He has set traps around the targets that Kelvin is likely to go after, such as the Patriarch and the members of his cabal. But those aren't working anymore, so he wants to create something else that can draw Kelvin out of his hiding place.
Now that he has drawn the attention of Manhattan, who happens to be the strongest demigod on Earth-11, he has to be careful not to show his face.
He can fight demigods as a mortal. He can even kill demigods. But Manhattan could do that too as a mortal.
Now that Manhattan is a demigod, his power is through the roof. Manhattan has actually destroyed a planet before. So he must not have a fight with Manhattan at all.
He sighed and said, "Look at how low I have fallen. I have been scared into hiding by a junior."
"It is my fault, though. I guess it is another repercussion of my foolish decision."
At times like this he remembers the ridicule of the god kings when he had decided to give up the power of a god king. He remembers what they said clearly.
A god king called out to him after the weave of destiny dispersed, "You are a fool. You will regret this decision."
Even Odin was disappointed. The All Father said, "I am disappointed in you. That was indeed a foolish decision. You prioritized quantity over quality. That is a decision based on naivety. You should have created a Pantheon to protect your world if you cared so much about it."
He had refuted by saying, "It is wrong that the destiny of a whole world should rest on the shoulders of a few. It is too much of a responsibility and also unfair to the rest. I prefer that everyone should have power over their destiny. Whatever happens, I know that I have repaid the world for their help, and that's all that matters."
That scene has haunted him for many years. It was the last thing he saw when his whole life flashed before his eyes as he gave up his divine spark for the will of the planet to gain an active consciousness.
He had imprinted that scene and his wish to kill Raijin onto Wrath. At that time, even though he hated Raijin and many others, he still cared for the world. That's why he also imprinted the harsh requirement for the binding of the future god king on Wrath.
Wrath's purpose was to find a suitable paragon to grant him revenge and also shackle that paragon so that they wouldn't be able to bully the people of earth.
He chuckled sorrowfully as he thought about that. "I offended a lot of people, disappointed a lot of people, and lost my family for nothing."
Then he said, "I just hope that it takes a long time for that stubborn Frigid to heal. She can be so stubborn sometimes."
He sighed when he thought about her. She used to have a crush on him. But her feelings for him have obviously turned into bitter hatred.
While Icon was having trouble, trouble was also brewing in New London. This trouble was caused by Lady Dimitri, but it led to trouble for Kelvin.
Lady Dimitri is the B-rank super who was responsible for the deaths of two kings and the exposure of the identity of the other two.
She was currently being hunted by everyone. The heroes wanted her for the crime of using the common people for her agenda, and the corpos wanted her for harming them.
Even the villains were after her because of the massive bounty on her head. So the whole of the city was after her.
She couldn't escape from everyone. She was eventually found and cornered.
She was surrounded in her apartment and about to be killed. Fortunately, she had a backup plan to stall her death.
Apparently, she had cursed more than ten thousand people in the city. Those ten thousand would die as soon as she dies. Then their corpses will spread the curse throughout the city.
She claimed that she had created a weapon of mass destruction. All it needed to go off was her death.
She was exaggerating, of course. She had only managed to curse a little more than five thousand people, and her curse wasn't capable of spreading across the city like a disease.
But her enemies didn't need to know that. In fact, it was a good thing that they didn't know that she was mostly bluffing. They believed her and held off on killing her.
At any other time, maybe someone would have risked killing her. But it was only recently that 100,000 people were turned into idiots in the city. No one wanted a repeat of something like that.
Only the villains were willing to risk killing her. But the heroes and the corpos stopped them.
The heroes and the corpos decided to look around the city to find traces of her curse and unravel it. It was a good decision considering the circumstances.
They combed the city searching for weird signs. They used trackers of various kinds to search and nulls to unravel the curses. This brought some success and some failures.
Their effort was successful because they found a lot of weird things and what could be counted as curses. They discovered that she wasn't the only one cursing the people of the city. There were many others doing it too.
In terms of failure, it was that they couldn't tell which weird thing was hers out of the numerous things they found.
It would be best if they could isolate her curses, find all of them, and remove them all at once. That way she wouldn't be able to sense what they are doing and detonate the curses beforehand.
Both of these were good news for Lady Dimitri. The exposure of so many curses and arrangements in the city proved that she wasn't lying. It meant that they had to take her warning seriously and not kill her soon.
Even the failure to identify which was her curse was a good thing for her because it meant that they couldn't solve her curse very soon. After all, she will only continue to live along as she has leverage over the city.
But these two things were bad news for Kelvin because they found the blood hooks he placed in people before he went to the Lignum world on his first expedition.
He had placed the blood hooks in those people. to use them as backup batteries for life force in case he was stranded in a place without life force.
He didn't need it then on Lignum. While he hadn't forgotten about them, he wasn't willing to remove them yet because they could still be useful. Unfortunately, Lady Dimitri had to kick up a fuss and expose his blood hooks.
He discovered it immediately after they found the first blood hook. The person that did tried to remove them and failed, which triggered a warning sensation in Kelvin.
They didn't try to remove the blood hook after that, but he had already been warned. He sent one of his shadows to find out what was going on.
When he discovered what happened, he began to kill off every blood hook. He made them explode, which in turn killed their host. It was quite a scene.
Hundreds of people died all over the city at once. It created a lot of panic, which drew Icon's attention.
Icon slapped his head and said, "Of course the blood hooks. How could I have forgotten about them?"
He knew about Kelvin's blood hooks, but he had been too focused on Kelvin. He had also been very busy running for his life recently.
Now that he had some free time and had been reminded about the blood hooks, he went in search of the corpses. to use them against Kelvin.
The corpses were stored in secure locations under strict security for research and preventive methods in case the curse was contagious. But this couldn't stop Icon from getting to them.
If anything, the fact that the people of the city and found and stashed all the corpses in a single location made it very easy for him to get to them. At the very least, he didn't need to go around looking for them himself.
He gathered the corpses and used them to set a massive curse of his own.
He chuckled to himself as he worked, "Let's see how you like this. As soon as you leave your hiding place, you will get a face full of this and be crippled. Then I'll come over and get you. It will be so easy."
He laughed as he worked.
His curse was a success. The corpses turned to dust while one of the strongest curses possible was created.
This curse was so mystical that it bypassed the boundary of the core of the world to reach Kelvin immediately after it was cast.