The melee in New York reached its final prelude.
Under the combined efforts of the X-Men, Avengers, and Justice League, the battle lines were firmly held.
The remaining Kree Soldiers began to scatter, but it no longer mattered.
At this moment, all eyes were focused on the two figures above the giant pit in the city center.
General Zod hovered in mid-air, his chest heaving violently.
Earth's sunlight was strengthening his divine body at an unprecedented rate; every muscle bulged with explosive power.
Yet, this power, enough to crush stars, seemed so ridiculous in front of the man opposite him.
"Ha! Ha! Haaah!"
Zod's figure blurred into a black streak, breaking the sound barrier!
His fists created hundreds of afterimages, each strike containing the mass of a small star, raining down on Tel-Rol's head!
"Bang! Bang bang bang bang bang—!"
The dense impacts merged into a dull thunderstorm.
But every one of Zod's punches was blocked by Tel-Rol's casually raised fist.
At the center where the four fists and palms met, the air was compressed into solid white shockwaves, exploding in rings, pulverizing all remaining buildings and glass within several kilometers!
The more Zod fought, the more startled and enraged he became.
"Why?! My power is still surging, why can't I even budge his defense in the slightest?!"
With pure physical strength alone, he was toying with Zod's full power.
"Is that all?"
Tel-Rol finally spoke after parrying another heavy punch from Zod.
"Didn't you eat? Your strength isn't much greater than that blue-skinned trash from earlier."
"You—are—dead!"
This sentence completely ignited Zod's pride and fury as the highest commander of Krypton.
He swiftly retreated, creating a hundred-meter distance, his entire bio-field beginning to rage due to extreme anger.
"Bastard!!!"
With a roar, Zod's eyes instantly turned blood-red, and two deep-red beams of Heat Vision shot out from them!
Destructive energy, condensed from extreme rage—Heat Vision!
Sizzle sizzle sizzle—!
The air twisted from the scorching, emitting a sharp wail.
Wherever the Heat Vision passed, the ground was plowed into two terrifying, bottomless ravines with edges melted into lava!
In the distant ruins, Deadpool exaggeratedly whistled: "Oh! Cool! Kryptonian laser eyes! These special effects, the budget is burning!"
Facing this attack capable of melting everything, Tel-Rol finally moved.
He didn't even bother to dodge, simply slowly raised his left hand, fingers spread, palm forward.
A pure white speck of light appeared out of thin air in his palm, initially only the size of a needle tip, yet emitting a heart-palpitating energy fluctuation.
"Om—"
The light speck rapidly expanded, transforming into a rapidly spinning energy ball that continuously absorbed surrounding light.
Around the pure white orb, rings of eerie purple lightning, originating from the power stone on his other hand, intertwined.
He parted his lips and uttered three words.
"Ki - Blast."
Boom—!!!
A terrifying pillar of energy, over ten meters in diameter, pure white inside and wreathed in purple lightning outside, burst forth from his palm!
Its immense power threatened to punch a hole through the entire sky!
Red and white, two energies representing ultimate destruction, collided violently in mid-air!
In that instant, a constantly expanding, blindingly bright hemisphere of light appeared! A terrifying shockwave spread at the speed of light, tearing up the ground layer by layer, sweeping it towards the sky!
The stalemate lasted less than half a second.
"Break—for—me—!!!"
Zod's eyes widened in fury, injecting all the energy he had absorbed from the sun into his eyes without reservation.
The red Heat Vision beam thickened by another factor of two, like two enraged blood dragons, attempting to devour the white light.
However, Tel-Rol merely narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Trash."
He gently pushed his wrist forward.
The core brightness of the seemingly maxed-out white light pillar suddenly surged a hundredfold!
The purple lightning became even more violent, instantly coiling around, shredding, and devouring the two red beams!
"Wh... what?!"
Zod's face was filled with horror.
He watched helplessly as his attack was torn apart, and the unstoppable white torrent slammed heavily into his chest!
"Pfft—!"
Zod didn't even manage a scream; his entire body flew backward at a speed beyond visual capture.
His black Kryptonian battle armor shrieked piercingly under the energy impact, disintegrating and vaporizing inch by inch, starting from the point of impact on his chest!
Rumble rumble rumble—!
He was firmly pinned to the ground by the Ki Blast, plowed backward for over a thousand meters, and finally, with an earth-shattering roar, was pressed into the bottom of a newly formed giant pit, a hundred meters deep!
"Sizzle... sizzle sizzle..."
The Ki Blast did not dissipate; it continued to pin him to the bottom of the pit, constantly scorching and grinding his body with destructive energy.
Zod let out a painful roar.
He struggled desperately, his limbs carving deep grooves in the pit's rock, yet he couldn't budge the energy pressing down on him in the slightest.
"This... what kind of power is this?!"
Tel-Rol maintained his single-hand-forward stance, stepping through the air, slowly floating above the giant pit.
He looked down at the charred, unrecognizable body at the bottom of the pit, his eyes as cold as ice.
"That's enough."
He loosened his fingers.
The Ki Blast, which had spanned heaven and earth, instantly vanished into thin air.
The world returned to silence.
Before Zod could even catch his breath, an even more terrifying, despair-inducing energy fluctuation came from above him.
He struggled to lift his head, seeing Tel-Rol raise his right hand, which held the purple power stone.
"Crackling!"
Golden energy burst forth from his body!
But this golden energy was mixed with the incomparably domineering purple destructive lightning from the power stone.
The two energies converged and compressed above his fist, forming a speck of light.
"It's over, General."
Tel-Rol's voice was devoid of emotion; he swung his fist down at Zod in the pit!
This punch didn't even need to connect. The energy storm alone, generated by the fist, would be enough to completely wipe Zod, along with half the city block beneath him, from this world!
Just as that fist of destruction was about to descend!
"Swoosh—!!!"
A sound of tearing through the air came from the edge of the sky!
A red and blue figure, moving so fast it could only be seen as a comet trailing a long stream of light, crashed straight towards the location at an incredible speed!
"Stop!!!"
Boom!!!!!!
A deafening roar that defied description!
The red and blue figure landed precisely between the two, just an instant before Tel-Rol's fist touched Zod!
His feet hit the ground, and the hard bedrock instantly exploded! A giant crater over twenty meters in diameter burst open around him, and a circular shockwave carrying billions of tons of shattered rock and dust surged skyward!
Tel-Rol's fist, capable of destroying everything, was slightly deflected by this brute force impact, grazing Zod's cheek and slamming heavily into the ground.
"Boom—Rumble—!!!"
A violent earthquake, affecting all of New York, was triggered.
Zod felt a chill on his cheek, followed by a burning pain; the skin on half his face was directly torn by the punch's wind, leaving a bloody mess.
He looked in shock at the broad back before him... a back that had descended like a god.
The dust slowly settled.
The newcomer wore a red cape, his blue battlesuit stained with blood, but the "S" emblem on his chest still shone brightly.
Clark Kent. Superman.
He ignored Tel-Rol. He simply slowly straightened his body, his usually ocean-like blue eyes now burning with an icy-blue, towering rage, staring intently at Zod, who was struggling to get up from the ground.
"Zod!"
Clark's hoarse, low voice carried the chill squeezed from deep within his throat.
[Stuck! Save the child!!]