The silence was a physical presence, heavy and suffocating. It had replaced the thunderous cheers of the crowd, the chaotic screams of the defeated soldiers, and the celebratory blare of a thousand galactic horns. Now, the only sound was a low, resonant hum emanating from the sky. It was the sound of something so immense that it bent the very air around it.
Above the stadium, blotting out the sun and casting the entire floating arena in a deep, terrifying shadow, was a Shadow Dominion warship. It was not a small fighter or a cruiser. This was a flagship, a titan of war that stretched for miles, its obsidian hull bristling with cannons that could—and, according to the official specifications Aetherion's System once helpfully provided him with, had—vaporized continents. The crowd, a billion strong, was utterly paralyzed, their collective fear a palpable force. They had just watched one man dismantle an army, but this was a different league entirely. This was a weapon of planetary annihilation.
The voice boomed again from a thousand loudspeakers embedded in the warship's hull, a deep, rolling thunder that shook the ground and vibrated in the chests of every living being.
"Surrender the one called Aetherion. Or be reduced to atoms."
Aetherion, completely unbothered, simply tilted his head back, his gaze fixed on the warship's immense, menacing form. He brushed a few stray crumbs of his now-finished sandwich off his shirt, a small, mundane gesture in the face of absolute annihilation. His mind was elsewhere, already contemplating the glorious, cheesy future of the lifetime supply of Dragon Puff noodles he had secured. "Huh. That's new," he muttered to himself, his voice a low counterpoint to the cosmic threat.
But then, the familiar tickle began to build in his nose. It was the same horrible, inescapable sensation he'd felt that morning, the one that had given the moon a smiley face. He had forgotten to take his anti-cosmic-allergy medication again. The pollen of a distant nebula, the dust of a recently imploded star—something, somewhere, had chosen his nose as its final resting place.
"Hang on, fellas—" he tried to warn, but it was too late. The sensation intensified, building into a pressure that felt like a miniature black hole trying to escape his face.
And then—
"ACHOO!"
It was… a sneeze. For anyone else, it would have been a mundane, everyday occurrence. For Aetherion, it was an act of god-tier calamity. The sneeze hit the air not with sound, but with an invisible, devastating shockwave of pure, untamed kinetic energy. The warship's shields, which could withstand supernovas, instantly shattered into a glittering shower of light, a soundless explosion that ripped across the sky. The hull, forged from neutron star material, bent and twisted like tin foil in a furious wind, the metal groaning with a sound that could only be described as a cosmic cry of pain.
The entire vessel, a city-sized behemoth, was sent spinning out of the sky, its massive cannons now pointing harmlessly at the empty vacuum of space. The shockwave didn't stop there. Half the stadium roof was gone, torn from its foundation and sent spiraling into the upper atmosphere. The very clouds parted for miles in every direction, leaving behind a pristine, impossible circle of blue sky and revealing the distant, smiling moon. On a neighboring planet, a meteor belt, which had been orbiting peacefully for millennia, rearranged itself into a cosmic, glowing sculpture in the shape of a giant nose.
The warship finally crashed into the ocean with a sound like an angry god doing a belly-flop. A geyser of water the size of a mountain rose into the atmosphere, so high that it momentarily eclipsed the sun and froze the upper-atmosphere.
The crowd didn't cheer. They just stared, their mouths agape, their faces pale with shock. They had just witnessed a man sneeze an entire warship out of the sky. In the stunned silence, a single, quivering voice from the stands finally dared to break the spell: "He… he sneezed it to death."
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Up in the VIP box, the Tournament Host's assistant leaned in, his multi-faceted eyes wide with terror. "Sir, should we… stop the match? This is… a bit much. The Shadow Dominion… they're going to be furious."
The Host simply shook his head, his eyes wide with a manic gleam of pure glee. He had just struck gold. This wasn't just a powerful contestant; this was the greatest showman in the history of the cosmos. "No. We double the prize money. And," he added, a conspiratorial grin spreading across his face, "find out what kind of sandwiches he likes. We might need to keep him around forever."
The black-armored warrior, groaning on the floor, his armor still smoldering from the residual energy of the sneeze, looked up at Aetherion in stunned disbelief. "This… isn't possible. Nobody's that strong."
Aetherion crouched down beside him, a faint, almost pitying smile on his face. "Strong? Nah," he said with a completely straight face, still wiping a nonexistent crumb from his shirt. "I'm just allergic to space dust."
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Meanwhile, somewhere high above in the Shadow Dominion's imperial palace, the Emperor sat frozen before a live hologram replay of the sneeze. He watched in stunned horror as his most powerful warship, the flagship of his fleet, was effortlessly swatted from the sky. The sheer audacity of it, the utter disrespect. He had sent an army, and it had been defeated by a... sneeze.
The Emperor's tea cup, made from hardened volcanic crystal, was now a puddle of molten terror in his hand. He watched the replay again, and then a third time, his brain struggling to compute the sheer absurdity. This wasn't strength. This was something far, far worse. It was a force of nature. An anomaly. He couldn't fight it with cannons, he couldn't conquer it with armies.
He had to get rid of it. But how? He couldn't bomb the planet, as the human was on it. He couldn't simply send another warship, as it would just be sneezed to death. A new, terrifying thought slowly crept into his mind.
"…We may have to burn the universe," he muttered, his voice a whisper of pure, existential fear. "It's the only way to be sure." He looked down at the puddle of crystal in his hand, a tiny tear rolling down his cheek. "And I just wanted a new teacup."