Hyuk didn't need to intervene too much. This world had committed to the superhuman path decades ago, and the arrival of the fusion cells had shattered the scientific bottlenecks holding back their research.
Superhuman abilities weren't reserved solely for combat; they could also be integrated into industrial manufacturing, scientific research upgrades, and the modification of existing material systems.
This integration would undoubtedly accelerate Planao's technological advancement.
Without her needing to micromanage, the second phase of the Main Mission would eventually complete itself. It was simply a matter of what parameters the system used to measure completion.
Hyuk had been in this Quadrant for fifty-three years. She had plenty of time left to complete the second task, and if push came to shove, she could always force Planao's progress along.
She wondered if there would be a third phase.
Still,
she couldn't shake the feeling that developing superhumans based on the fusion cells carried some underlying, unforeseen risk. But since it was currently the only viable path, they had no choice.
They couldn't simply scrap all their current achievements and waste decades searching for an alternative method to engineer superhumans. That would be an incredibly lengthy process.
Hyuk couldn't afford to wait that long.
She could only brace herself and shoulder the risk.
As the peaceful years rolled by, computers emerged and rapidly spread into households, with personal PCs becoming a common fixture in many homes.
Hyuk bought one for herself. She figured she might eventually find a way to go back and bring Type Zero over; otherwise, spending all this time alone was getting rather dull.
...
One day,
Gibson sought her out at her residence, looking deeply anxious.
"Excellency Hyuk, we have a crisis!"
"What happened?"
"Derek has gone rogue."
"The one codenamed Hercules?"
"Yes, him."
The incident had begun half a month prior. After returning from a mission, Derek had a dispute with a fellow superhuman codenamed Razor, who was subsequently found brutally murdered.
A military inquiry pinned the crime on Derek. When the brass summoned him for questioning, Derek, unable to tolerate the feeling of being controlled any longer, completely snapped.
He flew into a psychotic rage and tore the entire military base apart. To cover his tracks, he systematically slaughtered every single soldier and officer stationed there.
Numerous other superhumans at the base died at his hands, while several others vanished. The military believed Derek had forcefully taken the survivors with him.
Given the catastrophic scale of the incident, the Alliance mobilized every asset at its disposal and quickly tracked Derek down. However, upon contact, Derek made it violently clear that he had no intention of ever returning to submit to Alliance authority.
That wasn't all.
Derek had also rallied numerous superhumans from other military bases. Together, they had completely shed all restraint, running amok and acting with absolute impunity.
Several major cities were currently being devastated by their rampant destruction.
Although the high command had deployed armed forces and loyal superhuman soldiers to neutralize many of the rioters, some of the rogue elements were simply too powerful to handle.
Unsurprisingly, Derek was the worst of them.
He even treated the Alliance's own armed forces as if they were the WWII Emeralds army, systematically wiping out entire platoons with zero survivors. It was almost as if he were trying to compete with Hyuk, desperately attempting to match her legendary battlefield body count.
He had gone completely insane.
Realizing they were completely outmatched, the brass had no choice but to beg Hyuk to step in. These bastards were tearing apart civilian populations; the Alliance couldn't exactly drop nuclear warheads on their own sovereign cities.
Hyuk was puzzled. "Didn't you implant a micro-bomb in his skull? Did it fail to detonate?"
Gibson's face was grim.
"We don't know who did it, but the bomb appears to have been surgically removed. It was likely the discovery of that fail-safe that triggered Derek's absolute, burning hatred for the Alliance."
Every path of development was bound to face some hurdles. Hyuk wasn't about to criticize Gibson and the military for failing to foresee this, that would be too harsh.
They had taken logical precautions; it was simply a case of human plans falling short of destiny.
Hyuk stood up.
"Where are they now?"
...
Lotus City.
This metropolis had once been reduced to ash by the fires of war, but its post-war reconstruction had transformed it into a thriving, highly prosperous international hub.
Yet, in a matter of mere days, the city had been thrown back into ruin. The rogue superhumans, free of the military's suffocating leash, were letting loose and giving in to their basest, ugliest desires.
