Shattering their understanding of superhumans?
The host's words sounded so excessively dramatic that the contestants found them hard to believe. They knew Powerful was incredibly strong, but claiming that she could completely "shatter their understanding" felt like a gross exaggeration.
"Just how strong can a single person possibly be?"
It was completely beyond their imagination.
Leviathan and Radiant Man both cast long, intense glances at Hyuk. Perhaps this final battle would finally unveil her true, current limits. They were absolutely desperate to know the answer.
"Please look at the big screen!"
The second the screens displayed the cataclysmic battle between Hyuk and the Merger, Pat, on Planao, everyone's focus locked on with absolute intensity. In an instant, their entire perception of the absolute upper limits of superhumans was violently rewritten.
Utter jaw-dropping shock.
Pure terror.
Total, breathless awe.
It was exactly as the host had described.
Much like when they had first awakened and stared in awe at the snippets of the Battle of Jpscan City, watching this clash on the screen completely demolished their cognitive boundaries.
"This is a battle that occurred on a certain planet behind the door. Contestant Powerful engaged the Merger in a full-power struggle, the sheer intensity of this conflict eclipsing any previous engagement by a landslide!"
"The reason this is crowned the Battle of One Billion Degrees is because the Merger's thermal output literally reached that unfathomable temperature!"
"Any conventional biological lifeform or matter exposed to such extreme conditions would be vaporized in a fraction of a microsecond. Serving as the battlefield, this metropolis was almost completely evaporated into nothingness!"
"Contestants, I initially wanted to name this the Battle of the Sun, but in truth, even the searing surface of the sun doesn't come close to matching this level of heat!"
Finally, the host posed a question to the shell-shocked crowd that they couldn't even begin to fathom, before delivering an even more staggering answer.
"A punch comparable to the density of a white dwarf star, delivered at a velocity of Mach 25. Do you comprehend the sheer destructive yield of such a blow? This single punch is powerful enough to pierce clean through the Earth's crust!"
The contestants' breath hitched, their minds paralyzed by absolute horror.
"..."
The entire stadium fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
This scale of destructive power was something they didn't even dare to dream of. Yet, Hyuk undeniably possessed it. A thermal environment of one billion degrees, a heat source hotter than the sun, and a physical strike capable of splitting open the planetary crust.
Every single detail underscored the terrifying power of that woman. It was a realm they could never hope to touch. Dumbfounded, the crowd slowly shifted their gazes, locking their eyes onto Hyuk.
Radiant Man's breathing turned ragged.
Strong!
Too damn strong!
Bloodshot veins map-lined his eyes. He pursued this exact type of ultimate, peak strength; perhaps, one day, he too could unleash a thermal shockwave of this caliber.
Leviathan merely muttered to himself under his breath.
"A punch capable of piercing the Earth's crust..."
Witnessing the collective, paralyzed reaction of the contestants, the host beamed with immense satisfaction. Indeed, Hyuk's clash against the Merger was simply too absurdly high-tiered.
He made a sudden announcement.
"I understand that asking you to challenge this particular opponent individually is a bit too much to ask. Therefore, for this final round, I will permit all of you to work together as a team!"
"As long as you can collectively defeat this single opponent, I will award every single one of you ten points!"
The contestants exchanged anxious looks.
Was it even possible?
Was this really a challenge that could be solved by sheer numbers?
"And now, the final challenge begins!"
Swish.
The contestants vanished into the scenario. This time, all of them materialized on the exact same battlefield, a massive, dense crowd of superhumans clogging the streets.
And then,
a massive swarm of pale, fleshy tentacles erupted from the earth. Caught completely off-guard, dozens of contestants were instantly snared and absorbed by Pat the moment they spawned. The surviving crowd scrambled to react.
"Everyone, charge together!"
"Unleash your absolute trump cards immediately! We cannot, under any circumstances, let him enter his burst state, or it is game over for all of us!"
...
Back in the real stadium,
Hyuk watched with mild amusement as the contestants charged forward en masse, only to be devoured by Pat's ravenous tentacles like candy. From the very first second, the engagement was a complete, one-sided slaughter.
Without some form of specialized counter to neutralize his absurd hyper-regeneration, their chances of clearing this challenge were virtually zero. Conventional attacks simply could not put Pat down for good.
He didn't even need to enter his devastating nuclear burst state. In his baseline form, Pat easily suppressed and effortlessly crushed the entire roster of contestants, including Leviathan and Radiant Man.
He fought and fed simultaneously.
