Mark Grayson was like a moving mountain; with every step, the paving stones of the Vought Tower plaza groaned and cracked under the unbearable strain.
Sharp alarms still shrieked, alloy gates had enclosed the area like a gladiatorial arena, and turrets above flickered with locking red lights, yet all these modern technological defenses seemed so ridiculous in the face of such pure power.
A dozen figures descended, surrounding him.
Atom Eve's surrounding air distorted with energy fluctuations, Immortal's smile was false and cruel, Dupli-Kate's clones whispered, Robot's eyes scanned with cold red light, and Rex Splode's fingertips pulsed with dangerous energy.
These faces, which he once called comrades and even elders, now wore commercialized masks, their eyes filled only with domesticated arrogance and numbness.
"Company orders, take him alive!"
Immortal roared, a sonic boom exploding behind him, and he charged first, his shoulder, capable of smashing through military fortresses, slamming violently into Mark Grayson's chest.
A dull thud sounded.
It wasn't the expected bone-cracking or being sent flying, but rather like an egg thrown with full force against granite.
Immortal's sneer instantly froze, transforming into extreme pain and disbelief.
He felt as if he had collided not with a living being, but with the ancient, eternal base of a mountain; a terrifying recoil spread along his shoulder blade, clear sounds of bone cracking popped, and he screamed, staggering backward, clutching his grotesquely twisted shoulder.
Mark Grayson didn't even look at him.
His gaze swept over the others, his voice low, attempting to pierce through that layer of distorted hypocrisy.
"Stop now, before I get serious."
Atom Eve sneered, pushing her hands forward, and a beam of atomic energy, powerful enough to melt through main battle tank armor, roared out, its scorching light ionizing the air in its path, directly blasting towards Mark Grayson's face!
Mark Grayson did not dodge.
He didn't even block.
The energy beam hit him squarely in the face, a blinding white light engulfing his figure, and the scorching heatwave made the distant live-streaming helicopter shake violently.
Viewers in front of their televisions gasped, thinking they had witnessed the end.
The light faded.
Mark Grayson's face was slightly turned at an angle, and that was all.
He slowly turned his head back, his face without even a trace of scorch marks, only his molten-gold eyes, coldly locked onto Atom Eve.
He raised his hand and brushed away non-existent dust from his forehead with his fingers.
The color drained from Atom Eve's face instantly, her lips trembling, unable to comprehend why her strongest attack felt like a mere breeze.
"Boring tricks."
Mark Grayson's voice showed no fluctuation.
The next moment, he moved.
A burst of pure, extreme speed and strength, defying physical common sense, erupted; the ground where he had stood collapsed into a huge crater, but he had already appeared like a ghost in front of Atom Eve.
One punch.
A simple, straightforward punch, without even a whoosh, because the speed had already surpassed sound.
Atom Eve's energy shield around her shattered silently like a soap bubble, and the punch landed on her lower abdomen.
Her eyes bulged suddenly, her body folded into a terrifying angle, and the suit on her back burst open with a fist-shaped hole.
She flew backward silently like a struck baseball, crashing through three buildings consecutively, disappearing into the distant dust, her fate unknown.
All of this happened in a flash of lightning.
"Open fire! All fire!"
Robot's cold electronic voice showed fluctuation for the first time.
Countless clones surged forward like a tide, energy bombs rained down, oscillating rays wove into a net, Black Blood's corrosive liquid, Darkwing's infrasound waves, and various bizarre abilities all poured onto Mark Grayson's position.
Explosions merged into one continuous blast, flames shot skyward, smoke filled the air, and the entire plaza looked as if it had been repeatedly plowed by a cluster of heavy artillery.
Mark Grayson's figure was blurred in the fire of the explosions, but occasionally his simplest movements could be seen.
Waving his hand to swat away rays, letting bombs explode on his back yet remaining unmoving, casually grabbing a charging clone and crushing it…
But the real action only took a few moments.
A hand chop shattered Robot's alloy body, a simple throw sent Rex Splode, along with the bombs he had just generated, high into the sky to become fireworks, and a kick sent the rampaging Immortal flying, embedding him deep into the alloy gate, completely silencing him.
His movements were efficient, concise, and possessed a suffocating aesthetic of violence; every strike inevitably rendered a super-powered individual incapacitated.
This was not a battle; it was a massacre.
And in this symphony of destruction, countless live broadcast cameras above transmitted his every movement, and the words he occasionally uttered, attempting to awaken the others, clearly across the world.