"Hahaha!"
A superhuman in a torn combat suit drifted through the air, clutching a bottle of liquor. Completely wasted, he wobbled haphazardly across the sky, smashing into buildings and leaving a trail of shattered glass and crumbling concrete in his wake.
The superhumans engineered by the Alliance possessed immense physical durability; these minor impacts didn't faze them in the slightest.
"Where are the women?! Where are they?!"
Codenamed Vagrant Dragonfly, the drunk superhuman scanned the streets below, his blurry eyes struggling to focus as he bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Huh?"
At that moment,
he noticed a tiny black dot appearing on the horizon. Vagrant Dragonfly usually possessed exceptional vision, but it was currently blurred by the alcohol. However, the moment he finally focused and recognized the approaching figure, every trace of drunkenness evaporated.
"It's... it's her!"
BOOM!
Vagrant Dragonfly panicked. He had grown up listening to the legendary exploits of this entity. Suddenly seeing her materialize before his eyes filled him with nothing but sheer, paralyzing terror.
Before he could even register a reaction, his body exploded into a cloud of bloody mist mid-air. Limbs rained down in all directions, his death was swift, brutal, and absolute.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 20,480,033 tons ⬆]
Hyuk had arrived.
She looked down over Lotus City, using her hyper-developed vision and hearing to sweep the area. She systematically locked onto the coordinates of every rogue superhuman.
The superhumans scattered across the city caught wind of her presence, their expressions twisting in horror.
"Run! Get out of here!"
The legend of the Alliance had descended, and her historical record of absolute victory was terrifyingly real. Any rogue who retained even a shred of sanity knew they stood zero chance of survival.
Only the brainless fools dared to charge at her.
"Hahaha! So I finally get to meet the legendary hero of the Alliance! Let's see if you're actually as strong as the rumors say..."
BOOM!
A violent sonic boom shattered the glass windows of nearby skyscrapers as Hyuk tore through the sky at supersonic speeds. The handful of superhumans who dared to raise a hand against her were instantly obliterated.
Completely ignoring inertia and gravitational forces, her hyper-maneuverable flight path made the slaughter look like a casual tile-matching game. No matter which direction they fled, there was no escape.
Hyuk steamrolled over the rogues with peerless, crushing force, leaving behind nothing but crimson splatters and mangled flesh. The indestructible bodies they had been so proud of were as fragile as tofu before her.
One rogue attempted to grab a civilian hostage, but Hyuk was a step ahead. With a casual backhand to his face, his entire head detonated on impact.
"No, please! I don't want to die..."
The remaining rogues were driven mad with fear, scrambling desperately to escape. But Hyuk caught up to them in heartbeats, shattering their skulls in their frantic struggles.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 20,480,040 tons ⬆]
——
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 20,480,067 tons ⬆]
These superhumans were simply too weak. They barely contributed anything to her overall strength.
Hyuk swept through the rogue superhumans with lightning speed, averaging less than ten minutes per city. Most of her time was actually consumed by transit and searching for her targets.
Lacking X-ray vision, and with distant sounds drowned out by ambient noise, her pacing was naturally bottlenecked. Had they been in an open, flat expanse, she could have wiped them all out in under ten seconds.
These second- and third-generation superhumans were godlike to the Alliance, but in Hyuk's hands, they were as fragile as glass.
Brittle and easily shattered.
Fire, freezing ice, or paralyzing gases, none of it mattered. The specialized abilities designed to counter superhumans completely lost their efficacy before Hyuk.
Hyuk's physical capabilities had long since transcended the boundaries of humanity. They had no conception of just how unfathomably powerful she truly was; any resistance was utterly futile.
As the rogue superhumans were systematically put down and city after city fell silent, Hyuk's voice crackled over the military comms: "Where next?"
Her tone brought an overwhelming wave of relief and security to the operators.
The high command's intelligence officer replied: "The last location is Ston City. That's Derek's stronghold. He's gathered several powerful superhumans there. Exercise caution."
"Got it."
With that,
Hyuk instantly accelerated to supersonic speed, streaking toward the horizon.
