He Was Practically a God!

Leon saw every move the terrorists made with perfect clarity.

But he did not retaliate immediately. Instead, he stood quietly in place and waited.

Before long, large numbers of explosive weapons, including grenades and rockets, were fired.

Yet Leon remained as immovable as a mountain. A sweep of Heat Vision was all it took to end the round.

He did not take flight until the vehicle-mounted missiles began to ignite.

"JARVIS, are there any satellites above us right now?"

"Master Leon, an American military satellite is currently operating over Afghanistan."

JARVIS immediately responded and began analyzing the situation.

"Once a conflict of moderate scale or greater occurs, it will immediately begin surveillance."

"Additionally, there is a local reporter secretly filming seven hundred meters away."

"A reporter? A war correspondent?" Leon nodded and straightened the golden S on his chest. "Looks like the audience is in place. How could Superman's first battle go unnoticed?"

His gaze swept over the area, and he immediately found the reporter.

The terrorist organization's base was wedged between several small hills, making it easy to defend and difficult to assault.

The man was currently lying amid the bushes halfway up one of those hills.

He was wrapped up tightly and dressed in clothing with strong local ethnic characteristics.

The beard showing beneath his coverings was half black and half white. He was clearly no longer young—a middle-aged local reporter named Ben.

People like him had lived through Afghanistan's peaceful days, and they had also endured the most dangerous flames of war after their country was invaded, as well as its bleakest days of displacement.

They often hated the Ten Rings even more and feared sacrifice even less.

They were people who sought only to expose the terrorist organization's atrocities with their own lives in exchange for peace in their homeland.

"Was that really... Superman?" The middle-aged reporter had also spotted the figure flying in the distance.

The man wore a bright red cape, stood tall and straight, and had a face as handsome as Superman's in the movies—impossible to forget, yet somehow impossible to recall clearly afterward.

No matter how he looked at it, that was Superman Ben himself!

Could Superman really exist in this world? Had he come to deal with the terrorist organization below?

The reporter found it utterly absurd.

Yet the footage his equipment had just recorded—Superman facing an army alone—was so real.

"Real or not, it doesn't matter! If Superman can save this country, I'll spend every last cent I earn for the rest of my life supporting DC and Warner Bros.!"

(DC Comics was acquired by Warner Bros. in the twentieth century.)

Gritting his teeth, the middle-aged reporter suddenly saw a spark flare up in the camp. Then scorching flames erupted, and six vehicle-mounted missiles, each two or three meters long, shot into the sky.

"Th-that's a missile! Oh no!" The reporter stared at Leon with his eyes nearly splitting apart. "Superman, get out of the way! Get out of the way!"

But instead of retreating, Leon charged toward them.

He accelerated through the air, holding his phone in one hand and thrusting his clenched fist forward with the other as he collided with the missiles like an arrow.

Boom!

One missile exploded, followed in rapid succession by the rest.

The deafening explosions echoed between the hills. Smoke quickly spread, and the flames lit up every branch on every tree.

The blast winds bent the surrounding trees one after another.

The middle-aged reporter's headscarf was blown away, exposing a head full of dry yellow hair blown straight upward.

Dum-E stared blankly at the smoke clouds in the sky, blue eyes reddened by the flames filling the heavens, his heart full of unease.

No one could survive a direct hit from six missiles. Even leaving behind an intact corpse would be wishful thinking.

But that was Superman. The bullets below had not hurt him at all, and he had even taken the missiles head-on... what if?

As if answering the middle-aged reporter's hopes.

A sudden gale rose within the clouds of smoke.

"Whoosh! Whoosh!"

The gale was fierce but not especially swift. Within seconds, it scattered the mushroom cloud that had only just begun to rise, revealing an unscathed figure.

It was Superman!

Superman's cape still fluttered behind him. He had not suffered the slightest injury!

No—forget injuring him. Those missiles had not even managed to stain him with a trace of soot!

"Allah above!! I knew it!! I knew he could do it!"

The middle-aged reporter leaped to his feet, his face flushed red with excitement. He jumped and pumped his fist wildly, too excited to care that he had exposed his position.

