Chapter 58: Fighting the Hellfire Club

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As soon as Edward saw his punch was ineffective, he jumped back, dodging the man's swipe, but he was still sent flying by the burst of energy.

The blow was powerful, but Edward still managed to land back on his feet near the group of mutants, and the man in a wheelchair warned, "This is the leader of the Hellfire Club, Sebastian Shaw. He can absorb energy at will and use it as he likes."

Edward nodded before looking at the other members of the Hellfire Club, there were five other members. One was black, as in night black, almost like the demon Edward fought back in Camelot, except he was humanoid and quite fiery.

He was standing on Shaw's left side, showing his importance. On his right was a blond, stunning woman dressed in white, looking at him seductively while trying to enter his mind. Nice.

Behind the mind reader was another woman, black haired this one, and with an eyepatch over her right eye and a scar over her left, she held two big knives in her hands, and looked like she knew how to use them.

On the other side, standing behind fiery boy, she was flying half a meter above the ground, her fairy like wings holding her up.

As for their final member, Edward recognized him well enough, as he had faced him in the past. Bariendo. It didn't take much effort from Edward to defeat him as he had a poor control over his power though, so he barely even remember him.

Bariendo sure remembered him though, "Serenity, finally my revenge! You shall fall before my invincible barriers!"

He looked ready to pounce on Edward, but Shaw stopped him, looking at the group in disdain, as if they weren't worthy of his time.

Edward was ready to fight them when he felt something budge against his mind, and felt it was quite familiar as he recognized it to be from the X-Men girl from before. He was about to refuse when he heard her voice, "Stop being stubborn and accept the link!"

Edward grunted, but allowed for the link to create, and as he did he heard a male's voice command, "Marvel Girl, your mind powers are best to counter Emma. Iceman, your ice counters Sunspot, you take him. Archangel, only you can take on Angel, beware of her acid spat. Beast, you take Callisto, careful of her knives. Guardian?"

Understanding what he was being asked, Edward replied mentally, "Bariendo has the power to create barriers at will, and I can take either him or Shaw. Also, call me Serenity."

"Good. Shaw counters my powers so you take him while I attack this Bariendo. Everyone, keep a check on the Professor and the Brotherhood, the Professor may have knocked them out but we should still watch out."

Edward felt surprised by this last point, he thought the Brotherhood of mutants had faced the Hellfire Club first and were defeated, but it seemed the bald man in the wheelchair wasn't as powerless as he first thought.

But now wasn't the time to ponder on his power as all the X-Men already engaged their target, meaning it was his turn too.

Shaw didn't bother move and only watched as Edward closed in, confident in his power. Edward closed in and instead of punching him, he tackled him. He felt like he was tackling an immovable wall, and barely made Shaw retreat a step.

Shaw only made a disdainful smirk and elbowed Edward in the back with enough force to put him down.

Slamming against the ground, Edward grunted, things hadn't gone as planed. His plan was to use the remaining force of the impact to send Shaw flying, but Shaw's ability to absorb energy was much stronger than he first thought as there was no force left whatsoever.

Now on the ground though, Edward planted his fingers into the ground, and using all of his strength he lifted a huge mud mound, and threw it up.

For the first time, Shaw's face changed as he was helpless before the change of terrain, and was sent flying for real, and as he fell to the ground the mud fell on top of him too.

Both impacts didn't do much damage to him as he absorbed most of the shock, but he was buried beneath the mud.

At the same time, Cyclops, who was fighting Bariendo, saw this and ordered, "Iceman, freeze that mound!"

Iceman did as he was told with no hesitation and created several layers of hard ice above the mound, covering it up entirely.

Edward looked at the two and nodded thankfully, teammates could really be useful, especially with a good leader such as Cyclops.

Beneath the frozen mound, Shaw tried to free himself, but the strength in his body wasn't enough. When he absorbed energy, he would absorb it inside his body, and he had two ways of using.

The first one was to keep it in his body, and the more energy was stored, the stronger he would be. The second was to use it as a burst of energy, which used up a lot more of energy.

Left with now other choice, Shaw released all the energy stored in his body outward, destroying the frozen mound and freeing himself, but he was now only as strong a normal man.

And Edward vividly felt the difference, so with a wave of his hand several ropes of Eldritch Magic were conjured, bounding his wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck, waist, thighs, knees and ankles, as well as pulling him off the ground.

As such, Shaw was unable to move in the slightest, and couldn't conjure any energy himself. Edward was told he could only absorb energy from other sources, but he couldn't be too careful, so he sealed all movements.

Keeping so many ropes conjured at once was quite the burden to his concentration though, and the energy passing through his body was starting to overwhelm his Chi, so he quickly severed the connection with the array at the other end of the lake, relieving him of the burden.

With one problem taken care of, Edward could now go help another.

Beast was fighting against Callisto, and was winning thanks to his greater strength and agility. Callisto looked more skilled, but often skill wasn't enough to overcome pure strength. The only reason she was still holding on was thanks to her ally in the sky, Angel, who spat out acid balls at Beast, who was forced to dodge.

Not far from them, Cyclops was running around and sending beams of red energy from his eyes at Bariendo, which the later countered by putting up barriers. The two were quite well matched, although Cyclops was the one attacking, thus had the advantage.

Above them was also another fight, and Angel's acid spit was giving her the advantage and forced Archangel into a defensive position, but he was holding on well and managed to force most of Angel's acid spits focused on him, so they wouldn't go for his teammates.

Iceman was doing fine against Sunspot, fire and ice clashed relentlessly as they did quite some damage to their surroundings, but it was nothing compared to the destruction caused by the last fight.

