And so Zod witnessed with his own eyes as this planet was restored from its destroyed state back to the state before its destruction.
"Thank you for your help, Ancient One."
Zod said with a smile.
"I need to get back as soon as possible."
The Ancient One shook her head, so Zod opened a wormhole to let her leave.
He truly had no interest in the Time Stone. Even if Thanos got his hands on the Time Stone, there was nothing he could do against the current Zod.
As for the restored planet, the lifeforms on it retained their memories from before the planet's destruction—memories of wanting to surrender.
So they very simply surrendered, all of them.
"What? A whole Ultraman squad went missing?"
Zod heard this news the moment he returned to the Kryptonian Empire.
Before dispatching Ultraman squads, they would observe whether the target planet had any capacity to resist. Someone like Captain Marvel was purely an accident.
Not to mention Galadriel with her divine eyes was keeping watch—for something to go wrong was difficult indeed.
"When I observed them, they had already vanished."
Galadriel said uneasily.
"Interesting…"
Zod didn't blame Galadriel. Although the universe at large didn't know the Kryptonian Empire had someone like Galadriel—a clairvoyant with eyes and ears that could see most places in the universe—if someone was truly powerful enough, they could indeed take away an Ultraman squad without Galadriel noticing.
It wasn't strange that someone would set their sights on the Ultramen. After all, the Ultramen Zod created were enhanced versions.
Hundred-meter-tall beings with tens of thousands of tons of strength, capable of releasing nuclear-level energy rays with their bare hands.
Most importantly, these things could take on an entire fleet single-handedly!
Before the Ultramen appeared, there were powerful individuals who could do such things, but they were ultimately few in number. However, once the Ultramen appeared, the civilizations of the universe took one look and thought—
Holy shit, the Kryptonian Empire has already produced tens of thousands of Ultramen, and it still doesn't look like they're stopping?
If these tens of thousands of Ultramen mobilized together, who could possibly stand against them?
So, driven by curiosity—or rather, by the desire to obtain the Kryptonian Empire's technology for transforming people into Ultramen—someone captured an Ultraman squad.
And this Ultraman squad proceeded to reveal quite a bit of information.
First, they didn't know the transformation technology themselves, because after undergoing the transformation they would enter a state of unconsciousness, and upon waking they would already have their powers.
Second, the Ultramen were not Celestials, nor were they created based on the Celestials as a reference.
Third, the number of Ultramen might have already exceeded one million by now, and they were fully replacing the Kryptonian Empire's military—meaning the Burning Legion and the Space Knight Corps could successfully retire.
Fourth, each Ultraman individual had differences from one another. Not all of them were a hundred meters tall; under certain circumstances, some could even grow to a gigantic nine hundred and ninety-nine meters…
Fifth, the "tens of thousands of tons of strength" wasn't entirely accurate either—it varied from person to person. Some individuals might have one or two hundred thousand tons of strength. And each person's abilities also differed. Many Ultramen possessed their own unique superpowers, such as space traversal, time reversal, telepathy, mind control, psychokinesis…
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Sixth, the description of "nuclear-level rays" was far too vague and incomplete. The power of ray techniques also varied from person to person. Weaker rays might only have nuclear-level power, but some Ultramen's rays were powerful enough to directly blow up a planet comparable to Earth, and a small number of elite combatants were even stronger…
Hiss!
Everyone drew a sharp breath. Holy shit, the Kryptonian Empire was about to defy the heavens.
A million Ultramen like these—then nobody else needed to bother playing the game. They might as well just bow their heads and submit to the Kryptonian Empire.
Moreover, even the elite among the Skrulls—the Super-Skrulls—couldn't replicate the Ultramen's abilities. Though theoretically a Super-Skrull could replicate all the abilities and memories of whoever they copied, the Ultramen seemed to fall outside the scope of that power.
Zod was increasingly finding the Ultramen incredibly useful. The Ultramen he created had the ability to freely change their size, so he didn't need to worry about them being too large to deal with smaller targets.
Zod located the missing Ultraman squad, and along the way also found the ones who had ambushed them. He wiped them all out before leaving.
However, the fact that the Kryptonian Empire was mass-producing Ultramen as superweapons had essentially become known to the civilizations of the universe. They felt they couldn't just let the Kryptonian Empire continue manufacturing Ultramen—otherwise they truly wouldn't be able to stop the Kryptonian Empire's invasion.
But alas, of the three great empires, the Skrull Empire and the Kree Empire had fought each other to the point of beating each other's brains out—there was no way they could stop.
The Shi'ar Empire was currently facing Thanos's Black Order and invasions from various other civilizations, barely able to look after itself.
Wanting to deal with the Kryptonian Empire—how could it be easy?
In the past, the Kryptonian Empire didn't have enough manpower and couldn't hold the territory they conquered. But with the appearance of the Ultramen, that problem ceased to exist. Just casually sending a few Ultramen to a planet was enough to suppress all resistance.
The fleets dispatched by various civilizations to try to snipe the Kryptonian Empire were directly crushed by the now-vigilant Ultramen of the Kryptonian Empire.
With a single strike, an Ultraman wielding a planet-destroying ray destroyed more than half the fleet. The rest posed no challenge to those Ultramen.
Fortunately, Zod had no intention of expanding his territory further.
Hadn't they seen how exhausted the leader of the Assassinorum from the Warhammer world had become, taking over the daily affairs of a million planets? The man had been driven half-mad.
Although Zod had the Black Queen to help handle things, the Black Queen was still a step behind the Kree Empire's Supreme Intelligence, and she would eventually fall behind too.
This was about enough for now.
"Any news in the universe lately?"
Zod sat in his palace, He Xi on his left, Liang Bing on his right, and Angel Yan massaging his shoulders.
That woman Esdeath had run off somewhere the moment she returned, though they had shared some intimate time together.
"The Shi'ar Empire is close to being pushed back to their homeworld by the Black Order. But they also struck back at the Black Order with everything they had. The information I've gathered shows the Black Order was caught in the Shi'ar Empire's gravity collapse bomb trap—more than half of the Black Order is gone."
The Black Queen said.
In that supernova explosion, if Thanos hadn't fled fast enough, he would have been gone too.
But by creating a supernova explosion in their own territory, the Shi'ar Empire also suffered devastating damage. Thousands of planets were reduced to nothing, and gamma ray radiation affected more than half of the Shi'ar Empire. Countless newborns were born deformed, and the number of people who died from radiation was beyond counting.
Though there was no news of a Hulk being created.
"The Raptor Star was affected too, wasn't it?"
Zod asked. There was no way the Shi'ar Empire's homeworld could have escaped the effects of the supernova explosion—the blast radius was simply too massive.
/-\
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