...
Ston City.
A superhuman with electromagnetic-hacking abilities shrieked in terror, frantically shouting: "Derek! She's heading our way!"
The other superhumans Derek had gathered in the room immediately descended into a panic.
"What about the other rogues?"
"It looks like they've all been... systematically wiped out..."
The implication was clear: they were all dead. There was no need to ask who had killed them. At the thought of that woman arriving to eliminate them, they couldn't help but tremble.
Derek's body also shuddered instinctively, though he quickly forced himself to recover. Even though he didn't believe he was much weaker than Hyuk, the fear was impossible to entirely shake.
It was like a grown child who still held an instinctive dread of their parents.
Derek's rebellion and subsequent rampage were highly irrational. He easily could have slipped away and gone into hiding, rather than coercing and manipulating these other superhumans to join him in flagrant, wanton destruction.
But he had truly had enough of the military's leash, enough of fighting with kid gloves on, and enough of constant lecturing from high command. Once he snapped, he completely cast off all self-control.
He surrendered to his base desires and impulses, never once considering the consequences of his actions. In his mind, acting with complete, lawless impunity was simply too intoxicating.
It was only when that woman personally stepped in to clean up the mess that Derek felt the first stabs of genuine fear. But he forcibly crushed those feelings, desperately convincing himself that he could still control the situation.
Gritting his teeth, his expression twisting into a snarl, he turned back to the panicked crowd. "Do you really want to crawl back to the way things were? I've had enough of being bossed around by high command, enough of taking their orders. We are superhumans! We possess far greater power. Look at this! With our strength, we can enjoy whatever we want!"
"But..."
"I know what you're afraid of. But no matter what, she is still just a superhuman. I am not weaker than her. Beside, I have all of you here. If we rip her off the heroic pedestal the Alliance built for her, you'll see she isn't invincible!"
The rogue superhumans exchanged glances.
They were temporarily placated.
Seeing his words hit the mark, Derek secretly exhaled a long breath to calm his racing heart. Just then, they spotted a silhouette streaking toward them from the horizon.
"She's! She's here!!"
The moment the shout went up, the newly placated superhumans instantly scattered. They fled at their absolute maximum speeds. While they had found Derek's speech convincing, the split second they actually saw her, their deep-seated awe and terror overrode everything else. They ran for their lives.
"A bunch of useless trash!"
Derek roared in fury. Gritting his teeth, he launched himself into the sky to confront Hyuk, bellowing: "We've buried a massive bomb beneath Ston City! Back off, or I'll blow Ston City sky-high!"
A nuclear warhead?
Where did they manage to get their hands on one of those?
Hyuk hovered in mid-air, confronting Derek. The sheer displacement of wind from her flight battered against Derek's body, forcing him back a step despite himself.
Derek sized Hyuk up, letting out a sneer. "The great hero of the Alliance. You look much younger than I imagined. You don't look majestic at all, and certainly not terrifying."
Facing his childhood idol, he felt only jealousy and burning resentment. A desperate, unsuppressible urge to prove himself surged in his chest, instantly consuming his mind.
Hyuk completely ignored the idiot. Instead, she swept her gaze across the city, locking onto the fleeing superhumans. Very few of them could fly; the vast majority could only run on foot.
"I'm talking to you!"
Derek lost all control, completely enraged by her indifference. "You were just born in an earlier era!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "If I had been born in your time, the legendary hero of the Alliance would have been me! The one who slaughtered ten million enemies would have been me! The one who brought peace to the world would have been me! Anything you can do, I can do too!"
He was completely shameless.
He utterly ignored the fact that his current actions were the exact antithesis of peace.
He was merely shouting nonsense to soothe his pathetic, fragile ego, desperately trying to prove his worth to Hyuk and anyone else watching.
Logic didn't matter.
To him, his own twisted beliefs were more than enough.
By the time he spat out his last word, Derek had completely lost control of his rage. The sheer fury drowned out all his survival instincts. Lunging forward, he closed the distance instantly and threw a full-force punch directly at Hyuk's chest.
BOOM!!!
CRACK!!!
