Like a God

"Charlie, look."

"That's Homelander, right?"

A kilometer from Silver Tree Town, by a creek, two young men in plaid shirts were fiddling with a drone remote.

Through the drone's live feed, they spotted a blue figure flying toward the town.

"Why would Homelander come to a place like this?"

"Who cares, Charlie."

"Quick, get your drone to follow him."

"Forget the wilderness survival special—let's make it a Homelander feature."

The one called Charlie let out a "Huh?": "Hold on, I see military vehicles. Look."

On the screen, outside the town, rows of military jeeps were rolling out.

The two young men took in the scene.

Then they cheered.

"Military and Homelander."

"Something big's definitely going down here!"

"Film it. We have to film it."

"When we post this online, I bet it'll break a million views!"

Meanwhile.

Inside the military camp.

Livewire glanced at a drone hovering in the distant sky and muttered, "Should I take that thing down? Doesn't look military."

Element Man shook his head. "Forget it. Homelander wants us on standby. If anyone tries to break out of the town, we stop them."

"So I think we should focus."

Princess Frost, tall and model-like, scoffed. "Relax. I can handle the lockdown and interception alone."

Starlight, standing nearby, rolled her eyes, sensing the underlying tension among the new Supers.

She looked at Homelander, who had already reached the town's sky, and whispered, "What's he planning to do next?"

Azu looked down at the town from above.

The mission requirements slid through his mind.

"No hostages to save this time. That's a relief."

"Then I'll just wipe out Nightcrawler and that so-called Midnight Clown together."

As he spoke, Azu's eyes began to glow. In moments, they were filled with golden light.

His pupils seemed to hold a sun, blazing with the brightest noon radiance!

The gold grew fiercer, spilling from his eyes, even illuminating the capillaries around them.

The temperature around the town shot up. In an instant, even those far away in the camp gasped.

They felt scorching heat, breaking into sweat. The scenery warped and blurred before their eyes.

"What's going on?"

"Why is it so hot?"

Even the Supers—Princess Frost and the others—found it unbearable.

Element Man's eyes turned emerald, and wind stirred around him. But the air was so hot that even the breeze came as a wave of heat.

Princess Frost parted her lips and blew a gentle breath, cooling the area around her.

At that moment.

High in the sky.

Azu had already raised the temperature of his Heat Ray to 3,000 degrees!

Hot enough to melt steel.

So even though the heat radiating to the ground was only a fraction, it still made the vehicle shells scalding and turned the earth into a furnace.

The next second.

Golden beams blasted from Azu's eyes. The temperature was so extreme that the air itself ignited as the rays tore through it.

With Azu at the center, roaring flames erupted across the entire sky above the town!

A staggering wave of heat slammed into them, forcing Starlight and the others to step back.

Looking up at Homelander amidst the inferno, their hearts pounded with awe and fear.

Especially Princess Frost.

She had fought him one-on-one before.

I thought back then that Homelander had used at least eighty percent of his power, even if not his full strength.

But looking at it now—

Back then, Homelander hadn't even been serious.

If he'd been like this at the time, I'd have been melted by his rays long ago!

Watching the godlike figure in the flames, Princess Frost's breathing grew heavy, and her gaze turned dazed.

A golden beam like a waterfall tore through the air, about to land on the town.

Suddenly, the beam twisted, veered off, and howled across the ground toward the town square.

There, a fat man had appeared out of nowhere, mouth wide open, inhaling.

Azu looked over and saw that the fat man's mouth seemed to lead to another world, flashing with bizarre, shifting light.

The next second, his Heat Ray was sucked into the fat man's mouth and cast into another space.

The process lasted several seconds, and Azu saw no sign of the fat man bursting or being overwhelmed.

He immediately stopped firing the high-temperature beam.

And frowned.

His Heat Ray could produce explosive effects on impact—three-thousand-degree rays, once detonated, would be devastating.

But that fat man was completely unharmed.

Azu used Insight on him.

Name: Big Eater

Life Level: Level 4 (Supers)

Status: Nervous

Talent: Dimensional Projection.

A Super, sure enough.

Just then, the broadcast on the Circus Tent in the town crackled to life.

"Homelander!"

"You came, just as I expected."

"But I figured this would happen."

"So this time, I brought a Secret Weapon."

"Big Eater!"

"He'll eat up all your favorite energy rays!"

"And as for you gentlemen from The Boys."

"You broke your word—you brought Homelander here."

"That leaves me no choice."

"Negotiation Breakdown!"

As the words ended, cannons boomed in rapid succession from the rooftops of buildings around the town.

Shells were fired into the sky—what they were, no one knew.

Azu ignored them, shooting toward the fat man in the town square to kill him first.

But the moment he moved, the ground in front of Big Eater bulged, rocks rose up, and formed a two-meter-tall Stone Golem.

The Stone Golem lowered its center of gravity, crossed its arms, and tried to block Azu.

Bam!

Azu rammed into it, shattering the Stone Golem instantly, but when he landed, he saw Big Eater scrambling into the Circus Tent.

He smirked and was about to chase when the shattered rocks of the Stone Golem flew back.

They attached themselves to Azu, forming a Rock Prison.

Then, a face emerged on one of the rocks and said, "I won't let you pass, Homelander."

At that moment, the light above Azu dimmed sharply.

He looked up and saw thick clouds forming, blocking the sun and casting shadows over the earth.

The weather changed in an instant.

The sky turned gloomy, sunlight gone.

And then, the broadcast rang out again with the voice of Midnight Clown.

"Go, Servants of the Night, tear the faithless to shreds."

"Let black terror spread and expand!"

As the voice fell, the door of a two-story building not far away suddenly shattered. A figure burst out, tumbling several times across the ground.

Then it scrambled up—a "person" with no hair, pitch-black skin, and red light blazing from its eyes.

Its veins bulged across its body, fangs bared from its mouth, and its fingernails curved like claws.

With a roar, it bolted swiftly toward the edge of town.

The next second.

Doors and windows of building after building in the town shattered in succession.

A flood of mutated townspeople surged out of the structures, roaring like wild beasts as they madly charged out of town, toward the military and Supers like Starlight!

It's New Year's Eve—tomorrow is the first day of the new year.

Pigeon here wants to wish everyone a happy New Year first, and hopes that in the coming year, you all stay healthy and live in peace.

This past year has been truly tough, but we've all made it through.

May the new year see the bitter cold fade away, and the river of stars shine bright.