*Chapter 163: One Slash Freezes Nine Worlds (Part 1)*

The space in front of him rippled like a stone hitting water, as if it were mercury. However, the wave-like patterns in the space quickly smoothed out, leaving not a trace behind.

“What?!” After a brief moment of shock, Malekith realized that, just like Thor, the opponent had likely fallen into some spatial rift. He burst into a crazed laugh. “Haha! Idiot! Lost in some corner of the dead universe!”

To be honest, the Malekith of history wasn’t such a shallow character.

But he was deeply frustrated.

Once, Malekith had nearly united the Nine Realms, with his massive cosmic fleet blotting out the sky. But now? All those ships had crashed to the ground.

Even his last lackeys had been wiped out by Atreus and his girl, and they even hijacked his ship right in front of him.

It would be shocking if he wasn’t furious.

Though puzzled by the disappearance of Thor and Kratos, Malekith was relieved by the reduced number of enemies.

Now, he only had to deal with those three fierce women.

To his surprise, they hadn’t taken advantage of the situation to attack him. As he prepared to insult them, he finally noticed the difference between Thor’s and Kratos’ disappearances: Thor had fallen in by accident, while Kratos had entered intentionally.

At that moment, Malekith finally noticed the black hole gravity grenade hanging from his belt, emitting a sinister glow.

“No—”

Malekith's perception wasn’t great, but his reactions weren’t bad. In the final moments, he used the Aether to forcefully rip the black hole grenade from his waist and threw it far away.

But he was just a little too slow.

A flash of blood, and Malekith’s scream echoed through the heavens. Miss Jane, in the distance, was first shocked to see her lover disappear, then horrified as she witnessed Malekith, the ruthless leader of the Dark Elves, lose his right arm to the vortex.

Blood sprayed from the wound on his shoulder.

Meanwhile, light-years away on Earth, in the Batcave in Gotham City, a black alien arm suddenly appeared out of thin air and dropped right in front of Batman.

Bruce Wayne stared at the arm, utterly perplexed. For a moment, he almost thought his secret was out. But then he saw the news from London, where the strange overlapping of the Nine Realms had attracted live coverage from a news helicopter.

The military, of course, had sent out scouts as well.

Back in the battle, Malekith thought Kratos was long gone, but he quickly realized he was wrong.

“Argh!”

In the blink of an eye, Malekith was struck by eight slashes from behind.

Had it not been obvious that he wasn’t the attacker, any American detective arriving at the scene would’ve ruled his death a suicide—stabbed eight times in the back.

Fighting through the pain, Malekith drew even more power from the Aether. The resulting red particle storm ravaged the space behind him, causing an explosive roar that left the ground behind him riddled with craters.

But he still missed.

All he could see were flashes of blades, but no sign of the attacker!

In less than a second, the blade struck again.

Malekith's poor sense of awareness left him oblivious to the fact that the blade came from his left shoulder.

“Argh!”

Another blood-curdling scream echoed as Malekith lost his hand—not to a spatial tear this time, but to Hector’s divine blade from the “Troy Twins.”

He was rapidly turning into a helpless, limbless creature. But as one of the top bosses in the Marvel universe, his ferocity was unmatched.

Even with both arms gone, he still had enough strength for a desperate counterattack.

Spectators watched in shock as no less than the equivalent of ten Olympic swimming pools worth of red Aether particles sprayed from his body, flooding in all directions. Many of these particles seemed to vanish into thin air.

They weren’t disappearing. They were invading each of the Nine Realms—Asgard, Earth, Jotunheim...

The Rainbow Bridge was in crisis, alarms blared at S.H.I.E.L.D., and in every realm, people screamed in terror as ominous red tendrils and blood-red clouds filled the sky.

Malekith was beyond enraged. He wasn’t just filling every space around him—he was dead set on destroying the entire Nine Realms.

At this crucial moment, with the fate of the Nine Realms hanging in the balance, Atreus finally played his trump card—Thor!

Thor wasn’t dead, just lost.

Separated from his hammer and therefore unable to fly (Thor can’t fly without his hammer), Atreus eventually found him, bloody but still determined, patiently waiting in line for the London Underground because he needed to get to the closest space portal. Unbelievable, right?

“If I hadn’t come, how were you planning to get back?”

“Heimdall—wait, no, my father temporarily suspended Heimdall, so maybe I would've launched myself from a cannon.”

“...” Atreus was speechless. Opening a portal, he said, “After you.”

Thor wasted no time reclaiming his hammer and heading back into battle against Malekith!

Sure, Atreus could’ve led the charge himself, but it seemed like such a waste not to use Thor.

And so, Thor returned to the battlefield, charging forward through the Aether particle storm.

The scene was truly awe-inspiring.

The crimson particles surged like a flood from the Three Gorges Dam, a terrifying torrent weighing thousands of tons crashing down.

Yet Thor, with his godly body, charged straight into the apocalyptic red storm, moving forward against all odds.

Five hundred meters!

One hundred meters!

Fifty meters!

Thirty!

Twenty!

Ten!

Eight meters!

Six!

Five!

With every step forward, the pressure on Thor multiplied.

What started as the weight of a small car now felt like the entire Rocky Mountains were bearing down on him.

But his struggle was worth it. At the final three meters, a radiant bald figure finally stepped forward.

A dazzling golden light erupted, visible even across the vast kilometers of the portal connecting the Nine Realms.

One slash freezes Nine Worlds!

Heads rolled, and the universe fell silent.

Malekith—dead!

(End of Chapter)