Earth-1's forces moved into this world under something resembling a liberation banner and proceeded to strip Earth-3 fairly clean.
Unlike the Mars development projects, the resources here were ready-made—open a warehouse, load it up, and go. In short order, massive quantities of supplies, energy sources, and technical data were being ferried back to Earth. The military and the government were delighted. To their credit, the politicians weren't purely extractive: they dispatched elite units to help the current government stabilize the situation, and on balance accomplished quite a bit of genuine good.
Ultraman, Superwoman, and Power Ring were captured. Owlman, Deathstorm, and Sea King were unaccounted for. Alexander Luthor and Johnny Quick were dead. Forever Evil had succeeded completely. The original objective—destroying the Anti-Monitor—remained technically unfinished, but someone had volunteered to handle it on their behalf, and nobody raised an objection.
The moment Thea left Earth-3, Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor moved simultaneously.
Darkseid's divine power was at its peak. Setting aside Yuga Khan, who was still stuck to the Source Wall in a state of raving madness, Darkseid represented the absolute summit of the New Gods. Highfather didn't match him. Thea didn't either—not yet. Darkseid had no doubt about this.
The Anti-Monitor at full strength would have demolished Darkseid without much difficulty. He had absorbed the total energy of an entire universe, with no upper ceiling. The New Gods, by contrast, could only fuse with the Source—and only so much of it, with compatibility to consider on top of that.
To put it in terms anyone from this world would understand: the Anti-Monitor was from a xianxia world, while the New Gods were from a wuxia world—a high-martial one at best. The techniques simply weren't in the same league.
At full power, two moves. Anti-Monitor would have ended Darkseid in two moves.
But his current condition was poor. Extraordinarily poor.
Even so, he hadn't come here to die. With the Anti-Life Equation in hand, the power to unmake everything gave him grounds to fight. Killing Darkseid, leveraging the catastrophic disruption that would cause in the positive matter universe—that was his path to slipping free of fate's grip. If he could do it, the Anti-Monitor designation would cease to define him, and he could become a person again rather than a program whose only function was destruction.
The problem was that Darkseid rarely left Apokolips, rarely committed his true form to direct combat. Now, through the convergence of several forces at once, the Anti-Monitor finally stood in front of him. Kill this tyrant, and freedom would be within reach. Whatever multiverse tremors resulted from Darkseid's death—he didn't particularly care.
Two thick energy conduits extended from inside the Anti-Monitor's armor, connecting to the Anti-Life Equation. Under normal conditions, access would have been unrestricted. But after his death at Nekron's hands, vast portions of his body had been necrotic; the conduits were rerouted around the dead tissue, piping the energy directly to his wrists.
The power to unmake everything, concentrated in both hands. Reclaiming this felt like reclaiming himself. His confidence against Darkseid had never been higher.
The Dark Lord commanded five divine domains—darkness, evil, power, tyranny, and slaughter—and he felt the pressure radiating off his opponent immediately: something that sat above the New Gods entirely.
He felt no fear. He felt something closer to excitement. He had lived for untold billions of years. One look told him the enemy was running on fumes. An opponent this diminished—if he couldn't finish it, he had no business being here.
Fsst. Fsst.
Two quick hisses, and the Omega Beams fired first. When Darkseid committed, he committed to maximum force.
The two blood-red beams struck the Anti-Monitor's armor. Against a multiverse-tier combatant, even Omega Beams couldn't simply put him down—but the armor shattered, exposing the shoulder beneath: rigid muscle, pale as a corpse. Darkseid's expression opened into something raw and hungry. No more testing. He let out a roar that pressed against the stars themselves and drove a fist forward.
The Anti-Monitor spread his right hand wide. He condensed Anti-Life power at frightening speed into a purple energy beam roughly three meters across and launched it straight at Darkseid.
Darkseid was genuinely not skilled at evasion—possibly it was temperament, possibly raw agility had never been his strong suit. In every exchange Thea had observed, she had never once seen him dodge. No turns, no sidesteps, no jumps, no rolls.
Thea was fairly confident "evasion" simply wasn't in his stat sheet.
He didn't even watch the incoming beam. He extended his left hand to take it head-on and drove his right forward like a mountain falling.
His strategy was elementary: trade wounds. The enemy was down to his last sliver of health. By any accounting, this was already decided.
Watching from outside, Thea gave it two seconds and concluded that there was zero technical sophistication in this fight—just you hit me, I hit you, first one to fall loses.
From what she could observe, Darkseid's odds were solid. But she didn't rule out the Anti-Monitor having something in reserve for a last-second reversal. He had the Anti-Life Equation, after all—that was the universe's ultimate power. Anything was possible.
Sure enough, after five minutes of exchanging blows, the Anti-Monitor's armor was breached in multiple places, while one of Darkseid's eyes had been struck and was bleeding freely down his cheek. His mountain-like body was being corroded by antimatter energy across its entire surface—his left hand was a charred mess—though he was containing the damage through sheer divine force. He looked at the Anti-Monitor with a cold, narrow smile. The look of a hunter watching prey stumble into his net.
In a world surrounded by predators, even a villain had a hard time surviving. He couldn't afford to be badly hurt. If his wounds ran too deep, and Highfather and Thea chose to strike Apokolips together, he would have nothing left to fight back with.
Darkseid issued a silent command to Steppenwolf. The general of Apokolips opened a Boom Tube immediately.
A dark figure shot out—or rather, glided out, riding a pair of cosmic skis, clad in black armor. A New God. The Black Racer.
The skis moved at extreme speed, trailing a streak of white mist. His orders were to claim the Anti-Monitor's life.
The Black Racer didn't attack directly—antimatter energy was beyond his capacity to withstand. He circled the edges of the battlefield in two wide sweeps, reading the rhythm, looking for an opening.
Then Darkseid spotted a gap in the Anti-Monitor's defense. One Omega Beam hit the Anti-Monitor square in the face. Simultaneously, Darkseid was behind him—with both fists locked together, he swung with everything he had.
Closing the distance, Darkseid caught what the Anti-Monitor had been murmuring this whole time. He only caught fragments: misunderstanding. guilt. shame. failure. fool. The words were plain and archaic—but threaded through with an overwhelming compulsion.
What is this move? What is he doing?
The cold unease arrived fast. He had underestimated the Anti-Life Equation. Underestimated the Anti-Monitor.
If the Anti-Monitor had come to fight in this condition, barely holding together, he had known he was walking in with a plan. This was the kill shot he had been building toward.
Darkseid spun. The Black Racer—the one under his own control—had eyes full of chaos and violence.
The dark runners snapped to a new speed—twenty percent faster, just like that. The angle shifted by a hair. Straight at Darkseid.