Chapter 45: You Actually Know About the Spirit of Vengeance?
When it came to killing, Martin had always approached the act with the utmost gravity.
He would eliminate anyone who stood in his way, without hesitation and without remorse. Conquest and annihilation were sacred to him, acts of divine honor.
How could a man feel guilt when he believed his violence was glory incarnate?
And that… was the fatal flaw of the Penance Stare, its judgment was too subjective. If the judged held no guilt, if their will and mind aligned in conviction, the power simply failed to work.
That realization shook Ghost Rider to his core, leaving him stunned and lost.
"Why... why are you immune to my gaze?" Ghost Rider whispered in confusion.
Martin gripped his wrist and slowly pried it open. His voice was icy:
"What you see as sin, I see as honor. Don't presume to judge me with those shallow, laughable eyes."
His grip tightened, power surging.
Ghost Rider's Hellfire erupted, blazing higher in defiance, trying to sear Martin. But as the infernal flames licked across Martin's arm, they did nothing. No pain. No damage.
Crack!
Martin snapped both of Ghost Rider's arms like brittle twigs.
Not even a noble Spirit of Vengeance was without limits.
Boom!
His fist slammed into the Rider's chest, unstoppable force exploding outward. The blow cratered the incorruptible soul form that housed the spirit, leaving a horrific dent in its wake.
The Hellfire fizzled out.
All that remained was Johnny Blaze, unconscious and collapsed in the dirt.
"Johnny Blaze... poor bastard," Martin muttered, casting him a glance.
As a boy, Johnny had been marked by Mephisto. Tempted with the promise of curing his father's cancer, he signed the demonic contract, voluntarily becoming Mephisto's knight.
The cancer was cured…
Only for Mephisto to orchestrate his father's death in a stunt show crash days later.
A promise kept. A soul claimed.
Mephisto had won, he'd cured the illness and gained a host for the fallen Spirit of Vengeance. Perfect outcome.
Johnny Blaze, forever the unlucky fool who made a deal with a devil.
"Let me devour this idiot," rumbled Surtur, stepping forward.
"Do as you like. Just clean up after yourself," Martin replied nonchalantly.
Surtur gave Martin an amused look, then let out a deep, malicious chuckle. He grabbed Ghost Rider's broken form and swallowed him whole.
A sonic boom echoed outward as eternal flame and Skyfather-tier might surged from Surtur, eroding the Spirit of Vengeance piece by piece.
"Hmph... there's a demonic contract shielding him. A little resistance… but nothing I can't handle," Surtur grumbled. He just needed a bit more time.
Mephisto? Not even worth his attention.
"No—You vile creature! How DARE you harm my servant?!"
Mephisto's form manifested nearby, voice low and furious. Yet beneath that rage… there was panic. He could feel it, the contract had broken. His most prized champion was dead.
"The Spirit of Vengeance was meant to be an angel, Earth's protector. But you've twisted it into something else… a demon entangled with Hell itself."
Martin's gaze fixed on the man before him, an unassuming elder on the surface, but the stench of sulfur clinging to him told a different story. Martin spoke quietly, his voice calm, but edged with judgment.
"You actually know about the Spirit of Vengeance?" Mephisto blinked, genuinely surprised.
Of course he was. The first time the Spirit of Vengeance descended to Earth was twenty thousand years ago.
Back then, Earth was chaos incarnate.
Two native superhuman species ruled the planet:
The Eternals, genetically perfect and long-lived.
The Deviants, genetically unstable but filled with evolutionary potential.
A massive war broke out for control of Earth. The Deviants emerged victorious, but barely. The Eternals were forced to flee the planet. During their exodus, the Kree Empire intercepted them, capturing many for genetic experimentation.
These altered remnants became the Inhumans, now dwelling on the Moon.
The few Eternals who escaped fled to a moon of Saturn, there, they rebuilt.
This offshoot would call themselves: the Eternal Titans.
They named their new home… Titan.
That's why Thanos was so unique, born with purple, wrinkled skin, a genetic mutation so grotesque that his own mother tried to kill him at birth.
Among a race defined by flawless genetics, Thanos was a paradox.
If their genes could mutate, how could they claim perfection?
Only Deviants mutate.
The Deviants, though victorious, paid a heavy price; decimated population, shattered civilization, and fragile stability.
They had no time to celebrate.
A greater terror arrived.
The Celestials returned to Earth for their second visitation, judging the planet's evolution and genetic experiments.
Their verdict?
The Deviants were a failed experiment, worthless.
They began a campaign of total extermination.
In desperation, the Deviants poured the final strength of their civilization into forging a cosmic fortress in an effort to slay gods.
Yet, they failed.
The Celestials were too powerful.
Even as the Deviants' DNA adapted wildly, spawning new powerhouses through rapid mutation, they still couldn't match the Celestials' might.
The Deviants were annihilated.
But… their bloodline endured.
Fragments of their unstable DNA survived, encoded into primitive primates.
This new species evolved into modern humans, and among them, a few inherited the legacy of the Deviants.
These few are known today as mutants.
Their inherited gene, known across the world as the X-Gene.
All of this, this evolutionary cascade, traced back to the cataclysm of twenty millennia past.
Two superhuman dynasties—
One exiled.
One exterminated.
And Earth?
Left in a devastating power vacuum.
For the first time, no one stood guard.
The planet, ripe and defenseless, became the target of Hell itself.
A great demon cast its gaze downward, prepared to drag Earth into the pit, to turn it into a feast for demonic hordes.
And then—
A rain of fire fell from the skies.
Countless Spirits of Vengeance descended, blazing like meteors.
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