Chapter 660: Instant Execution of One
"Long'er, Candlelight, Shadow..."
His dark green dread coat unfurled like a pair of massive wings, snapping and roaring in the gale.
Kaito Shirogane muttered the names of the three interlopers from the Primordial Dragon Court, already parsing the distribution of strength among them.
He slowly bent his knees. At this moment, the tactical advantage of his joint effort with Stark Industries—which had systematically evacuated the vast majority of New York's human population over the past day and a half using his shadow legion—became monumentally clear.
This massive orchestration had not only pushed his local Reputation straight to the Revered threshold, but it had objectively allowed Kaito to bypass the continuous, crushing erosion of his active [Hyper-Empathy].
The Kryptonian had weaponized the Life Equation to forcefully hardcode this empathy trait into his vessel, and while Kaito concluded that over a grander world cycle it would allow him to smoothly step into the state of [The Concussive Pulse of the Spiritual Light]...
In the immediate term, it had undoubtedly cede his psyche a severe wave of negative duress.
The chaotic, unstructured thoughts and overflowing emotions of the human masses constantly crashed against his focus; those fragile, low-tier cattle looked as if they were enduring an un-pluggable torrent of panic and existential dread every single microsecond.
Kaito Shirogane compressed his stance mid-air, his dense Qilin Armor flaring with an obsidian sheen as his baseline aura underwent an exponential expansion.
Furthermore, the structural restrictions he had previously deployed via Wulong's [Logic] to systematically depress his vital signs down to the metric of an ordinary mortal were entirely and flawlessly dissolved by his mind at this microsecond.
His racing blood paired with the titanic thudding of his heart, forcing the boundless power of thunder to violently awaken within his cells.
Sizzle!
Brooding thunderclouds violently congregated across the stratosphere in a heartbeat. Without uttering a single syllable, Kaito smoothly shifted his title, [The Raging Lightning Flash] flaring into active deployment.
The boundless authority of heaven and earth, multiplied across the massive kinetic rotation of his internal magnetic field, drove a suffocating wave of pure, monolithic pressure to plummet straight down from the clouds.
At this exact microsecond, whether evaluating the twins who stood at the center of the subterranean detonation—their roiling black and white streams of light forming an isolated pocket of reality that cleanly blockaded the concussive shockwave of the lightning blast—
Or looking up to map the trajectory of Long'er, who had just been forcefully driven out past the New York border parameters over the Atlantic basin by Captain Marvel's high-velocity intercept;
All three targets simultaneously and flawlessly snapped their heads around, their narrow eyes locking straight onto Kaito Shirogane's coordinates.
It's him!
A shared realization finalized within their minds. That pathetically weak interloper they had encountered moments earlier—the clown who had caved to an immediate cognitive shutdown under a basic crowd-control curse word—could not possibly have been the asset actively wielding the [Sephiroth].
The developmental parameters anchoring the Stairway of Life dictated that the higher an organism scales along the tiers, the closer its biology closes the distance to the absolute apex of existence—and a high-tier life form naturally and flawlessly commands an overriding, total immunity against lower-tier capabilities!
This was explicitly where the undisputed majesty of their sovereign Dragon lineage lay!
Roar!
Long'er tilted his reptilian head back to let out a primitive, sky-tearing roar. Carol Danvers's brow wound dangerously tight as an unmatched, terrifying wave of physical strength violently detonated directly before her face.
Long'er drove his massive boots against the air currents, his ash-brown scales flaring as a distorted, white-hot gravity field radiated outward in heavy concussive waves, systematically grinding Captain Marvel's high-velocity displacement to an absolute halt.
Deep within his golden vertical pupils, a dense brown sheen of pure gravity mass violently erupted, generating a monumentally crushing aura of pure pressure.
Captain Marvel distinctly, sharply registered that the biological organism materializing before her knuckles had turned layout-wise, astronomically terrifying—far eclipsing any extraterrestrial warlord or galactic race she had historically engaged across the stars.
He acted identically to an absolute apex predator engineered by the cosmos to occupy the highest tier of the food chain; merely standing within his immediate perimeter cede her nervous system an immense wave of physical duress.
Danvers cast a rapid diagnostic glance downward. Verifying that their current coordinates occupied the open airspace of the Atlantic Ocean, her mind experienced a brief microsecond of relief—only for the spatial architecture directly before her chest to instantly go blank.
She forced her eyelids up, only to find a colossal, scythe-like tail violently plowing through the air toward her torso.
