"Who released me? You've made a grave mistake. You've unleashed fear you cannot comprehend. As a reward, I may spare your lives." With a large golden lightning bolt emblazoned on his chest, Black Adam—very much playing the villain—emerged from his seal in high spirits. Without even properly looking at Thea and the others, he launched straight into his monologue.
Thea's assessment of this person now included another trait beyond arrogant, boastful show-off: this guy had no brain! Couldn't he at least observe his surroundings?
Villains die from talking too much—truly words of wisdom. To avoid complications, Thea had no intention of wasting words with him on Earth. She immediately activated the teleportation array.
Sky-blue radiance flickered. The twenty-square-meter stone chamber, plus Thea's group and a bewildered Black Adam, were simultaneously teleported away. A circular crater appeared in their place, and as they vanished, the stone chamber fell completely silent.
At the same time, on an uninhabited planet eleven light-years from Earth, Thea's powerful enforcers had been waiting quite a while.
Deadman, Grodd, Faora, Poison Ivy, Livewire, plus the newly joined Killer Frost and Red Tornado. Some stood around bored, others chatted quietly. Seeing the teleportation light flash, they quickly dispersed into formation.
The teleportation concluded swiftly. Thea, Deathstroke, and Papa Midnite joined the encirclement. The air composition here was similar to Earth's. Mister E, pulling along the gawking Sivana, stood at the outer perimeter to watch.
"Who are you people?" Black Adam's brain hadn't quite caught up. Hadn't he just been underground? Where was this now? Looking around, all he could see was desolation. Had Earth turned into this hellhole?
Thea viewed him as livestock ready for slaughter and had no intention of wasting words. She turned to Grodd. "Can you control him?"
The increasingly rotund gorilla closed his eyes and concentrated for quite some time before shaking his head. "There's a barrier in his mental world. I can't break through immediately."
Thea wasn't particularly surprised by this result. Though these generations of Shazam shared the common trait of being brainless—each one intellectually questionable with low willpower—the divine power infused by the gods still granted them a passive attribute of resistance to mind control and debuffs. To forcibly control them, one had to break through the divine power's protection to touch their actual personality.
Powerful magic immunity, flight capability, magic usage, plus various distinctive divine power enhancements elevated their overall attributes to superhuman levels. In a sense, they were quite similar to Diana. Except the warrior goddess didn't need to constantly shout "Shazam," their actual combat strength was comparable.
This was why Thea had gathered all her enforcers to gang up on him.
Actually, killing Black Adam wasn't particularly difficult. Thea only needed to borrow Diana's Lasso of Truth, wrap it around his neck, loudly ask him what his transformation incantation was, have Black Adam shout "Shazam" himself to become an ordinary person, and there were far too many ways to deal with an ordinary human.
The only pity was that despite his extraordinary power, he was essentially still human and naturally subject to human lifespan. Black Adam had been sealed for a thousand years—he was far too old. Once separated from Shazam's divine power, he'd probably die of old age immediately.
Whether he died or not didn't matter to anyone, but it would be a terrible waste if that divine power dissipated with him. After careful consideration, Thea had only one option left: beat him down hard, knock this guy unconscious, then use Horus's divine power as a backdoor to bypass the divine power barrier, control the personality in his mental world, and finally have him gift the divine power to Thea. Mission accomplished.
Yes, the Shazam people's power system was quite peculiar. Power came easily but could be taken away just as readily. Divine power and magical power weren't cultivated by themselves at all, so they neither cherished nor cared about it.
Unlike Thea, who constantly refined and purified her power, striving to maintain perfect harmony with herself, they never bothered with any of that. Divine power and magical power related to their actual bodies like tenants to a landlord—you can't take it with you when you're born or when you die. Entering a treasure mountain only to return empty-handed perfectly described them.
Old Shazam and Black Adam occasionally did some actual work. The third-generation Shazam, brat Billy Batson, treated magical power completely like a toy. He'd even developed a sharing spirit, distributing portions of his magical power to his little friends and a talking tiger. This was simply blasphemy against magic—especially when contrasted with Dr. Sivana's fervor, it highlighted this point even more.
Shazam should be tossed into history's garbage heap. Thea waved at her subordinates. Free attack!
The first to jump out was Livewire. "I hear you also use lightning. Let's compare!" Without waiting for his response, she gathered silvery-white electric arcs in one-tenth of a second and flung them at Black Adam at blistering speed.
Do I even know you people? Black Adam didn't understand the principle of "strike first when you can." He just felt like he'd picked up the wrong script after escaping imprisonment.
However, facing an attack—especially an electric one—he didn't hold back either.
To intimidate these inexplicable people, he chose to tank it head-on. He also launched a lightning beam toward his opponent. The magical lightning instantly scattered Livewire's electric arc.
The somewhat masochistic Livewire watched the lightning coming at her without dodging, directly colliding with it. Her ability to absorb electrical energy was truly outrageous. In the original timeline, she could absorb the Flash's thrown lightning, so naturally she could absorb Shazam's magic now.
"Awesome! Got any more? Give me some more!" The lightning struck her body, sending her flying three or four meters, but she didn't care at all. Licking her lips with a somewhat crazed expression, she asked Black Adam.
"Crazy woman." Having never encountered this type of energy-absorption physiology, Black Adam still had rich combat experience. He flew down, preparing to use physical attacks.
However, halfway through his flight, he was intercepted by the black-armored Faora.
Faora was the main force against Black Adam. Her armor had been personally crafted by Thea. After all, having spent so long around Diana, forging a suit of armor wasn't difficult.
This black armor wasn't the original Kryptonian technological armor, but made from rare materials discovered on a planet in Ibn's trading company. On that planet, this material was treated as waste. By chance, Mister E had seen these materials and nearly fainted from excitement.
Aliens did excellent waste sorting. Many waste materials were piled separately awaiting disposal. Mister E had accidentally discovered an entire mountain of black obsidian. This powerful high-magic-resistance material had long since vanished from Earth. The Cult of the Cold Flame had extorted the entire magical world and only found a piece the size of half a fingernail, which they'd later presented to Thea like a treasure. One could imagine his excitement upon seeing a mountain of obsidian.
Afterward, he and Papa Midnite had happily wandered several planets. Countless rare materials abounded, delighting them both like fools.
Their harvest naturally alarmed Thea. The young Miss glanced over and moved on—these things weren't particularly important to her. She only selected some relatively rare materials. Faora's current armor came from there.