Beyond the Kuiper Belt.
Thousands upon thousands of steel warships of every size lay hidden along the outer edges of the asteroid ring, completely undetectable by any human technology on Earth.
The joy brought by finally finding the Supreme leader's long-lost son had diluted the ever-present atmosphere of cold bloodshed surrounding the fleet.
Quite a few newly promoted Kryptonian officers even remarked in horror after the latest strategy meeting that this was the first time in their entire lives they had ever seen Jor-El smile.
Even the reports from scouts and intelligence operatives confirming that the Green Lantern Corps would arrive within the Solar System in less than forty-eight Kryptonian hours failed to erase the faint smile lingering on Jor-El's face.
After the captains gradually left the command chamber, Jor-El removed his classically styled battle armor and leaned back heavily into his chair, closing his eyes beneath the artificial yellow sun lamps overhead.
Physically, Kryptonians were almost incapable of feeling exhaustion.
But mental fatigue was another matter entirely.
Standing silently beside him as always, Faora looked toward the holographic projection of Earth displayed across the command room screens.
She still clearly hadn't let go of her dissatisfaction over Jor-El personally insisting on meeting Kal-El earlier.
"Your son is undeniably a resilient warrior."
"But he clearly isn't standing on your side."
"He's not even twenty years old yet. What 'side' could he possibly have?"
Jor-El dismissed Faora's concerns casually.
"When viewed on the scale of the universe, choosing sides is meaningless."
"Eventually, he'll understand that."
"It is only a matter of time."
"The problem is that time is exactly what we lack."
As Jor-El's closest subordinate, Faora clearly knew more than the others.
"The Phantom Drives have become more efficient."
"We already noticed it during our journey to Earth, didn't we?"
"Indeed."
Jor-El muttered softly to himself.
"The Phantom Zone has changed."
"We arrived more than a dozen Kryptonian hours earlier than calculations predicted because of it."
The Phantom Drive was a new-generation faster-than-light jump engine developed personally by Jor-El, built upon the underlying principles of the void dimension he had first discovered—the Phantom Zone.
At first, Jor-El had used the Phantom Zone merely as a prison.
But as his research deepened, he gradually uncovered more and more phenomena that defied explanation.
When activated, the Phantom Drive submerged the warship into the Phantom Zone itself, allowing it to slide along the boundary between the Phantom Zone and the material universe, effectively jumping across vast stretches of the cosmos in an extremely short time.
The Phantom Zone should have been absolute emptiness.
Motionless.
Silent.
Like stagnant dead water.
And yet during the fleet's voyage, ripples had suddenly begun appearing throughout it.
To the Kryptonian fleet traveling within, those tiny ripples were equivalent to catastrophic storms.
That was something Jor-El could not understand.
But one thing was certain:
It was absolutely not a good sign.
Because the Phantom Zone, as a region of near-perfect nothingness almost completely detached from the material universe, functioned more like a membrane—
One separating countless multiverses from one another.
Jor-El had already discovered this truth.
And it was precisely because of that discovery that he had glimpsed the secret of the Anti-Life Equation.
If the Phantom Zone itself was changing, then naturally the universes distributed throughout it could not remain unaffected.
Jor-El urgently needed to obtain the Anti-Life Equation—
Not only to protect the Kryptonians,
But perhaps this entire universe…
And even realities beyond it.
"Give him a little more time."
"At least until we finish deployment."
The moment Jor-El thought about the abnormalities occurring within the Phantom Zone, a certain resolve hardened inside him.
"And if my son still cannot understand…"
"I will make certain that he does."
---
"Do you understand?"
Far beyond the Phantom Zone, within an even more distant universe, a supreme existence ruling over the Dark Multiverse extended an invitation toward the final surviving lifeform within that dying reality.
"The planet beneath your feet—and even the universe you just destroyed—are insignificant."
"There are still countless universes left for you to slaughter."
After receiving an affirmative response, the Bat-God Barbatos—who had replaced his former master and become the true ruler of the Dark Multiverse—laughed in satisfaction.
"Excellent."
"Bruce Wayne of Earth-22…"
"Welcome to my Dark Knights."
---
The process of building the machine itself wasn't difficult.
In fact, it was surprisingly easy.
After all, Tony had already recreated the technology once from scratch in another universe.
Now that he had the actual device in front of him, all he really needed to build was an amplifier.
"Holy shit, what is THIS?!"
"And what the hell is THAT?!"
The Tony from this universe was clearly still only at the very beginning of his extraordinary life.
The mysteries of the cosmos had yet to fully reveal themselves to him.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have gotten his entire armor operating system disabled by a single glance from Cyborg during their very first meeting.
As a result, the moment Tony entered the Justice League's Watchtower, he became like a mouse falling into a grain warehouse.
Everything fascinated him.
He wanted to touch absolutely everything.
"Hey, when I go back later…"
"Can I take this thing with me?"
"No! Tony, that's ME!"
Naturally, Cyborg refused immediately.
Tony was allowed to take some equipment and data back with him.
But Cyborg's external industrial mechanical arms were obviously not included in that list.
