Luke watched the sudden, majestic arrival of the Ancient One and nodded in approval. Since the ultimate carry had arrived, he was perfectly content to let her do all the work while he sat back and watched.
Without hesitation, Luke channeled the entirety of his 800-point dark energy reserve directly into her. Bolstered by the sudden influx of pure power, the Ancient One immediately cast a massive spell, dragging Andrews and the surrounding battlefield into the Mirror Dimension.
Andrews felt the spatial shift instantly. He spun around, staring at the golden-robed woman in absolute horror.
"Impossible! How can you casually forge a parallel dimension tied to the material plane?!"
The Ancient One didn't bother answering. With a simple flick of her wrist, the very fabric of space around Andrews violently twisted and warped.
Andrews' eyes widened. He desperately erupted with every type of arcane energy he possessed, hurling devastating spells at her. But the Ancient One casually batted them aside, neutralizing his attacks as effortlessly as swiping away a child's flailing fists.
She calmly raised a hand, and an invisible force seized Andrews by the throat, lifting him into the air. Staring into his terrified, bulging eyes, the Ancient One showed zero hesitation or mercy. A jagged, golden mandala flared to life in the air beside him, sweeping cleanly through his neck and instantly severing his head from his body.
Watching the dimensional lord—who had just fought him to a complete standstill—get casually swatted like a fly, Luke could only mentally chant, 'All hail the Sorcerer Supreme!'
The Ancient One turned and looked at Luke.
"If my dark energy supply hadn't suddenly been cut off, I would have had no idea you were in trouble," she sighed, waving a hand to dissolve the Mirror Dimension.
"You got lucky this time. Your Shadow Dimension is currently anchored very close to Earth, so I could easily cross over to replenish my reserves directly from the source. But if you ever venture further into the multiverse, you absolutely must not sever the connection, or I will very likely die."
Luke nodded earnestly. As the Mirror Dimension faded, they returned to his personal Shadow Dimension. However, he still couldn't sense the ambient space around him; Andrews' arcane sealing chains were still active.
Luke immediately shifted his internal energy flow, establishing a direct supply line to the Ancient One while siphoning a portion of his regeneration to slowly grind down the arcane seal holding him hostage.
Looking at the remaining enemy forces scattered across the battlefield, Luke ordered his Shadowkhan to launch a full-scale counter-invasion through the spatial rift, intending to completely conquer Andrews' now-leaderless dimension.
The Ancient One walked over to the glowing rift, peering into the conquered realm for a moment. When she returned, she pulled out the leather-bound ledger she had given Luke and jotted down several new coordinates.
"These are the coordinates for the micro-dimensions he was actively plundering. They are currently ownerless, meaning you can harvest them without issue. And given your current strength, you will mine them far faster than he ever could."
She glanced at the glowing arcane chains still restricting Luke. "However, I suggest you break that seal quickly. If your connection to your Shadow Dimension remains severed for too long, it will eventually revert to a masterless state. If that happens, I won't be able to enter it so easily next time."
She looked at Luke with a hint of mild surprise. "I must say, you are growing stronger at an astonishing rate. Still... it is not quite enough."
Luke smiled wryly. Even with his terrifying regeneration rate of 480 points per second, he still couldn't provide enough energy for her to fight at full power; she had only been able to flex a fraction of her true strength. He clearly had a long way to go.
After inspecting his domain for a few more minutes, the Ancient One instructed him to visit Kamar-Taj once he broke the seal to pick up a new list of coordinates, then promptly vanished.
According to her, she had spent the last few months aggressively rewriting the foundational structures of Kamar-Taj's magic. She was slowly transitioning the source of their spells so that once Luke became powerful enough, the sorcerers could draw entirely upon his pure energy rather than relying on dangerous extradimensional entities.
Luke didn't mind at all. He rarely fought in person anyway, preferring to command his army from the backlines. Plus, supplying them didn't lower his maximum energy capacity, and in exchange, he basically cemented the Ancient One as his personal, permanent bodyguard. It was a flawless trade.
However, the immediate aftermath was incredibly boring. Since he was still cut off from his domain, he couldn't use it to travel back to the material world. The Ancient One hadn't bothered to take him with her, leaving him stranded to slowly grind down the arcane seal.
'Did she intentionally leave me here so I wouldn't run around causing trouble until the seal broke?' he wondered suspiciously.
Thankfully, the Shadow Ninjas could still travel back and forth to Earth to bring him takeout, otherwise he might have actually starved to death in his own dimension.
Five agonizing days later, Luke finally shattered the arcane chains and re-established his connection to the Shadow Dimension.
He immediately routed the dark energy directly from his domain to the Ancient One, then firmly re-anchored himself to the dimension. Having survived the battle and the subsequent isolation, Luke realized he no longer needed the System to manually manage these connections; he could control them purely with his own will.
