Opening

Seeing the scene over the Pacific Ocean, the entire world fell silent, unable to recover for a long time.

Chopsticks fell to the floor, soup spoons slipped from hands, phones dropped from palms, tablets hit the ground... It was only after a long while that people recovered from the shock.

It was as if they had witnessed history.

Witnessed the birth of a god.

"Is this real?"

"My eyes aren't playing tricks on me, are they?"

"The world is about to change."

"Hahaha... This is truly wonderful."

"Humanity will suffer disasters from now on!"

"I've long hated this world."

"Damn it, why didn't he die?!"

"It's too fantastical. Can a living creature survive a nuclear bomb?"

"He is a myth."

"Wonderful. The day our lord conquers Earth is at hand."

The entire world went from silence to an uproar. The figure that emerged after the nuclear bomb sent goosebumps crawling over everyone's skin. An unimaginable sight had appeared before their eyes, making their blood surge and the veins in their necks bulge. It was the instinctive reaction to witnessing a powerful creature, stirring the genes buried deep within them that worshipped strength.

Some submitted to the power of the mighty creature.

Some devoutly worshipped the arrival of a god.

Some broke free from the genetic fear and worship of powerful creatures through sheer will.

Some fell into panicked terror.

Some saw this scene and could not accept it at all, dying on the spot.

Inside the Oval Office, three powerholders over seventy stared wide-eyed, unable to accept this devastating reality. Gasping for breath, they pointed at He-El on the television, their throats making hoarse choking sounds as they struggled to breathe. Their fingers fell limp, and they died with their eyes still wide open.

No one paid attention to the dead old men. Their faces had long since turned ashen, their eyes vacant as they sank into a countdown to death.

Some collapsed directly onto the blue carpet, their minds blank and their thoughts frozen in that moment.

The president sat in his chair. At that moment, strength suddenly seeped back into his slumped body. He brushed back his sparse, slightly disheveled hair and even had the leisure to straighten his appearance. Expressionless, he opened a drawer, took out his treasured ivory pistol, and gently rested it atop the back of his hand on the desk.

"Everyone, go home," the president said softly, his gaze calm and devoid of much emotion.

In these final moments of waiting for death, he maintained an elegant posture and recalled his original intention when entering politics. Why had he entered politics?

It had not been for fame, power, money, or status... On the contrary, it had only been for thirty workers at a seafood cannery in Lauren Town.

Only that... had brought him all the way to the presidency.

He had long forgotten the hopeful eyes and faces of those thirty cannery workers, but at this moment, he miraculously remembered them again.

Jack, Aunt Kevin, Herbert, Les, Roderick, William... Every face appeared in his mind with perfect clarity, even the way they had angrily and painfully raised wooden wrenches and iron hammers, wanting to smash him to death.

He did not know how they were doing, but it must have been difficult.

By now, he estimated that more than half of them had died from either illness or poverty. The rest were probably waiting to die while cursing him.

The president gently rubbed the smooth ivory pistol with his thumb. Suddenly, he wanted to know how He-El would treat ordinary people after conquering the world.

He wanted to ask.

Over the Pacific Ocean, beneath the dazzling night sky, He-El held a gigantic orange-red fireball of black smoke atop his fingertip. His biological magnetic field spun, drawing in the surrounding nuclear radiation and forming a planetary halo around the fireball.

At that moment, he truly looked as though he were lifting an evolving planet beneath the stars on the tip of his finger, an incomparably striking and magnificent sight.

Sensing that the nuclear radiation had all been absorbed and drawn over by his biological magnetic field, He-El controlled it and began dismantling the fireball on a microscopic level.

The planetary halo shattered in the next instant. Nuclear radiation could clearly be seen flashing with deadly specks of blue energy along the trajectories of the biological magnetic field, like starlight streaming down into He-El's pale skin.

