To be honest, Joey barely remembered the name Morlun anymore.
After all, when he first heard the name Flint, he hadn't immediately realized it belonged to Sandman either.
It was only after witnessing Morlun's abnormal hunger toward Spider-Man that Joey finally remembered what kind of monster this guy actually was.
Back when Joey had only just begun exploring his Kryptonian abilities, he'd once worried that General Zod's surviving forces might someday arrive on Earth and overwhelm him.
Thankfully, that never happened.
Instead, what arrived was an interstellar empire's million-strong invasion fleet.
Compared to Joey, Peter Parker wasn't quite as unlucky—but honestly, not by much.
This Morlun was essentially Spider-Man's natural predator.
To Spider-Man, he was like Kryptonite to Kryptonians, or Doomsday to Superman.
For the current Peter Parker to encounter him now was basically the equivalent of getting ambushed by the final boss before even leaving the tutorial zone.
Pure catastrophic bad luck.
Maybe the Peter Parkers from other universes could, through years of growth and training, barely manage to defeat Morlun in a desperate battle.
But for this universe's new Spider-Man?
Without Joey and Starfire helping him, death was the only possible outcome.
Morlun came from a hidden vampire family that existed outside the multiverse itself.
They possessed terrifying individual strength, could freely travel between universes, and fed upon the energy and souls of living beings.
That was also why they arrogantly referred to themselves as The Inheritors.
In their eyes, they were the rightful inheritors of everything across the infinite multiverse.
The countless parallel universes were nothing more than an enormous hunting ground to them.
They hunted lifeforms at will, taking whatever they pleased, with nobody capable of stopping them.
This predatory ability was especially effective against beings deeply connected to animal symbolism, such as Spider-Man.
Most Spider-Men couldn't survive even a single exchange against them.
Morlun recognized Peter Parker because he had already repeated the act of killing Spider-Man and devouring his body and soul across countless universes.
And almost every single time, Spider-Man had been utterly helpless.
As for why this worked so effectively—that involved complicated mystical symbolism.
If Raven or the Helmet of Fate were here, they could probably explain it through magical theory and ritual structures, perhaps even devise a counterspell or ritual to neutralize Morlun's abilities.
But Joey couldn't be bothered caring about any of that.
Especially when Morlun's drooling fangs were now only three or four feet away from Starfire.
Starfire genuinely loved the Earth clothes Joey had bought for her and didn't want them damaged by heat or anything else.
Which meant that even with the enemy already lunging directly at her face, she still waited for Joey himself to handle the fighting.
Morlun believed his prey had already abandoned resistance.
Without hesitation, he pounced toward the rooftop, his long fingers less than a foot away from his targets.
In the next second, he would snap the necks of these helpless lambs!
Until suddenly—his vision blurred, and his body flew uncontrollably into the sky.
Weak.
Far too weak.
Joey struck Morlun's jaw with what was, to him, an utterly casual punch.
The blow instantly shattered two of Morlun's fangs and launched him high into the air, far away from the civilians below.
Morlun hadn't even had time to react.
Come to think of it, Joey vaguely remembered that the Inheritors had some kind of weakness too...
Actually, forget it.
Like teleportation itself, Joey's figure flickered directly in front of the still-dazed Morlun and delivered another punch, sending him straight into outer space.
After breaking through the atmosphere alongside him, Joey grabbed Morlun by the throat with one hand, his eyes glowing red.
"You came to the wrong place, vampire."
Lately, Joey had started hating these past few days.
He had thought coming to a new universe would let him rest for a while and peacefully search for a way to help Earth survive future Kryptonian conflicts.
Instead, first came the Fantastic Four's warning from the future.
Then came these Inheritors from beyond the multiverse.
At this rate, what next? A Celestial?
No matter the situation, using heat vision at point-blank range to melt someone's brain was an execution method brutal enough to qualify as outright torture.
But for Morlun, it felt appropriate.
Pinned by the throat in Joey's grip, Morlun screamed as the heat vision scorched across his face.
The skin and nerves around his eyes were the first to burn away.
Sensing death approaching, Morlun instinctively used the physical contact between them to desperately drain Joey's life energy.
And then Morlun realized something terrifying—this enemy's life energy was unimaginably vast and pure.
Greater than the combined total of the thousands upon thousands of Spider-Men he had devoured before.
Under that overwhelming flood of energy, even Morlun's facial burns began regenerating.
He felt power surging through every inch of his body.
He had never experienced such intoxicating fullness before.
"What a magnificent sensation!"
Now fully restored, Morlun's joints crackled violently.
His body doubled in size, and his strength multiplied explosively.
Grinning savagely, he swung a punch at Joey.