Captain Marvel crossed her arms to deploy her cosmic shields, but right at the microsecond of contact, a deafening bang echoed as a compressed sonic cloud violently exploded. Her frame was shot through the air by the raw physical strength of the blow, rolling and tumbling across the waves for several thousand meters like a flat stone skipped across a pond.
Forcing her frame back into alignment, Danvers tracked the colossal monster compressing his stance, the air currents beneath his massive knees buckling into a sharp, liquid-like concave arc.
Her sensors captured a crisp, mechanical screech—the sound generated by his hyper-dense musculature winding into place cleanly replicating the groaning strain of a ten-thousand-ton cargo dreadnought's steel winches locking down. In the very next fraction of a second, the space before her eyes went entirely empty.
The atmosphere violently fractured, millions of blinding white sonic cloud fragments blasting outward across all coordinates as the compressed concave arc of air violently imploned.
The towering dragon-kin warrior morphed into a blinding, physics-defying blur, shooting straight back toward the central coordinates of New York.
Captain Marvel's psychological baseline violently vibrated. Before her muscles could catalyze a follow-up intercept, a rapid-fire succession of concussive sonic booms blasted open through the sky.
High in the atmosphere, white-hot cloud wreaths exploded in a non-stop, lotus-like pattern across the sky. The interloper's velocity metrics were entirely ridiculous, his trajectory seamlessly executing multiple, sharp vector shifts mid-air.
Amidst the frantic rolling of the stygian thunderclouds, his massive form completed its displacement to materialize directly over the city blocks.
Hum!
The entire upper atmosphere looked as if it were executing a direct, crushing downward compression. Carol Danvers clamped her palms over her chest, a sudden, agonizing sting of preternatural alarm locking onto her scalp as she noted that every single golden strand of her hair was standing rigidly on end.
An exceptionally terrifying, apocalyptic volume of pure violence had completely locked its tracking arrays onto her biology from within the clouds.
At this exact microsecond, Carol Danvers's face underwent a severe mutation as her memory recall mapped the precise warning the woman known as Wanda Maximoff had historically forced into her comm lines:
"Mercenary Tao is by no means a savior. He is, in actual reality, the absolute grandest demon to ever blemish this earth."
Confronted by the combined directives of Tony Stark and Nick Fury, Captain Marvel had ultimately cede her alignment to cooperate with this mysterious faction's combat blueprint.
But right now, an icy thread of doubt struck her soul: Had her intellect executed a catastrophic strategic error? Could it be that the target Mercenary Tao intended to systematically liquidate... was her own agency?!
The brooding storm clouds depressed even lower, the ocean waves below churning into a frantic, sky-tearing state of riot as the planetary magnetic parameters entered a total runaway disruption under Kaito's title.
Suddenly, the sky and earth plunged into an absolute, pitch-black dark.
At this exact microsecond, even the giant Long'er—despite maintaining maximum velocity while continuously execution sharp aerial vector shifts—registered that the spatial layout of his world had ground to a total, hallucination-like halt.
A monumental, unmatched tide of raw kinetic weight had flawlessly locked onto his coordinates from within the void.
He forcefully coiled his massive frame into a tight defensive ball, the ash-brown dragon scales plating his flesh radiating dense rings of pure gravitational energy.
A maximum-scale gravity field exploded from his core.
The ocean waves below and the thunderclouds above were involuntarily dragged toward his center, spiraling inward to compile a massive atmospheric shield.
Yet, standing several kilometers away atop the ruins, the corners of Kaito Shirogane's mouth merely split into a wide grin. His clinical focus had refrained from wasting a single wisp of attention to manually steer the attack.
"This is... the absolute Verdict of Heaven's Will~"
[The Lightning Bolt of Destiny]!
The totality of reality was wiped into absolute blindness for a fraction of a second, before a single, sky-cleaving bolt of primordial thunder violently detonated through the core of the giant's shield.
"Ha!"
An unmatched wave of pristine, unadulterated exhilaration washed over Kaito's soul. Letting out a sharp, maniacal laugh, he systematically inverted his title back to [The Savior of the Wicked], before the bent muscles of his knees violently and flawlessly straightened.
The liquefied atmosphere beneath his boots instantaneously exploded under the kinetic release, as a frantic, beast-like roar tore from Kaito's throat.
His massive silver-haired frame was entirely, flawlessly erased from the sensory grid of local space.
[The Instant · Tier 8], open!
At that exact same microsecond, Candlelight and Shadow—who had remained planted at the center of the subterranean concourse maintaining their isolated defensive pocket—simultaneously forced their eyes wide open.
