"Don't even think about running—you're not going anywhere today!" Darkseid crushed the Mother Box in Batman's hand like it was nothing more than an ant between his fingers. The enemy's only escape route, destroyed. He could practically see the despair and terror on that masked face. A vicious grin split his features as he waved off Steppenwolf, who had moved to assist. What kind of joke was that? Needing help to deal with an ordinary human? He'd never live it down.
"I'm not going anywhere—not yet!" Batman shot back. Darkseid had turned his head to dismiss Steppenwolf—confident, self-assured. The opening was narrow, but Batman seized it all the same. He twisted at the waist, whipped his arm up, and channeled every ounce of force the suit could muster into a single punch that crashed straight into Darkseid's face.
The Dark Lord staggered, caught completely off guard.
But the gap in their strength was staggering. He recovered after half a step.
"You've angered me, insect!" He grabbed Batman's arm and swung him overhead, slamming him into the ground.
The impact boomed across the battlefield. Chunks of armor scattered everywhere. Even at maximum defensive output, the Hellbat couldn't close the gap between them.
The punch hadn't actually hurt Darkseid—not physically. But his pride demanded retribution. He seized Batman's arm and smashed him into the ground again and again, intent on shaking the life out of this ordinary man through sheer brute force.
Batman was already redirecting every scrap of the armor's power. Whether the metabolic strain would kill him later didn't matter anymore. He needed strength—enough to beat Darkseid, or at least drive him back. Even if only for a moment.
The armor's damage climbed. Power output blew past eighty percent, racing toward one hundred—then two hundred.
Pain had numbed his body completely. He abandoned most of the armor's defensive capacity in exchange for attack power. One shot. That was all he'd get.
"Don't you dare hurt my father!" Damian saw Darkseid raise his fist again. Without stopping to consider the impossible gap between them, he hurled two Batarangs.
They couldn't hurt Darkseid. A hundred times faster, a hundred times sharper—it wouldn't matter. But the Dark Lord had his pride.
He raised his left hand and swatted at the projectiles as if brushing away flies.
The gesture wasn't aimed at Damian alone—Circe was caught in its path as well. The witch was far from pleased. But she was pragmatic to her core. She was in the same boat as the father-son duo now, and for the sake of her own escape route, she flash-stepped away with Damian in tow.
"Armor seventy-five percent shattered..."
"Life-support systems overloading..."
"Power-assist systems overloading..."
"Structural failure in five seconds..."
The moment Darkseid's attention shifted, Batman screamed internally: Now!
He didn't waste the opening. Ignoring the cascade of critical warnings flooding his HUD, he planted his left hand, twisted at the waist to his absolute limit, and swung his leg upward from below—a devastating kick straight to Darkseid's face.
The Dark Lord's massive body lifted off the ground. Before he could retaliate, the blood-red bat emblem on Batman's chest blazed with searing light. Energy gathered there, and for the first time, Darkseid felt a flicker of genuine threat.
Crimson energy—comparable to a full broadside from a Level Nine civilization warship—erupted outward. Even Darkseid couldn't withstand it. The quality of each individual hit might not have been enough, but the sheer quantity made up for it. The Hellbat armor, operating in what amounted to self-destruct mode, squeezed out every last drop of stored energy and fired it in a single shot.
Darkseid was blasted over a kilometer (~0.6 miles) backward. The energy wave obliterated every structure in its path. He lay spread-eagle in the middle of the devastation, blood-red energy still burning across the ground around him. From above, the scorch pattern formed the unmistakable shape of a bat with wings spread wide.
What hit me? Darkseid's mind felt sluggish, split in two—one part screaming at him to get up and kill, the other foggy and disoriented. He lay there for a long time, unable to rise.
What he hadn't seen was Batman slipping a dagger into his chest during the energy blast. A gift from the Gods of Egypt—their revenge against the Dark Lord. Its purpose was singular: confusion.
Even a New God couldn't resist the erosion of time. The Egyptian pantheon, having spent eons playing with the sands of time, knew their temporal arts well. The full extent of the dagger's side effects was unknown, but three days of disorientation? That much was guaranteed.
"Why do you possess such power, mortal? What is your name?" Realizing he'd lost this exchange, Darkseid called out from where he lay.
"Because I'm Batman!" The Dark Knight was in terrible shape, but he forced the words out. His voice came through the shattered faceplate, heavily distorted.
Two seconds spent on the attack. The Hellbat was on the verge of total collapse. The mask had crumbled away below the nose. Chest plates and arm guards were falling off in sheets.
The breathing apparatus was completely destroyed. His wings barely deployed. He fixed Steppenwolf with a look fierce enough to make the general step back, then spent one more precious second—holding his breath—to find Damian. He crushed a teleportation talisman.
Circe watched Darkseid go down and nearly lost her mind. Even if Kalibak came to vouch for her now, she didn't dare stay on Apokolips. Darkseid's retaliation afterward was as predictable as breathing.
Now or never—I'm getting out too!
At the critical moment she grabbed Damian's arm, and all three vanished from Apokolips in a flash of white light, bound for Earth.
"Urgh—!" The instant they materialized on Earth, before anyone could take stock of their surroundings, Batman vomited a massive spray of blood. The armor disintegrated completely. Even with the Dark Multiverse absorbing part of the damage, he was critically wounded—hovering at death's door.
Thankfully, Damian had healing gems. He selected the highest-grade one with the strongest restorative magic and pressed it against his father's chest. Gentle blue light, smooth as flowing water, coiled around Batman's body—mending tissue, purging necrotic cells.
The healing lasted three minutes. Damian kept his eyes locked on Circe the entire time. You could never tell what someone like her might do.
"You've gotten me killed!" Circe hissed through gritted teeth, glaring at Damian.
Helplessness flooded through her. She didn't even know what expression to wear anymore.
The Greek side had sold out Heracles. Going back there seemed impossible now.
Apokolips... Apokolips was an even sadder story. Through a cascade of unfortunate events, her standing with the New Gods had flipped from reputation to outright hostility. In all the vast cosmos, Circe couldn't think of a single place left that would take her in.
She was a sorceress of earth-shaking power—and somehow she'd ended up completely boxed in. It was beyond absurd.
"You're Circe?" Batman had used a teleportation talisman, and Thea had naturally sensed the activation. Following the transmission signature, she'd returned to Earth as well.
Facing a goddess no less formidable than Darkseid himself, Circe's mouth filled with bitterness. She lowered her head in a bow. "Your Majesty."
"Why did you leave the Underworld?" Thea genuinely didn't understand. She'd made a grand entrance as the new ruler of the Underworld, and instead of welcoming her with open arms, people were fleeing? If Two-Face hadn't flagged the desertion in his records, she wouldn't have even known there were deserters. Now that she'd caught one in person, she intended to get a straight answer. Were you unhappy with the new management? Or unhappy? Or unhappy?