The outcome went exactly as expected, concluding with a total team wipe. Right up until the last of them was absorbed, they hadn't even managed to force Pat to activate his nuclear burst state.
They had grossly overestimated themselves.
Five minutes later,
the contestants returned to the stadium, thoroughly questioning their life choices. Back in their respective domains, they were all elite superhumans, but in that simulated slaughterhouse, they were treated as nothing more than cannon fodder and bottom-tier grunts.
"The disparity in our strength is just too vast."
"It wasn't even a fight."
Defeated sighs echoed through the stands.
Now that all ten featured battles had been evaluated and challenged, their final scores materialized above their heads. Everyone's standing was plain to see, and the leaderboard on the screens remained completely unchanged.
"Tense and thrilling moments always fly by in the blink of an eye! Contestants, it seems our tournament is finally drawing to a close. Please look at the big screen!"
Hyuk's image flashed onto the screen.
"Let us congratulate Contestant Powerful! Truly worthy of our special guest and heavyweight participant, she achieved a flawless victory across all seven challenges, and with three of her own battles featured in the selection, she has secured a perfect score of one hundred points!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Brilliant, colorful fireworks shot into the air above the stadium, exploding in dazzling cascades.
Once again, Hyuk stood under the collective spotlight. In all honesty, she thoroughly detested being the center of attention. She only wanted this farce to conclude as quickly as possible so she could return to her quiet solitude.
"Ranking directly behind Contestant Powerful are Contestant Leviathan and Contestant Radiant Man! Both of you secured seventy points, maintaining your tie for second place. Truly worthy of celebration!"
"The three of you will be formally inducted into the Planet NPC Hall of Fame, spreading your names across the cosmic void. Furthermore, each of you will receive a mysterious grand gift. Let us celebrate their achievements!"
"Of course, participation rewards for all other contestants will be distributed shortly."
The fireworks continued to cascade across the sky.
Wrapping up the event with efficient precision, the host bowed elegantly and politely to the contestants. His voice began to echo, sounding as if it were drifting further and further away into the distance.
"It has been an absolute honor to successfully host this tournament on Earth. I hope everyone had an enjoyable evening, and may our paths cross again in the future!"
The tournament was officially over.
When Hyuk regained her bearings, she found herself suspended in the middle of a deep, endless cosmos. Shimmering constellations radiated a brilliant, ethereal starlight. From within this stellar luminescence, a sudden beam of energy streaked toward her, merging directly into her physical form.
Simultaneously,
a flurry of chaotic visions flashed through Hyuk's mind.
She stood upon the surface of a collapsing, doomed planet; she sat upon a throne as an autocratic emperor ruling over multiple star systems; she locked horns with an enigmatic figure in the depths of space; and finally, she was pulled into the crushing singularity of a black hole, sinking into eternal death.
"This is the constellations' gift to you."
The host appeared beside Hyuk out of nowhere. "The starry vault has forecasted your future, presenting this destined path to you as a gift. What do you think of this mysterious grand prize?"
Hyuk's brow furrowed.
"Will the future I just envisioned definitely come to pass?"
The host instantly understood her reaction. "It seems your future is not particularly optimistic. How should I put this? Within a single Quadrant, destiny is absolute, impossible to resist or alter. However, across multiple Quadrants, everything is subject to change. If you wish to rewrite this forecasted future, you must harness the power of other Quadrants to grow stronger."
Before this moment, death was a vague, distant concept to Hyuk. But now that the constellations had envisioned her destiny, her demise had become explicit and absolute.
She would meet her eternal end inside a black hole at some point in the future.
Just like that,
a heavy, suffocating sense of crisis settled over her.
But worrying was completely futile. Just as the host had suggested, the only variable Hyuk could control was her own strength. Perhaps, in the future, she could grow powerful enough to shatter and rewrite her own destiny.
There was still one burning question she wanted to clarify.
"What exactly is the conceptual definition of a Quadrant as you mentioned...?"
Nobody answered.
The elusive host had vanished without a trace. Hyuk opened her eyes to the pitch-black night, feeling as if she had just woken from a dream of absolute, vivid reality. She scanned her surroundings; she was indeed back in the physical world.
"How long was I asleep?"
"What do you mean?"
The phone screen flickered to life. Type Zero didn't comprehend Hyuk's question; given Hyuk's current evolutionary state, she had long outgrown the biological need for sleep. Type Zero answered honestly,
"From my perspective, you did nothing more than blink. It took exactly half a second."
The sky remained dark.