Shadow-stepping back to the material world, Luke flopped onto his plush hotel bed and let out a long, satisfied groan.
He grabbed his phone. Since he hadn't had any signal in the Shadow Dimension, he had ordered his ninjas to pirate a bunch of DC comics for him to read.
Unlocking the screen, he was surprised to see over a dozen unread text messages. Most of them were from Tony, with a few frantic messages from Coulson mixed in.
Frowning, Luke decided to call Tony first.
Across the country, a pale, shivering Tony Stark stared down at the massive, gaping hole in his chest. Obadiah Stane had just used a sonic paralyzer on him, forcefully ripped the Arc Reactor from his chest, and left him on the living room couch to die of cardiac arrest.
As his heart struggled to beat without the electromagnet keeping the shrapnel at bay, his phone suddenly lit up. Seeing Luke's name on the caller ID, Tony felt a desperate surge of hope and weakly answered the call.
"Hey, Tony. I was tied up for a few days. What's going on?"
"Luke... can you get here? Obadiah... he took the reactor," Tony gasped out, using every ounce of his remaining strength.
"Wait, what? Hang on, I'll be right there!" Luke was shocked that the plot had advanced this quickly. He immediately drew a portal with his Sling Ring and stepped through.
(Author's Note: In this setting, the Sling Ring portals can only be opened within the material plane and the Mirror Dimension. The Ancient One used a different method to enter the Shadow Dimension earlier).
Tony stared in sheer disbelief as a circle of golden sparks flared to life in his living room, and Luke casually stepped out of it.
Without missing a beat, a Shadow Ninja darted down into Tony's basement workshop, grabbed his original, glass-encased Arc Reactor (the one engraved with 'Proof That Tony Stark Has a Heart'), sprinted back upstairs, and expertly jammed it into Tony's chest cavity.
The moment the reactor clicked into place, color flooded back into Tony's face.
Gasping for air, Tony stumbled down to the workshop, threw open a hidden vault, and began suiting up in the newly painted red-and-gold Mark III armor.
"Obadiah... he's the one who orchestrated my kidnapping," Tony panted as the robotic arms bolted the heavy plating onto him. "Sorry, kid. I shouldn't have suspected you."
As the final faceplate locked into place, Tony prepared to blast off. Obadiah had explicitly threatened Pepper, and she was currently at Stark Industries!
"Tony?! Where are you?!" Rhodey's panicked voice echoed from upstairs.
"Hey, Rhodey! Down here!" Tony yelled back.
Rhodey sprinted down the stairs and froze, staring at the gleaming, fully armed Iron Man suit. "Tony... what the hell are you wearing?"
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"Uh, my new prosthetic?" Tony deflected. "Anyway, what are you doing here?"
Rhodey glanced warily at Luke, having no idea how the kid was always seemingly involved in Tony's near-death experiences. "Pepper called me. She said Obadiah was behind your kidnapping. She asked me to come secure you."
"Well, you're a little late for that," Tony sighed. "Where's Pepper now?"
"She went to Sector 16 at Stark Industries with five S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to arrest Obadiah."
"Five agents aren't going to be enough," Tony said grimly, recalling Obadiah's gloating about building his own massive suit of armor. He turned to Luke. "Kid, can you use that sparkly door thing to get me to Stark Industries? Pepper is in serious danger."
Luke nodded. He raised his hand and traced a circle, opening a portal directly to the Stark Industries plaza.
"Holy..." Rhodey whispered, staring at the magical gateway in pure shock.
"Hey, Rhodey! You coming or what?" Tony called out, stepping through the portal with Luke.
"Uh... yeah. Okay," Rhodey muttered, cautiously stepping through the golden sparks.
"By the way, I need you both to keep the portal thing a secret," Luke warned them as the gateway snapped shut behind them.
He wasn't worried about Tony, but Rhodey was a high-ranking military officer. If the Pentagon found out Luke had unrestricted, untraceable global teleportation, they would hound him to the ends of the earth.
"Tony?" a surprised voice called out from the darkness.
The three of them spun around to see Pepper Potts standing near the entrance, looking incredibly relieved.
"Pepper! Thank God," Tony exhaled, his metal shoulders dropping. At least she hadn't gone inside yet.
"Luke? What are you doing here?" Coulson asked, stepping out from the shadows with his team of agents. "And why haven't you been returning my messages?"
Before Luke could even attempt to craft a lie, the concrete pavement beneath their feet violently exploded upward.
A massive, hulking behemoth of steel erupted from the underground laboratory, towering over the group.
"The Iron Monger?" Luke stared up at the mechanical monstrosity in utter confusion, then turned to Tony. "I thought you said your prototype suit would have melted in the explosion!"
