Stepping into the black SUV, Luke rubbed his temples, already anticipating the headache of trying to lie his way out of Nick Fury's interrogation.
"Trying to figure out how to lie your way out of this one?" a voice asked from the backseat.
Luke sighed and shook his head. "Dealing with people who think they can read minds is so annoying."
"Have you actually met someone who can read minds?" Fury asked smoothly, sliding over to sit next to Luke.
Luke rolled his eyes and didn't bother answering. When dealing with spymasters like Fury, the more you spoke, the more you revealed.
"Your background is incredibly fascinating. You simply appeared out of thin air in New York. You moved into Hell's Kitchen and started making a living by massacring people," Fury noted, changing tactics when Luke remained silent.
"I wouldn't call them people," Luke countered.
"But you are a person. You aren't the law, and you aren't God. Just because you have some superpowers and a fancy teleportation trick, you think you have the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner? Who do you think you are? Batman?"
"Yeah, pretty much. So what? I'm just a guy trying to get by. Sue me."
Luke completely leaned into the act of an uncooperative, rebellious teenager. He knew Fury was just trying to provoke him into spilling more intelligence.
"Fine. We'll set that aside for now," Fury said, abruptly dropping the subject. "Now, why don't you try to lie to me about how exactly you managed to find Tony Stark."
"I told you already. My ninjas were sweeping the mountains, they found a terrorist camp, I popped over to take a look, and I found Stark." Luke turned his head to stare out the window, refusing to let Fury analyze his micro-expressions.
Then, a thought struck Luke. "By the way, you aren't the real Nick Fury, are you? There's no way that paranoid old bastard would casually sit next to a guy who essentially declared war on S.H.I.E.L.D. last time."
Luke narrowed his eyes. "You're a Skrull."
The 'Fury' sitting next to him frowned deeply. "What are you talking about? What's a Skrull?"
"Drop the act," Luke scoffed. "I know a lot more than you think. For instance, I know your blood is green. And I know about a certain Carol Danvers."
The fake Nick Fury opened his mouth to reply, but the driver suddenly interrupted.
"That's enough. Get out," the driver commanded, pulling the SUV over to the side of the road and flipping a few switches to disable the interior recording devices.
The driver reached up and peeled off a highly realistic silicone mask and wig, revealing the gleaming, eyepatch-wearing bald head of the real Nick Fury.
The fake Fury obediently opened the door, stepped out into the woods, and vanished from sight.
"Alright, Luke," Fury said, turning around in the driver's seat to face him. "Now we have a lot to talk about."
"Starting with how you know highly classified, Level 10 secrets, and exactly how you found Tony Stark."
Luke stared at the real Fury for a moment, his mind racing. 'Alright, guess I can't play dumb anymore.'
He casually crossed his legs, leaning back and staring directly at Fury's... shiny bald head.
"The truth is, I'm an Earthling who finally managed to find his way back home after being abducted by aliens decades ago," Luke stated, keeping his face perfectly blank and his voice devoid of any tells.
"A few years ago, I ran into Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers. She gave me the navigational charts to get back to Earth and caught me up on some local intelligence."
Fury froze. A heavy, suffocating silence filled the car.
"How is Carol doing?" Fury finally asked, his single eye piercing into Luke.
Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second. Carol Danvers didn't even show up in Avengers: Infinity War, so how the hell was he supposed to know what she was doing right now? He had to improvise.
Seeing the suspicion creeping back into Fury's eye, Luke quickly spun his web. "She's still flying all over the galaxy trying to find a new homeworld for the Skrulls. She's incredibly busy, so it's not like I saw her every day. But..."
Luke paused, pretending to recall a fond memory. "She misses her cat. And right before I left, she told me to make sure your eye was doing okay."
At the mention of the cat, Fury instinctively reached up and brushed his fingers against his eyepatch.
He sat in silence for a long time before finally nodding slowly. "Alright. You can go."
Luke didn't hesitate. He opened the door and stepped out, utterly amazed that his improvised bullshit had actually worked.
"You don't harbor any ill will toward Earth, do you?" Fury suddenly called out from the driver's seat.
"Of course not! I'm from Earth!"
"Good. Because you know I can call Carol back at a moment's notice."
"Yeah, yeah, the pager," Luke waved a hand dismissively. "By the way, have you seriously not used it once in all these years?"
Hearing that final detail, Fury completely relaxed. Only he and Carol had been present when she handed him the modified pager.
"She told me not to call her for emergencies unless they were absolute planetary threats," Fury muttered as the SUV drove off.
Having successfully bluffed the ultimate spy, Luke shadow-stepped back to his hotel room.
"Dealing with that paranoid Bald Egg is exhausting," Luke groaned, flopping onto his bed and opening his System interface.
After several days of relentless grinding, his army had swelled to over 470 Shadow Ninjas (generating 0.4 energy/min each) and 30 Razor Claws (generating 2.0 energy/min each). In total, he was passively regenerating around 230 Energy Points per minute.
Checking his accumulated reserves, he bought exactly 30 more ninjas, bringing his total count to a perfect 500.
As expected, a new System prompt appeared.
[Notice: Host must purchase a 'Stat Enhancement' before purchasing additional units.]
Luke checked the requirement and nearly choked. The upgrade cost a staggering 100,000 Energy Points. At his current generation rate, that would take roughly 430 minutes, or over seven hours. Fortunately, he had a decent chunk of energy saved up, which shaved off an hour.
Not wanting to wait, he used his daily ad skip to fast-forward three hours, waited another thirty minutes, and finally hit the required 100,000 points.
