"Happy to see your old friend?"
Mercer teased him with a smile. Azure light reflected off his face, casting his profile in a handsome glow.
Although this was not the Space Stone from the same universe, in both universes, the Red Skull had been sent by the Space Stone to the location of the Soul Stone.
Obtaining the Soul Stone did indeed require trading a life for a life.
That applied to ordinary people. Mercer, who already possessed three Infinity Stones far beyond those of this universe, was powerful enough to break that restriction.
As the azure energy seeped in, half a minute later, an orange beam shot straight up from the ground, its tremendous energy piercing the sky.
Watching the beam, Mercer stamped his foot again. Countless streams of spatial power spread from his body and instantly wrapped around the soaring beam.
At the same time, he raised his hand. The beam gradually weakened and drifted toward him, finally forming an irregular, thumb-sized stone that glittered in his palm.
This was the Soul Stone.
"Not that hard to get."
Mercer held the stone up and waved it before the Red Skull's eyes with a smile.
The Red Skull watched him in silence. This was the first time he had ever encountered such a situation.
"You're very powerful. Many people have come here before, but they always believed that offering lives in exchange would suffice. Some even brought hundreds of thousands of lives to sacrifice, never realizing that the life they needed to exchange had to be that of their greatest love."
The evidence for his words lay at the foot of the mountain.
A glance down revealed thick piles of skeletal remains. The bones came in all sorts of shapes, with relatively few resembling human skeletons.
Humans were not