It didn't take long for the bold headline on the livestream to grab their attention.
[Monster Association's Lord Gold live-broadcasts the destruction of humanity's strongest weapon!]
"What the heck—lemme see." Curly tapped in.
A picture appeared, apparently shot from very high altitude.
Though the camera was far away, special enhancement let them barely make out the details.
It was a ruined city; near its outskirts stood a tiny, golden-glinting figure.
Inside an office building, every employee's computer suddenly popped up the same stream.
A bearded manager frowned at his screen; even though an X was right there, the stream's title hooked him.
"Monster Association stunt?" He clicked in and started watching.
Before the HQ City battle, the world's major software firms had already been infiltrated by the Monster Association, waiting for this moment.
Every phone and computer running their OS began pushing the livestream.
There was no chat overlay; the software giants were simply relaying the satellite feed.
HQ City.
After waiting quietly for several dozen minutes, Gold saw faint specks of light as the nukes closed to within three kilometres of the city.
He clenched his fists at his hips, pride on his face, and looked skyward. "From today on, let the Monster Association teach the world fear!"
Boom! The ground beneath Gold caved in instantly, spreading into a crater hundreds of metres wide.
Whoosh! His body shot skyward as a golden streak toward the incoming warheads.
Swish-swish-swish! Under the eyes of the planet, a golden flash pierced the salvo; in an instant it lanced through more than a hundred nukes.
Bzzzz! Every warhead detonated simultaneously three kilometres above the city. Blinding light erupted, the sky flared, nearby cloud clusters were blown apart, and the heavens were scoured clean.
Terrifying heat poured downward; the ruins of HQ City melted instantly as the shockwave and radiation swept unchecked.
Below, arms folded, Gold welcomed the thermal blast.
Rumble! Searing heat slammed into him; his golden skin merely reddened a touch, showing no other reaction.
The aftershocks of dust and debris followed.
From the satellites, all people could see was a golden streak flashing through the nukes above HQ City—then the detonations.
Blinding brilliance followed; the light bathed every viewer's face through their screens.
But shock slowly replaced that light on their faces.
Inside one of Nanwu Country's missile bases.
After launch, the middle-aged officer had kept his eyes on the stream on his phone.
When he saw the golden streak nail every warhead, his face went white. "Impossible—no Monster could move that fast!"
These nukes were travelling at nine Mach; in terminal sprint they neared eleven Mach—eleven times the speed of sound.
"Even if it can detonate them, it can't survive a hundred!" another officer nearby gasped.
nukes were humanity's trump card; if something could shrug them off…
He dared not picture how mankind would face such Monsters in the future.
At this moment the entire globe stared at the stream, hearts in throats.
The combined yield of a hundred air-burst nukes erased what remained of HQ City from the map.
Gigantic mushroom clouds rose; the ground quaked.
Cities near HQ felt the violent tremors as well.
Inside a restaurant, lunchtime patrons were glued to their phones watching the feed.
Rumble!
A moment later, tremors from neighbouring HQ City made the restaurant shudder.
Clink-clink-clink!
The wind-chime over the door shook madly.
"Earthquake?" A middle-aged woman looked up, puzzled.
Such a tiny quake—nothing to fear.
"Look over there!" Outside, a waiter drumming up customers suddenly screamed in terror.
Hearing him, several patrons connected the tremor to the nukes; they bolted outside.
They stood in the street, staring toward HQ City.
Their faces froze, eyes wide with awe.
An unnatural, bright white glare filled that part of the sky, as though some energy were erupting and venting.
A bespectacled man paled. "That direction's HQ City. With that tremor and the stream showing ruins under nukes—could it really be HQ City?"
His voice shook harder the more he spoke; they were only eighty or ninety kilometres away, yet they'd known nothing until the blasts hit.
Ordinary folk like them had been left completely in the dark until the shockwave arrived.
The mushroom clouds lingered for about half an hour before finally fading.
Jiang Yan hovered in the air, gazing at HQ City; the radiation around him now exceeded safe levels by who-knew-how-many-fold.
But to him the effect was negligible.
He—like the rest of the world—waited to see whether Gold had survived.
Ten-odd minutes later the clouds dispersed and the nuked HQ City reappeared.
The rubble that once filled the city had vanished; only scorched, carbonised ground remained.
The sole intact thing was Gold himself, standing at the centre, sheathed in golden light, arms folded, white face smirking arrogantly.
The blasts had centred three kilometres above him; the fringe shockwaves couldn't even scratch his skin.
Though Jiang Yan had expected it, seeing Gold unscathed made him laugh aloud: "Hahaha! From this moment, no one can stop me—can stop the Monster Association!!!"
Inside Town City's royal palace.
Ye Chang watched the satellite feed of Gold unharmed by the nukes.
His face drained of colour, naked dread in his eyes. "We're finished—mankind is finished!"
Without the nuclear deterrent, he could already picture kingdom after kingdom falling to the Monster Association's armies.
On the rooftop of the Xuanjian Division building, Wu Yuan stared at the same satellite images on his phone, silent.
Facing a hundred warheads he too could survive—but not by tanking them bare-bodied like Gold; that was simply absurd.
"A body that tough really belongs to a mere Level Six?" Wu Yuan narrowed his eyes.
With Bai Wenliang defeated, it would soon be his turn to face the Monster Association; the pressure on him skyrocketed.
'Looks like I'll have to invite those reclusive Level Sixes. If humanity falls, you hermits won't stay safe either.' Wu Yuan's gaze flickered.