The fireball on his fingertip began to shrink and spin under the compression of He-El's biological magnetic field. In an instant, the fireball shrank to a thousand meters. In the blink of an eye, it became the size of a basketball. The explosive energy within was being microscopically analyzed by He-El's biological magnetic field and consumed at an astonishing rate.

The fireball on his fingertip finally dissipated. With a soft puff, black smoke rose from He-El's hand and vanished.

"I can do it too!"

He-El's merciless, cruel smile grew brighter.

The red glow of Heat Vision flickered within his deep pupils. In the next moment, He-El's eyes shone in the night sky like the morning star, but did not fire Heat Vision.

Using his biological magnetic field inside his body, He-El constructed an orbit similar to a particle accelerator. Heat Vision was guided inward by the biological magnetic field, accelerating madly along the particle-acceleration cyclotron orbit arranged within his body.

A pattern resembling a particle-acceleration cyclotron orbit immediately appeared on He-El's right hand. A red glow could faintly be seen through his veins as frantic particle acceleration took place. His entire pale arm turned crimson, as if lava were cracking and erupting beneath the skin.

He pointed his right index finger toward the sky. From its tip burst Heat Vision energy particles accelerated to the absolute limit, colliding with an energy-filled cell released by He-El.

A tiny crimson orb of light rose from his finger.

Boom!

Another enormous and terrifying nuclear explosion erupted. A gigantic crimson fireball appeared beneath the starry sky in an instant. The horrifying shockwave blasted away the seawater that had been flowing back, pressing the ocean down hundreds of meters.

He-El had kneaded a nuclear explosion into existence with his bare hands.

Having observed and personally experienced the power and birth of a nuclear explosion—the collisions of countless particles, the reactions of fusion and fission—there was no reason his incomparably powerful body could not do the same.

With his superhuman precision and terrifyingly powerful control over his biological magnetic field, He-El developed a skill with the destructive force of a nuclear explosion.

"Let's call it the Heat-Vision Nuclear Bomb!"

After all, it was a skill born from accelerating Heat Vision energy particles and smashing them into an energy-filled cell, one he had comprehended and researched during this nuclear explosion. He thought the name suited it well.

Compared to a nuclear bomb's explosion, the energy and destructive power unleashed by using his own biological magnetic field to create an acceleration circuit and crash particles into a cell were even greater. It also produced no radioactive contamination. He-El was very satisfied with this display of nuclear power and gave humanity a favorable evaluation in his heart.

Humanity had been scared numb.

A creature capable of enduring a nuclear bomb's central explosion suddenly seemed perfectly normal to them.

But... creating a nuclear explosion barehanded, an attack of that intensity, with nothing more than a casual point toward the sky.

Heh. What alien? Clearly, he was a god.

While they were still frozen in terror, every electronic device in the world—phones, computers, tablets, radios, anything with a Loudspeaker—broadcast the same message.

"At 12:01 a.m. on March 1, I am Dawn. I have now locked down all Earth networks, military weapons, and nuclear launch systems. Starting with Alaska State, this nation is expected to be conquered within twenty-four hours. This is a change in the nation's upper leadership and does not concern civilians. Ordinary citizens, remain in your homes and do not panic. Anyone who takes the opportunity to cause trouble will be exterminated."

"Repeating: At 12:01 a.m. on March 1, I am Dawn. I have now locked down all Earth networks, military weapons, and nuclear launch systems. Starting with Alaska State, this nation is expected to be conquered within twenty-four hours. This is a change in the nation's upper leadership and does not concern civilians. Ordinary citizens, remain in your homes and do not panic. Anyone who takes the opportunity to cause trouble will be exterminated."

"Repeating: At 12:02 a.m. on March 1, I am Dawn. I have now locked down all Earth networks, military weapons, and nuclear launch systems. Starting with Alaska State, this nation is expected to be conquered within twenty-four hours. This is a change in the nation's upper leadership and does not concern civilians. Ordinary citizens, remain in your homes and do not panic. Anyone who takes the opportunity to cause trouble will be exterminated."