It had been two weeks since Raphael's intense confrontation with Zion and the subsequent weight of his father's revelations regarding their genocidal lineage. While Raphael attempted to settle back into his life, the consequences of his "heroics" were already rippling through the cosmos; the signal from Zion's beacon had successfully sliced across dimensions to reach the farthest reaches of the multiverse. There, amidst the debris of worlds already falling to the Monarchy, the war for the soul of the multiverse was reaching its crescendo.
Floating in the thin atmosphere above the planet Xylos, the warrior Thamaeon hovered with predatory grace. He was a massive, heavily muscled Kineta, his long, spiky hair drifting in the turbulent air. His frame was clad in a sleek, form-fitting black bodysuit that clung to his physique, reinforced by segmented green and silver armor plates.
Flaring silver shoulder pads and polished green plating defined his silhouette, while a glowing Affinity Symbol was embossed boldly in the center of his chest. A dense shroud of green Tactile Telekinesis and Battle Spirit pulsed around him, shimmering like a toxic nebula as he surveyed the doomed world below.
Below him, the continents of the planet were in a frenzy of doomed defiance. Massive rockets and tactical nuclear bombs arched up from the oceans, slamming into Thamaeon's position in a series of blinding, radioactive detonations. As the mushroom clouds dissipated and the smoke cleared, Thamaeon remained untouched, a cruel smile etched onto his face.
"That's all you have for me?" Thamaeon's voice boomed, amplified by his telekinesis. "Another weak, worthless planet. Our King is right people like you don't deserve to live. You are a waste to the universe."
He looked down at the screaming world with utter contempt. "Your souls and your energy can be used for something greater. A purpose that will make this world great for our Empire. We no longer have to hold back to leave slaves for the planet. All we need is the souls."
Thamaeon began to gather his energy, his aura flaring to a blinding intensity. "Psycho Battle Spirit Abyss!" he roared.
High above the clouds, a massive orb of green telekinetic and spiritual force began to form, pulsing with a hungry light. It functioned as a bottomless vacuum in reality, waiting to absorb the souls and essence of everything below.
Descending like a meteor, Thamaeon rushed toward the nearest continent, firing bursts of Cycloblast energy that leveled city blocks in seconds. The inhabitants fled in terror, but there was no sanctuary to be found. As they perished, their translucent souls began to rise, instinctively seeking a path to the afterlife; however, the Psycho Battle Spirit Abyss intervened. Its spiritual gravitational pull snatched the spirits mid-ascent, trapping them within its glowing core to be funneled back to the Kingdom.
A massive assembly of the planet's elite protectors a league of high-tier superheroes and legendary guardians rose into the sky to make a final stand. "Your conquest ends here!" they roared, charging with a resolve born of desperation.
Thamaeon's silver eyes flared with a cold, predatory brilliance. "Finally," he whispered, "a challenge".
He met their combined assault with a display of overwhelming, systematic violence. Thamaeon moved like a blur of green and silver, his fists punching through reinforced armor and super-powered flesh as if they were nothing but mist. He caught the leader of the group mid-flight, gripping him by the waist and physically ripping him in half before tossing the remains aside like refuse. He pivoted in mid-air, delivering a kick that sent a powerhouse defender screaming through miles of cityscape, the impact leveling entire skyscrapers upon landing.
With every life he extinguished, his silver eyes glowed with a sickening intensity as they briefly absorbed the souls of the fallen. Surveying the burning ruins and the billions of spirits from the fallen protectors to the smallest animals spiraling into the Psycho Battle Spirit Abyss, Thamaeon let out a dark, hollow laugh.
"How pathetic," he sneered, looking toward the horizon with unquenched bloodlust. "Even with your 'strongest' warriors, you couldn't land a single blow significant enough to draw blood. Your martial arts are pitiful. It's time to end this and move on perhaps the next planet will provide a real thrill".
He angled himself toward the planet's core, flying at a speed that ignited the very air around him. He punched through the planet entirely, the world exploding in a cataclysm of rock and fire behind him. As the final surge of souls rushed into the energy orb, Thamaeon grabbed the contained harvest.
"I wish I could absorb all of you myself," Thamaeon muttered, glancing at the billions of teeming spirits churning within the abyss, "but I have to bring back the shares for the King."
With a surge of power, he accelerated into the void, leaving the dying world behind to continue his path of systematic annihilation. Far across the silent expanse in a completely different sector of the cosmos, another elite warrior of the Kingdom presided over his own theater of destruction.
