Restart, Spider-Man! [94]

Under the night sky on a rooftop, Tuxedo Loki watched the Green Goblin, who was bound tightly with webs and rope, and seemed to ponder something.

"What's on your mind?" Xia Luo asked.

Tuxedo Loki replied, "Hypnosis doesn't work through armor. Learned that the hard way."

He still recalled the embarrassment of failing to hypnotize Iron Man.

"Oh, now I remember. Stark did make fun of you for that."

Old Steve chuckled and promptly removed Norman's helmet.

"What are you scoundrels trying to do to me? Stop this at once!!"

As Norman wailed, Loki raised the Mind Stone staff and tapped it lightly on Norman's forehead.

Buzz~

A ripple of light pulsed, and Norman's pupils took on a sudden blue glow.

Watching Norman's dazed expression, Old Steve turned to Xia Luo.

"Are we sure this will work?"

Xia Luo shrugged. "Worth a try. With all the competitors in this round, we need extra hands. Taking on that guy alone is impossible."

Hypnotizing other competitors with the Mind Stone to recruit them into his team had been an idea Xia Luo had from the start.

It was just that encountering Dark Stephen, along with this world's cunning Loki, had already cost him two retries.

As he thought this, Norman finally reacted.

"Kid, didn't I already… die?"

A bewildered Norman quickly regained his memories, looking around at Loki and Steve before focusing on Xia Luo.

"It was you who saved me, kid."

Norman's eyes filled with tears as he stepped forward and hugged Xia Luo.

Xia Luo was speechless.

"Is this your version of hypnosis? Why is it different from when you hypnotized Barton?" he asked Loki.

Loki also looked puzzled.

"Something's off. Usually, once I hypnotize someone, they'd be emotionless unless I used a different kind of hypnosis magic." He frowned, confused.

"What kind of hypnosis?"

Hearing this, Norman released Xia Luo and rubbed his temples. "I feel clearer—like the thing inside me has finally gone quiet."

He smiled with relief. "I can go back to see Harry now."

"No, you can't go back just yet."

Xia Luo guessed that Loki had only hypnotized Norman's second personality, allowing Norman to temporarily regain clarity.

"Is there a way to completely erase his second personality?" he asked Loki again.

Tuxedo Loki frowned. "In essence, each personality is still him. The only options are therapy or a seal. Completely erasing a second personality is impossible."

"Forget it, then." Xia Luo abandoned the idea.

Therapy would take too long, and sealing it was unreliable.

Besides, it might reset once he left the resurrection round, meaning the next time they met, it'd still be the evil Green Goblin.

Unless a cure-all serum could be created specifically for him.

But that, too, could reset.

Maybe he'd try that someday.

For now, Norman would do as backup.

With no time to explain further, Xia Luo had Loki hypnotize Norman again.

Soon, the four of them set off, following Xia Luo's coordinates until they found Professor Curt, hypnotizing him the same way.

Four became five.

"Kid, your powers just keep getting more ridiculous," Old Steve remarked.

Even Tuxedo Loki seemed impressed. "Magic like this—I've only seen my mother…"

Halfway through, he became quiet again.

Xia Luo didn't explain.

Fortunately, everything seemed to be matching up so far.

By his calculations, Tony and Electro should have finished their fight and might already be on their way to the meetup.

Electro would likely leave the city to find a power station, but with his speed, he'd be hard to catch—let alone hypnotize.

Meanwhile, Hydra's Captain and Bucky knew S.H.I.E.L.D.'s intel system too well, so unless Xia Luo appeared in person, they wouldn't show up on surveillance at all.

He wasn't planning to lure them out for now, though, as he was close to missing Venom Parker's final appearance.

Venom Parker was second only to Dark Stephen in terms of threat level.

"We're here."

The five-man team arrived at an amusement park.

Under the cover of night, the amusement park was eerily quiet, the occasional breeze carrying a strange smell with it.

"That's the smell of blood," Old Steve confirmed.

"I see him—it's the black Spider-Man."

Tuxedo Loki pointed toward the Ferris wheel, his expression hardening.

"That one's a real brute."

At the top of the Ferris wheel, a black-clad Spider-Man was hunched over, devouring a broken corpse that hung from the metal frame. Blood trickled down the structure, painting a disturbing scene.

Around the Ferris wheel, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents lay in wait, closely monitoring Venom Parker's every move.

They didn't act hastily, as they had already lost many colleagues to him and knew just how terrifying he was.

When Xia Luo and his team appeared, the agents seemed to have been expecting them and quietly withdrew from the amusement park.

"Commander, they've arrived," Agent Hill reported.

In the S.H.I.E.L.D. command room, surveillance footage captured the five-man team approaching Venom Parker, and Nick Fury's single eye gleamed with interest.

"Keep watching them, but don't interfere in their fight," he ordered.

Beside him, Coulson observed, "This whole incident began with that red-and-blue Spider-Man. He's tracked down every strange entity hiding in the shadows and has convinced them to join him with that unusual staff. He must have a purpose in gathering this much power."

Nick Fury nodded. "Some of them even eluded our intel network, but Spider-Man found them with ease."

He looked at the older Captain and Loki in the group and took a deep breath.

"Stark wasn't lying—parallel timelines truly exist." He hadn't stopped monitoring this strange team.

"But the other Natasha hasn't shown up," Coulson noted.

"That's not important."

Nick Fury's eyes remained fixed on the brewing fight in the footage. "What's important is whether their goal is the Tesseract or something else."

He turned to Coulson.

"Have Tony and Steve returned yet?"

"No, they haven't responded to orders."

"Those two are far too prone to going rogue."

"Fortunately, Barton is back."

At that moment, the battle in the amusement park began.

Boom, boom, boom!

A green streak flashed across the night sky as pumpkin bombs exploded in succession. The black creature snarled and roared in the firelight, wielding a massive black blade dozens of meters long.

Buzz~

Before the blade could reach Norman, Old Steve, who had climbed the metal frame, activated a high-frequency sonic device he had learned to build from watching Natasha operate it.

"Ahhh!!"

Immediately, the sonic waves spread out, melting the black blade. The black substance writhed violently, and Venom Parker's horrifying screams tore through the night as he thrashed, destroying everything around him in a frenzy.

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