"It should have! A chain reaction of that magnitude definitely would have destroyed it!" Tony argued defensively.
"Wait, did a chain reaction actually happen?!"
"Yes!"
"Oh. Never mind then."
Ignoring Tony's highly confused glare, Luke turned his attention back to the Iron Monger.
This wasn't his Shadow Dimension. The ambient dark energy here was practically non-existent. The absolute maximum offensive power he could unleash was tied solely to the 800-point reserve stored in his body.
While an 800-point dark energy blast hit with the kinetic force of a tank shell—which was incredibly powerful—Luke highly doubted it would be enough to completely destroy the Iron Monger. Tony's Mark III armor could casually withstand a direct tank round, and there was no way this oversized steel Goliath had weaker armor than Tony.
"Coulson," Luke sighed, rubbing his forehead. "I highly doubt your standard-issue handguns are going to do anything against that. I strongly suggest you pull back and evacuate any civilians in the area."
Luke glanced around at the gathering crowd. Gawking at disasters wasn't exclusive to his past life; Americans apparently loved playing with death too, as several idiots were actively running toward the giant killer robot with their cellphones out to record.
Realizing the kid was absolutely right, Coulson nodded. He quickly ordered his agents to grab Pepper and Rhodey and begin aggressively pushing the civilian crowd back, leaving Tony and Luke alone to face the Iron Monger.
"Will your ninjas actually work against that thing?" Tony asked quietly over his suit's external speakers.
"We'll find out," Luke replied, though he honestly wasn't sure.
While a single Shadow Ninja now possessed eight times the physical strength of a normal human, and the Razor Claws were devastatingly fast, this was a heavily armored walking tank.
Dozens of Shadow Ninjas boiled out of the darkness behind Luke. Inside the Iron Monger, Obadiah frowned, having no idea what these shadowy freaks were. But fueled by the sheer, intoxicating power of the Arc Reactor humming in his massive chest, Obadiah felt completely invincible.
He raised his right arm, spinning up the massive rotary Gatling gun, and unleashed a roaring torrent of bullets at the ninjas.
The Shadowkhan didn't flinch. They charged directly into the line of fire. It took dozens of high-caliber rounds to shred a single ninja, but the endless wave of bodies threw themselves forward, physically blocking the bullets with their sheer numbers to cover their comrades' advance.
While the main force drew fire, several ninjas attempted to flank the mech, only to be blown away by a cluster of micro-missiles. But they were just the distraction.
With blinding speed, a squad of Razor Claws darted out from the shadows, leaping directly onto the Iron Monger's chassis. Their conical steel feet sparked against the armor, and their razor-sharp spiked fingers tore deep, jagged gouges into the thick metal plating.
Taking advantage of the chaos, the surviving Shadow Ninjas swarmed the mech like ants on a beetle. Combining their 8x enhanced physical strength, the swarm actually managed to violently tackle the massive Iron Monger, sending it crashing to the pavement.
Luke stepped forward, bringing the mechanical behemoth within his 20-meter command radius. He ordered the ninjas to shrink into the shadows, intending for them to slip through the tiny gaps in the armor, infiltrate the cockpit, and silently assassinate Obadiah.
However, to Luke's shock, it didn't work.
The interior of the Iron Monger was a dense, chaotic labyrinth of high-voltage wiring. The massive, unstable electrical currents surging from the stolen Arc Reactor created an intense electromagnetic field that severely disrupted the ninjas' shadow-walking ability.
Many of the ninjas managed to slip inside, but the dense electrical maze slowed their incorporeal forms to a crawl.
Luke clicked his tongue in annoyance. High-voltage electricity was technically a form of pure energy, and in massive, erratic quantities, it could briefly interfere with dark energy constructs. Normally, the few wires in a brick wall didn't bother them at all, but the Iron Monger was essentially a walking power plant.
Still, it was only a minor delay. Given a minute or two, the ninjas would inevitably navigate the maze and reach the cockpit. All they had to do was keep the Iron Monger pinned down.
But of course, things never went that smoothly.
Realizing he was completely overwhelmed on the ground, Obadiah roared in frustration and ignited his massive thrusters. The sheer concussive force of the jet engines blasted the entire swarm of ninjas off his chassis, launching the Iron Monger high into the sky.
As the massive suit blasted out of Luke's 20-meter command radius, the few ninjas that had managed to slip inside the armor were violently ripped out of their shadow forms. Forced to solidify in the cramped, heavily armored gaps between the gears, they were instantly crushed to death.
"Damn it!" Luke cursed. If Obadiah had stayed on the ground for just thirty more seconds, he would have been a dead man.
Tony immediately ignited his own repulsors, taking to the sky to pursue. "He's probably not going to land again! Can you fly?!"
