Chapter 77: Shaking Hands and Making Peace?

New York. Outside the exhibition hall, on the plaza.

Luke lay in the cockpit, breathing heavily, his hand gripping the dragon-horn joystick slick with sweat. The difficulty of dealing with the Mark VI far exceeded his expectations. The main reason was vibranium.

He had gravely underestimated vibranium; in reality, it was even more formidable than he knew, practically a bug in the system. This metal was not only indestructible and capable of absorbing nearly any form of energy, but its most outrageous trait was its ability to store and reuse the energy it had absorbed.

Just now, Luke had unleashed a demonic energy slash, the edge of his sword aura grazing Tony. Yet, apart from being blasted back over a hundred meters, Tony's Iron Man suit remained unscathed. In fact, it only spurred a counterattack—the chest-mounted repulsor cannon fired back at him. The energy within this blast, beyond the arc reactor's inherent magical power, even contained the energy waves of Asura.

“Vibranium is just insane!” Luke was so envious he nearly drooled.

Inside the cockpit, several red warning lights flashed incessantly beside Luke's small face. This signaled internal damage to the War Lord's structure. After running diagnostics, Christina reported that the War Lord’s main body had already sustained seven percent damage, though it could continue to fight. Most of this damage came from Tony’s exceptionally powerful chest-mounted repulsor cannon. In comparison, the short, sharp palm arc pulse cannons posed no threat at all, and after a few uses, Tony abandoned them.

Their inability to threaten the War Lord was not the main reason; the crucial point was that every time a pulse cannon struck, Tony would inexplicably get struck by lightning. He still couldn’t figure out the principle behind this. JARVIS had no answer either.

By now, both had exhausted nearly all the tricks at their disposal. Even Tony’s flashiest move from Iron Man 2, the high-energy laser rotary cutter, had made an appearance. In the film, Tony and Rhodey, surrounded by a horde of Iron Soldiers, have Tony tell Rhodey to duck, and then fire twin red laser beams from his palms, executing a spectacular spin and wiping out all the enemy soldiers in one go. This high-energy laser cutter seemed to be a one-off weapon, usable only once per battle.

Unfortunately, Tony aimed both hands at Luke and kept the twin high-energy lasers on him for a full ten seconds. The result? Only a mocking retort from Luke.

At the end of the day, a laser is just an electromagnetic wave, dealing electrical and thermal damage to its target.

But for adamantium, which could withstand temperatures up to five hundred thousand degrees Celsius without the slightest deformation, it was little more than a tickle. Luke was well aware of his mecha's weakness: vulnerability to kinetic energy. But when it came to heat or electricity, the adamantium plating on the surface made him nearly immune.

Tony, however, didn’t know this. All he saw was that no matter what attack he tried, the monstrous thing before him—bigger even than Iron Monger—barely budged. Only the chest repulsor cannon, gathering all the reactor’s energy, could shake it even slightly.

Tony rated the War Lord as a far greater threat than Iron Monger.

The Mark VI was an all-purpose suit, equipped for every conceivable scenario—even underwater operations. Besides the weapons already deployed, it also carried several types of small missiles. Among these were dozens of micro armor-piercing rounds. The Iron Man suit had micro launchers on its shoulders—used in the film to battle Whiplash.

After careful consideration, Tony decided not to use these armor-piercing rounds. Adamantium was not something that shells could penetrate. Yet, he didn't realize that had he used them, the result would have been quite effective. While the shells couldn’t pierce the War Lord’s surface, their kinetic force would still deliver internal shock damage.

In the end, Tony even remembered his last ace: an anti-tank missile. This was his special weapon for heavy targets, used in the Middle East to destroy tanks—and the behemoth in front of him fit the bill perfectly. Still, Tony ultimately gave up on that idea. The Apostle had provoked him repeatedly, and the two were clearly at odds, but it hadn't come to the point of using a missile.

Tony glanced around—the beautiful plaza was now utterly destroyed. Things had clearly escalated. The devastation the two of them caused tonight was several times worse than what Hammer’s Iron Soldiers had wrought. Well, Tony’s gaze fell on the half-collapsed exhibition hall in the distance—the damage was at least dozens of times worse.

All of it was the Apostle’s doing. The other fought with no concern for collateral damage.

Tony couldn’t care less about repair costs. What he wanted to know was just how much longer he was expected to fight. From the start, this battle had felt inexplicable to him.

At the very moment Tony abandoned the thought of launching a missile at Luke, Luke silently pulled from his storage space the only adamantium grenade he had ever made. After a moment’s thought, he put it away again. Like Tony, Luke bore no deep grudge against him; he was only here to rack up points, and there was no need to use the ultimate weapon. This thing would devastate everything within a kilometer, friend or foe, and even he himself would not escape unharmed.

“Apostle, we need to talk,” Tony called from thirty meters away.

“About what?” Luke’s tone softened a bit. Lotus had just informed him that his mission had already earned an A-grade. In Lotus’ words, Luke’s troublemaking tonight had reached a perfect level of shamelessness. He’d done enough.

An A-grade meant a blueprint for a divine-tier sword weapon, from Lotus’ years of collection.

“I don’t think there’s any need for us to keep fighting.” Tony pointed to the ravaged plaza, then at the cowering reporters in the distance. “I don’t see any reason to escalate this any further. As much as I dislike you, this fight is pointless. You must know you can’t beat me.”

“Oh? Is that your idea of a truce?” Luke curled his lip inside the mecha.

“If you want to fight, we can arrange another time and place. But not tonight—things are already bad enough here,” Tony said. Moments earlier, he’d taken several calls, including one from the President and another from Nick Fury, both ordering him to stand down immediately.

Luke shrugged the War Lord’s massive shoulders. “Makes no difference to me. How about we shake hands and call it a night?”

“Shake hands?” Tony eyed him warily, unmoving.

Luke lumbered the mecha forward with heavy steps. “Just a handshake, don’t worry. Trust me, I tried it earlier—a punch from me didn’t kill you.”

Tony wondered how, given the other’s size, they were meant to shake hands at all.

“Up to your old tricks again,” he thought, fully aware of Luke’s style and suspecting the Apostle was up to something. Yet, he couldn’t figure out exactly what Luke intended this time.