Hyuk clearly remembered spending a considerable amount of time waiting inside that massive arena, yet the physical flow of time on Earth had only advanced by half a second. The spatial-temporal manipulation of the Planet NPC native was far more terrifying than she had initially estimated.
It was rather regrettable that she hadn't managed to clarify the exact concept of a "Quadrant." Currently, her only solid lead was that these anomalous doors allowed individuals to traverse between different Quadrants.
She recalled that Earth was designated under Quadrant 042.
Sensing that something significant had transpired, Type Zero voiced her confusion.
"Did something happen?"
"The Planet NPC native..."
...
At that exact moment,
far away in Jpscan City, Shenan jolted awake from a dream. The events of the tournament flashed rapidly through her consciousness, her face pale with shock.
"The Planet NPC native...?"
Clearly, she had been one of the contestants registered by the suited host. Having failed to secure any high-tier placement on the leaderboard, a small-fry like her had naturally slipped under everyone's radar.
The tournament.
The challenges.
Leviathan.
Radiant Man.
And Powerful!
Shenan only remembered participating alongside the other contestants to challenge the ten featured battles. She could recall the final scores and rankings clearly, yet her detailed memories of the actual combat processes were completely blank.
All technical details regarding their opponents' specific moves, traits, and combat profiles had been systematically erased from her mind. But none of that mattered. What truly mattered was that Shenan still vividly remembered that Powerful's strength existed in a peerless league of its own.
She could vaguely deduce one terrifying conclusion: even if the absolute strongest superhumans currently active in the world and every single participant inside that arena charged her all at once, facing Powerful would still mean certain death.
Shenan had never clashed with Powerful directly. However, she could easily infer this conclusion based on the sheer scale of the final boss they had faced, which was merely Powerful's past opponent.
Her terrifying might was beyond any shadow of a doubt.
"Instructor, I have crucial intelligence to report immediately!"
Shenan filed her report on the spot. There was no need to wait until morning; the classified details of this tournament would be on the desks of every global leader within the hour.
Soon, everyone would realize that Powerful's strength remained peerless and completely uncontested. If the Battle of Jpscan City had merely established Hyuk's reputation, this event officially crowned her as the undisputed strongest superhuman on Earth.
"Powerful?"
"Correct, it's her!"
"Her level of power is completely beyond our comprehension..."
"Can you recall any more specific details or intelligence?"
"No. Our memories of the event have been thoroughly and cleanly blurred."
Similar conversations were playing out in secure briefing rooms across the globe.
Not every superhuman on Earth had participated in the tournament. However, those selected by the Planet NPC native were all individuals of exceptional caliber, with Leviathan and Radiant Man serving as the most convincing proof of the roster's elite status.
Thus, Hyuk's absolute dominance required no further validation. A silent, invisible storm swept across the globe, throwing every major intelligence agency into a state of frantic activity.
Hyuk was one issue.
The Planet NPC native was an entirely different crisis.
This was humanity's first encounter with an extraterrestrial possessing such logic-defying, absolute authority over reality. Fortunately, the entity harbored no active malice; otherwise, the consequences would have been catastrophic.
...
Night fell.
A blinding streak of starlight cut across the night sky, descending to Earth at blistering speed. In a fraction of a second, it vanished into a local construction yard, jolting three civil engineering buddies awake.
Inside the bunkhouse,
three young men in their twenties sat bolt upright in bed. Exchanging bewildered glances under the pale moonlight, the bulkiest of the three, the eldest brother, scrambled to his feet.
"Second, Third... what the hell did you guys just dream about?"
The tallest of them, the second brother, immediately began packing his bags with practiced efficiency. Wearing an expression of grim, heroic determination, he declared, "Eldest brother... I dreamed that we are destined to save the world!"
"Exactly!"
The shortest but most agile third brother quickly threw his clothes on. Believing in the dream without a shadow of doubt, he grabbed his plastering bucket and prepared to bolt. "Eldest, Second, let's go! We've got a world to save!"
Without another word,
the three of them stealthily packed up their buckets and slipped away from the construction site, muttering the entire way about saving the Earth and rescuing humanity. As for mixing mortar and laying bricks? That could wait.
Nobody knew what they had witnessed in their dreams.
...
One week after the tournament.
"Congratulations. World governments have officially designated you as the strongest superhuman on Earth. Your current threat rating actually eclipses that of the extraterrestrials."
"Whatever."
Hyuk didn't care about such things. As long as those agencies kept their distance and didn't disrupt her peace, she had zero interest in their actions. They could rank her threat level however they pleased.