After being chased nonstop by one apocalyptic crisis after another over the past ten days, constantly living under crushing pressure and racing against time, Joey finally felt himself relax slightly as he watched Tony and Cyborg bickering with each other.
At the very least—
He finally had enough time left to maneuver.
"Alright, grab all the necessary data. We need to leave immediately. What's the maximum multiplier the time-distortion effect can handle?"
"One-to-one. One day here corresponds to one year there. In a sense, literally living a year in a single day, Superman."
The energy inside the temporal wristwatch originated from the power of an Omega-level mutant from several dozen centuries in the future. For Cyborg and Tony—who had only spent a short amount of time researching and testing it—this was already the safest stable ratio they could achieve.
"You have to understand, this thing is still basically half a black box to us."
"If the time ratio gets too extreme, it could trigger massive uncontrolled matter exchange between the two universes."
Joey immediately broke out in a cold sweat after hearing their explanation.
"That sounds a little dangerous..."
"No."
Tony corrected him instantly.
"Not a little dangerous. It's extremely dangerous."
"I'm literally gambling both my life and the safety of my entire universe to help you and yours, Joey."
"So from now on, you'd better pray three times a day—morning, noon, and night—to thank your savior: Mr. Stark."
"Thank you, Tony."
Joey placed a hand on Iron Man's shoulder.
He truly did owe the man his gratitude.
This savior from outside their timeline had practically opened an entirely new path of survival for the whole Flashpoint universe.
"I really..."
"Whoa, stop right there! You're being serious?"
The moment Joey started speaking in such an unusually sincere tone, Tony's face instantly collapsed.
He had done all this because helping people was simply what heroes were supposed to do.
Not because he wanted someone pouring heartfelt praise onto him.
If anything, that just added pressure.
And honestly, the person under the greatest pressure here clearly wasn't Tony.
It was Joey—the guy whose face permanently looked like he was carrying the weight of the world.
"Don't be so serious all the time, Joey. Why can't you smile a little?"
"You know the saying—guys who smile tend to have good luck?"
"That is absolutely a false proposition, bro."
Cyborg had already finished packing the critical data from the Watchtower archives into Joey's belt storage compartment.
Naturally, he still found time to argue while working.
"Monday and Tuesday: war against the Amazons and Atlantis."
"Wednesday: hunted by a lunatic Green Lantern."
"Thursday: a death match against another Superman."
"Friday: brutally beaten by your cousin."
"Saturday: gang-beaten by the entire Green Lantern Corps."
"Sunday: your father arrives leading a Kryptonian invasion fleet..."
Cyborg seriously imagined himself in Joey's shoes for a second.
Under those circumstances, smiling probably was a bit difficult.
"I don't think smiling people necessarily have good luck."
"I think people with terrible luck just usually can't smile."
"And Superman here is obviously the second type."
"Can you stop listing my trauma like it's a grocery inventory already?!"
Listening to Cyborg casually recount every brutal beating he'd suffered made Joey want to leave immediately.
"We're out of time. Start the machine already!"
Cyborg needed to remain behind to stabilize the time machine from this side.
Hawkgirl also had to stay behind to guard the Watchtower and protect the wounded.
That meant only Joey could accompany Tony into the new universe.
And even then, he had to remain ready to respond instantly to any emergency recall signal from the Watchtower.
Fortunately, in the other universe, Joey would never truly face the problem of not enough time.
As long as Cyborg sent the signal, Joey could literally take a shower, change clothes, eat lunch, and still arrive instantaneously.
Once Joey and Tony completed construction of a more advanced and stable time machine on the other side—after making proper preparations and building a much broader bridge between universes—they would finally be able to save this universe properly and without panic.
Cyborg attached signal beacons onto Tony and Joey, then backed away to a safe distance before beginning the countdown.
"Get ready. I'll activate it on three..."
"Three!"
BZZZZT—!
The instant the machine activated and Joey teleported alongside Iron Man, he felt the world spin violently around him.
Even with Kryptonian physiology, he felt distinctly nauseous.
Perhaps the extreme temporal distortion caused the universe itself to instinctively reject an outsider like him.
Joey even felt a bizarre kind of motion sickness.
For the moment, however, he chose to blame Cyborg's garbage counting method instead.
"Fucking Cyborg!"
A flash of white light erupted.
Still in the middle of verbally roasting Cyborg for his unreliability, Joey suddenly realized he had crash-landed in the middle of a bustling city street.
Thankfully, he managed to regain balance at the last second instead of creating a giant crater.
Before he could even observe his surroundings, terrified screams erupted from every direction around him.
Then, accompanied by a beast-like roar echoing from the distance, a black shadow came hurtling through the air in a perfect arc toward the street below.
The pedestrians nearby had already frozen from terror.
Aside from screaming, none of them could react at all.
Still slightly dizzy, Joey acted almost entirely on instinct.
Before the falling object could crush anyone on the street, he caught it firmly overhead with both hands.
Only then did he realize what he was holding.
An old-fashioned dark green Ford sedan.
The civilians directly beneath the impact point were spared instantly.
Just like Action Comics #1 back in 1938.