Though Ultraman was gravely wounded, he still had a sliver of strength left.
The moment he saw the spatial tunnel Axis had opened, he threw himself toward it without the slightest hesitation. He understood all too well that staying behind meant certain death.
Inside the spatial rift, Axis had his hand clamped around Grail's throat. He wrenched her head to one side, preventing her from firing the Omega Beams again.
What a nuisance. He hadn't expected her to follow him through. The good news, at least, was that the rift had already sealed behind them. Darkseid would not be able to pursue.
"What exactly did you mean by that?" Grail turned to Axis and asked.
"Exactly what I said. Your father Darkseid isn't as simple as you think, and I have no desire to get involved. All I wanted was to leave your world. Why did you follow me?" Axis's gaze dropped to the figure clinging to one of his legs. "And you. When the hell did you get in here?"
He had been so focused on dealing with Grail that he never noticed Ultraman slipping in after him, latching onto his foot.
Axis was sorely tempted to kick the man loose and send him tumbling into the spatial turbulence.
Ultraman seemed to read that intention immediately. "Broly, I didn't betray you! I can follow you. Broly, please, take me with you. Don't leave me behind!"
In truth, what Axis had done was perfectly ordinary by the standards of the Crime Syndicate. Using a teammate as a shield was practically routine for them.
Though Ultraman bore a grudge over it, he felt no real outrage. In their world, betrayal and deception were simply the way things worked.
"Fine. Do whatever you want." The spatial rift had fully closed by now. They were far from the DC universe.
To be safe, Axis had opened an exceptionally long tunnel this time, burning through the vast majority of his divine power.
They drifted through the spatial turbulence for what felt like an eternity before he managed to open a gateway into another world.
It was fortunate that all three of them possessed extraordinary constitutions. One was the daughter of Darkseid and an Amazon warrior chosen by the gods, a demigod in her own right.
Another was an alternate-universe counterpart of Superman, and a comic-book-tier version at that. The last was a Saiyan of godly power. Anyone less durable would have been torn apart by the spatial storms long ago.
They touched down on an open clearing. Apart from Axis, both of his companions collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.
The moment they arrived in the new world, Grail's expression changed sharply. She could no longer sense her home universe.
She had once traveled across parallel universes in search of a way to kill her father Darkseid, using a secret art of the Amazons to cross between realities. And even while journeying through other universes, she had always been able to perceive her original world through certain methods. She could always find her way home.
But now she felt nothing. She could not tell where home was. Even this place felt fundamentally strange to her.
"Where is this? Where have you brought me?" Grail turned toward Axis, red light flickering in her eyes.
"Do you understand what a world truly is? Your world is a multiverse, existing within a creation shaped by a supreme creator. My ability allows me to travel between worlds entirely. It's different from anything you've known before.
"What you thought of as crossing between worlds was merely hopping between parallel universes. You never escaped the cage. Now I've brought you outside the real cage, or rather, into a different one." Axis dusted himself off as he spoke.
Then his expression changed abruptly. His body blazed with light: red, gold, blue, and purple, as though he had triggered the fusion transformation he had mastered long ago.
But the truth was that the divine power inside him had gone berserk.
Axis focused his mind at once and forced the sensation down through sheer willpower.
He did not understand why, but the instant he arrived in this world, his divine power had begun to riot. There was a swelling, an explosive pressure building inside him.
His God Ki and his Destruction energy felt as though something in this world was trying to ignite them, to set off a violent detonation.
The sensation startled him badly. If his God Ki and Destruction energy detonated inside his body, there wouldn't be enough left of him to fill a thimble.
What the hell was this? Other transmigrators got sent to places like the Naruto world or the One Piece world, where they could coast through on easy mode, clearing content without breaking a sweat.
Why did he always end up in absurdly dangerous universes? First it was the DC universe, where he had to fight the Anti-Monitor and then ended up on Darkseid's radar.
He had barely managed to escape, only to bring two dead weights along with him. The DC universe ran far too deep. Setting aside the Presence who sat above even Berpetua, beings like the Great Darkness, Lucifer, Gabriel, and others were all far beyond anything he could handle.
It was enough to make him feel overwhelmed despite being a Super Saiyan God who had mastered Destruction energy, a being of universe-level power.
All Axis could do was redirect every ounce of his Ki to suppress the explosive pressure building inside him.
The situation was genuinely dangerous. He could not even open another gateway to leave this universe, because tearing open a spatial rift required a tremendous amount of divine power.
Right now, Axis felt as though channeling even a trace of divine power might cause him to detonate on the spot.
He had no choice. He marshaled his Ki to full capacity and used it to temporarily restrain his rampaging God Ki and Destruction energy.