"…The power of superhumans should not be used for this…"
"…Look at this city of yours, does it truly need such guardians?"
His words, amidst the deafening explosions and the frantic barking of the superhumans, seemed so faint, yet so clear, like heavy hammers striking the hearts of everyone watching the live broadcast.
On the streets, those who had long accumulated countless grievances, who had been harmed or silenced by the system, watched the man on the screen, unstoppable like a demon god, yet speaking their innermost thoughts, watching those glamorous superhumans torn apart like paper dolls, and their long-suppressed emotions finally erupted.
Shouts began to echo in various cities, crowds began to gather, surging towards local government agencies or Vought offices. The thin ice of social order was cracking.
"Shut up!"
One of Dupli-Kate's clones shrieked, her main body bleeding from her nose and mouth due to the continuous destruction of her clones.
"What do you even know?"
"They threaten our families, they use drugs and control chips to turn us into obedient dogs!"
"This world has long been rotten, rotten to its core!"
Immortal, with his leg broken, lay on the ground, laughing grimly.
"That's right, we're just higher-grade consumables, clowns used for a show!"
"This world… isn't worth saving at all!"
These words, broadcast live, reached Mark Grayson's ears and the entire world.
Mark Grayson's movements froze for a moment.
He looked at these distorted faces, listened to their desperate and insane accusations, and the last trace of hesitation and sorrow in his heart, born from seeing familiar faces, completely dissipated, replaced by a deep, almost overwhelming anger and recognition.
This Universe was indeed rotten from its very foundation.
It turned beautiful power into commodities, heroes into clowns and slaves, and guardianship into oppression.
Just then.
A low, ancient voice, as if from the depths of the stars, resonated directly in his mind, carrying a cold temptation.
"Behold, Mark Grayson, this is the ultimate form of lower civilizations' self-corruption; order built upon lies, power serving greed. It is terminally ill, beyond salvation."
It was the voice of the Titan Clan.
They, in some unknown way, transcended spatial boundaries, sending whispers into his thoughts.
"Your pity is superfluous. True deities bear the responsibility of selection and purification; destruction is creation."
"Eradicate this erroneous existence, find Mark Grayson of Universe 1, and your Universe will be safe and sound. This is efficiency, and also… destiny."
The voice was filled with irrefutable rationality, carrying a grand cosmic view, attempting to foster the nascent divinity within him, overriding his human side.
Destroying this twisted world sounded so simple, so… correct.
For a moment, the urge to destroy flowed through his veins like hot magma; his fists clenched, his gaze swept over the terrified ordinary citizens fleeing in the distance, and a condescending, indifferent sense of scrutiny almost took control of him.
But he saw a mother desperately covering her child's eyes, shrinking into a corner, saw the protesters at the distant street corner holding crude signs, their eyes burning with faint flames of hope…
He took a deep breath, and the violent urge to destroy was forcefully suppressed; humanity once again gained the upper hand in his molten-gold eyes.
"…No."
He replied in his mind, unsure if the other party could hear him.
"What needs to be destroyed is not this world, but the very thing that created all this distortion."
His gaze once again locked onto the superhumans in the arena who were still attacking frantically, yet were already terrified.
They were both victims and perpetrators.
They were ravaged and twisted, and now they had become the sharpest claws maintaining this twisted world, addicted to distorted power and false glory, beyond salvation.
There was only one way to liberate them.
He took a step, and the ground exploded!
The next second, he had appeared in front of Atom Eve, too fast for vision to catch; his right hand shot out like lightning, fingers splayed, and he grabbed her beautiful face.
The arrogance in Eve's eyes was instantly replaced by terror; atomic energy surged wildly around her body, attempting to break free, but it was like hitting an absolute barrier, unable to budge those five fingers in the slightest.
Mark Grayson was expressionless, his arm muscles bulging slightly.
Crack!
A crisp, skull-splitting sound of bone breaking echoed across the world through the live broadcast microphone.
He crushed her skull.
With a swing of his arm, he flung the still-twitching body, once a symbol of beauty and power, like a rag doll, sending her flying to crash into a giant billboard in the distance, raising a cloud of dust.
Dead silence.
Both in the plaza and in front of the screens.
Mark Grayson stood still, shaking off non-existent blood from his hand, but his heart felt torn.
He remembered the Eve of his Universe, that stubborn, strong girl who eventually stood by his side, and now, he had personally suffocated the distorted existence represented by this face.
