Earth-???
After passing through a bizarre dimensional gap, Wanda landed on the ground, her knees hitting the cracked asphalt.
This is not the normal landing point for spatial teleportation.
The portals to Kamar-Taj are precise and smooth, like walking through a door.
In the process just now, she was forcibly pulled out of the gap in the real dimension by a force, passing through at least three dimensional barriers, and finally being thrown to the ground like garbage.
Wanda stood up, supporting herself on one knee, and crimson Chaos Magic lit up between her fingers.
Energy fluctuations danced at his fingertips, illuminating a three-meter radius around him in a fiery red glow.
She didn't rush to move.
Observe first.
This was the first lesson the Ancient One taught her: when faced with an unknown environment, always take three seconds to assess the situation before deciding on your next move.
The Ancient One's original words were, "Impulsive sorcerers don't survive the second dimensional rift." At the time, Wanda thought the old lady's words were too harsh, but now, looking back, every word was a piece of wisdom.
There was a wide street all around.
The buildings on both sides were in a state of disrepair, with most of the glass curtain walls shattered and steel bars protruding from the concrete.
Overturned vehicles, torn clothing, and large patches of dried, blackened marks were scattered on the ground.
A nauseating stench filled the air.
Wanda's nose wrinkled slightly.
wrong.
The world is too quiet.
New York, she was almost certain this was New York. The width of the streets, the arrangement of the buildings, and the silhouette of the half-crooked building in the distance all pointed to Midtown Manhattan.
But New York can't be that quiet. Even at 3 a. m., the streets of Manhattan should be filled with the sounds of cars, people, and sirens.
But there was nothing here; it was eerily quiet.
Wanda closed her eyes, and the perception range of her Chaos Magic expanded outwards: fifty meters, one hundred meters, three hundred meters...
There was still no sign of life, not a single one.
Her fingers tightened slightly, and the brightness of the scarlet light increased by a notch.
Having served Sorcerer Supreme in Kamar-Taj for a month, she had seen many things crawling out of dimensional rifts.
Tentacle monsters, consciousness parasites, singing flesh lumps—Wang's notebook was filled with sketches of these things, each marked with a "disgust index" rating.
But the fact that there was no one alive in the entire city was something she had never encountered before.
Suddenly, a sound came from behind.
It wasn't footsteps; it was a dragging, wet, rubbing sound, mixed with a hoarse, strained sound coming from a throat.
It has the structure of human vocal cords, but produces sounds that are not human.
Wanda turned around.
A group of figures emerged from the shadows at the end of the street.
A dozen or so, no, dozens.
They were dressed in all sorts of clothes: suits, sportswear, nurse uniforms, police uniforms.
Their clothes were covered in dark stains, some people's sleeves were down to the waist, and some people weren't wearing shoes at all.
His walking posture is completely wrong.
The joints were twisted, the knees bent in the wrong direction, and there was a guy in a gray hoodie whose left foot was turned backward, with his toes pointing backward. With each step, his bones made a cracking sound, but he didn't care at all.
Wanda did not act immediately.
"Stop."
Her voice carried far through the empty streets.
"I don't want to hurt you. If you can understand me, stop."
This is standard procedure.
The first step His Sorcerer Supreme takes when dealing with unusual events is to determine whether the other party has the ability to communicate.
If this is a form of collective mind control resulting from some kind of dimensional intrusion, a hasty attack could harm innocent bystanders.
After he finished speaking, no one stopped.
The speed actually increased.
The man in the suit at the front raised his face. Wanda hadn't been able to see their features clearly until now, but she could finally see them.
His skin was grayish-blue, and his eye sockets were sunken, containing two cloudy, unfocused eyeballs.
His mouth was open, his jaw was dislocated and drooping down to his chest, and something that shouldn't be in his mouth was stuck between his gums.
These guys aren't human, or at least they're no longer human.
Wanda abandoned her last bit of hesitation.
Crimson Chaos Magic was released from her hands simultaneously, two energy pulses sweeping across the street, sending entire rows of "things" flying and crashing into the rubble of buildings on either side.
Several of them were embedded directly into the wall, their limbs folded at impossible angles, and they were still wriggling.
A month ago, Wanda might have been disgusted by this scene.
But in that month, she cleared out a swarm of splitting flesh worms at the edge of the Dark Dimension, and in the Nightmare Dimension, she strangled three centipedes with baby faces with her bare hands.
These things are so disgusting they don't even rank in the top five.
She shook off the lingering energy from her hands and prepared to leave the street.
laugh--
A thin thread shot down from above and stuck precisely to her right shoulder.
Wanda reacted faster than she could think; the Chaos Magic automatically formed a shield the instant the threads made contact, deflecting the sticky attack.
