Chapter 649: No One Can Escape
"Holy Spear, anchor released."
The words were spoken with a calmness that bordered on a whisper, sounding more like a quiet murmur.
In the sky behind Superman, the blonde-haired Black King took a slow step downward. A staircase of shifting black and white light materialized beneath her feet, and she methodically walked down these steps toward the mortal realm.
She extended her right hand forward. In the very next fraction of a second, a blinding golden column of light violently sliced down from the heavens to pierce into the ocean.
The Atlantic Ocean and the sky above were simultaneously and aggressively churned into a violent vortex.
The spear that impaled the sky and earth—the Spear that Shines to the Ends of the Earth, [Rhongomyniad]—began to complete its manifestation at this exact microsecond.
In this single instant of contact, Solomon coughed up a heavy rope of fresh blood. The wide-area mass spell formula [St. George's Sanctuary]—which he had spent multiple operational cycles and immense resources painstakingly embedding across the entire New York grid—was violently and flawlessly smashed to pieces.
The Holy Power anchoring the energy wings behind his back aggressively fractured, completely destroying the delicate balance separating light and dark, and rendering the binary cycle of the holy and the demonic entirely useless.
Yet, he could only keep his head rigidly raised, his entire physical vessel frozen in an absolute state of motor paralysis.
Within those top-tier, jewel-class precognitive Mystic Eyes, the simultaneous manifestation of two distinct [Black Kings] was perfectly and sharply tracked across his pupils.
His retinas vibrated frantically, and his cerebral cortex throbbed with a blinding, agonizing sting as his neural pathways were severely contorted under the sheer load of processing the raw magical output and conceptual weight of the entities.
Within the infinite variations of the immediate timeline his precognitive arrays had scanned, there had been absolutely zero parameters mapping the entry of this second Black King!
Granted, the direct orbital entry of Superman alone was already more than sufficient to cede absolute, unilateral dominance over every single asset active on this grid. No matter how monumentally powerful Mercenary Tao claimed to be, a Kryptonian who had successfully mutated into a [Black King]—naturally endowed with the absolute, unyielding reinforcement of a planetary planetary consciousness—possessed the undisputed capacity to systematically crush him.
Why on earth would a second Black King materialize on a board like this?!
[Rhongomyniad] was, in its underlying narrative essence, the manifestation of an alternate timeline where Bedivere had caved to a fatal hesitation, failing to return the Holy Sword to the lake. At the exact chronological juncture where she was fated to expire, Artoria Pendragon had failed to die, ultimately evolving into a wandering, unliving wraith traversing the earth while clutching a divine construct.
And under the continuous, suffocating erosion of the divine authority anchoring that divine weapon—the Holy Spear [Rhongomyniad]—she had systematically transformed into the Goddess Rhongomyniad.
The weapon she wielded was a divine construct that sat on the exact same priority tier as the Holy Sword—the Holy Spear of the Star, an absolute anchor of storms designed to bind the planetary crust, and a massive pillar of light that pinned down the very surface layer of reality.
At this precise microsecond, Solomon felt an unmatched, apocalyptic wave of pure cosmic weight hammer down onto his soul. For the first time in his existence, a genuine, icy thread of pure terror was forged inside his mind as he realized the wheel of absolute Destiny was on the verge of flawlessly plowing through his framework.
He had always been an exceptionally elite calculator, structurally endowed with a preternatural spiritual perception and a mastery over the Future Sight that stood completely without rival across the Space.
Consequently, Solomon did not cede a single line of belief to concepts like "fate," nor did his analytical matrix acknowledge the authority of the "Law of Causality." Every single action he executed was arrived at through systematic observation and calculated choice.
But at this exact microsecond, an ancient narrative fragment centering around the Goddess Rhongomyniad automatically surfaced within his mind: Within that specific timeline, it was precisely because she concluded that under the catastrophic influence of King Solomon, humanity had completely and flawlessly lost its future, that she had chosen to aggressively launch her campaign.
And his own framework... Solomon had consistently utilized his unique superpower—the capacity to flawlessly observe and lock his personal reality down to a sub-atomic level—to hardcode his essence to match the archetype of the [King of Magic: Solomon], successfully unlocking [The King's Reality]: a Title capability engineered specifically to cede him overriding dominance against magic-side Reincarnators.
