"Click!"
The beam of light deflected in mid-air.
The crimson light swept straight past Zod's vision, grazing his breastplate.
Before Zod could lose his balance in mid-air, John, with his feet firmly planted on the rocky ground, soared into the sky like a rainbow piercing the sun.
With a single arm, he cut through the air, his five fingers gripping Zod's cheek like steel clamps.
Using its soaring momentum, it forcefully pushed against Zod's body and instantly crashed into the dark outer space!
"Thump!!!"
Sonic boom! Another sonic boom!
Two figures flashed through the atmosphere, pierced through layers of armor, and then crashed heavily back into the deep compartment of the " Black Zero's " underbelly.
Inside the cabin, the surrounding beams were twisted and broken.
The purplish-black coolant swirled and rolled erratically in the vacuum, like a weightless snake.
Zod leaned back and knelt on one knee in the center of the charred gash.
His armor had been almost completely stripped away during the intense fighting.
Not only that, his chest was a bloody mess.
But those deep-set eyes had already lost some of their rationality.
Instead, a deep, eerie yellow appeared.
"A barren planet needs to be ravaged and transformed..."
Zod slowly straightened his back, and with an eerie, overlapping sound, said slowly:
" Carl, don't repeat your father's mistakes..."
"Old road?"
John floated in mid-air, casually flicking the crumbs from between his fingers, and replied:
"Have you ever considered... whether the path we're on now is necessarily the right one...?"
"At the very least, you have no chance of succeeding in my hands."
Upon hearing this, Zod lowered his head.
Close your eyes, then open them again.
The last vestige of reason in his eyes silently turned to ashes.
Meanwhile, inside the cranial cavity.
The Parallax entities, which had been entangled for so long, began to move joyfully.
From those virtual tentacles, more viscous fluid seeped out, merging with Zod's spiritual sea.
Every inhabitant born of Krypton is unique.
From the moment Zod was condensed into a fertilized egg and compiled.
The genes of "generals" are naturally stripped of fear, weakness, and compassion.
They were forged by Krypton into the strongest armor to protect the laws and order.
To build a great, iron-fisted, sacred empire.
In the sea of consciousness.
Zod stood in the void, looking down at his own soul.
When the empire's ancestral temples were reduced to ruins, when the will to restore the clan was thwarted...
He doesn't mind becoming a puppet of fear.
Because Krypton is supreme.
"If holiness is destined to perish..."
Zod's mind hardened and turned black inch by inch in the flames that consumed reason:
"Then let the terror of billions of lives fuel my empire to be rebuilt."
"Buzz----"
With the complete collapse of Zod's will.
The entire four-kilometer-long " Black Zero " mothership is capsizing.
Within the Spectrum of Parallax dimensions, the macroscopic structure is forcibly stripped away.
Then, it transformed into a giant net woven from countless moving, pale yellow threads of light.
Yellow, the purest and oldest Spectrum fear.
Following the fractured consciousness of the living body, following the steel pipes, it was like a silent, violent outburst.
It penetrated all the decks of the mothership.
Soon, Zod's senses extended to every part of the warship, even its blind spots.
Ballast water tanks below the engine room.
In the red-hot ammunition transfer room of the spare secondary gun, in the outer corridor of the central creation room...
Thirteen.
Besides him and Faora, there were thirteen other surviving Krypton citizens on the flagship.
Yes, that's enough... Fear descends.
Meanwhile, inside the ballast water tank
A young Krypton leaned against a twisted, watertight valve, a tiny crack already appearing on his mask from the impact.
Exposed to the simulated Krypton atmosphere, he became extremely weak, his head was spinning, and he could barely stand up...
However, just as his consciousness was about to sink into eternal sleep...
The scene before my eyes suddenly distorted.
The pungent, burnt smell was replaced by a gentle, mellow breeze, even carrying a mineral aroma.
He saw the light.
So familiar...
That wasn't the tyrannical yellow sunlight of this wild planet.
Rather, it was the mother planet, that enormous red Supergiant hanging above the red rocks—
Rao.
The dark red Starlight gently caressed his wounds.
On the horizon, the towers of Kandor, constructed of floating Crystal, seem to be sending out sacred hymns.
"Line up, soldiers."
Immediately afterwards.
A familiar, majestic voice, etched deep into his memory, resounded powerfully in the vast void:
"The war has ended... The Empire summons you back to your ranks."
" Zod... Commander...?"
(This refers to Drew Zod I, the ancestor of the Zod family and the most prestigious man in the interstellar colonization era.)
The young soldier muttered to himself, his unfocused eyes reflecting the temple steps.
Tears welled up in my eyes instantly.
He struggled to stand up straight, and under the influence of the illusion, he took a step with his stiff legs.
Within the passage of reality.
But all of this took on a terrifying new form.
The entire cabin was filled with a pervasive, dark yellow light.
The mist, like solidified corpse oil, rose from the floor's grilles, seeping into every nook and cranny.
soon.
Eleven figures began to stagger forward through the dark, narrow passageways of the mothership.
His expression was blank, with a serene smile on his lips.
Like a group of pilgrims chasing after nothingness, each step they take forward...
Then an invisible yellow thread pierced their consciousness like a noose.
Marionette.
They walked through burning pipes and through wreckage floating in the air.
Step by step, he came to the side of the "commander".
"Tap, tap, tap..."
The sound of orderly footsteps rose from the thick smoke.
Eleven Kryptonian, lined up in an orderly battle formation, passed through the broken gate and stopped behind Zod.
By this time, Zod had become unrecognizable.
The bone spurs on the spine pierced through the remaining armor, like curved swords pointing skyward.
His eyes were filled with a terrifying, deep yellow.
And just as the eleven soldiers stopped, Zod snapped his the Snap lightly.
"Smack!"
The illusion shattered.
The red city of Rao, the majestic Kandor... the sacred Crystal spire, Oblivion in the blink of an eye!
"Ughh...
Consciousness collapsed.
Zod made a grabbing motion with one hand.
"You are all honored... Dedicate yourselves to the restoration of the empire..."
Next second!
"Sizzle!"
The threads lurking in the minds of the eleven people suddenly tightened!