And he was not the only one affected. Grail was experiencing the same thing. The Omega Effect she had inherited from her father, the power of the New Gods, was running wild inside her as well.
The Amazon warrior immediately dropped to a cross-legged position on the ground, breathing in great heaving gulps, forcing the explosive feeling under control.
"My power! My power!" The most dramatic change, however, was happening to Ultraman. The moment this world's sunlight struck his body, he began to shrivel at a visible rate.
In seconds he went from a towering figure standing over two meters tall to a gaunt, skeletal man barely one meter seventy.
"What's happening here? Why do I feel like my divine power is going to explode? I feel like my entire body is about to burst apart!" Grail looked to Axis.
"I don't know either, but suppress the feeling as fast as you can. If we don't, we really will explode. We'll be reduced to dust." Axis's expression was grim.
At this moment he could not draw on too much Ki energy. His God Ki and Destruction energy were equally unusable. He could rely only on his raw physical strength in a fight.
His Ki had to be devoted entirely to keeping the other two forces in check. Without its mediating influence, those two energies would immediately collide inside his body and detonate.
The resulting explosion would be like two stars smashing into each other, the destructive force multiplied many times over.
In this state, he might not even be able to defeat Ultraman. The full-strength Ultraman who rivaled Superman, that was, not the wreck standing before him now.
He wondered whether Ultraman's deterioration was caused by some property of this world itself, or specifically by exposure to its sunlight.
"Please, Broly, help me! Push this world's moon in front of the sun, block the light! Otherwise this yellow sun is going to kill me. I'm too weak. I'll serve you. I'll be your subordinate. You'll be the boss from now on." Ultraman crawled to Axis's side, pleading.
"Shut up. I haven't figured out the situation either. Something about this world is strange. Extremely strange." Axis's face was dark.
He could tell that his Ki was completely unaffected. But his God Ki and Destruction energy were in serious trouble.
"Your complexion doesn't look right," Grail said, rising to her feet after catching her breath. "I think my situation may be better than yours. I can feel the pressure too, but I can still suppress my divine power. You, on the other hand, don't look well at all."
Perhaps it was because she was only a demigod while Axis was a true god, and an extraordinarily powerful one at that.
"Ultraman, do you feel your power trying to explode? Does your body feel like it's about to burst?" Axis crouched down and looked at Ultraman.
"What are you talking about, explosion? I don't have that feeling at all. I'm just incredibly weak right now. Please, help me. Get me a piece of Kryptonite."
Axis's expression grew even darker. Then he reached into his personal dimensional pocket and produced a second-generation Tree of Might Fruit.
Ultraman's cells possessed powerful radioactive properties. They could absorb the energy of his homeworld's stones and generate a form of radiation. That was the source of his strength.
Earth's yellow sunlight disrupted this cellular radiation, which was why his cells were now starved of energy.
Since it was cellular energy he lacked, life energy ought to serve as a substitute. As for finding him Kryptonite, that was a material unique to the DC universe. No other world would have such a thing.
"Eat this. It's a fruit that contains immense life energy. Even an ordinary mortal who consumed it would gain extraordinary power. It should replenish your life energy. Try it and see if it works." In this unknown world, Axis thought he might need Ultraman's strength.
Ultraman was a being who, despite possessing power rivaling the gods and physical attributes surpassing them, was technically still a mortal. There was no divine power within him.
That meant he should be unaffected by whatever was destabilizing this world.
The instant Ultraman laid eyes on the fruit, his gaze went wide. His cells were screaming with hunger. He even swallowed involuntarily.
It was the body's desperate craving for sustenance. On Earth, he had only ever felt this way about one other substance: Kryptonite.
"Thank you! Thank you!" He did not know what the fruit was, but his every instinct told him it would work.
He snatched the Tree of Might Fruit from Axis and devoured it in several enormous bites, finishing it in moments.
The effect was immediate.
Strength flooded back into his body. It was just like absorbing Kryptonite. His cells recharged. Powerful life energy swelled his muscles, his bones lengthened, and his gaunt face filled out.
In the space of a heartbeat he was once again the towering figure he had been, well over two meters of solid muscle. But the harsh sunlight was already beginning to erode his cellular force field again.
Seeing this, Axis raised his hand and sent a sphere of Ki into Ultraman's body. The energy spread across the surface of Ultraman's skin, forming a protective membrane that shielded him from the sunlight.
Beneath the surface, however, Axis had made a few additional preparations. At the risk of triggering another flare of divine power, he sealed a portion of Destruction energy, God Ki, and Ki energy inside Ultraman's body.