One could speak with absolute candor: this Title was the absolute starting point for his entire grand strategy.
Visualizing his ego as the King of Magic, he had aggressively orchestrated the wide-area mass execution of core characters, systematically engineering a total structural collapse across the chronological weight of this worldline.
According to the historical data resources circulating within the Space, the [Black King Assembly] was highly, statistically likely to initiate a direct orbital insertion only when a world reached this exact threshold of structural breakdown.
Throughout every single documented log detailing the arrival of a Black King—incidents that uniformly resulted in the absolute liquidation of massive clusters of elite Reincarnators—the underlying variable was always that the world had been systematically slaughtered down to the event horizon of absolute collapse by the interlopers, leaving the timeline entirely incapable of sustaining its own continuity.
But the absolute, direct result of his meticulously calculated campaign was actually the sudden manifestation of this specific Black King · Rhongomyniad?!
Solomon actually developed a profound, hallucination-like illusion that his existence was about to be permanently erased from the logs.
As the colossal golden Holy Spear pinned itself across the horizon sandwiching the sky and earth, the ambient elemental parameters violently entered a runaway state of riot, and the foundational laws governing the planet began to structurally fracture.
Solomon's sensors could distinctly, sharply perceive that a wave of concentrated magical energy so immense it verged on pure cosmic terror was aggressively beginning to erupt straight out from the oceanic bedrock of the Atlantic basin.
The Inner Sea of the Planet?
The activation parameters of the Holy Spear's anchor release within this specific world were actually causing the structural parameters of reality to undergo a total re-engineering...
Solomon was almost passively cataloging and analyzing these shifts; it was an automated reflex hardcoded into his neural pathways. But under the continuous, crushing weight of the active Anti-Life Equation, his physical motor functions remained highly restricted.
Granted, he still maintained a microscopic threshold of agency. Solomon had originally been biding his time, waiting for that silver-haired monster to breach the chasm to initiate a lethal grapple against the Black King.
That would have functioned as his mathematically optimal window to execute a clean system regression.
But now, the sudden arrival of a second Black King had completely and flawlessly shattered his tactical layout, caught entirely off guard.
Boom!
Right on cue with his panic, a sky-tearing column of pure golden Ki violently erupted from the bedrock, resembling an inverted Holy Spear rising from the earth to challenge the heavens.
Solomon's mind instantly settled, a profound wave of near-hysterical relief washing over his soul as if he had just miraculously cheated death.
Although his precognitive arrays had failed to map the entry of a second Black King onto the board, Mercenary Tao's core behavioral profile remained flawlessly, beautifully predictable!
Yes! That's exactly it! Mercenary Tao was precisely that breed of unrefined, primitive wild beast!
The exact millisecond a beast registers that another predator is attempting to forcefully seize its cordoned-off prey, it will aggressively and unconditionally enter a state of total, maniacal rage!
At this exact microsecond, evaluating that sky-tearing column of golden Ki-Wave exploding across the atmosphere, Solomon actually experienced a hint of genuine gratitude toward the monster.
In the very next fraction of a second, a massive figure violently shot out from the pitch-black subterranean cavern, launching into the upper atmosphere.
This was highly likely the absolute singular individual on the entire regional grid who maintained complete motor agency at this microsecond. Everyone else—including Captain Marvel, Ikaris, and the remaining native powerhouses—had been completely and flawlessly pinned down by the overriding weight of the Anti-Life Equation.
Although these top-tier native assets undoubtedly retained a microscopic baseline capacity to force a motor movement, not a single one of them was stupid enough to rashly expose their coordinates at a juncture like this.
Kaito Shirogane lowered his eyelids, the dragon-like blood and vitality within his core continuing to roar like a titanic nuclear forge. Although the execution of his Serious Punch had inflicted a severe wave of existential damage across his system—vaporizing his right arm from the elbow down and structurally disrupting his perfect internal self-circulation loop—
His engine still comfortably retained the terrifying, hyper-accelerated output of his Eight-Fold Kaio-ken.
