After completing the transformation, Joey spread his hands out before him and carefully observed the streams of light flowing within his body.
The combination of a Kryptonian's senses and an Ultraman's body was an extraordinarily strange experience.
The inhabitants of the Land of Light, the world of the Ultras, clearly possessed bodies fundamentally different from those of most normal carbon-based lifeforms.
Most Supermen and Kryptonians were, at their core, still material carbon-based organisms—flesh and blood beings. Nearly all of their superpowers relied upon their bio-field.
Kryptonians couldn't actually fly on their own; it was their bio-field that allowed them to overcome gravity.
Nor were they truly made of steel. Their cells were simply rendered virtually indestructible through the enhancement of that same bio-field.
An Ultraman's body operated on an entirely different set of principles.
This was a fifty- to sixty-meter-tall plasma aggregate composed entirely of pure energy—a projection of a being made of information and energy into the material universe.
It only looked vaguely humanoid on the surface.
In principle, perhaps it was closer to someone like Captain Atom?
[Let me teach you how to—]
With their minds connected through mutual understanding, Lipiah was just about to explain how to use his body when Joey instinctively figured it out on his own.
Raising both arms level with his chest, he flicked one hand forward.
An Ultra Slash flew from his fingertips.
[...Yes. That's basically how it works.]
Internally, Lipiah marveled at this mysterious humanoid's ability to learn.
Little did he know that Joey only dared skip the tutorial because he had already looked up the strategy guide in his head.
The serrated energy blade sliced through the air and slammed into the Leopardon that had only just managed to regain its footing.
Sparks erupted everywhere.
"Nice one!"
Thanks to the nonstop stream of trash talk coming from Leopardon's pilot, Takuya Yamashiro, there was virtually no chance of mistaking which Leopardon was real.
The Alien Zarab might be able to perfectly imitate Leopardon's appearance.
But it couldn't imitate a pilot who functioned as a twenty-four-hour-a-day trash-talk generator.
"Crawl back to hell, you cosmic hillbilly!"
Things like honor and sportsmanship were luxuries to a Spider-Man who spent his days dealing with the murderous Iron Cross Army.
Taking advantage of Zarab's unstable footing after being struck by the Ultra Slash, Leopardon followed the timeless principle of when he's down, kick him harder.
The crest on Leopardon's forehead launched forward and shot straight toward Zarab's throat.
An even more violent explosion erupted from the alien's body.
Under the relentless barrage of attacks, the mysterious cosmic energy surrounding him rapidly diminished.
The space around his body began distorting once more.
His disguise was becoming impossible to maintain.
After manifesting a Sword Vigor earlier and clashing head-on with Leopardon's own, a significant portion of Zarab's cosmic energy had already been consumed.
That revealed an important fact.
His power could be exhausted.
Meanwhile, Ultraman's body, expanding its bio-field across a far broader dimensional scale, appeared before the increasingly unstable Zarab like a phantom.
A single punch shattered the alien's camouflage filters and dispersed them in every direction.
Immediately, Zarab was forced back into his true form.
After having his optical camouflage physically beaten out of him, the Alien Zarab crashed into the ground.
The waves and mud thrown up by the impact allowed Joey to notice something.
Zarab wasn't actually the two-dimensional creature he appeared to be.
He possessed a perfectly normal physical body.
He had simply chosen to render his entire body invisible, revealing only the skin on the very front of his body whenever he appeared.
As a result, he looked like a paper-thin two-dimensional lifeform.
Just as Joey began mentally cataloging this fascinating discovery for his ongoing studies in multiversal alien biology, Lipiah interrupted his train of thought.
[Please don't kill him just yet. I still have a question I need answered.]
That left Joey to do the asking.
"Who exactly is this new master of yours?!"
The entire reason Lipiah had pursued Zarabacross time, space, and dimensions was because wherever the alien traveled, life ceased, civilizations perished, and only silence and emptiness remained.
And the only reason Zarab was capable of causing such devastation was because he willingly served a powerful entity, acting as that being's advance scout and vanguard.
Lipiah simply wanted to know who that being was.
"I can't tell you!"
Leaning against the waterlogged ground and the walls of the canyon, the Alien Zarab twisted violently.
The last remnants of cosmic energy surged through his body.
A dangerous and dazzling light erupted from him.
"Die, hound of the Land of Light!"
"Fuck!"
Anyone with eyes could tell what Zarab was about to do—he was going to self-destruct!
The energy radiation from Zarab's body, held in Joey's arms, had already become extremely unstable. According to the calculations made by Joey and the Original Ultraman, an explosion of this magnitude in the previous location would have consequences beyond imagination.
At best, it would punch a hole into the oceanic tectonic plate below, expanding the Pacific's water capacity by double.
At worst, it would be comparable to Aquaman going crazy and tearing half the Eurasian continent apart—only without anyone there to stop the cascading disaster.
In that instant, Joey had no time to think further.
Controlling Ultraman's body, he grabbed Zarab from the surface and shot straight into the sky, reaching outer space in the blink of an eye.
While flying at extreme speed, Joey was about to perform a Earth-to-space throw, flinging Zarab even farther into the outer reaches of the galaxy.
But Zarab clung tightly to his body, refusing to let go.
"!!"
Realizing this, Joey dared not hesitate even for a moment.
Struggling with Zarab, he flew desperately away from Earth.
If a dying Zarab was confident that this explosion could destroy Ultraman, then it was more than capable of wiping out this universe's Earth.
As for his own safety, Joey could no longer afford to think about it.
At this point, he had already accepted that he might end up in life-threatening situations almost daily.
Besides, this body wasn't even his—it belonged to Ultraman.
"Ready for a second big bang?"
[I have no objection.]
Joey's erratic thinking didn't relax Ultraman at all, because both of them knew this was nothing like the joke Joey had made.
Their energies had become entangled due to their collision; their lives were now linked.
If one suffered misfortune, there was no such thing as the other escaping it.
[I hope we survive this explosion.]
Fortunately, both of them shared the resolve to sacrifice themselves for weaker civilizations, which allowed them to plunge into danger without hesitation, even while sharing a single body.
And just as easily… they had fallen into Zarab's trap.
"Well, self-destruction sounds dangerous, but actually..."
Before Joey could finish his sentence, Zarab completed the final stage of energy accumulation.
BOOOOM!
In the distant void far beyond Earth and the Sun, an unprecedented explosion swept across the solar system. On Earth, the night side of the planet was once again illuminated as bright as day.
Zarab's body was completely annihilated in the cosmic energy blast.
Even the form of the light giant could not maintain existence in the material world.
Even the nearby asteroid belt was erased by the overwhelming energy wave.
Only Joey remained, drifting alone in the dark void of space, no longer breathing.
#Well, not all self-sacrificial heroism leads to a happy ending. Self-detonating villains are extremely dangerous.#
#This was the final ending of this strange story—the two noble and powerful warriors from beyond this world vanished in an unfamiliar universe.#
#Although Zarab was dead, this did not stop his hungry and greedy master from seeking the next victim.#
#A deeper and more distant crisis was about to occur, but it no longer concerned the universe where they had perished.#
#Because that would be the next story.#
#I witnessed everything that happened, but I did not, could not, and will not interfere.#
#Because I am the Watcher.#
#Wait—what the hell is that?!#