In the next fraction of a second, both twins violently thrust their palms outward.
Satoru Gojo registered a monumental, crushing shockwave plowing straight toward his face.
The long silver strands framing his brow were violently blown back from his eyelids. The expression of passing shock anchoring his features lasted for a mere frame, before his countenance seamlessly mutated into a mask of pure, bloodthirsty cruelty.
"Domain Expansion: Unlimited Void!"
Weaponizing a vocal cadence that had completely fractured into a distorted, high-intensity shriek, he forcefully threw his domain across the sector.
The pitch-black barrier of his domain fully encapsulated the coordinates of the Millennium Bug, the Odinforce Divine Envoy Yun Wujiu, and the Tree Herder before they could even attempt a tactical extraction. Trapped within that ecstatic, runaway malicious core, he cede absolutely zero credit to calculating the survival metrics of his own allies.
An infinite, redundant ocean of raw information violently slammed down into the cerebral pathways of everyone caught within the perimeter.
Hum~
Yet, deep within that stygian, enclosed domain, a blinding wisp of pure white luminescence abruptly ignited. Gojo rigidly froze. In the very next microsecond, a tree-demon whose operational status was entirely unknown, paired right alongside a Millennium Bug whose spirit framework had been severely broken by his previous self-detonation, simultaneously registered a monumental, near-endless tide of raw vitality exploding inside their cells.
Their critically depressed parameters were systematically and flawlessly restored to absolute peak metrics in a single heartbeat.
Particularly evaluating the Millennium Bug—at this precise microsecond, he distinctly, sharply perceived that the negative emotional parameters and cursed energy anchoring his core had been flawlessly inverted alongside Gojo's massive Reverse Cursed Technique, mutating into absolute positive energy.
His physical muscles and skeletal pathways were executing a hyper-accelerated biological reconstruction.
Bang!
Satoru Gojo's pupils violently contracted. His Six Eyes captured a single wisp of pitch-black static cleanly and flawlessly punching straight through the structural architecture of his domain—which had temporarily lost its vector governance due to the sudden activation of his technique inversion.
His system held absolutely zero priority to blockade the strike.
He lowered his glassy eyes to evaluate his palms. At that exact microsecond, the moment his domain completed its deployment, those twin genderless youths had actually managed to directly step in to execute a total structural re-engineering of his cursed energy properties?!
A stygian wisp of black lightning violently ignited out from the Manhattan grid, cutting through the atmosphere like a jagged, space-tearing crack to slice the New York sky cleanly down the center.
In a single fraction of a second, the vector had already re-anchored itself out across the open ocean blocks.
But at this coordinate, the silhouettes of Candlelight and Shadow simultaneously ground to an absolute halt. Evaluating the form of the giant Long'er hovering in the sky—an asset whose ash-brown divine authority had been completely extinguished down to the atom—their expressions turned intensely, entirely stygian.
Long'er slowly forced his reptilian neck around, the incandescent golden vertical slits of his eyes completely glassy and dim. Over eighty percent of the dragon scales plating his physical vessel had been thoroughly pulverized into dust, his flesh retaining the charred, blue-black discoloration of a primordial thunder strike, while his biology housed an unmapped grid of concussive indentations from multiple, high-velocity impacts.
"Exercise... caution... his vessel utilizes... a full Underworld Morphology..."
In the next fraction of a second, a stygian current of Underworld essence executed a clean rotation across his torso. Kaito Shirogane let out a sharp, mocking chuckle as his obsidian hand relaxed its grip, allowing the monumentally massive dragon-kin giant to plummet helplessly down through the clouds, striking the ocean waves below with a heavy crash.
[Notification: You have terminated a vanguard element of the Primordial Dragon Court: Long'er.]
[You have obtained A-Rank Singularity * 1.]
[You have obtained 30,000 Dimension Points.]
[You have obtained Merit (Tier 2) * 1.]
Suspended roughly three kilometers away within the stratosphere, Kaito Shirogane monitored his panel, a wide grin splitting his features as he casually waved his left hand to dismiss the rigid, sweat-stained faces of Tony Stark and the core Avengers huddling near his boundary.
"Rest your minds, gentlemen. I shall finalize the execution of these interlopers with immense velocity."
"After all... at this precise nexus of the chronology, I am explicitly operating as the absolute Savior of this city..."
[Current Worldline Collapse Index: 9%. Localized attributes have sustained a Minor Threshold Escalation.]
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