Marvel's Strongest Mage

What a magnificent display of chaos this arms expo had become.

Iron Man streaked through the sky, crimson and gold glinting in the moonlight. Behind him, a swarm of Iron Soldiers gave chase—dozens of autonomous drones, armed and ruthless, tearing through the air like metal locusts.

Their bullets screamed past Stark's armored frame, but none found purchase. The gold-titanium alloy shell of the Mark VI suit absorbed the impacts like rain on steel.

Ivan Vanko had built something formidable. There was no denying it.

These Iron Soldiers—while lacking the finesse of Stark's suits—were engineered with power cores that rivaled, if not surpassed, the old palladium arc reactor Stark had once relied upon. A sobering truth, considering that reactor had been born from desperation in a desert cave… but its blueprints were never truly Stark's.

Anton Vanko had built it first. Decades ago. Forgotten. Exiled. Doomed to die in obscurity.

Now, his son had turned that legacy into vengeance.

If not for Stark's breakthrough—the synthetic element modeled after the energy signature of the Tesseract—the outcome of this night might've been very different. Without that new core, this chase could've ended with Iron Man falling from the sky.

But fate had chosen a side.

The Iron Soldiers roared past buildings, unleashing firestorms below. Their munitions didn't scratch Stark's armor—but they annihilated everything else.

Cars exploded. Pavement cracked. Streetlamps burst in showers of sparks. The ground became a battlefield.

Despite their lethal firepower, the Iron Soldiers had one fatal flaw.

They weren't built to last.

Stark's suits were passion projects. Personalized, customized, and forged with obsessive perfectionism. Justin Hammer's bots, on the other hand, were mass-produced, cost-optimized, and corner-cut at every turn.

No gold-titanium alloy. No intelligent targeting. No adaptive learning.

Just machines.

Stark looped back toward the Expo. His new plan was clear: lead them into a trap.

At the heart of the Expo stood a massive globe-shaped structure—an architectural marvel of interwoven steel beams, rings, and support mechanisms.

A monument… and a blueprint.

Stark dove through the rings effortlessly, weaving between girders with practiced grace.

However, the Iron Soldiers didn't have the grace that he had.

One by one, they collided with the reinforced steel structure, shattering on impact. Metal debris and flame erupted like fireworks. The globe became a tomb for drones.

Stark didn't linger. He soared skyward again, peeling away from the wreckage. But Daniel, who had arrived minutes earlier, remained below, watching the inferno with eyes that saw beyond the flames.

He wasn't here for the fight.

He was here for the knowledge.

The massive steel globe was more than just an art piece. It was the physical framework Howard Stark had embedded with a secret: the lattice pattern of a new atomic structure, one capable of unlocking a new element—a synthetic miracle.

And Daniel had memorized every line of it.

The flames had only made the details clearer.

As a mage, Daniel's mental focus was far beyond that of a normal human. Not quite photographic memory, but close. When he concentrated, he could replicate entire magical arrays, blueprints, or linguistic scripts from a single observation.

And tonight, he'd seen enough.

The spherical outer shell, the internal support bars, the mathematically spaced nodes—they formed the molecular framework for Stark's new element. With time and recalibration, Daniel could refine it further. The globe was imperfect. It had suffered wear, repairs, and vandalism. He would fix all of that in his own schematics.

He stepped forward.

The inferno parted for him.

Though Daniel had long since evolved past his early days with flame and nature magic, fire remained in his blood. Even under Earth's sluggish magical pressure, he could still command it with grace. The blaze bent around him, curling away like a living thing avoiding its master.

He didn't leave immediately.

Because the globe wasn't the only secret buried here.

This entire expo—the land, the layout, the walkways and lights, and trees—was built atop the blueprint of something greater. Howard Stark had designed this place with vision. The small sand table Tony used to create the new element was just a model. This was the full-scale version.

And Daniel intended to memorize all of it.

He moved silently through the grounds, eyes cataloging every structure. The paths, the columns, the lighting rigs, even the shape of the water fountains. Each detail could be important. Especially when reconstructing Howard's original particle lattice.

But blueprints weren't enough.

When he returned, he would need to acquire all archival photos of the Expo—construction phases, renovations, every modification made since Howard's death. Something told him the elder Stark had embedded more than just one secret here.

Because creating a new element was just a step.

Creating a replica of Cosmic Cube particles—the real goal—was something else entirely.

Daniel didn't just want Stark's synthetic energy source. He wanted the real thing.

If he could locate the actual spatial energy particles the Cube was made of—if he could absorb or manipulate them—then even without the Tesseract, even without a single Infinity Stone, he might still wield the powers they granted.

Survival after Thanos' snap.

Freedom from Time.

Control over Space.

He didn't need all the Stones. Just one might be enough.

But such thoughts had to wait.

Because not all Iron Soldiers had left with Stark.

Several remained grounded—those without flight capabilities. They patrolled the Expo ruins like mindless sentries. And so far, none had seen Daniel.

His invisibility technique bent light perfectly. It wasn't simple cloaking. It was silence. Pressurelessness. Erasure.

But still, one misstep could ruin everything.

As he crossed through the last gazebo on the far end of the grounds, he heard it.

A low whine. Servo whirring. Metal footsteps.

Then—gunfire.

The Iron Soldier burst into view, arms raised, twin barrels lighting up like a storm.

Daniel didn't flinch.

A shimmering energy barrier snapped into place with a twist of his wrist. Bullets struck harmlessly against it, slowed midair and dispersed into heat.

In the same breath, Daniel blurred forward.

One flash of his blade—a slim arcane edge of condensed force—and the drone's arc reactor fell neatly into his waiting hand.

The timing detonation system? Severed.

The Soldier took half a step back.

Daniel thrust a flame sphere into its chest.

Boom.

The explosion rocked the area—scrap metal flew in all directions.

By that time, Daniel was already gone.

And then, one by one, the grounded Iron Soldiers began detonating.

A ghost was among them.

But Ivan Vanko wasn't watching. He was too consumed with his real obsession: Tony Stark.

As Hammer Industries' servers were breached, as Natasha Romanoff tore through guards, as Pepper Potts stormed the labs—Ivan prepared for his finale.

Far from the Expo, in Central Park, the true battle had begun.

Stark and Rhodes fought back to back, carving through drones like they were paper dolls. Repulsors flashed. Gatling cannons spun. Explosions erupted in showers of sparks.

It wasn't a battle. It was a massacre as Hammer's soldiers were embarrassingly outmatched.

Their bullets couldn't pierce Stark's armor. Their targeting systems couldn't keep up. Their armor cracked under pressure. Their joints seized. Their software lagged.

In one burst of light, Stark fired a spiraling cross-beam that sliced through drones and forest alike. Entire rows of machines and trees were felled in one clean cut.

Rhodes froze. "Damn."

Daniel, now nearby, halted as well, hidden just out of sight.

That attack wouldn't have hurt him, but it would've exposed him.

Now came the real finale.

Because from the sky, with a thunderous impact, something massive crashed down.

A towering metal figure—over three meters tall—rose from the crater.

The final Iron Soldier.

No.

Ivan Vanko.

The real battle had begun.