered that its space was much larger than his own, with countless creatures busily collecting energy from spatial rifts around them.
Luke's gaze sharpened. These creatures weren't all goblin-like beings. There were other kinds as well.
Luke waved his hand, and the Shadow Ninjas charged through the spatial rift into the target dimension.
The weaker creatures couldn't withstand even a single exchange with the ninjas, but some were stronger and could fight the Shadow Ninjas to a standstill or even defeat them.
Just then, blasts of darkness flew out from a corner, dispersing the Ninja Soldiers outright.
Inside the target dimension, a creature floated over to the rift and met Luke's gaze.
"To think there would be a Dimension Lord inside this micro dimension." The figure coated his throat with dark energy, emitting strange pulses of dark energy, but Luke understood his meaning through those fluctuations.
With a flick of his hand, the figure sent out a bolt of energy that dispersed an approaching Shadow Ninja, then continued looking at Luke.
"Turning dark energy into creatures? Ridiculous. I'll gladly take all this fellow's energy!"
The fellow spoke mockingly, but soon noticed something was wrong. After the Shadow Ninja turned into dark energy, it didn't remain in his dimension. Instead, it withdrew straight into Luke's Dark Dimension, leaving him without the slightest benefit.
Luke also noticed that his maximum dark energy hadn't dropped, nor had his ninja count decreased. Wasn't that different from what this guy had said?
The other party also said in surprise:
"You can actually retrieve dark energy from someone else's dimension? How did you do that?"
Looking at Luke with a frown, the figure waved his hand. Tens of thousands of creatures appeared in his dimension and charged toward Luke's dimension.
He had transported these fellows over from the Material World on his side. They weren't beings like the Shadow Ninjas, but that also allowed him to attack Luke boldly.
"Whatever secrets you have, once I kill you, your Dark Dimension will return to nature!"
The figure laughed as he spoke, and the army behind him clashed directly with the Shadow Ninjas in his dimension.
Looking at the dark mass of enemies, Luke hurriedly had the Shadow Ninjas within his range turn into shadows and return first to form a defensive line. The other Shadow Ninjas did everything they could to hold off the enemies before them and buy Luke and the others time.
By the time those Shadow Ninjas were surrounded and wiped out by enemies several times their number, Luke's side had successfully established a battle line. He then slowly summoned the previously dispersed Shadow Ninjas again.
Watching the enemies draw closer, Luke kept thinking: apart from the opposing Dimension Lord, the ordinary enemies were individually weaker than his Ninja Soldiers, but they outnumbered his side by dozens of times. Looking at his remaining energy, he could only summon a little over a hundred Shadow Ninjas, which wouldn't change the situation much. He was far too much on the back foot this time.
Let's see how things go first. My ninjas neither live nor die, and they don't have stamina bars! Maybe they can slowly wear the enemy down!
Watching the other party's subordinates charge toward his side, Luke could only have his ninjas prepare to engage.
Before you continue