In a neighboring sector, Orinmael hovered above a world in its final throes. Despite his youthful appearance and blonde hair, his presence was a heavy, suffocating weight. He wore the high-rank Kineta uniform: a sleek black bodysuit reinforced by segmented plating, accented with polished dark blue and silver.
The skies around Orinmael erupted with resistance. Entire aerial battalions of armored warriors, archmages, and planetary defenders surged toward him through the burning atmosphere. Blue-white spell circles expanded across the heavens as colossal beams of magic, lightning spears, plasma storms, and gravitational curses slammed into the dark blue shell surrounding his body.
But the attacks did nothing.
The magic crashed against Orinmael's telekinetic barrier like waves splashing against an ancient cliff. Ripples spread lazily across the dense dark-blue aura, but not a single strike pierced through. Even the combined force of the planet's greatest sorcerers failed to move him an inch.
"Get off our planet!" the defenders screamed. "It is not yours! We heard about your species! We will not become another conquered world! Charge! Keep attacking! Don't let up!"
Orinmael hovered silently above them, his silver eyes half-lidded with exhaustion and boredom. The endless barrage reflected in his gaze like distant rain.
"This species is pathetic," he muttered with a tired sigh.
He slowly raised one hand.
Dark blue telekinetic energy condensed around his fingers, unfolding outward into intricate machinery formed entirely from Battle Spirit and force manipulation. Massive floating ray cannon constructs materialized behind him, layered with rotating rings, glowing symbols, and shifting geometric barrels forged from pure telekinetic structure.
The defenders froze.
Then the cannons fired.
Gigantic dark-blue beams ripped across the battlefield with surgical precision, vaporizing spells, tearing through warships, and piercing straight through entire formations of warriors and archmages alike. The sky's themselves split apart under the overwhelming force as Orinmael remained floating motionlessly at the center of the destruction, looking more inconvenienced than threatened.
As they fell, Orinmael's silver eyes glowed, instinctively absorbing their souls. Below him, a survivor wailed in despair, "Impossible... those were the strongest warriors on our planet!"
Orinmael looked down, unimpressed. "Those were your strongest? Then your species truly deserves to be destroyed. Lucky for you, I won't do it slowly. This is too boring."
He ascended rapidly, leaving the terrified survivor shaking in the ruins. Reaching the upper atmosphere, he manifested a Psycho Battle Spirit Abyss and began to channel his energy. By fusing his dark blue Battle Spirit with raw telekinesis force, he constructed a colossal, shimmering cannon of spiritual energy. The weapon hummed with a heavy, suffocating power before he unleashed a beam so potent it lanced through the planet's core, detonating the world in a silent flash of light.
As the billions of souls from the dead rushed toward the Abyss, Orinmael watched with dull interest as a few flickers of light escaped the vacuum, ascending toward heaven.
Across another section of the universe, the warrior Ennarya turned the battlefield into a theater of savage joy. She wore the high-rank Kineta uniform: a sleek black bodysuit reinforced by segmented plating, accented with polished red and silver to match her aggressive nature. Her long, curly red hair whipped around her armor as she moved with lethal fluidity.
Encased in a violent shroud of crimson Battle Spirit and telekinetic force, Ennarya moved like a crimson gale through waves of defenders. The planet's final guardians, piloting colossal suits of living machinery, roared as they swung massive mechanical blades and unleashed volleys of high-yield energy fire. She wove through the heavy metal limbs with predatory speed, her own massive telekinetic sword humming with destructive power.
Each swing of her blade didn't just sever metal and limb it cut through their very spirits. Her silver eyes pulsed with manic hunger, devouring the essence of every enemy who died directly by her hand. A spray of blood and hydraulic fluid hit her face as she sheared through a pilot's reinforced cockpit, but she didn't wipe it away; she simply smiled, wreathed in a terrifying storm of red energy.
Standing among the mounting corpses and shattered steel, she shook her head. "That was too easy. Come on... I wanted to have more fun."
She glanced at the horizon, sensing the billions of lives remaining across the doomed world. "Well, I can't absorb all of you myself. I have to save some for the Kingdom."
Ennarya took to the sky, manifesting her own Psycho Battle Spirit Abyss. She gripped her massive sword and swung it in a wide, violent arc, unleashing a concentrated barrel of telekinetic force that slammed into the planet with enough pressure to cut the world clean in half. As the planet shattered, the souls of the billions fallen rushed into her abyss.
As some of the flickering sparks of light escaped toward heaven, Ennarya let out a bored huff, muttering that the cosmos had been quite boring with no true challenge so far. She accelerated toward her next target, leaving the debris of the shattered world behind as the warriors continued their path of conquest.