He lowered his gaze, his long, incandescent silver hair whipping wildly toward the stars as his vacant eyes locked straight onto the twin Black Kings who had forcefully barged onto his board.
"Black Kings..."
It had been an exceptionally long world cycle since he had last laid eyes on a specialized classification of entity that operated as an absolute, living legend within the logs of the Space.
Identical to the exact microsecond he had historically encountered the Black King · Luffy back then, both of these individuals were completely enveloped in a majestic, structurally unfathomable wave of sheer presence.
During that early operational cycle, Kaito Shirogane had been far too pathetically weak, entirely incapable of parsing the underlying metric of that aura.
Today, having personally experienced the parameters of the [Desperate Savior] operational mode himself, his sharp intuition knew exactly what that presence represented: it was the absolute, unyielding favor of a world's planetary consciousness.
It was an apocalyptic tier of violence where the very matrix of reality aligned to reinforce your agency.
And the individual who had successfully amassed this caliber of planetary backing was none other than the God of All Mortals within the superhero archetype—Clark Kent. The single Kryptonian who had practically given concrete, living form to the very concept of a [Superhero].
Beside his silhouette stood the monarch who had undergone a total divine assimilation with a divine construct. The raw magical density bleeding from her frame was a torrent that a resurrected Artoria Pendragon—utilizing the Mud of the Holy Grail to forge a surrogate vessel—could never hope to match in a million lifetimes.
She had completely divorced herself from the metrics of a Heroic Spirit; she was a full-fledged, absolute Deity!
The narrow, pitiless eyes of Superman and the Goddess Rhongomyniad simultaneously locked onto Kaito Shirogane's coordinates. In the very next microsecond, a crushing wave of absolute, multi-dimensional pressure slammed straight into his system.
[You have encountered a Special Unit · The Black King Assembly]
[You have encountered the direct influence of the active Capability: Anti-Life Equation. Executing structural immunity check...]
[Processing...]
Crack!
Kaito violently snapped his left arm upward, the golden Ki coating his body surface exploding outward into a massive nova that completely displaced the atmosphere, leaving his entire frame looking as if it were performing a full volcanic ignition.
[Check passed. You have successfully achieved total immunity against the influence of the Anti-Life Equation.]
"Ha~"
Kaito unhinged his jaw to let out a thick, superheated plume of exhaust steam. As his dense Qilin Scales automatically locked into place across his entire frame, a lone wisp of Sin-Value was systematically wiped from his panel, forcefully triggering [The Omen of the Wicked God].
The cataclysmic reinforcement didn't stop there. The pitch-black trench coat draped over his muscles suddenly looked as if it were executing a total biological awakening; a dense, stygian wave of dark green Reiatsu violently and flawlessly erupted from the satin lining, aggressively uncoiling across his shoulder blades to form two colossal, sky-spanning wings of pure spiritual force.
Hum!
Deep within the pitch-black sky, the dark green ocean of his Reiatsu completely blockaded the stratosphere, condensed droplets of high-density spiritual essence beginning to rain-fall down onto the shattered city blocks like a localized storm.
Kaito Shirogane let out a deep, guttural growl of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. Throughout his entire existence across the Space, he had never once forced his system to simultaneously deploy every single line of his absolute trump cards—because ever since executing his tactical regression from the B711 universe, he had failed to encounter a single rival whose strength was sufficiently monstrous to compel him to open the throttles.
Staring up at the Kryptonian who was hovering lazily in the stratosphere, calmly looking down at his position with narrow, pitiless eyes, the thudding rhythm of Kaito's heart instantaneously ground to an absolute halt as his silver hair flared outward down to the root.
[Hyper-Limit Spiral], activate!
In the very next fraction of a second, an invisible, hyper-dense AUTHORITATIVE force field slammed cleanly down across the entire metropolis.
High in the sky, the Holy Spear clutched within the Goddess Rhongomyniad's hand emitted a sharp wisp of static, and the staircase of light anchoring her boots began to visibly fracture and turn translucent.
And further down the slope, Ikaris and Captain Marvel were violently shot toward the pavement as their flight mechanics collapsed, while a low-altitude Solomon watched his black-and-white wings instantaneously dissolve into nothingness, his frame plowing straight down into the dirt with a heavy crash.