Beneath the deafening sonic boom, a sharp, sickening crunch echoed. Derek's rage had driven him to exert every ounce of his strength, but the impact of his fist colliding with Hyuk's chest sent a devastating kinetic recoil directly back through his arm, shattering his bones into splinters.
Shards of pale bone ripped through his muscle and skin. The excruciating agony made Derek shriek in terror. Trembling violently, he forced his head up, only to meet Hyuk's freezing, emotionless eyes.
THUMP!!! THUMP!!!
Derek's heart hammered violently as a suffocating wave of dread completely submerged him. But it was Hyuk's next words that kicked him directly into the abyss.
"When did you develop the illusion that I was some kind of hero?"
Hyuk grabbed Derek by the skull and hoisted him into the air. With just a fraction of pressure, Derek felt his skull beginning to fracture, forcing a pathetic scream from his throat.
"Ahhh!"
But no matter how frantically he thrashed, he couldn't loosen Hyuk's ironclad grip by even a millimeter.
A bomb?
A nuclear explosion?
Hyuk couldn't care less. She had never tolerated threats or moral blackmail. Even if there really was a nuke, let it detonate. Derek was the one pulling the trigger; she would simply ensure he died alongside the citizens he killed.
She had zero interest in listening to the self-pitying rambling of an insecure loser. Pain and death were far better teachers.
BOOM!!!
Hyuk slammed Derek's head face-first into the pavement, completely pulverizing the asphalt.
Derek's physical output was roughly six hundred tons.
Hyuk's strength, rounded down, was over twenty million tons.
The difference in their power was astronomical. Derek had harbored his delusional fantasies simply because he was entirely ignorant of this reality.
Forget fighting back, even if Hyuk stood perfectly still, Derek possessed no way of bypassing her passive durability. They did not exist in the same dimension of power.
BAM!!! BAM!!! BAM!!!
In Hyuk's grip, Derek was nothing more than a convenient blunt weapon. Clutching him by the head like a warhammer, she swung his body to plow through the other fleeing superhumans, crushing them to pulp on impact.
Crimson blood sprayed in all directions.
It stained Derek's face completely red.
Only at this moment did Derek realize how monstrously powerful Hyuk truly was. In her grasp, he was like a cheap toy in a child's hands, utterly, completely helpless.
"Let... let me go..."
BAM!!!
Hyuk swung Derek, slamming him directly through another superhuman. Most embarrassingly, because Hyuk was flying at such extreme velocities, Derek actually began to suffocate from the sheer air pressure.
He was far too weak.
One of the fleeing superhumans turned back and saw this scene, shrieking in absolute hysteria. He scrambled to run, but Hyuk simply hurled Derek straight at him.
The rogue was obliterated into a mess of bone and flesh on impact, while Derek's body tumbled onto the pavement. The massive residual kinetic energy sent him sliding across the ground, carving a path of destruction through half the street.
"Cough! Cough!"
Dark blood poured uncontrollably from his mouth. Derek had never sustained such catastrophic injuries in his life. He lay amidst the crushed ruins of the street, gasping for his final breaths.
"Ki... kill me, and you'll never find out where I hid the bomb..."
CRUNCH!!!
Hyuk dropped from the sky, her boot stepping down and crushing Derek's head into mush. She had absolutely no desire to listen to another syllable of his nonsense. Just like that, the strongest artificial superhuman died a miserable death.
Hero of the Alliance?
Hyuk herself had never acknowledged such a title. She was acutely aware of her own nature and actions; during World War II, she had been a pure, unadulterated executioner.
War had merely been her playground.
She possessed absolute self-awareness.
No one should ever expect her to be some noble, righteous superhero. And trying to use morality or the lives of others to threaten or blackmail her was an entirely useless endeavor.
[Infinite Overload · Potential Unleashed]
[Strength: 20,480,200 tons ⬆]
Compared to the other superhumans, Derek had provided Hyuk with a slightly larger boost of strength. However, even then, it amounted to nothing more than a fraction of a decimal point.