Floating just above the massive battleship in the silent void of space, Saelith watched the distant flashes of exploding planets with cold, silver eyes. Her short, curly white hair drifted around her face like a halo of smoke. She wore the high-rank Kineta uniform of white, gold, and silver, the Infinity symbol embossed on her chest shimmering against the blackness of the cosmos. Around her, a dense, dark pink aura of Battle Spirit and telekinetic force pulsed with a rhythmic, heavy thrum.
Saelith kept her arms crossed as she watched the chaos unfold. "At this rate, we're almost finished with this cosmos," she mused. "Then we can move to the next one. I'm glad all my hard work is finally paying off. I am so close to finally being a Captain."
A tech-warrior, his own armor flickering with navigation lights, flew up from the massive hull and came to a halt several meters away.
"General Saelith," the warrior called out, his voice crackling through her comms. "Captain Sylas requests your presence in the command center immediately. He says it concerns a mission of extreme importance for the entire squad."
Saelith didn't turn her head, her gaze lingering on a dying star. "I see. Very well. I will gather the others." She reached up and clicked the beacon on her gauntlet, sending a jagged pulse of dark pink energy through the void. "Return to the battleship. Now," she commanded over the squad link.
Inside the main base, the four warriors stood before the primary viewing deck. Thamaeon leaned against a console with his arms crossed, while Ennarya paced like a caged animal, her red hair twitching. Orinmael hovered a few inches off the floor, looking as though he might fall asleep at any moment.
Suddenly, the massive screen flickered to life. The towering image of Captain Sylas appeared; his white hair was cropped sharp and his silver eyes pierced through the transmission. He was clad in a pristine white and gold battle suit that radiated a cold, absolute authority.
"We have received a signal from a very distant universe," Sylas began, his voice echoing off the metallic walls like a heavy tolling bell. "It comes from a planet called Omniterra. We sent an warrior, Zion, to conquer that sector... and he has failed."
The room fell into a stunned silence. The warriors exchanged looks of genuine shock.
"Zion failed a mission?" Orinmael muttered, his usual boredom momentarily displaced by confusion. "That planet must be a actual challenge."
Sylas nodded grimly. "Yes. He is one of our strongest. Mid-class warriors of his caliber rarely ever fail a mission, and his Battle Spirit is notoriously difficult to bypass. We are classifying this as an A-rank planet for now. Perhaps even higher."
Thamaeon let out a low, predatory growl, his massive frame tensing with anticipation. "Finally, a world that can actually challenge us. The stronger the warrior, the tastier their souls."
"It was not a complete failure, however," Sylas continued, his expression hardening. "Good news did come from this report before his signal went dark. He claimed to have found the Crystal. More importantly, he believes he has located the traitors."
The air in the room shifted instantly, turning heavy and electric. Thamaeon straightened up, his eyes narrowing into slits. Even Orinmael's eyes began to spark with a rare flicker of excitement. Ennarya began licking her lips in excitement, her crimson aura flaring at the thought of the coming slaughter.
Saelith remained silent, her arms crossed tight, but her mind was racing. This is it, she thought to herself, her dark pink aura shimmering with her hidden ambition. The Crystal and the traitors in one location? This is the perfect mission. This is exactly what I need to elevate me to Captain.
"We have heard these claims before," Sylas continued, his expression hardening. "Many times, they have proven false. But we must guarantee the truth of this report. I must be the one to find that Crystal. I must find my sister, Aurelia. And I want the traitor, Kael, dealt with by my hand. It was my fault; I trained him. He is my problem to deal with. You are to bring both of them to me alive."
He leaned forward, his silver eyes locking onto each of them through the screen. "You are to keep this mission secret from all other squads. Report only to me. Our King shall give us glory for this success, and this squad alone shall reap the rewards."
Saelith stepped forward, inclining her head in a show of disciplined respect. "I understand, Captain. If the Crystal and the traitors are there including your sister we will secure them. All of them will be captured and brought back to you as ordered."
"Good," Sylas replied, his image beginning to flicker and fade. "Do not disappoint me. Get moving."
The group followed a warrior-scientist to a specialized, long-range battleship. Upon boarding, they were informed that even at their current speeds, the journey to the far-flung universe would take nearly a year. In a flash of distorted space, the ship vanished into the void, leaping across thousands of light-years in mere moments as the team settled into the long transit.