Luke sighed. His ninjas couldn't fly, and while he could theoretically propel himself through the air using pure dark energy blasts, it was incredibly inefficient and far slower than just running on the ground.
"Wait, Tony! Hold on!" Luke yelled, a brilliant idea flashing through his mind.
He shadow-stepped rapidly across the plaza, leaped into the air, and completely dissolved into darkness, splashing directly onto the surface of Tony's red-and-gold armor.
"What the hell?!" Tony yelped, startled as Luke vanished, only for thick, pitch-black streaks to suddenly coat the sleek surface of the Mark III.
"I'm hitching a ride in my shadow form," Luke's voice echoed directly from the dark patches on the suit. "Get close and ram him! When you make contact, I'll jump over to his armor!"
"Not a bad trick," Tony praised, banking hard and rocketing after Obadiah.
"Hey, chrome-dome! Where do you think you're going?!" Tony yelled, firing two concentrated repulsor blasts that slammed into the Iron Monger's back, dealing absolutely zero damage to the thick plating.
Obadiah mocked him over the comms, attempting to return fire with his Gatling gun and shoulder-mounted rockets. However, he quickly realized the weapons were completely unresponsive; the Razor Claws had thoroughly shredded the external targeting arrays and ammo feeds during the initial swarm.
Furious and out of ranged options, Obadiah did the only thing he could think of. He fired his thrusters to max and turned around, intending to ram Tony head-on. He refused to believe his massive, heavily armored suit would lose a game of chicken against Tony's sleek, fragile toy!
As expected, the massive Iron Monger slammed into the Mark III, sending Tony spiraling violently out of control.
But in that brief moment of physical contact, Obadiah completely missed the streak of pitch-black darkness that flawlessly transferred from Tony's armor onto his own.
"Hello there, asshole!"
Luke's voice whispered directly into Obadiah's ear, nearly causing the older man to suffer a heart attack.
"Who is that?!" Obadiah roared, furiously scanning his HUD, assuming someone had hacked his encrypted comms channel.
Instead of an answer, Luke physically manifested directly on the back of the Iron Monger.
Channeling his maximum output of dark energy into his fist, Luke delivered a devastating, tank-shattering punch squarely against the back of the Iron Monger's helmet. The sheer kinetic impact, amplified by the corrosive nature of the dark energy, left a massive, fist-shaped crater in the thick armor plating.
"You little rat!" Obadiah screamed, reading the massive structural damage alert flashing across his HUD. He blindly swung a massive metal arm backward to swat Luke off.
Luke instantly melted back into the shadows on the armor's surface, flawlessly dodging the blow before popping back out near the suit's neck joint.
Condensing his dark energy into a razor-sharp, crackling blade, Luke slashed fiercely at the exposed gears and wiring at the base of the helmet. The highly corrosive dark energy instantly ate through the protective casing, leaving a deep, jagged gash that exposed the interior cockpit.
Sensing a genuine threat to his life, Obadiah panicked. He began pulling wild, erratic aerial maneuvers—barrel rolls, steep dives, and sharp banks—desperately trying to shake Luke off his back.
Unable to maintain his physical grip against the G-forces, Luke was forced to retreat fully into his shadow form, clinging to the surface of the Iron Monger like a stubborn leech.
Knowing he'd probably get launched off if he tried to manifest his physical body again, Luke changed tactics. Utilizing the jagged gash he had just carved into the neck joint, he began rapidly summoning Shadow Ninjas directly into the exposed opening.
Fighting off the nausea from his own erratic flying, Obadiah gritted his teeth, determined to shake the kid off.
Suddenly, he felt something cold press against his throat.
He froze completely.
A gleaming, razor-sharp katana had slid through the gap in the armor from behind, resting gently against his carotid artery.
"Alright, that's enough," Luke's voice echoed coldly from the shadows. "Take us down. Now. Unless you want this blade to accidentally slip."
In the distance, Tony had finally stabilized his flight path. He watched helplessly as Obadiah pulled off a series of insane aerial maneuvers. Knowing his Mark III couldn't match the sheer brute strength of the Iron Monger, and lacking any weaponry capable of penetrating its thick armor, Tony felt incredibly frustrated.
'First thing I do when I get back to the lab... design armor-piercing munitions,' Tony grumbled to himself.
Just as he locked in his next R&D project, he watched in utter confusion as the Iron Monger suddenly stopped all evasive maneuvers and began a slow, completely compliant descent back toward the ground.
'What just happened?'
Tony followed him down. The Iron Monger landed softly on the plaza and stood completely still. A moment later, Luke peeled himself off the chassis, dropping casually to the pavement.
"What's going on, Luke?" Tony asked, landing heavily beside him.
Luke waved at Tony, then turned back to the towering Iron Monger.
"Open the suit. Now."