There is a planet called Anteverse. Its skies are eternally choked with dark clouds, its land barren and utterly lifeless. No rivers can be seen—only layers of exposed bedrock—and even the atmosphere itself is a murky, yellowish hue. Within these rock formations lives a species known as the Precursors.
The Precursors are a colonial species, propagating by endlessly invading other planets. They possess exceptionally advanced knowledge of toxicology, chemical biology, and hyperspace technology.
They can bridge their homeworld with other planets by creating wormholes, infiltrating the enemy from within and launching attacks using invasion forces. The Kaiju are individual bio-weapons manufactured using the Precursors' own genetic material.
This is not the first time Earth has suffered invasion by the Precursors. They established a connecting wormhole once before, during the Triassic period, roughly between 250 and 203 million years ago.
However, back then, Earth's atmosphere had an extremely high oxygen content. The Kaiju, deployed as the vanguard of the invasion, could not adapt to such an environment, and the colonization effort ultimately ended in failure.
But with the dawn of the modern era, Earth's pollution worsened. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rose to a point capable of supporting Kaiju survival. And with Thanos's directive in hand, the Precursors chose to invade.
"This place feels even worse than the pockmarked surface of the moon."
A group of superheroes, clad in protective suits, appeared here.
They had arrived courtesy of Zodsys's spatial technology—deployed rather reluctantly. After all, driving straight into the heart of the enemy, teleporting right into their home base, and then wreaking havoc—that was precisely what superheroes excelled at.
"That's only because you haven't seen the moons from the worlds of Tree-Not-Son or Koro-sensei."
Zod's voice rang out.
"What's that?"
All the superheroes voiced their puzzlement. There were other moons?
The Kaiju surged forward the moment the Outworlders appeared, hurling themselves into the fray as if ignorant of both fatigue and fear. Had the heroes not anticipated stepping directly into the enemy's headquarters and prepared accordingly, facing Kaiju in such overwhelming numbers would have been an ordeal.
"The symbiote armor Stark provided is just too incredible."
By now, the superheroes had all switched into the flashy, silver-white battle suits of Stark's design. After confirming the assault plan and eliminating another wave of the nine-headed invading monsters, Stark had mass-produced a vast quantity of liquid symbiote metal.
That was the most convenient aspect of symbiote armor—it could instantly take form as a full suit.
Now, every superhero stood encased in symbiote armor over five meters tall. Stark had also rolled out upgrades, making these suits far deadlier than the Hulkbuster.
Then, with Stark himself at the vanguard in his twenty-meter primary armor, they pressed the offensive. Stark was exceedingly pleased with his new look. Though twenty meters was still shorter than the Kaiju, the integrated weaponry carved through the beasts with the satisfying ease of slicing melons and vegetables—no need to worry about collateral damage here.
Unlike the true cannon fodder that could only be classified as Category II or III Kaiju, the Category V and VI Kaiju possessed a considerable degree of intelligence. They would not stand by and watch their kind be slaughtered. From the blue organs embedded in their forelimbs, tentacle-like azure blades extended—sweeping across the battlefield like beam sabers.
"Tch."
A click of the tongue, a note of annoyance. Across the battlefield, where only the sounds of explosions and impacts echoed, a faint, cold laugh rang out.
An instant later, the murky, yellowish sky blazed with brilliant golden light. Golden-red lightning, wreathed in the splendor of blazing flames, descended from the void at a divine speed no beam saber could hope to match. It pierced cleanly through the torso of the Category VI Kaiju.
The residual lightning pillar carried enough force to skewer virtually every Kaiju standing in a straight line. Immediately after, the thunderous flames erupting from the penetration wounds detonated violently under Zod's manipulation.
But clearly, this was the invaders' headquarters. Cloned bio-weapons like the Kaiju were in no short supply.
An even greater swarm of Kaiju attacked. From Zod's entire body, inexhaustible flames erupted outward.
A towering pillar of fire shot into the sky, dyeing the murky yellow heavens a deep, scorching red. It was as if the wrath of a deity commanding the very authority of flame surged endlessly, scouring the gray cloud layers.
The Kaiju on land closest to the fire pillar were the first to bear the brunt. They shrieked pitifully as the unchecked blaze consumed them. But in the blink of an eye, from the center of the towering inferno came the crisp, clear cry of a bird. Taking the form of a phoenix—a winged shape of pure flame with a wingspan stretching a full hundred meters—it blotted out a vast swath of the sky.
Carrying terrifying force, as though it meant to shatter the very land itself, the hundreds-of-meters-wide phoenix locked onto the Precursors' location and dove.
With a roar that seemed to shake the heavens, the land began to collapse outward from the phoenix's point of impact. The scene rivaled a volcanic eruption. The bedrock crumbled and split, magma-like flames flowing through the fissures. A moment later, fire erupted from deep underground like a volcanic blast.
Even calling this the arrival of doomsday would not be an overstatement.
Yet the cataclysm was far from over. Countless beams of light rained down in dense volleys, and the earth endured a second round of detonations.
The Precursor's voice trembled.
"Tell me what I just saw was an illusion!"
Another Precursor remained expressionless.
"Clearly, this is a being more terrifying than Ronan—and that was an attack he genuinely unleashed."
Setting aside the energy output, the sheer instantaneous impact force alone exceeded one hundred million tons. Anything in that zone that was not killed outright by the extreme heat and high temperature would have been pulverized by the concussive force.
Thanks to the transit portals created by their space technology, the Precursors were able to rapidly leap to the edge of the blast zone and survive such an ultimate attack. Even so, the heat was so intense that even without taking a direct hit, the surging thermal wave nearly boiled the moisture from their bodies, leaving scorch marks seared across their hides.
"Have we made contact with our allies yet?"
"Quite obviously, even if we did, it would already be too late."
A humanoid figure wreathed in flames strode out at a leisurely pace. Before the Precursors' eyes, the shape of a bare-handed human gradually became clear.
It was a young human male wearing a faint, infuriatingly punchable smirk. Invaders though they were, the Precursors, in this situation, could clearly still feel fear. The desire to survive was hardly absent in them, and so they attempted to parley with this human half their size.
"Human, I believe we can talk—"
Zod studied the Precursor—its appearance resembling that of an aquatic insect, with four arms, semi-transparent wings, and an exoskeleton like Earth's crustaceans.
Their monster tech doesn't look half bad either. Should I pawn them off to the Kryptonian Empire?
"Zod, you absolute freak. That explosion just now generated a hundred million tons of impact force, and he walked away completely unscathed."
Tony Stark gaped in astonishment. Is that guy even human anymore?
/-\
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)