With Axis's help, Ultraman no longer needed to fear this world's sun.
"Excellent! I'm the strongest again!" Ultraman laughed. "Damn you, Broly, how dare you betray me! You used me as a shield! Hand over every last one of those fruits. If you agree to take orders from me, I might let you live."
He had barely recovered before turning on Axis with a threatening snarl. As he himself had noted, betrayal was commonplace in the Crime Syndicate. But Axis could restore his power and shield him from the sun, so Ultraman figured he would negotiate.
Axis watched the display and snorted coldly. Typical villain behavior. Good thing he had planned ahead.
"Go ahead and try, Ultraman. Have you forgotten how I kept Alexander Luthor in line? If you have, I can give you a reminder. I gave you back your strength, and I can take it all away just as easily. So what will it be? Defy me, or follow my lead for now?"
A flash of gold passed through Axis's eyes as he spoke.
He could not use his God Ki or Destruction energy, but Ki was still available.
If Ultraman wanted mutual destruction, he was welcome to try. The result would be the fish dying while the net remained perfectly intact.
Ultraman's face twisted. He did fear the man in front of him. The way Axis had dealt with Alexander Luthor was still vivid in his memory. That purple energy the man wielded could kill him in an instant.
"I wouldn't pick a fight if I were you, Ultraman. You'll regret it." Grail shook her head.
What an idiot.
They were very likely stranded in a completely unknown world. If they ever wanted to get home, they would need this man to do it.
Now was not the time for hostility. Ultraman's skull was stuffed with muscle instead of brains.
No wonder Superwoman, Diana's counterpart, had never thought much of him. No Amazon woman would be attracted to someone so outwardly imposing yet so hollow inside.
Tough against the weak, crumbling against the strong, and utterly witless on top of it.
"I understand, Axis. But you need to keep providing me with those fruits and shielding me from the sunlight." Ultraman deflated at once, his tone suddenly meek.
"That's more like it. You've made the right decision. If you dare rebel, you're a dead man." Axis gave a cold snort and activated the energy he had sealed inside Ultraman's body.
Ultraman was instantly wracked with unbearable pain. He felt the sting of sunlight again, an agony beyond description.
In that moment, every thought of resistance was extinguished. The being before him had him completely under his thumb.
"Good. Ultraman, due to certain circumstances, I can't afford to fight openly in this world. I'll need you to handle the combat on my behalf. Any objections?" Axis said.
He still had one card up his sleeve. If he could lie low for a year, he could use the Dragon Balls. They possessed the power to transport him across universes.
He also wondered how Old Pinapple was faring in this world. What kind of situation had he ended up in? Axis cursed himself for not escaping alone instead of dragging the old man along.
"Leave it to me, Lord Broly. I'll follow your orders. Just keep supplying me with those fruits." Ultraman said.
"Good. Don't worry, I'll provide the fruits. A single one will sustain you for quite a long time." Axis replied.
With Ultraman dealt with, Axis turned his attention to Grail, daughter of Darkseid.
This woman's bloodline was every bit as impressive as Wonder Woman's, perhaps even superior. Wonder Woman's father was Zeus. Grail's father was Darkseid.
But Wonder Woman had siblings, aunts, and grandmothers who had gifted her a full set of divine armaments.
Grail had nothing of the sort. All she had inherited was the Omega Effect.
"Axis, what do you intend to do with me? You should know that without access to your full divine power, you may not be able to defeat me." A cold smile played at the corner of Grail's mouth.
Axis snorted. To be frank, this woman was genuinely ugly by human standards. Her skin was deathly pale, like a corpse. Darkseid's blood clearly wasn't doing her any aesthetic favors.
"Let's call a temporary truce and form an alliance. First, we need to figure out where we are. Ultraman, fly up and do a circuit. Take a look around."
Ultraman nodded and launched himself skyward, the sonic boom of his ascent tearing through the sky.
Axis kept a wary eye on Grail, watching for any sign of a surprise attack. Grail merely gave him a wicked grin and sat down nearby.
She was not feeling well herself.
Though she was not a full god, her body still carried the Omega Effect, the divine power of the New Gods, and it was thrashing inside her.
A few minutes later, Ultraman returned.
"I've figured it out. This looks like the late twentieth century. It's still Earth, but it's different from our world. Everything seems to be flipped around. The Americas and Europe seem to have swapped.
"Columbus apparently discovered the Americas, and Napoleon, who conquered the Americas in our world, conquered Europe here instead. The United States was established in the Americas."
Axis resisted the urge to roll his eyes. You're the one with the flipped world, you moron. This is the normal Earth.
"Did you spot any beings with superhuman power?" Axis asked.