Chapter Ninety-Six: Acquiring Vibranium

Once Ulysses Klaue had been brought back to the main world, two soldiers in powered exoskeleton armor immediately stepped forward and forced him to the ground.

He had to be admired as a ruthless old titan; the moment the stun charge ceased for an instant, he tried to rise and resist. But inside the temporary base, escaping was nothing more than a dream.

This was nothing like Wakanda, where the guards were merely a band of spear-wielding natives who fancied themselves superior in technology.

Inside the temporary base were gathered the finest special forces from across the globe, and outside, vast numbers of troops stood ready to respond to any emergency.

After handing Ulysses Klaue over to the soldiers who came to take him, Wang Jing immediately donned his armor and then teleported the long-waiting plane expeditionary force into the Marvel world.

The sudden appearance of the plane expeditionary force left Klaue's men momentarily stunned, but their fingers on the triggers made the choice for them. Yet the bullets they fired at the soldiers in powered exoskeleton armor were either deflected or warped and jammed against the hard plating.

As for the expeditionary force, the moment they appeared in the Marvel world, they raised their weapons and opened fire on the surrounding soldiers. Their overwhelming firepower instantly pinned Klaue's men so completely that they could not even lift their heads.

At the rear, Liu Peiqiang, still seated on the ground, struggled to pull off the energy shield generator that had grown hot from overload against his chest, then cast it aside. Pain twisted his face as he clutched his chest, which throbbed from the impact.

"Are you all right?" Wang Jing hurried over and asked, reaching out to help him up, only to be stopped by Liu Peiqiang.

"Wait, don't move. I think my ribs are broken."

"Then I'll send you back." With that, he returned Liu Peiqiang to the main world, and with the help of the nearby soldiers, carried him into a medical pod.

When he was lifted up, the broken ribs pierced his organs, and the pain sent veins bulging across Liu Peiqiang's forehead. After crying out several times, he fainted from the agony.

But under the care of the medical pod, Liu Peiqiang soon woke again. Even so, the tear-searing pain from moments ago remained vivid in his memory.

He had been injured on missions before, back when he served in the military, but never had he suffered the breaking of several ribs followed by such violent displacement as he had today.

That wrenching torment felt as though four steel needles had been driven straight through his body. Jesus himself, back then, had probably suffered only that much.

Once he was certain that Liu Peiqiang was fine, Wang Jing took the second wave of the plane expeditionary force back to the Marvel world.

The arrival of the follow-up troops finally stripped the last of Klaue's men of any will to resist. Had the cruise ship's interior not been so cramped, forcing Wang Jing to teleport only a dozen or so at a time, the expeditionary force would already have occupied the entire vessel and there would have been no need to move in two batches.

After the cruise ship was fully secured, the expeditionary force began transporting the mission target, vibranium. Of course, alongside the vibranium were the various files stored in Klaue's office.

To Wang Jing's surprise, among those files they actually found the method for processing vibranium. Though crude at first glance, it was still better than having nothing at all.

Once everything of value had been removed, the expeditionary force began planting explosives throughout the cruise ship.

After sending all the people and the vibranium back to the main world, Wang Jing left the ship and flew toward Wakanda.

Not long after his departure, the abandoned cruise ship stranded on the beach erupted in a violent explosion, the blast tearing the entire vessel apart.

Even after the first detonation, there were still occasional secondary explosions from within the hull, where orange-red flames burned.

Those were shells, missiles, and the like, set off by the heat. That was the main reason the abandoned cruise ship had been blown to such a ruinous state.

After all, the handful of explosives the expeditionary force had planted could never have produced such tremendous force.

Back in the main world, once the vibranium had been obtained, Song Guohua immediately locked it away in a dedicated vault, taking out only one canister as consumable material for experiments and research.

The first group to receive an allocation was the second-generation Arc Reactor research team led by Jiang Ning and the Vanko father and son.

Using the acquired technology, they fashioned the vibranium into a ring no larger than a button, then Anton Vanko carefully placed it into the fixture inside the particle accelerator.

"The vibranium is in place. The particle accelerator can be started now," Anton Vanko said.

"Understood. Hurry out. The accelerator has already begun startup," Jiang Ning replied while operating the machine.

With the electrical supply of an entire city behind it, the particles inside the accelerator were driven to 99.999 percent of the speed of light.

Seen from outside, it looked as though a beam of laser light were racing through the accelerator's tunnel.

"The energy has reached the critical point!" Even in the control room, more than a hundred meters away, one could clearly feel the ground trembling beneath their feet.

"Begin bombardment of the target!" Jiang Ning said as he operated the controls, reciting the procedure aloud.

Through the camera inside the tunnel, they could see the vibranium being struck by the laser and rapidly blazing with brilliant light. Soon the brightness exceeded the camera's exposure limit, and the screen could show only a field of white glare, nothing else.

Ten seconds later, according to plan, Jiang Ning shut down the particle accelerator. As soon as it stopped, the tremors in the ground vanished as well. The cooling modules kicked into full operation, and the roaring of the fans sounded like an aircraft engine. To someone unaware of the truth, it might even have seemed that a plane was taking off nearby.

After waiting two minutes, the Vanko father and son, who had volunteered themselves, put on their exoskeleton armor and entered the particle accelerator.

Anton Vanko used a pair of tweezers to carefully lift the glowing white ring from the fixture, then placed it onto the second-generation Arc Reactor held by Ivan Vanko.

As the ring and the reactor's groove aligned perfectly, a thin glass layer sealed it in place, and immediately afterward a bright light flared up rapidly at the base of the reactor.

Seeing the Arc Reactor gradually stabilize, both father and son Vanko wore exhilarated smiles of triumph.

"Father, we did it!" Ivan Vanko said excitedly.

"It was the result of everyone's efforts," Anton Vanko replied with a calm smile.

The people in the control room, having witnessed the entire process, erupted into cheers.

This was the beginning of a small-scale energy revolution. With the second-generation Arc Reactor, all the devices that had previously been forced to remain on the drawing board because of energy limitations could finally be brought to life.

For example, the small drones on the Helicarrier had previously remained trapped in the supercomputer's database because energy constraints prevented a proper balance between weaponry and propulsion. Now, with the second-generation Arc Reactor, firepower and thrust would no longer be a problem, and energy shields could even be added to improve their defenses.

Wang Jing's own powered exoskeleton armor, along with that of the plane expeditionary force, could also undergo a major upgrade, outfitted with far more powerful electromagnetic weapons and the laser armaments they had previously been forced to abandon because of energy shortages.