The moment Jovian turned into a bolt of lightning and dove into the spacetime gate—
"Beep beep beep…"
Mark's phone suddenly started ringing in his pocket.
"Sorry, everyone… I've gotta go!"
Mark's expression changed instantly the moment he heard the voice on the other end. Before anyone could say another word, he shot up into the sky.
"So the rubble's on us again, huh?!" Rex arrived late, staring after the departing Mark as he yelled in frustration. "Seriously—who the hell is their father? How do you raise two brothers that are this similar and this arrogant?!"
"Say one more word, Rex," Eve snapped, glaring at him.
Inside a hospital room in the Pentagon, Mark became a whirlwind and burst straight into the deepest part of the ward.
"Hey, Mark!"
On the bed, the tall man was chatting with Debbie, who sat near the headboard. When he noticed Mark, he immediately smiled and waved.
"Dad!"
Mark became an afterimage, moving at a speed no normal person could track, and slammed into the tall man's arms.
"Mark…" The tall man—Earth's strongest hero, Omni-Man, Nolan Grayson—looked down at his younger son and showed a rare gentleness. A real gentleness, from the heart. "Sorry for worrying you."
"Mark, Nolan just recovered—don't hurt him," Debbie said, patting Mark's shoulder. Then she looked around the room. "Where's Jovian? He didn't come with you?"
"Jovian…" Mark's face tightened with worry.
"Mark—what happened to Jovian?!" Nolan's eyes sharpened the moment he saw Mark's expression. He grabbed Mark's shoulder and asked in a stern voice. Jovian—the one the prophecy spoke of, the son who would lead the Viltrumites forward—Nolan absolutely would not allow anything to happen to him.
"Jovian…" Mark swallowed. "He went in alone. He flew straight into the aliens' spacetime tunnel."
"…Oh." Nolan immediately relaxed and let go of Mark's shoulder.
Then—like it was nothing—he turned to Debbie.
"Debbie, I've been craving your cooking. How about we go to the grocery store together today?"
"Of course," Debbie nodded softly. "I'll make the thing all three of you love most tonight."
"Hey! Dad! Mom!" Mark burst out, incredulous. "My brother is in another dimension right now—he could literally be in the middle of the aliens' home base—and you two are talking about what we're having for dinner?!"
"Listen, Mark." Nolan smiled and shook his head at Mark's anxious face. "Your brother is as strong as I am… maybe even stronger. Those aliens can't hurt him."
"Mark, you need to have a little confidence in your father and your brother," Debbie added calmly.
"The reason I was scared before was because your father had never been hurt that badly," she continued. "But going to another dimension to deal with aliens or some evil dimensional warlord? That's… honestly not that unusual."
She smiled, completely certain.
"And I believe Jovian—someone your father acknowledges—has that same level of strength. I'm sure he's doing exactly what your father would do… calmly and reasonably negotiating with them. Explaining why they can't attack Earth."
On the Flaxan planet…
A white figure stood atop a carpet of corpses.
All around him, the ground had been dyed a deep, wet red—like someone had spilled tomato juice across the world. A Flaxan force of over a thousand had been reduced to pulp in an instant, churned into paste by that single body moving through them.
Slowly, the white figure lifted his head, looked toward the Flaxan city… and smiled with sunshine-warm gentleness.
Yes—exactly like Debbie said.
Jovian was calmly "reasoning" with the Flaxans, using practical action to teach them why they couldn't attack Earth.
Inside the Flaxan city district—
"Wooooooo…"
A shrieking alarm suddenly blared.
"What's going on?!" Several young Flaxans holding tablets—apparently in the middle of a meeting—froze in place, brows furrowed as they tried to figure it out.
"Haha—probably an air-defense drill," one of them said, smiling as if he'd figured it out. "Didn't we run into a few issues lately while conquering that low-tier planet? I don't think a primitive civilization could follow the spacetime route all the way here, but early warnings are always good…"
Whoosh!
The moment he smiled, a violent wind swept through. Every Flaxan present squeezed their eyes shut.
When the wind stopped, the young Flaxan who'd been smugly explaining everything… no longer had a head.
"Oh my God?! What just happened?!" The others stared, eyes bulging. It was their first time encountering a tornado that killed.
Whoosh!
Another gentle breeze rose—soft, almost playful—brushing their cheeks.
And then, in front of them, an alien man appeared: slicked-back hair, a white bodysuit, a giant F on his chest.
"Sorry," he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "My technique still isn't smooth enough. I forgot to shave the rest of your watermelon heads."
"What did you say?" The Flaxans frowned. They couldn't understand a word of his strange language.
In truth, they didn't need to.
Because in the next second, they suddenly felt their vision spin violently—then saw their own bodies… standing there without heads.
"Emergency! Emergency! We are under attack! I repeat, this is not a drill!"
Inside luxury residential towers built from exotic alien metal, the high-end news broadcasts screamed the same message on repeat.
"The enemy is extremely dangerous. A five-thousand-person tactical assault unit equipped with advanced weapons has already been wiped out. All residents are ordered to shelter immediately…"
"One person?" An older Flaxan watching the broadcast cursed furiously. "What is the military even doing? It's just one person! What—are they bulletproof? One man equals an army? All our technology and we can't handle that?"
He sneered, convinced the empire had become incompetent—hitting walls in conquest, and now triggering the highest-level alert over one "low-tier" invader. Ridiculous…
BOOM!