Looking at Superman, he felt as though he had seen hope.

After so many days and nights of yearning, international organizations had not intervened—but a miracle had arrived.

The terrorists in the camp were just as excited as the middle-aged reporter.

They too jumped and shouted, except what they yelled was, "Monster! That's a monster!"

Before long, a burst of gunfire rang out among the noisy terrorists. Another group of deserters, or people unwilling to serve as cannon fodder, were executed.

Leon waited in the air for a while, a look of interest appearing on his face.

"Oh? You finally brought out the Jericho missiles. Planning to take me down with you?"

The Jericho missiles had an extremely wide blast radius. Once they exploded, everything within two kilometers would be engulfed in fire.

Using Jericho missiles at such close range meant these terrorists intended to drag Leon down with them.

"Perfect. I've never seen the power of Tony's masterpiece with my own eyes. Now I finally get to experience it firsthand."

"JARVIS, don't forget to record this and send it to Tony. Leave him a message asking how he can sleep at night."

"Of course, Master Leon. I've been recording the entire time." JARVIS was always so thoughtful.

After waiting several minutes, the terrorists finally figured out how to operate the Jericho missiles. They pushed them into the open and successfully ignited them.

Three Jericho missiles launched at once, emptying out the base's entire stockpile in a single go.

The three missiles accelerated through the air. Once they neared their target, they immediately broke apart, and dozens—perhaps hundreds—of smaller missiles sealed off every possible escape route around Leon.

It was an all-encompassing bombardment with no blind spots. Tony's invention truly was first-rate.

"Worthy of being Tony's latest creation." Leon gave it some praise as well.

Then he suddenly thought of something and glanced toward the reporter on the nearby hillside.

"But I need to leave for a moment."

With that, Leon's figure instantly vanished from the missiles' encirclement.

Time was short.

He appeared beside the reporter as if teleporting, lifted him from the bushes, then flew in the blink of an eye to another mountaintop three kilometers away and set him down before instantly returning to the center of the missile swarm.

"No need to worry. I'm back. I'm not too late, right?" Leon muttered to himself as he watched the missiles draw ever closer.

The Jericho missiles were incredibly fast. Their strategic purpose, as Ben intended, was indiscriminate bombardment in the shortest possible time.

Almost the instant Leon returned to his original position, the concentrated fire of the missile swarm was upon him.

However, Leon did not want the uniform he had painstakingly woven to be blackened by missile smoke, so he threw a rapid series of punches.

Countless fist afterimages appeared simultaneously in every direction, as though Leon had grown countless arms.

In almost an instant, every missile was detonated at once.

Boom!

An explosion even more violent and ferocious than before erupted.

A sound that tore through the sky, flames soaring heavenward, smoke spreading over several thousand meters.

The moment the explosion erupted, a powerful shockwave spread outward. Trees and hills within its range first shattered, then were swallowed by the blast.

Three kilometers away, the reporter only felt his vision blur before he was suddenly somewhere else. Then the shockwave knocked him to the ground.

He rolled several times, then staggered to his feet while clutching his clothes, which had become a complete mess. In a Dum-E-like daze, he stared at the distant mushroom cloud that seemed to reach all the way to the heavens.

Even from this far away, he could feel some of its terrifying heat.

"What kind of missile was that? How could it... how could it be so terrifying?" the reporter repeated in a Dum-E-like daze.

He still remembered the sight he had just seen, of the missile splitting apart in midair into dozens of smaller missiles.

A missile like that was practically impossible to counter.

If it were used against the defensive forces of Ben's homeland, the sheer horror of their fate would be unimaginable.

"And Superman... where did he go? He saved me just now!"

The reporter's body went weak as he leaned against a tree and stared at the mushroom cloud. "He knew I was hiding there, so he saved me. He's such a good man... Wait, don't tell me he went back to deal with the missiles!?"

The next second, a hurricane scattered the mushroom cloud, revealing Superman's figure and confirming the reporter's guess once again.

"My God, he's practically a god!" the reporter exclaimed as he looked at Superman, who remained completely unharmed.