What should have been a duel between two telepaths had changed into a terrain altering battle of great proportions. Emma Frost had two forms, her human form, in which she could use telepathy, and her diamond form, in which she couldn't use telepathy anymore but also became immune to it, and her body also became much stronger, both in offence and defence.

As her telepathy was useless, Marvel Girl was forced to use telekinesis, and since the beginning of the fight she had been hurling huge mounds of earth and water from the lake onto Emma, trying to hold her off, but she couldn't stop her.

Since Marvel Girl was the mental link between them, Edward esteemed her fight to be the most important, and he happened to be a great counter against her opponent, so he rushed toward them.

He asked Marvel Girl to stop hurling things at Emma mentally, which she did with some hesitation, freeing Emma. But before she could approach Marvel Girl, Edward arrived upon her, punching her.

Much like Sebastian Shaw earlier, she faced the incoming purple fist fearlessly, ready to see Edward's fist shatter against her diamond skin, but as the two connected, something much different happened.

Her diamond skin cracked, and Emma felt the world spin as she was sent flying by the punch. She crashed into the ground, and returned to her human form with a dizzy mind.

Seeing Edward fall toward her, his purple fist again coming down toward her, she tried attacking his mind, but found herself facing a big wall, stopping her from entering her mind. It was the last thing she felt before being knocked unconscious by Edward.

With two enemies downed, the others fights also quickly ended. Bariendo was the first one to be downed after the initial two, Jean bothered him through telepathy, giving Cyclops the opportunity to hit him with one of his beams.

Then, Angel was gunned down from the sky by Scott, Archangel fell down on Callisto and knocked her out with the surprise attack, and Sunspot was defeated by Iceman.

Now that the enemy had been dealt with, Edward turned to the X-Men, as well as the fallen Brotherhood, who were waking up. He realized the speedster had disappeared with the woman wearing a red costume, and made a mental note to himself to keep an eye out for them.

"Thank you for your help, Serenity. We wouldn't have won without your help." Cyclops came up to Edward and stretched out his hand.

Edward nodded and took his hand, complimenting him, "You are a great leader, the fight was fun. But I still have to ask, what are your intentions?"

Cyclops sent a look at the Professor and replied, "For now, simply to adapt to this time, and then take in more mutants, to offer them shelter and teach them how to use their powers, so they won't hurt others, or themselves."

Edward nodded at that, understanding why the Ancient One said they were important, "Those are noble goals, I hope you won't stray from them. Do you want me to take care of them?"

Edward pointed at the fallen people, and Cyclops shook his head, "No, thank you, we will deal with them."

Edward shrugged at that, and he opened a portal while making the Eldritch Ropes disappear. Shaw tried to struggle, but the helmet was taken off his head, and he was knocked out by one of the telepath.

While making a mental note to strengthen his mental defences, Edward passed through the portal, disappearing from the lake.

He did not set a direct portal to his house though, they could see through the portal after all, and he didn't want that, so he had created a portal to his crafting room, where he created another that led home.

As the portal opened and he saw his house, he felt speechless though. Donna, whom he told to do her homework, was playing with his X-Box…

He went through the portal, and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm playing, can't you see?"

Edward sighed, exasperated by her, and lit off the console, "Go do your homework. NOW."

Donna slightly flinched as he raised his voice, and didn't respond this time as she walked back to her room.

Author's Note: Too big to fit in the right place. Phrasing, I know.

Well, yesterday's comment on the rant... it warmed my heart to be honest, it feels good to see your work is appreciated.

Now, I've also taken the time to think about everything that was said, and one thing I want to make clear is that this story will last quite some time. I'm not talking about three thousand chapters or anything like that, but as you may know I have a Patreon, which has 20 chapters in advance, and since it's my only source of revenue (I'm a student), I don't like putting every chapter I have in store there. Like that, I don't have to write one chapter everyday. Some days I will write five chapters in a row, and I won't write for entire days too. As of this moment, I am getting real close to writing the 100th chapter, so even if I were to suddenly stop writing for some reason you would still have chapters for more than a month.

But don't worry, I don't intend on quitting, mean and dumb comments hurts, but i've grown to ignore them, this isn't my first story, and most certainly won't be my last, so don't worry, this isn't getting dropped.

Anyway, as I was saying, I thought about what we talked, and I feel there are several flaws to be corrected. First is obviously repetition, I do agree this story is taking a Dragon Ball Z kind of dynamic, fighting, losing, training, winning, and the MC is too passive, letting the world throw stuff at him. My excuse for that is that as a hero he can't really take action by himself, but that's a poor excuse for I believe it can be fixed, I just need some thinking.

But I feel that most problems will probably be resolved by the time Edward has his next breakthrough, which spoiler, is after the ongoing arc in Patreon. I know that a lot of people will probably not like the arc Patreon is in, because of reasons I can't really tell without spoiling, but I loved writing that arc, and more importantly, it is the arc where Edward grows the most. If you think that I put a lot of thought on Edward's character development in all those 'random' fights, then I assure you, your mind will fucking explode. If you keep on reading, that is. The development of Edward's mindset is also much more clearly depicted as it is so big some explanations were actually needed.

I am currently writing the aftermath of that arc, and thanks to this interaction I understood the problems he will need to fix.

So I know it's a little late, but expect for Post Chapter 90 Edward to no longer let the world dictate his life for him, and for the format to no longer be so repetitive. And don't forget that as he gets stronger, his opponents gets stronger, meaning at some point they will become as strong as Diana's, meaning... there will be more Diana/Edward fights.

Also, this is a bonus chapter in thanks for the support, I guess. Still want to note that some still wrote comments in Spanish and French... The idiocy of humans never fails to surprise me.