His right fist surged forward with layers upon layers of force, so dense that the air within ten meters seemed to freeze. Without a doubt, if it landed, the transformation would fail, and the body's functions would suffer severe damage.
"Ah! Aren't you going to talk sense?!"
The wail of Black Sperm had barely escaped his lips.
"Gravity Field!"
Psykos stopped Zodhis in his tracks.
Super Giant Water Gun! BOOM! Mega Power Punch! BOOM!
Zodhis took on three Dragon-level monsters simultaneously. He blocked their attacks, but cracks began to spread across his gauntlets. Though the nano-armor rapidly repaired itself, the monsters glimpsed hope.
"His armor can't hold out much longer!"
"Even Zodhis can't handle this many Dragon-level and Demon-level monsters at once with just his armor!"
"Shatter his armor!"
The monsters were ecstatic.
Having completed its fusion, its power multiplied countless times, Golden Sperm roared in fury.
"Die!"
Golden Sperm charged in first, trading blows with Zodhis in raw, meat-against-meat combat.
Yet even in close combat, Zodhis was flawless. Hundreds of punches and kicks exchanged in a single second, yet Golden Sperm took far more hits and failed to land a single fist on Zodhis's armor.
Eventually, Golden Sperm was repelled, and Monster King Orochi stepped in to take his place.
A punch descended like a sky-blotting curtain.
"Damn it, we're dragging him down."
Stark was miserable; he couldn't bear the thought of becoming a burden.
After all, Zodhis was staying rooted to the spot to protect them. The monsters had clearly seen through this and intended to grind him to death right there, using attacks he couldn't afford to dodge.
"Deplete his armor's energy—use ranged attacks!"
Psykos had not anticipated Zodhis to be this powerful, capable of fighting Orochi to a standstill, so she ordered everyone to switch to long-range barrages.
Snake heads sprouted from Orochi's body. Countless heads opened their jaws and fired energy cannons. Zodhis deployed his energy shield, and attacks rained down upon it like a deluge.
The energy shield held for ten minutes before shattering. The ensuing attacks all struck Zodhis directly.
Of course, Zodhis's counterattack was equally ferocious. His heat vision flashed, and Evil Natural Water was vaporized instantly. Orochi was cut in half at the waist. But Zodhis also took a punch from Golden Sperm, slamming him into a wall. The Dark Knight Armor cracked; before the nano-metal could repair itself, Homeless Emperor pressed the advantage.
A cascade of energy bullets carpet-bombed the area, battering Zodhis's armor into even worse shape.
Yet even in this state, Zodhis retaliated. The weapon that had previously flash-frozen the atmosphere roared to life again. Caught off guard, Orochi, Homeless Emperor, Golden Sperm, and a swarm of other monsters were all encased in ice.
Zodhis then charged forward and shattered the frozen blocks.
Just as everyone thought the monsters were finished, a black shadow shot straight toward Zodhis.
"DOOM! DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!"
In a supersonic exchange rivaling eight times the speed of sound, Zodhis and the dark figure collided four times. Only after the recoil forced the two apart did everyone hear the thunderous booms, like four overlapping claps of thunder.
Whooo-oooh. Whooo-oooh.
A strange sound—like a wraith, like a devil—rose simultaneously.
His body was bent forward at a heart-stopping angle, chest heaving violently. The jet-black substance covering his arms and chest—composed of blood, skin, keratin, and hair—had suffered massive damage. Beneath his feet, two deep furrows stretched a hundred meters, gouged entirely by the force of impact.
And yet, he had nullified most of the damage.
And he had become stronger.
The black substance writhed like a living thing. At first it merely squirmed, trying to mend the damage. Then, as if it had been doused in super-fertilizer, it surged outward, growing even thicker and swallowing Garou's body.
Two and a half meters tall, with chiseled black muscles and sharply defined meridians, two sharp horns nearly half a meter long sprouting from his head—he looked even more like a monster now.
Garou.
Zodhis was slightly surprised. He had been saving the finale for the fusion of Orochi and Psykos, expecting a landscape-scouring showdown. How had Garou suddenly stolen the spotlight?
Not that he hadn't shaped Garou into this form, but he had mostly left him to his own devices.
"Superhuman willpower, unprecedented insight, flawless tactical placement... Even with the breathing technique I've developed by fusing multiple martial arts, pushing my body's performance to its absolute limit, I still feel uncertain I can beat you..."
"This must be the most perfect, most powerful hero—the embodiment of justice, destined to strike down and erase all evil."
"Are you talking about me?"
Zodhis watched Garou, whose pitch-black eyes were fixed on some unseen point.
"Beyond imagination and yet utterly logical... this strength of yours must have been forged through countless battles."
"Ah."
Even though he was just talking to himself, it was as if Garou had found some clue. His spirit and presence began to rise steadily.
"You know, I've only studied martial arts for seven years, and I've already reached this point."
"Your moves—I can see through them in an instant and replicate them perfectly."
"And you, standing at the pinnacle of humanity, represent an unprecedented peak—but also an unpassable limit."
Zodhis shook out his Dark Knight Armor. The nano-suit was visibly thinning; after all, it had just weathered direct attacks from Homeless Emperor and the others, and a significant portion of its constituent nano-metals had been vaporized.
"God Slayer Instant Strike!"
BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!
The impacts of their fists blurred into a single continuous line. In just a few seconds of combat, Garou unleashed thousands of vicious attacks.
BOOM!
Cough, cough... "I clearly saw through your moves, but you instantly increased your output... This level still isn't enough."
"Extreme Evil Sense!"
Ba-dump.
Following that heart-stopping pulse, a hazy black mist silently rose around Garou's body.
Shing!
Now, thanks to the black mist, even the fluctuations of his strikes were completely masked.
Zodhis grew more astonished the longer they fought, because he discovered that Garou's punches had no recovery lag—it was as if reaction force simply didn't exist for him.
How was that possible?
Or could it be... that idealism and "I believe, therefore it works" actually function in the Marvel universe?
Extreme Evil Sense reflected every single one of Zodhis's movements into Garou's mind. His body moved instinctively, his left leg coiling with a spring-like spiral step to redirect force, his right fist flickering like lightning—in the span of a thought, it had already thrust forward. In the next instant, it would land—
"BAM!"
Both of them took a direct hit from the other. The Dark Knight Armor on Zodhis's abdomen, struck squarely, disintegrated into powder on impact.
/-\
Enjoying the story? Want to read ahead?
Support the novel and unlock early access to unreleased chapters!
~ +20 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon! (+1 Chapter daily)
https://p-atreon.com/Its_Zack
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access Patreon normally)