Ennarya paced the cabin, a manic grin spreading across her face at the prospect of an A-rank planet. To her, a world of that caliber meant stronger warriors and souls that would be far more delicious to devour. Nearby, Orinmael remained characteristically detached; he drifted a few inches off the floor, his silver eyes slipping shut as he fell into a deep sleep before the ship had even cleared the sector.
Thamaeon stood like a statue, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He remained skeptical, doubting that a single planet could truly offer anything special enough to warrant such a journey. Saelith, however, stayed fixed at the viewport, her gaze lost in the passing streaks of starlight. She watched the cosmos blur by, silently praying that the Crystal and the traitors were truly waiting for them at the end of the line. If the rumors were true, the prize for their success would be beyond even their wildest dreams.
Deep beneath the surface of Omniterra, the atmosphere was suffocating. In a subterranean laboratory, the only light radiated from the cold, flickering blue of dozens of holographic monitors. The room was a graveyard of ethics, filled with massive glass cylinders containing a nightmarish array of specimens humans, aliens, Spirits, and fused mutations floating in stasis fluid, their limbs twitching in an medicated sleep.
The lead scientist sat hunched over his primary console, his eyes bloodshot as he analyzed the footage from a battle weeks prior. On the screen, Team Cosmic clashed with the Demon King and his vanguard. His focus, however, was singular. He watched the frame where the superhero Raphael the anomaly they called "One" unleashed a flurry of strikes. As the screen zoomed in on Raphael's Red Force, the scientist tracked the flare of telekinetic energy with obsessive precision.
"Incredible," the scientist whispered, his fingers trembling over the keys. "The density... the spiritual output. He shares a signature with Infinity Man, yet the architecture of his power is superior. Unlike the former, his subatomic particles, his elemental quarks, and his very spirit are undergoing a constant state of mid-battle evolution."
He leaned closer, the blue light reflecting in his dilated pupils. "I need to secure him. I need more samples. With this essence, I can finally stabilize the bridge between biology and divinity. I can become the perfect being the apex of evolution."
He glanced toward his other creations suspended in the dark. Most were biological failures fragile husks that expired within weeks, their nervous systems unable to handle the strain of multi-species fusion. "But with this data," he hissed, "their cellular structures can adapt in real-time. No matter how many essences I splice together, the Red Force will act as the perfect anchor. They will remain stable."
The silence of the lab was broken by the mechanical shuffle of a mutated butler, a creature of stitched flesh and hydraulic limbs. It approached with a cup of coffee, but as it reached the desk, a tremor in its motor cortex caused its grip to fail. The dark liquid splashed across the console, soaking a small, framed photograph.
The scientist bolted upright, his chair screeching violently against the floor. "You mindless defect! What have you done?!" he screamed. "There is only one of these in existence!"
In a fit of cold rage, he snatched a remote-trigger device from his desk and slammed the activation button. A high-voltage electrical surge racked the butler's frame, sending it collapsing to the floor in a heap of sparking wires and scorched tissue. "Get out of my sight before I recycle your parts!"
Trembling, the scientist snatched up the wet photograph, clutching it to his chest as if to shield it from the world. A single tear tracked through the grime on his face as he looked at the image: himself, younger and full of hope, standing beside his wife and daughter.
"I'm sorry for failing you both," he choked out, his voice cracking with a decade of buried grief. "For what they did to you... for what they took from us. The Superhero Organization... Superior Man... they will all pay in blood. I promise."
Suddenly, his monitors began to flash a deep, aggressive violet. No alarm sounded; instead, a heavy, subsonic hum vibrated through the floorboards, rattling the glass of the stasis jars.
"Damn it," the scientist hissed, slamming his fist onto the desk. "They're calling for a status report again. Always interrupting... always demanding results just when I am on the threshold of a breakthrough."
He swiped his hand across the interface, encrypting his private files and purging the screen before reluctantly answering the transmission.
The central screen flickered to life, divided into ten distinct, shadowed frames. This was the high council of the Black Dominion Syndicate, a collection of the cosmos's most dangerous figures: ruthless gang leaders, CEOs of interplanetary corporations, rogue kings from fallen systems, and high-ranking demons.
The council sat in a semicircle of oppressive shadow, their eyes glowing with varying shades of cold malice. At the head of the massive table stood the Leader of the Black Dominion Syndicate. He was a man whose silhouette commanded the room, possessing an ambition that stretched beyond the stars to every neighboring universe.