Type Zero spent her time harvesting intelligence on superhumans across the web, a metric that was growing exponentially by the day. Hyuk never pried into how she occupied her spare hours; at the end of the day, their relationship was strictly a partnership.
Having crossed the Hempaeas, Hyuk was back in her homeland, charting a slow eastward course toward Jpscan City. She felt no rush to return home, frequently stopping along the way to take in her surroundings.
While the undercurrents swirling beneath the established order were undoubtedly turbulent, the surface of society maintained its peaceful, mundane facade. Superhuman topics proliferated across the internet, though the general populace still dismissed them as mere urban legends.
Amidst the bustling crowds,
Hyuk would occasionally detect a few anomalous individuals. They were fundamentally superhumans, some of whom remained completely oblivious to their own awakening.
Others had fully awakened their talents but were desperately trying to conceal them.
"Why is there only this much cash?"
"You better bring more tomorrow, you hear me? Otherwise, I'll beat you to death!"
"..."
On a secluded street corner,
Hyuk sat casually on a concrete barrier in an empty lot, watching a group of local thugs shake down a scrawny teenager. The boy remained completely silent as they snatched his backpack and pocketed his lunch money.
Once the thugs departed, the boy retrieved his bag from the dirt. Brushing off the dust, he sat down in a quiet corner of the empty lot, silently wiping away his tears.
Hyuk kept her eyes locked on the boy. "You could have easily taught them a lesson."
The teenager turned his head, casting a wary glance at this strange visitor, but said nothing.
Hyuk added, "Otherwise, there is no point in having awakened your strength."
Hearing those words,
the boy bolted to his feet as if struck by lightning. He stared at Hyuk in sheer panic before scrambling to flee, utterly bewildered as to how this woman could possibly know his secret.
It was exactly as Hyuk had observed. The teenager was an awakened superhuman whose physical conditioning and strength already vastly eclipsed those of average humans. Had he actually fought back, a hundred ordinary men wouldn't stand a chance against him.
...
Day after day, on that same secluded empty lot, Hyuk would frequently witness the scrawny teenager being extorted and bullied by local street punks.
She chose not to intervene, opting instead to observe in silence. This boy was fundamentally different from ordinary victims; he possessed the physical capability to easily push back, yet he actively chose to submit and endure.
This was a highly volatile mindset.
One either explodes in silence or perishes within it. If the teenager were truly indifferent, it would be fine, but he was clearly reaching his limit.
A violent eruption was merely a matter of time.
If he were genuinely capable of stoic endurance, he wouldn't have been weeping in this dirt lot to begin with.
Over the course of half a month, Hyuk watched the teenager get shaken down five separate times. This lot was apparently located on his mandatory route between school and home, there was simply no avoiding it.
Every time he passed through, he would spot Hyuk sitting there. However, once he realized that she had deduced his secret, the teenager began making conscious efforts to avoid her gaze.
Hyuk never reached out to him, maintaining her role as a passive observer.
Another half-month drifted by.
The teenager was extorted yet again. This time, however, he didn't try to avoid Hyuk. Instead, he quietly walked over and sat down nearby, continuously wiping his tears with his sleeves.
He desperately needed an outlet, and Hyuk was seemingly his only option. He didn't dare share his secret with anyone else, leaving this enigmatic woman, Hyuk, as his sole sounding board.
Sniffling, the boy spoke to Hyuk in a trembling, choked voice. "My dad told me... he told me I must never, ever fight back. He said it would trigger massive trouble for our family. So I've just been enduring it..."
Hyuk gave a flat, indifferent response.
"Mm."
The boy continued to vent, his words laced with the faint, crackling warning signs of an impending breaking point. "But the more I give in, the more those extorters take a mile! When I told my dad about them, he just told me to try and avoid them. He just kept repeating that I must never lay a hand on anyone..."
Hyuk listened quietly. The boy's very next sentence made her realize his true motive: the kid was searching for an excuse, a rationale, an adult's permission to finally unleash his power.
The boy said, "If I don't fight back, they'll never stop. I don't want to be shaken down anymore. You once told me I could teach them a lesson... do you think I should do it?"
His immature mind had not yet developed independent conviction; all of his potential actions required validation and approval from an authority figure. Yet, his own father had done nothing but constrain him.
Now that his pent-up impulses were on the verge of erupting, Hyuk had become the catalyst to unleash his emotions. Because she knew his secret but had done nothing to exploit or harm him, the teenager believed she might actually be someone he could trust.
