"What the hell just happened?!"
The remaining Ultraman barely had time to react before Captain Marvel came flying straight at him.
This time, the giant saw her coming.
Light ignited across his palm as he swung an Ultra Slash downward like a glowing blade.
Boom!
The instant they collided, Carol caught the strike with both hands.
Then, with impossible leverage, she pivoted and hurled the hundred-meter giant over her shoulder hard enough to crater the landscape.
"Damn it!"
The first Ultraman had already climbed back to his feet. Crossing both arms into a firing stance, he unleashed a Destruction Ray.
A blinding beam roared toward Captain Marvel.
Carol didn't dodge.
Didn't even flinch.
She stood there and absorbed the attack head-on.
The energy vanished into her body like water pouring into a star.
And her aura surged even higher.
Golden photon energy erupted across her hands before she slammed both palms forward.
The blast exploded outward without restraint.
Space itself twisted under the pressure, warping into spiraling distortions around the beam path.
The Ultraman struck by the attack screamed as explosions and electrical arcs detonated across his body. Sparks burst from every inch of his armor-like skin before he crashed violently to the ground.
The second Ultraman fired another Destruction Ray.
Carol snorted coldly.
Photon energy condensed around her hand like a blade, slicing the incoming beam apart as casually as cutting silk.
Then she accelerated.
Instantly.
Her fist screamed through the atmosphere toward the giant's face, the compressed force around it distorting space itself.
The Ultraman panicked and threw a punch of his own.
BOOM!!
The collision detonated like a stellar impact.
Two overwhelming forces slammed together, unleashing shockwaves in every direction. A pressure wave stretching kilometers outward pulverized half a nearby city instantly beneath billions of tons of kinetic force.
BOOM!!
White air currents swept across the battlefield moments later.
Carol hit the ground first.
The instant she landed, overwhelming momentum exploded outward from her body like a volcanic eruption. Hurricanes spread in all directions, snapping stone pillars apart and ripping debris into the sky.
The Ultraman crashed backward through a mountain range.
Carol chased him relentlessly.
Photon energy gathered around both fists as she unleashed a savage barrage of punches, each strike hammering the giant deeper through solid rock.
One punch.
Then another.
And another.
Under the constant eruption of photon power, she drove the Ultraman entirely through the mountain before finally blasting out the far side.
The giant let out one final unwilling roar before collapsing.
Then his body dissolved into drifting particles of light.
The remaining Ultraman saw that and immediately chose survival over pride.
He ran.
Carol's expression changed.
There was no way she could allow him to escape.
If he got away, the next person arriving would probably be one of the Kryptonian Empire's true monsters.
Esdeath.
Dueling Sword.
Or Darius.
All three were infamous throughout the galaxy. Even among the countless powerhouses scattered across the cosmos, they ranked near the top.
Carol was confident.
Not suicidal.
But before she could catch the fleeing Ultraman, rainbow-colored light descended from the sky once again.
A familiar figure stepped out from the Bifrost.
"At last," Esdeath said with a cold smile, "we finally meet."
The Kryptonian Empire didn't possess someone like Heimdall naturally.
So Drex Valen solved that problem himself.
Using the Reality Stone, he simply created a Kryptonian equivalent.
A superior version, in his opinion.
Her name was Galatea.
And when the two Ultramen ran into trouble, Galatea noticed immediately.
Naturally, Drex preferred creating an impossibly beautiful woman over copying Heimdall exactly.
After receiving the report, Darius declined to come because he was busy slaughtering enemies elsewhere.
Dueling Sword refused because he was currently stationed defending Krypton itself.
Which left Esdeath.
Carol immediately recognized her.
White military uniform.
Ice-blue hair reaching down to her waist.
The overwhelming presence of someone who stood above entire civilizations by force alone.
Stories about Esdeath spread everywhere across the galaxy. Whenever a world refused surrender, she often exterminated the entire civilization personally.
A genuine psychopath.
Granted, the universe had no shortage of people like that.
Esdeath, meanwhile, looked thrilled.
Ever since Drex upgraded her with Saiyan genes alongside her Kryptonian physiology, her power had exploded upward again after stagnating for years.
And now…
She finally had an opponent worth testing herself against.
Both women vanished simultaneously.
Then reappeared inches apart.
The impact that followed shook the planet.
From deep space, the collision looked like a miniature star igniting across the surface.
BOOOOOOM—
The force of their punches ripped across the crust like planetary artillery.
At the center of the impact zone, gigantic trenches several kilometers long split across the landmass.
The aftershocks peeled away layers of the planet's surface.
Molten lava erupted from ruptured fault lines while distant volcanoes awakened one after another, spewing black smoke into the darkening atmosphere.
The crust itself began trembling continuously.
A global catastrophe had become inevitable.
Heat waves spread worldwide.
Storm clouds thickened overhead.
Explosions erupted randomly across the horizon while strange-colored lightning flickered inside the clouds like fractured veins of energy.
Esdeath climbed out of a river of magma grinning wildly.
Kryptonian biology combined with her bio-force field made her body nearly indestructible. Extreme heat, freezing temperatures, lightning, radiation, toxins…
None of it mattered much anymore.
Laughing, she slammed a fist into the ground.
Terrifying force surged deep into the planet's crust.
The earth exploded upward.
Carol had just reappeared when endless smoke, molten rock, and firestorms swallowed her whole, blasting her backward through a chain of detonations.
Yet she emerged completely unharmed.
In Binary form, Captain Marvel had already crossed into something far beyond human.
Defeating her wouldn't be easy even for Esdeath.
Carol stabilized herself in midair and unleashed another massive golden photon beam at full power.
The attack distorted the atmosphere around it so violently that mirror-like fractures appeared across nearby space.
Esdeath burst into laughter.
Then she thrust one hand directly into the incoming beam.
And stopped it.
Bit by bit.
She physically forced the golden energy backward.
Carol stared in disbelief.
"Monster…"
This was the first time she had ever seen someone suppress her photon energy with raw strength alone.
Blue.
Gold.
Purple.
Beneath the darkened sky, three colors collided endlessly, flooding the battlefield with violent light.
Every impact sent ripples through space itself.
The air screamed.
Electrical arcs flashed everywhere like superheated blades carving through reality.
Plasma storms detonated around the two women like artillery bombardments.
Esdeath ignored everything completely.
Her bio-force field and Kryptonian body protected her so thoroughly that even her clothes remained undamaged.
Carol wasn't bothered either.
She simply absorbed the excess energy.