"Another mission collapsed," the Leader's voice resonated, smooth yet sharp as a razor. "The Demon King was neutralized and captured in less than a single night. I manipulated the board perfectly, utilizing my influence within the Hero Organization to redirect the assets under my thumb. While the public remains oblivious to my reach, I ensured the Omni Force, Superior Man, and every other major superhero group were diverted to secondary missions across different universes. I cleared the path, and yet, the operation still failed. Even that assassin I hired. Why?"
He paused, his eyes narrowing. "And who is this anomaly they are calling 'One'?"
"He's this bratty little hero, always butting in," a shadowed figure, a notorious gang lord, spoke up, his voice laced with venom. "He doesn't even stick around for the cameras or for the cops. He just beats up my men and leaves. I encountered him myself a few days after the Demon King's fall. He intercepted my men at the docks while we were moving a shipment of bio-stimulants. He moved like nothing I've ever seen."
The Leader's expression darkened, his brow furrowing into a mask of cold frustration. "I dislike variables. This 'hero' is not registered with the Hero Organization, which means I cannot dictate his movements or pull his strings. He is an outlier, a ghost in the machine. But that shouldn't matter. With the sheer volume of technology and resources I have funneled into this Syndicate, he should be a memory, not a headline."
He leaned over the table, the light catching the expensive fabric of his suit as he loomed over the holographic displays.
"I provide the liquid capital to keep your empires solvent," the Leader stated, his voice dropping to a dangerous, low silk. "I allow your gangs to run rampant across multiple cities and throughout every major country on this planet. I have sustained your failing kingdoms and propped up your crumbling dictatorships. I am the one who convinces neighboring civilizations not to glass your territories from orbit, providing you the firepower to strike back and conquer."
He leveled a sharp, accusing stare at the supervillains and rogue monarchs in the frames. "I manipulate the very superheroes who hunt you, ensuring they stay two steps behind while you sew chaos across the globe. I want the world to witness the absolute failure of these 'idols' and the utter incompetence of the current administration. Only when they are desperate will they realize that I am the only logical choice to lead the Coalition the only hand capable of guiding the fate of the multiverse as we know it. I have delivered on my promises. I have financed your dreams. Yet, when the time comes to secure my vision, you all choose to fail."
His gaze shifted, locking onto the laboratory feed. He leveled a steady, accusing finger at the screen.
"And you, Professor," the Leader hissed, his voice echoing through the cold lab. "Where were your 'breakthroughs'? I salvaged you from the gutter after the world took everything from you. I built that lab. I funded every one of those twisted experiments. We spent years positioning you first in the same high school as the Demon King's daughter, then following her all the way into college all to ensure we had eyes on the target at all times. And yet, when the battle began, your creatures were nowhere to be found. Explain the return on my investment."
The scientist's voice wavered as he gripped the edge of his console. "The... the risk assessment was too high, sir. The night before the assault, this hero One was active across the sector. He tracked down and neutralized a significant number of my creatures, specifically targeting my elite-grade specimens. By the time the Demon King engaged, my combat-ready forces were nearly depleted. I only have a few high-level assets remaining, and I couldn't risk the primary core samples being destroyed."
He swallowed hard, glancing nervously at the dark frames on his screen. "Furthermore, with so many superhero teams deployed in the area, the theater of war was becoming too crowded. If I had released my remaining abominations, the energy signatures would have been a beacon. I couldn't risk them tracing the signal back to this laboratory and compromising the entire operation."
"You do not calculate 'risk' unless I authorize it!" the Leader roared, the sound of his fist slamming the table echoing like a gunshot through the transmission. He slowly straightened his tie, his voice returning to a terrifying, calm silk.
"This hero originated in your sector. Therefore, he is your problem. Eliminate him immediately. If you fail me again, I will liquidate your assets including your life. You will be nothing but a disgraced academic with a dead family. A failure as a scientist, a father, and a husband. Just the way I found you: a worthless nothing. A worthless human. Am I understood?"
"Yes... perfectly," the scientist whispered.
The transmission cut to black. The silence that followed was heavy. Suddenly, the scientist snapped. In a blind surge of adrenaline and hate, he swept his arm across the console, sending glass vials and high-tech data pads shattering against the floor.
"I am tired of being the footstool for 'superior' beings!" he screamed at the empty walls. "They think because I'm human, I'm a servant? Not for long. I will be the apex. I will be the final evolution."
He turned his bloodshot eyes back to the frozen image of Raphael on the main screen. He traced the Red Force radiating from the boy's fist.
"I will find you, One," he hissed, his voice trembling with a dark, newfound resolve. "I will unmask you, strip you of your strength, and take everything you hold dear. And when your essence is mine... my revenge and my freedom will finally be absolute."