He immediately purchased the upgrade.
BZZZT!
The familiar surge of power rushed through him, permanently enhancing his physical constitution to eight times that of a normal human. His mining and regeneration rates doubled once again, skyrocketing to roughly 480 points per minute.
Luke stretched his arms, feeling the immense, intoxicating power coursing through his muscles. His capital had doubled yet again, giving him a massive confidence boost in case he ever had to fight Nick Fury and whatever Hydra-confiscated 0-8-4 artifacts S.H.I.E.L.D. had locked in their vaults.
Noticing that the base price for a Shadow Ninja had inflated to 70 Energy Points, Luke realized his days of effortlessly buying them by the dozens were slowing down.
Still, at his current rate, he could drain about six micro-dimensions a day. Checking the Ancient One's ledger, he saw he only had about thirty micro-dimension coordinates left. Once he exhausted those, he'd have to go back to Kamar-Taj and ask for coordinates to larger, potentially inhabited realms.
He waited twenty minutes for his ninjas to completely drain the remaining 10,000 crystals from his current micro-dimension before locking onto the next coordinate in the book.
"Whoa, this one has over 150,000 crystals!" Luke marveled. He had assumed these micro-dimensions capped out around 100k.
Suddenly, a blaring System alert flashed across his vision.
[WARNING: Hostile entities detected within the target dimension. Eradication is required before mining operations can commence.]
Luke froze. 'Enemies? Inside the dimension?'
[CRITICAL WARNING: The target dimension has aggressively breached the Host's Dark Dimension. Initiate immediate countermeasures!]
Before Luke could even process the warning, he noticed his maximum energy capacity slowly ticking downward!
'They're stealing my energy?!'
He immediately closed his eyes and plunged his consciousness into his personal Dark Dimension.
His domain had grown into a massive, pitch-black void roughly 10,000 cubic meters in size. But looking up, he saw a jagged, glowing spatial rift torn open in the "ceiling." Like a god observing his realm, he floated up to the rift and saw dozens of bizarre, goblin-like creatures operating strange, crude machinery to siphon his dark energy.
With a wave of his hand, Luke forcefully dragged the spatial rift from the ceiling down to the floor. Instantly, hundreds of Shadow Ninjas materialized around the rift and ruthlessly slaughtered the panicked, trapped goblins.
Peering through the rift into the enemy dimension, Luke's eyes narrowed. The opposing realm was vastly larger than his own. Countless creatures were swarming around several other spatial rifts, actively plundering energy from various dimensions.
And they weren't just goblins; there were massive, heavily armored brutes and bizarre, floating entities among them.
Luke didn't hesitate. He commanded his Shadow Ninjas to charge through the rift and invade the enemy dimension.
The weaker goblins were effortlessly butchered, but the larger, armored brutes managed to fight the ninjas to a standstill, and in some cases, overpower them.
Suddenly, a volley of concentrated dark energy blasts shot out from the enemy ranks, completely obliterating dozens of his advancing ninjas.
A humanoid figure floated down from the dark sky of the enemy dimension, hovering directly in front of the rift to lock eyes with Luke.
"To think a meager micro-dimension would actually harbor its own Lord," the figure sneered. It channeled its voice through dark energy fluctuations, allowing Luke to perfectly understand its intent.
With a flick of its wrist, the entity fired another blast, instantly vaporizing a charging Shadow Ninja. It smirked at Luke.
"Using dark energy to construct artificial summons? How pathetically inefficient. I'll be taking all of this energy for myself!"
The arrogant Lord laughed, but its laughter abruptly died. It quickly realized that when the Shadow Ninjas were destroyed, their dark energy didn't disperse into its dimension to be absorbed. Instead, the energy instantly snapped back through the rift into Luke's domain. It hadn't stolen a single drop!
Back in his domain, Luke checked his interface. His maximum energy capacity hadn't dropped, and his ninja count remained exactly the same. 'So much for stealing my energy, idiot.'
The enemy Lord looked genuinely stunned. "How are you forcefully recalling dark energy from within my domain? What is this sorcery?"
Frowning deeply, the Lord raised its hand. Instantly, an army of over ten thousand grotesque creatures surged forward, charging blindly toward the rift leading to Luke's domain.
Unlike the Shadowkhan, these creatures weren't energy constructs; they were physical beings the Lord had conquered and transported from various material planes. Because they were expendable physical fodder, the Lord had zero hesitation in throwing them into the meat grinder.
"I don't care what secrets you hide! Once I slaughter you, your dimension will shatter and revert to raw energy!" the Lord roared.
The massive horde crashed into the vanguard of Shadow Ninjas stationed just inside the enemy dimension.
Seeing the overwhelming tide of enemies, Luke immediately ordered all ninjas currently outside his command radius to voluntarily dissipate and respawn back inside his domain, forming a tight defensive phalanx around the rift. The few ninjas still caught in the enemy dimension fought desperately to stall the horde, buying him precious seconds.
After the stalling force was inevitably overwhelmed by sheer numbers, Luke finished assembling his defensive line.
Staring at the endless swarm of monsters pouring through the rift, Luke rapidly calculated his odds. 'Excluding the enemy Lord, the individual grunts are significantly weaker than my ninjas. But they outnumber me twenty to one. And with my current energy reserves, I can only summon about a hundred more ninjas. That won't change the tide of battle. I'm playing defensively.'
'Let's see how this plays out. My ninjas don't feel pain, don't fatigue, and respawn infinitely! Let's see who breaks first!'
As the first wave of monsters crashed into the Shadowkhan phalanx, the brutal war of attrition began.