Hyuk, however, refused to make his decisions for him.
"What you choose to do is your own business. You must bear the consequences and the cost yourself. I am not encouraging you to do anything, and you have no business using my words as an excuse."
A brief silence ensued.
"I understand."
The boy wiped away his lingering tears, stood up, and walked away.
As for what exactly he had "understood," only he knew.
A few days later,
the teenager passed through the empty lot again and was inevitably cornered by the same group of extorting thugs. Under Hyuk's watchful gaze, the boy did not choose to submit this time.
He threw a flurry of completely unrefined, wild haymakers, pummeling the thugs black and blue. With his augmented strength, his reckless punches nearly fractured their bones.
"Ow, ow... it hurts!"
"Stop! Stop hitting us!"
"Boss, we're sorry! We got it wrong!!"
The thugs wept openly, begging for mercy. They could never have anticipated that this usually submissive, quiet kid would turn into such a wild animal when pushed over the edge. They were completely dazed.
"I'll teach you to rob my cash! I'll teach you to hit me! I'll teach you!..."
The boy grew angrier with every strike, kicking the whimpering thugs repeatedly. As their agonizing screams grew louder, he realized he might have hit them a bit too hard. Snatching his backpack from the dirt, he scrambled to flee the scene.
Yet, an involuntary, liberated grin spread across his face.
The following day.
The boy walked with his back perfectly straight. He no longer had to sneak around to avoid those punks, but his mood was far from completely bright.
He muttered, "My dad gave me a massive scolding. He said I shouldn't have laid a hand on anyone."
Hyuk asked, "Do you regret it?"
"No." The boy's voice dropped. "I just feel like I didn't hit them hard enough yesterday. They bullied me for so long; giving them a single beating was letting them off way too easy."
In reality, he had narrowly avoided sending them to the intensive care unit.
Finishing his thought,
the teenager locked eyes with Hyuk. "You're a superhuman too, aren't you? Otherwise, there's no way you could have known I was different from normal people the very first time you saw me."
Hyuk offered no reply.
The teenager took her silence as a tacit admission.
He pressed on with eager curiosity, "I used to think all that stuff online was just internet clickbait, but to think it's actually real. By superhuman standards, would you say my current strength is decent?"
"Average."
Hyuk wasn't entirely familiar with Earth's average superhuman metrics. The boy's combat intuition and ability development were incredibly green, but a physical baseline robust enough to take on a hundred men was indeed highly respectable.
An ordinary superhuman would stand zero chance against him. The boy was essentially a heavy tank, possessing bones of steel, an iron-clad physique, and immense physical strength. He was remarkably similar to Hyuk when she had first awakened.
His physical output sat right around ten tons.
Had he failed to restrict his output yesterday, he could have easily killed those thugs. In fact, reducing them to a pile of crushed meat would have been a matter of seconds.
It remained to be seen whether his talent possessed growth potential.
"I'm only average?" The boy was crestfallen. "I really thought my physique would qualify as pretty elite."
He knew exactly how resilient his body was. While he hadn't tested his skin against live ammunition yet, axes and blades literally left no marks, and he had never encountered anyone stronger than himself.
Furthermore, he lacked the clearance to access the highly classified details surrounding the Battle of Jpscan City or the Battle of Los Angeles.
The boy scrutinized Hyuk.
"You must be incredibly strong, right?"
"Is that your intuition talking?"
"Yeah," the boy nodded. "My eyes are extremely sensitive to light. The level of optical transparency your body exhibits is the lowest I've ever witnessed. Your physical density must vastly surpass mine."
Hyuk frequently utilized that exact method to gauge an opponent's structural density. The boy's talent was practically a watered-down version of her own, which sparked her curiosity slightly.
But only slightly.
Only now did she offer him a piece of advice: "If your strength is capable of scaling further, I suggest you start pushing your limits. Don't waste your talent."
With the rapid awakening of superhumans and the continuous influx of extraterrestrials, anyone lacking a certain tier of power in the coming era would struggle to even survive.
You would have absolutely no way of knowing when you might be vaporized as collateral damage in someone else's clash.
The teenager shared Hyuk's perspective. He could foresee that the future was bound to be an exceptionally hazardous era. Rather than quietly remaining an ordinary victim, he wanted to grow stronger.
"Big Sis, could you..."
"No," Hyuk interjected before he could even finish his sentence. Her refusal was absolute and instantaneous. "I have zero interest in playing house with children."