Zod had his eye on a mission.
The objective was to hunt a pack of Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts roaming the Endless Sea at the edge of X Galaxy—successfully kill three of them. Submitting their energy cores or video footage of the hunt would both count as mission completion.
The Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts were a newly emerged breed of cosmic monster, drifting around the spatial nodes of the Endless Sea. They specifically attacked ships passing through those nodes to and from X Galaxy. Rumor had it that dozens of ships had already been destroyed, including two heavy-class cosmic battleships. They were seriously dangerous.
The Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts targeted passing ships and small merchant convoys to drain the energy from their reactors. That meant bait was necessary—without the right lure, finding these vicious creatures hiding in the asteroid belts would be a nightmare.
Because of these beasts, merchant traffic to X Galaxy had thinned considerably. The X Galaxy civilization had no choice but to post this mission to exterminate the formidable cosmic beasts. Several large mercenary corps had accepted it, but so far, only one had managed to hunt three Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts. Word was, they suffered heavy losses, barely scraped through the mission, and then refused to go out again.
Zod didn't know exactly how strong these cosmic monsters were, but they definitely weren't on the level of Doomsday Superman, Phoenix Superman, or Divine Dragon Superman.
Ten million credits was enough for Zod to make the trip.
"When we get there, let me fight first."
Hearing they'd be hunting monsters, Esdeath was instantly fired up.
"Mm."
Zod recalled Esdeath's disposition and nodded in agreement.
He piloted the ship through three or four spatial nodes in a row. This kind of ultra-long-distance jump put enormous strain on both the ship and its passengers.
Any other vessel and crew would need to rest after passing through a single node; there was no way they could string nodes together like this.
But soon enough, the ship crossed over three hundred light-years and entered the Endless Sea star region at the fringe of X Galaxy.
The Endless Sea earned its name because the stellar systems here were utter chaos—a newborn galaxy freshly birthed from the explosion of a dying one. Disordered planets were everywhere, massive asteroids and comets dotted the void at random. Asteroid belts, cosmic storms, searing electron currents—all of it combined into a death galaxy, riddled with lethal cosmic traps. Since it had no fixed star systems, it was lumped into X Galaxy's territory. The Endless Sea stretched over a hundred light-years in diameter, fully half the size of X Galaxy itself.
A newborn galaxy was extremely dangerous, but it was also bursting with riches. Rare ores, precious flora and fauna, condensed energy crystals—all forged in the cycle of destruction and rebirth, largely untouched by intelligent life's plunder. It was a natural treasure vault, drawing swarms of mercenaries and adventurer crews. Every year, countless tales of sudden fortune sprang from this backward yet bountiful place.
The X Galaxy civilization had built a thriving mining and adventure industry around the Endless Sea. Before those Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts targeted it, the Endless Sea alone generated over a million credits a year from tourism and adventuring revenue.
And they'd kept that up for more than eight centuries. That steady income had let the civilization rocket from a backwater that just barely crawled off its homeworld to a power boasting over a dozen colonial planets. Honestly, it was the heavens spoon-feeding them—right up there with Wakanda.
The mission briefing had already given Zod the target coordinates, so he flew the ship straight to where the Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts were active.
He had also prepared bait specifically for them.
A super-giant magnetically confined fusion reactor!
A power source that colossal was more than enough to draw the Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts in.
As soon as the ship entered the Endless Sea, the bizarre, chaotic gravity fields seized it. Fortunately, the ship's engines were powerful enough to wrench it free of the turbulent gravitation. Then they hit an asteroid belt—a real piloting test. Zod just rammed straight through.
A hull forged from Vibranium, Adamantium, and primordial Kryptonian alloy pulverized asteroids without so much as a shudder, as if those giant rocks were nothing but bubbles.
After plowing through seventeen or eighteen asteroids, a massive cluster of dark silhouettes emerged.
These things had four bat-like wings, jet black and non-reflective. They looked a bit like manta rays from the ocean, but their size was monstrous.
Ridiculously huge. Just eyeballing it, their length was over a hundred meters, with front wingspans probably exceeding a hundred and fifty meters.
These were the Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts.
Esdeath had already exited the ship. Zod switched on the recording—he had zero interest in picking up any energy cores.
Besides, the sheer number of them was a problem in itself.
If three Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts were worth ten million credits, wiping out this entire horde might net... what, over a billion?
Esdeath's eyes flared crimson. She opened with heat vision, the superheated beams slamming straight into the face of the lead Giant Bat Cosmic Beast.
And just like that, it was sliced cleanly in half.
"That easy?"
Zod blinked.
Esdeath was a little surprised too—heat vision had only been a probing attack. These things were that weak?
But what they'd completely failed to consider was that not everyone could fight in space and pump out this kind of damage.
Usually, most people relied on ships to battle massive cosmic creatures like these. Ships lacked maneuverability, and their defenses were paper-thin before energy shields got unlocked—Zod had always wanted to gripe that they'd somehow unlocked jump tech before energy shields. The tech tree was a total mess!
As for the beasts' attacks... well, ships weren't agile, and most space-combat weapons were energy-based, firing in straight lines. Given the distances involved, the cosmic beasts could dodge with ease.
So when a Kryptonian like Esdeath showed up, it was an absolute steamroll over these cosmic beasts that struck terror across the galaxy.
Closing in on another beast, Esdeath threw a heavy punch with mountain-toppling force.
When the two forces met, the Giant Bat Cosmic Beast's face was clearly nowhere near as hard as her fist. Her punch of steel caved its face inward, crushing a depression several meters across, as if it had taken a giant's face-shattering blow.
Right after, the beast was torn apart, its body splitting into pieces. Esdeath tested the feel, then looked a little disappointed. Still, she knew she couldn't just randomly stumble on an opponent worthy of an all-out fight. As for going at it with Zod... Zod would say controlling his strength was too much of a hassle.
Zod watched Esdeath rampage through the Giant Bat Cosmic Beasts, ripping them apart and scattering their remains everywhere.
/-\
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