A cold, heavy sense of despair weighed on his heart.
"Eve! Bastard!!"
Rex Splode's eyes were bloodshot, frantically generating high-explosive energy bombs, raining them down on Mark Grayson like a torrent.
Mark Grayson didn't even look at him.
He simply raised his foot and stomped the ground fiercely.
Boom!!!
With his footfall as the center, the ground for tens of meters in all directions violently heaved upward as if struck by a meteor, then collapsed with a crash! A terrifying shockwave spread in a ring; the ground beneath Rex Splode's feet instantly shattered, he lost his balance, and the bombs he had just generated slipped from his grasp.
Boom boom boom!!!
A violent explosion engulfed him, flames shot skyward, and mangled limbs and charred fragments scattered.
Mark Grayson slowly emerged from the flames of the explosion, unharmed, his eyes still cold, but his tightly pressed lips betrayed a hint of suppressed emotion.
Another one… finished.
"Kill him! All together!"
Dupli-Kate shrieked, hundreds of thousands of clones surging from all directions like a frantic ant colony, attempting to overwhelm him with sheer numbers.
Mark Grayson finally frowned, a sign of impatience with such meaningless attacks, and also disgust at having to kill Kate.
He took a deep breath, then charged forward fiercely!
No technique, no evasion, only the purest power and speed.
He was like an out-of-control, ultra-high-speed train, crashing directly into the sea of clones!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A series of dense, indistinguishable sounds of flesh exploding rang out.
Wherever he passed, the clones had no time to make any move; they simply exploded into a sky full of bloody mist, as if directly hit by high-velocity cannon fire.
Not a single clone could make him pause for a hundredth of a second; blood rained down, painting the plaza a dazzling red, and shattered flesh and organs splattered onto the ground.
Mark Grayson instantly traversed the ocean of clones, leaving a crimson path paved with flesh and blood behind him, appearing directly in front of Dupli-Kate's main body.
Her scream abruptly cut off, her face showing only extreme terror.
Mark Grayson's hands reached out, grabbing her shoulders.
Rip—!!!
A teeth-grating sound of cloth, flesh, sinew, and bone being forcibly torn apart rang out.
He didn't even exert much force, simply pulling her apart with a casual motion.
Dupli-Kate was literally torn in half.
Warm blood and internal organs splattered all over Mark Grayson, turning him into a blood-soaked figure.
He casually tossed the two halves of the corpse aside, letting them fall into the pool of blood.
Blood droplets slid down his resolute cheeks, but his face remained expressionless, only in the depths of his molten-gold eyes, a huge, unseen pain and fury churned.
For this unavoidable slaughter, for this damned world that twisted and trampled everything beautiful!
Robot fired high-frequency cutting rays; Mark Grayson did not dodge, and the rays sparked a tiny, insignificant flicker in his eyes.
He reached out, grabbed Robot's arm that fired the rays, and squeezed with his fingers, crunch! The alloy arm was crushed into metal scrap, sparks flying everywhere.
His other hand clenched into a fist, simply and directly punching through its chest, pulling out the core processor, and crushing it with a casual squeeze.
Black Blood sprayed corrosive liquid, which sizzled as it landed on Mark Grayson, but it couldn't even damage the outermost layer of his skin.
Mark Grayson countered with a punch, blowing up his head.
Darkwing attacked from the air with sonic waves.
Mark Grayson leaped up, moving so fast that afterimages appeared in the air, and with a swing of his arm, like breaking a cheap piece of porcelain, he shattered Darkwing into an exploding cloud of blood mist mid-air.
One by one, once famous superhumans were reduced to fragmented remains on the plaza under his simplest, most brutal, and most effective attacks.
The battle was over.
Smoke filled the air, and the smell of blood was thick and pervasive.
Mark Grayson stood alone amidst a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood, bathed in blood, like a demon god emerged from hell.
The helicopter cameras above trembled as they focused on him; the whole world watched this silent and bloody judgment through screens, in utter silence.
His face remained expressionless, but his slightly heaving chest and the molten-gold eyes, where a storm was suppressed in their depths, revealed that his inner state was far from as calm as it appeared.
He had personally executed these distorted creations bearing the faces of old acquaintances, and with every strike, his heart endured a violent laceration.
He looked up, his gaze piercing through the pervasive blood mist, locking onto the towering, cloud-piercing source of evil.
Vought Tower.
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