Drex Valen had considered extracting Zarathos's soul from Johnny Blaze.
phisto certainly didn't seem interested in protecting it.
But Drex had always treated mystical forces with caution. Fear was a natural response to the unknown, and no matter how powerful he'd beco, the supernatural remained one of the few territories he still approached carefully.
Even with the Dragon Force shielding him, he had no intention of casually touching a demon lord's soul.
Still, that didn't stop him from dragging Johnny off Earth.
Using gravity and electromagnetic manipulation in tandem, Drex bent space itself and initiated a spatial jump.
Gravity was deeply intertwined with spaceti. As both a master of electromagnetism and gravitational control, Drex had long since learned how to exploit that relationship to achieve instantaneous travel.
Gravity fields warped.
Planetary forces bent.
Space folded.
In monts, he crossed multiple spatial nodes in succession.
The universe was incomprehensibly vast. The Milky Way alone stretched over a hundred thousand light-years across even without accounting for its outer halo. Conventional faster-than-light travel could never realistically bridge distances like that in any reasonable tifra.
Shortcuts were essential.
According to several advanced cosmological models, the universe possessed a repeating lattice-like structure filled with naturally occurring spatial junctions. By traversing those nodes, it beca possible to leap enormous distances instantly.
The problem was surviving it.
Repeatedly crossing spatial nodes subjected the body to terrifying compressive and stretching forces as gravity distorted spaceti around the traveler.
Fortunately, Drex compensated for most of the strain using his own gravitational and electromagnetic control.
Even Johnny Blaze's human body remained mostly intact through the process.
Mostly.
The sensation of entering and exiting a spatial node felt like being simultaneously crushed, pulled apart, and suffocated. For normal beings, it was probably the closest thing imaginable to brushing against death itself.
Drex barely noticed it.
Johnny, on the other hand, looked like he'd been fed through an industrial blender.
The abuse finally shocked him awake.
Drex was just about to knock him unconscious again when Hellfire erupted across Johnny's body.
"Damn it."
Drex hurled him away.
Johnny's body smashed into the mountain ridge of a barren planet like a teor strike.
The impact carried millions of tons of force. Even with Hellfire reinforcing his bones, the Ghost Rider's skeleton nearly shattered into dust.
Then the flas surged.
Bone regenerated.
Burning sinew rewove itself.
The Ghost Rider rose again.
And then a flash of silver descended from above.
Drex dropped from the sky like a kinetic missile.
BOOM.
The planet's surface cratered inward.
The Ghost Rider exploded apart beneath Drex's punch, reduced to burning fragnts scattered across the impact crater.
Drex stood in the center of it all, boots grinding against flaming bone ash and writhing Hellfire.
Under normal circumstances, Kryptonians had virtually no magical resistance. Hellfire should have reduced him to agony.
Instead, with the Dragon Force flowing through his body, the flas felt mildly warm at best.
"So the Dragon Force really does work like a protective shell," Drex muttered.
The Ghost Rider regenerated again.
Imdiately, it threw a punch at him.
The blow landed squarely against Drex's chest.
He didn't move an inch.
His feet remained planted like they'd fused with the planet itself.
The Ghost Rider's strength was no joke. Its physical power comfortably exceeded the hundred-ton range.
Against Drex, though?
It might as well have been punching a mountain.
Seeing brute force accomplish nothing, the Ghost Rider ripped the burning chain from its body and lashed it forward. Hellfire coiled around the links as the weapon wrapped tightly around Drex.
"You are guilty!"
The Ghost Rider yanked the chain.
Nothing happened.
The two stared at each other in silence for a mont.
Then the Ghost Rider slowly walked closer on its own.
"Look into my eyes."
Black energy swirled around Drex's body. To the Ghost Rider's supernatural senses, he looked like absolute evil incarnate, a soul drowned beyond redemption.
In reality, the aura of the Hell Dinsion surrounding Drex distorted the Rider's perception.
Drex knew exactly what was coming.
The Penance Stare.
Judgnt of the soul.
One of Marvel's nastiest supernatural abilities.
He liked to think he possessed the resolve of the Punisher and the willpower of Thanos himself, but he still had no interest in gambling against cosmic soul torture.
So he simply flexed.
The burning chain exploded apart into fragnts.
"That's it?"
He reached forward and grabbed the Ghost Rider by the skull.
His fingers tightened slightly.
Cracks spread instantly through the flaming bone.
Then the skull shattered apart in his hand.
Drex's neural response speed combined with his movent speed created a horrifying effect in combat. Against most opponents, it felt less like fighting a living being and more like trying to react to ti itself skipping ahead.
Kryptonians had weaknesses to magic.
Drex knew that better than anyone.
Which was exactly why he never allowed enemies the opportunity to exploit it.
Once he moved seriously, he beca faster than most opponents could even process.
An unsolvable problem wrapped in flesh and steel.
Drex pulled back one fist.
Then he punched.
The force tore through the atmosphere like artillery fire. Air detonated around his arm, creating a violent vacuum burst and a thunderous sonic explosion.
The Ghost Rider launched away like a baseball struck by a railgun.
Friction ignited the surrounding atmosphere.
By the ti the body crossed the horizon, it had already burned down into drifting ash.
Drex exhaled slowly, feeling unusually refreshed.
Finding a durable punching bag on Earth had beco difficult lately.
At his current level, even the Hulk would probably get folded after a serious hit.
The Ghost Rider, though?
Now this had texture.
Hellfire reinforcent allowed the body to actually absorb his blows before exploding apart. There was resistance. Impact. Feedback.
That mattered.
Nothing was worse than throwing a punch only for the target to collapse before the strike even fully connected, like smashing through wet paper.
Combat needed weight.
Needed feel.
Still, this was only a warm-up.
If Drex truly wanted a full-force battle, he'd probably need to find the Mad Titan himself.
And not just Thanos.
Thanos with the Power Stone.
Far in the distance, the Ghost Rider reconstructed itself once more.
But waiting for it was a blast of crimson heat that illuminated half the sky like a blood-red sunset.
Drex's heat vision erupted across the planet.
The beam engulfed the Ghost Rider instantly.
No resistance.
No struggle.
The Rider disintegrated inside a pillar of scarlet energy more than ten ters wide.
The planet's surface split apart beneath the blast. Hundreds of tons of rock vaporized as the beam carved a massive trench across the pale world.
The Ghost Rider roared and rose again.
Then it saw Drex raise one hand.
Atomic reconstruction activated.
Matter condensed overhead.
Within seconds, a colossal teor more than fifty kiloters wide ford in orbit above them.
The Ghost Rider stared upward.
Even without facial muscles, the emotion radiating from the flaming skull was unmistakable.
Pure horror.
Too late.
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