A bodily offering: sacrificing the "guardian"!

Link suddenly laughed.

Amid the terrifying atmosphere of a world thrown into turmoil and a universe seething with rage, his laughter sounded so jarring, so ill-timed, and even carried a hint of morbid delight.

Behind him, Harley froze. Even Red Skull stopped screaming beside him and stared at him as though he were insane.

Faced with cosmic pressure powerful enough to crush a god, Link instead became utterly calm. His mind raced, rapidly refining that insane idea into a logically "perfect" closed loop.

Sacrifice a loved one...

From beginning to end, this rule was riddled with loopholes.

First, it never said it had to be "my" loved one.

Second, the concept of "love" itself was absurdly broad.

Red Skull. John Schmidt.

This ambitious man, who had coveted the Tesseract's power back in World War II, had touched the very source of space and been cursed and banished here, becoming the Soul Stone's guardian.

He had spent nearly a century trapped in this godforsaken place, alone.

Billions of years of curses, billions of years of guardianship.

Wasn't that a kind of "love"?

It was a passive, forced love born of Stockholm syndrome, twisted to the extreme and ingrained in his very bones! His soul, his curse, the entire meaning of his existence had all become inseparably bound to "guarding the Soul Stone."

In a sense, no one in this universe "loved" that damned stone more than he did!

The logic was perfect!

The plan was viable!

A terrifying gleam blazed in Link's eyes. Ignoring the pressure bearing down from the sky, he blurred into motion and appeared before Red Skull in an instant.

"You..."

Red Skull had barely begun to speak when a hand burning with purple energy seized his spectral throat.

"You said a soul had to be sacrificed."

Link's