Boom!
A bleak, suffocating wave of pure, unadulterated entropy completely enveloped the city blocks. A stygian, terrifying aura of absolute dominance rose from Kaito Shirogane's skin.
Directly over the crimson silhouette of The Omen of the Wicked God, a vastly more monumental, pitch-black phantom of pure tyrannical authority forced its head up through his cells.
[The Dominator of the Realm], activate!
"Black Kings... I assume the two of you hold zero professional objections... to executing a battle under an environmental layout of this classification?!"
The exact microsecond the final syllable cleared his teeth, Kaito's physical frame violently exploded across local space. Before the concussive shockwave of a sonic boom could even complete its compilation in the sky, Kaito Shirogane's left fist was already driven completely and flawlessly straight toward Clark Kent's face.
The pocket of atmosphere sandwiching his knuckles was instantaneously depressed into a sharp, white-hot concave arc before violently fracturing down to the atom, triggering a devastating vacuum wave.
BOOM!
Clark slightly tilted his head to the side, his narrow eyes expressionlessly evaluating Kaito's coordinates. His absolute velocity and neurological reaction metrics were mathematically engineered to operate at an impossible, reality-defying tier.
That cold, unyielding glare of absolute, detached arrogance completely and flawlessly set Kaito's bloodthirsty combat desire ablaze.
Kaito's pupils violently contracted as he unleashed his absolute [Gaze of Arrogance]!
Boom!
Clark's towering frame violently shuddered as he was shot backward through the stratosphere, his body registering a kinetic displacement identical to sustaining a front-on, unmitigated impact from multiple full-fledged Titans.
The Kryptonian's pupils instantaneously burned an absolute, incandescent crimson red, twin beams of cosmic heat rays aggressively tearing through the atmosphere along a jagged, lightning-like trajectory.
Kaito Shirogane violently snapped his left hand forward to answer the strike, a hyper-concentrated Ki-Wave violently erupting from his palm.
Hum!
A cataclysmic beam clash exploded across the exosphere once more—but after a single fraction of a second of contact, accompanied by a deafening bang, the Ki-Wave and the cosmic heat rays violently detonated into a scattered blast wave.
Kaito's Left Arm of the King registered a wisp of sharp, stinging pain. The absolute power parameters wielded by this specific Black King had officially scaled to a tier where they could forcefully leave a diagnostic marker against his unyielding limb.
Kaito and Clark Kent locked eyes across the vacuum—only for both of their silhouettes to cleanly and instantaneously vanish from the sky in the very next microsecond.
Simultaneously, down on the fractured bedrock, Solomon evaluated his internal diagnostics, watching the system countdown timer indicate that his framework was on the verge of completely breaking through his active combat lock. His psychological baseline was wound dangerously tight under a suffocating wire of tension. The exact microsecond Mercenary Tao initiated a head-on grapple against Superman in the stratosphere, he had frantically accelerated his internal protocols to execute a clean tactical extraction.
Yet at a juncture like this, the passage of chronological time felt processing-wise, excruciatingly slow.
Suddenly, that preternatural, highly accurate spiritual intuition crystallized within his neural pathways once more. His entire being froze as his eyes watched the system countdown countdown approach the absolute zero threshold. Ultimately, his survival instincts completely overrode his hesitation, driving a desperate command down his comm lines:
"Regress!"
The exact microsecond the programmatic stream of data prepared to materialize to wrap his soul into a system extraction, a lone hand was calmly and firmly clapped down onto his shoulder plates.
"Hey, hey, hey, Solomon. The two of us have aggressively and beautifully maintained a shared combat alignment down to a critical nexus like this, and you honestly harbor the nerve to lazily discard me on the board~"
Solomon slowly, methodically turned his frame around.
Far up in the upper atmosphere, his narrow scanning arrays sharply captured the silhouette of Superman, who was currently holding several elite Reincarnators by the scruff of their necks under a single hand, casually returning them straight to their original coordinates on the grid.
And Mercenary Tao had his obsidian left hand firmly, flawlessly clamped around his windpipe.
These two monsters... possessed absolutely zero intention to allow a single breathing asset to leave this world alive...
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