If Militmony of the Talius Empire were here, he could have easily dismantled Derek. Militmony simply lacked the ability to fly; once in close quarters, he would have reduced Derek to a pulp.
Hyuk connected to the communication channel.
"Come clean up the battlefield. Also, there's a bomb here. Send a team to defuse it."
"Thank you for your hard work, Excellency."
The military staff expressed their deepest gratitude.
"As expected of the legendary hero. Your absolute combat efficiency brings us immense peace of mind."
The battle was over.
Hyuk didn't bother searching for the bomb in Ston City. She couldn't care less whether it was a nuclear warhead; if it was, that was a headache for the Alliance to deal with.
She asked high command: "Are all the rogue superhumans accounted for?"
"On the surface, the rampages have ceased."
The military representative answered.
...
Three days later.
After cross-referencing their personnel database, the military detected a glaring security loophole. They informed Hyuk: "Roughly thirteen superhumans are missing. We haven't been able to locate their bodies."
"Are they highly dangerous?"
"They belong to the high-threat tier. Our post-incident investigation indicates they systematically vanished after making contact with an unknown party."
While some of these superhumans possessed mediocre combat capabilities, they excelled in stealth and evasion. Tracking them was an uphill battle for the military, and they could only promise to do their best.
If they couldn't be found, they would simply have to deal with it later. After all, even nuclear warheads frequently went missing due to logistical oversight during transport. Statistically speaking, over thirty nuclear warheads had been lost globally over the past several decades.
The inner workings of the world were never as precise or secure as the average citizen imagined. Society was a broken vessel leaking from every seam, limping forward only because everyone was constantly patching up the holes.
...
Meanwhile,
Inside a certain biological laboratory.
Two physical bodies coalesced like sticky gelatin, boiling violently before restructuring into a basic humanoid form. However, the face remained entirely blank, devoid of any features.
A Merger.
A man's voice crackled from a nearby computer terminal: "What a truly miraculous form of life. To achieve evolutionary ascension so effortlessly."
The Merger, who had just completed the fusion with a superhuman, replied: "It is far from effortless. Our fusion is contingent upon absolute, mutual consent from both parties. Any trace of resistance or opposing will causes the process to fail. But it is precisely these strict constraints that yield such immense power once the fusion succeeds."
A Merger's fusion was permanent. Once initiated, the two entities could never be uncoupled. Post-fusion, their physical outputs stacked, making them exponentially stronger.
The man in the computer asked, "But tell me, after the fusion, are you still yourself?"
The Merger didn't mind disclosing this information, regarding it as trivial: "With every fusion, my individual will is influenced by the other. The more subjects I assimilate, the more pronounced the transformation becomes, until an entirely new consciousness is forged. It is still me, but it is no longer just me."
"Are the ones who fused with you dead?"
"It is not death. They are one with me. I am them, and they are me. We share one mind and body, entirely inseparable. It is a sensation that is likely difficult to explain to you."
"No, I cannot comprehend it."
Only by experiencing it firsthand could one truly understand the Merger's words. A slit opened on the Merger's arm, letting a glob of milky-white fluid drip into a metal canister.
"As agreed, you brought the superhumans to me, and I provide you with the raw Merger cellular and genetic samples. This is what you wanted."
"I want both of them."
"Very well."
The man behind the screen knew there was more than one Merger in this world. He asked: "Why not simply clone a vast quantity of superhumans possessing the fusion factor? Wouldn't that secure you an endless supply of fusion material?"
"We seek to fuse only with genuine powerhouses. Mass-produced clones lack a powerful will, a structured worldview, and self-awareness. Fusing with them in large numbers would severely degrade our intelligence. For our state of existence, that is a form of devolution."
"I see."
This was precisely why the Mergers went to the trouble of leaking their genetic samples to the major global powers, letting them spend decades cultivating superhumans with the fusion factor.
Unless they possessed the technology to instantly download knowledge and memories into cloned subjects, the Mergers would never use blank clones for fusion.
The fused subjects gradually altered their own thoughts and consciousness; fusing with a horde of blank-minded puppets would ultimately only turn the Mergers into puppets themselves.