A thunderous impact drew his attention.
Leaning on his cane, the older Flaxan shuffled to the window to see what was happening outside.
And then he finally understood why the military had issued the highest-level evacuation warning over a single alien.
It was a streak of burning light.
Air currents detonated around him with every movement.
A presence so overwhelming that ordinary lifeforms couldn't even get close without being erased.
Buildings were being punched through. Streets were being carved out. The city's lights were going out—one after another—like someone was snuffing candles.
"Dadabara…" the older Flaxan swore in an ancient Flaxan tongue—something that translated to a mix of "F*ck" and "goddamn it."
BOOM!
The next second, the building he was in exploded.
"Faster… faster… faster…"
Jovian kept accelerating, pushing his body harder and harder.
This was a speed he'd never dared to use on Earth—not because Earth's gravity held him back, or because there was some special limitation.
It was because on Earth, he was afraid that if he went too fast, he'd shred the planet's surface like paper.
The Viltrumite method for cleansing a trash civilization was simple: fly toward anything that shines.
At their invincible speed, anything that got near them would be incinerated into ash by friction alone.
Beneath the rock layer…
A Flaxan military base.
"The surface cities are being destroyed!"
"This enemy isn't something we can solve…"
"We might become the last Flaxans left on this planet."
The soldiers' head-tendrils tightened with grief. Their homeworld was being erased, and they could do nothing.
"As long as we live… we win!" A man who looked like the base's senior commander clenched his fist and raised it high. "If we survive, the Flaxans don't fall!"
"Yes!"
"Yes!"
The soldiers nodded, forcing themselves to believe it. They were the last hope.
BOOM!
Right as they were trying to hype themselves up, the entire base suddenly shook.
"What was that?!" The soldiers stared, confused.
"Who authorized base movement?!" The commander barked, showing crisp discipline even under pressure. He glared at the operators. "Who's moving us?!"
"We aren't," the operators said, exchanging looks and shaking their heads. "We didn't initiate any movement."
"Pull up an exterior feed—now!" the commander roared.
"Yes, sir!"
The outside image appeared on the screen.
A handsome alien man—bright smile, white suit, the massive F on his chest—was dragging their base upward like it weighed nothing.
As he hauled the entire underground fortress toward the surface, he noticed the cameras watching him.
He beamed straight at the lens and laughed.
"Surprise, motherfucker!"
"…It's over," the commander whispered, his face turning to ash-gray.
BOOM!
With another thunderous shock, the enormous base was ripped out of the ground.
The alien man held the island-sized facility with one hand, lined it up like a projectile—
And then hurled it toward another Flaxan surface base in the distance.
BOOM!
When the two bases collided, the explosion blossomed into brilliant fire.
A sonic boom ripped through the sky.
And the white figure returned to his work.
Rebar and steel plating couldn't stop him.
High-tech weapons struck his body without producing so much as a ripple.
He moved faster than sound.
His body was harder than alloy.
Like a war god carving through a world, he passed from city to city, extinguishing every light.
"Retreat…"
In orbit, inside a massive space fortress ringed by countless satellites, the Flaxan leader—dressed in the finery of an emperor—watched the lights vanish across the planet below.
Blood dripped, one red bead at a time, from his clenched fist onto the floor.
He was furious. He hated the invader.
But against a super soldier created by biological technology far beyond their civilization…
He had no answer.
In the end, he ordered the warp corridor activated.
"Yes, sir!"
The soldiers finally exhaled—relief mixed with dread. Their detectors tracked the ground lights dying out one by one, and their eyes widened.
The speed at which the enemy was cleansing the surface was beyond anything they'd imagined.
At this rate, it wouldn't be long before the enemy reached orbit.
And they had no heavy weapon capable of stopping something like that.
BOOM!
The fortress engines roared.
Outside, in the silent vacuum—
A pure golden spacetime gate appeared in front of the fortress, soundless and sudden.
"Full speed ahead!" the Flaxan leader commanded.
"Engines at maximum output!"
The operators' hands flew over the controls as the enormous fortress began moving toward the gate—
And then it stopped.
Permanently.
"—What the…" The sudden emergency stop made the entire fortress jolt.
"What happened?!" The leader slammed into the floor and went down hard.
He staggered back to his feet, furious, glaring at his subordinates—
And then he saw it.
Between the fortress and the gate, floating casually in the vacuum, was a white-clad figure.
"Hi~" the man said, waving as if greeting neighbors.
The leader stared at that alien in the white suit.
His face went dead.
"And now… goodbye."
Still floating in open space, the white-clad alien placed both hands on the fortress and shoved.
The fortress began accelerating—fast—back toward their homeworld.
"Report, sir—our engines have collapsed!"
"Based on system calculation… we have a ninety-nine-point-nine percent chance of colliding with our planet!"
The operator delivered the conclusion with a trembling voice.
"You don't have to tell me," the leader snarled, clenching his fist and raising it high above his head.
On Earth, that gesture was internationally understood.
BOOM!
Jovian drove the fortress into the atmosphere.
Watching it burn as it fell, he drifted back into orbit.
Then he raised his right hand and extended the finger he liked best—the middle one—toward the flaming fortress.
He believed in good manners.
If someone offered a gesture, you returned it.
"Go eat shit," Jovian muttered as a mushroom cloud bloomed on the Flaxan planet below.
He admired the beautiful scene… and, in his heart, sent his warmest regards to every single Flaxan on that world.