"I'll devour you first, then that woman, and finally my main course—Peter Parker!"
BOOM.
Morlun's fist smashed into Joey's face, interrupting the heat vision blasting from his eyes.
He should have felt triumphant.
Instead—the arrogance and smile slowly vanished from his face.
That was because his fist hadn't transmitted the expected sensation of flesh and bone.
Instead, it felt like hitting steel.
"Interesting."
Morlun's range of energy absorption exceeded Joey's expectations. Not only could he absorb the emotional-spectrum energy from the Lantern Ring, he could even drain a Kryptonian's bio-field.
Still, it didn't really matter.
Even though the micro-AI inside Joey's Kryptonian battle armor immediately proposed recompiling his energy wavelength to counter Morlun's absorption, Joey couldn't even be bothered to activate it.
As Morlun greedily and violently devoured every ounce of energy he could draw from Joey's body, his strength climbed to even greater heights.
And yet he couldn't feel happy at all.
Instead, he struggled desperately to escape Joey's grip.
He had already realized the horrifying truth: the pure biological energy on the other side was endlessly increasing.
Trying to drain Joey dry through absorption was like trying to empty the ocean with a straw.
Watching Morlun struggle in his grasp, Joey tightened his hand further.
At this point, Joey could already see the two fangs he had shattered earlier regenerating after absorbing just a fraction of his energy.
"Your entire species is disgustingly stupid."
It was honestly difficult to comprehend how an immortal race capable of traveling across dimensions could spend their existence wandering the infinite multiverse with one primary goal: killing every Spider-Man they encountered.
With abilities like theirs, they could have done something meaningful.
Instead, they chose to become interdimensional vermin.
And vermin deserved extermination.
Grabbing Morlun by the head, Joey flew directly toward the center of the solar system, crossing beyond the corona and plunging deep into the Sun itself.
Bathed in solar energy in the truest sense of the word, Joey felt better than ever before.
The same could not be said for Morlun.
The overwhelming heat and heavy-particle radiation tearing in from every direction shredded his skin, stripped away muscle tissue, and destroyed his internal organs layer by layer.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!!"
The agony was unbearable.
Morlun had once believed himself to be an unstoppable hunter across the multiverse.
How had he ended up like this?
His survival instincts drove him to absorb even more Kryptonian energy to reinforce himself and repair the damage.
Wounds that had nearly exposed bone regenerated again and again.
His flesh and skin regrew, only to be torn away moments later by newly forming solar winds.
The cycle repeated endlessly.
And throughout all of it, Joey never let go.
He simply allowed Morlun to continue touching him, continue absorbing energy, continue suffering through the endless cycle.
This was exactly what he deserved.
"I don't know how much longer you can endure this," Joey said calmly. "But me? To borrow someone else's words—"
"I can do this all day."
While Joey was busy having a friendly conversation with Morlun inside the Sun, Starfire brushed nonexistent dust from her clothes and tried persuading Peter to leave this disaster zone.
"You should go now."
News helicopters would arrive soon enough.
Neither she nor Joey truly had identities that could be traced anyway.
But if Peter wanted to continue living a normal life, he needed to leave immediately.
Peter, whose powers had only just awakened, still looked visibly shaken.
He stared toward the sky, but even with his enhanced vision, he couldn't see Joey anywhere.
That made him uneasy.
"But Mr. Joey still hasn't—"
"It's already over."
From their earlier exchange, Starfire had already gauged Morlun's overall level.
He wasn't more dangerous than a fully armed ordinary Kryptonian.
And after several close interactions with Joey, she had also developed the ability to faintly sense some of his thoughts from afar.
For example—right now, she could tell Joey had already finished the fight.
Though despite winning, he wasn't happy.
Which honestly wasn't unusual.
Based on Starfire's observations, Joey spent roughly nine out of every ten days unhappy.
Bzzzzzt—
Another portal suddenly opened beside them.
"Another one?!"
Starfire removed her sunglasses and wide-brimmed hat, revealing her long orange-red hair.
In another moment, both she and her hair would burst into blazing energy capable of incinerating half of New York.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Calm down!"
"We're not enemies! We're—"
"Spider-Man... I mean Spider-Ham!"
Fortunately, the figures leaping out of the portal weren't another group of insane vampires.
Instead, they were three extremely unusual newcomers.
"Are we too late?"
Still fully on guard and ready to attack at any second, Starfire looked carefully at the arrivals.
The first was an enormous red spider-shaped mech over two meters tall, from which crawled out a black-haired little girl even younger than Billy Batson.
The second was a woman wearing a red-and-blue suit with a spider emblem across her chest.
And the third was another figure wearing a red-and-blue Spider-Man costume...?
Wait.
Is that a pig?