The Serpent's Magic / Growing Giant

Several seconds later, the earth-shaking roar of the explosion finally arrived. Only then did an orange-red pillar of fire rise into the sky. The mushroom-shaped fireball churned like flowing water, rising and falling as though proclaiming its own power.

Heat surged, and the water vapor turned into a mist that blanketed the entire sea, shrouding the giant serpent's enormous body.

If not for the Ten Rings' energy field protecting her, Jessica might have been deafened on the spot. An attack of this power was no weaker than a nuclear explosion.

Stark's smug voice came through Dane's earpiece. "Well? Impressive, right?"

"I don't sense any radioactive contamination in the air. You didn't use a nuclear weapon."

"How could I use something like that inside the atmosphere?" Stark shook his head, then grinned. "Want to guess what I used?"

"Antimatter?" Dane answered.

Stark: "..."

That took all the fun out of it.

He curled his lip. "It was antimatter. The principle is actually very simple—simple as a nuclear bomb. It uses the energy released by matter-antimatter annihilation to destroy any enemy, and it doesn't produce any secondary pollution."

"The only drawback is that antimatter is difficult to obtain."

Under normal circumstances, only tiny trace amounts of antimatter could be produced in extremely demanding laboratories. This stuff simply could not be generated in a normal environment, or every place would become a potential detonation point.

Compared to a nuclear bomb, an annihilation reaction was far more thorough. When matter and antimatter collided, their mass was completely converted into energy.

What surprised Dane, however, was that Stark had not only created an Annihilation Bomb, but could even guide it with such precision and deliver it directly to the enemy's location. A brain cursed by knowledge truly was something else.

"...You built your own space-based