She shifted two steps to the left and looked up in the direction from which the thread originated.
A figure was crouching on the eaves of the building opposite.
A red and blue uniform, with only half of the spiderweb-patterned mask remaining.
The other half of his face was exposed, revealing grayish-blue skin, a missing piece of his nose, and a murky eye that rolled around without any white.
It's Spider-Man.
Wanda knew him; Peter Parker, the kid from Queens, the youngest of the Avengers, who never stopped talking when he was fighting.
The monster in front of me didn't stop talking.
"Hehehe, fresh, alive -- you smell so good, ma'am, really so good, I haven't eaten a live person in so long --"
The sound squeezed out of the broken Barry, sticky and guttural, with gurgling sounds between each syllable.
He sprang down from the eaves in a flash, Silk shooting out from both wrists simultaneously, crisscrossing and weaving into a web as he pounced on Wanda.
Wanda didn't even raise her hand.
The Chaos Magic exploded into a crimson shockwave on the body's surface, tearing the spiderweb to shreds the moment it touched the energy field.
The shockwave continued forward, striking the Zombie Spider-Man in mid-air.
Snap!
The Zombie Spider-Man- Man was slammed into a building.
Then it passed through the second building, left a human-shaped hole in the wall of the third building, and then there was no more movement.
Wanda withdrew her hand, looked down at her shoulder, and saw a small patch of gray slime where the Silk had stuck.
She pinched the fabric between two fingers, and the Chaos Magic heated it, burning the stain away completely.
A dense roar came from afar.
More than before, and much more.
Grayish-blue zombies were pouring out from both ends of the street, at intersections, and from the gaps in collapsed buildings.
In groups, some climbed, some ran, and some climbed out of the windows, all converging on this side.
Wanda frowned.
We can defeat them in battle, but we can't kill them all.
Moreover, continuing to fight on the ground will only attract more attacks.
The energy fluctuations of Chaos Magic were too conspicuous in this deathly still environment, no different from lighting a fire in the dark.
Chaos Magic lifted her body, Wanda rose vertically into the air.
Five meters, ten meters, thirty meters --
She stopped on the top of a relatively intact high-rise building, her feet landing on the rooftop covered with gravel.
From this vantage point, the entire outline of Manhattan unfolds before your eyes.
The world is worse than she imagined.
The streets were filled with those gray-blue figures, wandering in groups of three or five, aimless and directionless, turning when they bumped into obstacles and passing by their kind.
The Brooklyn Bridge in the distance is half broken, and its surface is covered with the same thing.
Several plumes of black smoke rose from the opposite bank of the Hudson River; the flames had been burning for a long time, and no one had bothered to put them out.
This is neither dimensional invasion nor mind control.
Wanda mentally reviewed the accounts of the death civilization in the ancient Kamar-Taj texts.
Several dimensional plagues can cause large-scale mass deaths and recoveries, but those are usually accompanied by strong residual dimensional energy.
There is none here; the concentration of magic in the air is almost zero.
There's only one explanation.
A virus, a virus that can bring the dead back to life, has completely infected this universe that is somewhat similar to hers.
Did Chthon throw her here to trap her? To wear her down? Or was he planning something else?
Wanda was about to continue her analysis.
A voice suddenly came from behind.
Young, somber, with a clear sense of wariness and suppressed surprise.
"Who are you?"
Wanda's body reacted before her brain; as she turned, Chaos Magic was already taking shape in her right hand.
At the other end of the rooftop, a woman dressed in a black bodysuit crouched in the shadow of the ventilation duct.
Her short, silvery-white hair was blown by the wind and clung to half of her face, while the other half was in shadow, revealing only a pair of gray-blue eyes.
Those eyes were fixed intently on the crimson light in Wanda's hand.
Like a cat that has been lurking in the shadows for a long time, it is trying to determine whether the uninvited guest who has entered its territory is prey or a threat.
Wanda noticed a few details: although the other person's clothes were torn, the torn areas had been simply mended and reinforced, so they wouldn't make any extra noise when moving.
Three sealed bags containing compressed biscuits and water were neatly stacked next to the ventilation vent.
This person stayed on the roof of this building for more than just one day.
and--
She is a normal person.
In Manhattan, where you can't find a single living person in the entire city, there is a living person squatting on the rooftop where she is standing.
The two people stared at each other from a distance of ten meters.
The crimson light in Wanda's hand did not extinguish, nor did the silver-haired woman opposite her emerge from the shadows.
The silence lasted for three seconds.
The silver-haired woman spoke first, raising her chin slightly and gesturing towards the light in Wanda's hand.
"Could you turn that thing off? It's visible from three blocks away."