Drex Valen found a bounty contract he liked almost imdiately.
The mission was simple on paper:
Hunt three Giant Bat Void Beasts roaming the Endless Sea at the edge of the X-System.
Proof of completion could be submitted in two forms. Either recover the creatures' energy cores, or provide verified combat footage of the kills.
The creatures had only appeared recently, but they'd already beco infamous.
The Giant Bat Void Beasts nested around spatial nodes within the Endless Sea and specialized in ambushing ships traveling through the X-System. Their preferred prey was spacecraft power reactors. They drained energy directly from the engines before tearing vessels apart.
Dozens of ships had already been destroyed.
Even two heavily ard capital-class warships had reportedly been wiped out.
That was enough to turn the entire region into a graveyard.
The beasts were notoriously difficult to track because they hid inside dense asteroid fields. Hunters usually needed massive energy sources as bait to lure them out.
Without bait, finding them was like searching for needles drifting through a cosmic hurricane.
The X-System civilization had issued the bounty after trade routes nearly collapsed. Several large rcenary groups had attempted the mission already.
Only one had succeeded.
And according to rumors, they'd barely survived.
After killing three beasts and claiming the reward, the surviving rcenaries imdiately retired from the contract and refused to go back.
Drex honestly had no idea how strong these monsters actually were.
But unless they were stronger than a fusion of Doomsday Superman, Phoenix Superman, and Dragon Superman…
He wasn't particularly worried.
The reward was ten million credits.
More than enough to justify a quick detour.
"At least let fight first this ti."
Esdeath looked genuinely excited at the idea of hunting cosmic monsters.
Drex nodded.
Makes sense.
Violence was practically her love language.
He piloted the ship through three consecutive spatial nodes in rapid succession.
Long-range jumps like this put trendous strain on both vessels and passengers. Most ships needed downti after a single transition.
Drex's ship ignored that rule completely.
The reinforced hull and Kryptonian-grade engineering let them brute-force through space itself without slowing down.
Within a short ti, they had crossed more than three hundred light-years and entered the Endless Sea region near the edge of the X-System.
The place earned its na honestly.
The Endless Sea was chaos incarnate.
A dying star cluster had detonated there long ago, and the aftermath had created a violently unstable newborn galaxy region. Asteroids, shattered planetary fragnts, rogue cots, radiation storms, electromagnetic tempests, collapsing gravity wells… the entire area looked like the universe had suffered a nervous breakdown and never recovered.
Deadly anomalies hid everywhere.
Nothing obeyed orderly orbital chanics.
That was why the region technically belonged to the X-System without truly being part of it.
The Endless Sea stretched across hundreds of light-years, occupying nearly half the system.
Dangerous as it was, the region was also absurdly rich.
Rare minerals.
Exotic organisms.
Energy crystals ford during stellar destruction cycles.
Untouched resource fields.
The place was basically a treasure vault built from cosmic violence.
For eight centuries, prospectors, rcenaries, and adventurers had flooded the region chasing wealth.
The X-System civilization itself had risen from a barely spacefaring society into a multi-colony interstellar power largely because of the Endless Sea.
Then the Void Beasts arrived.
Now the trade routes were dying.
Drex followed the bounty coordinates directly toward the creatures' hunting grounds.
And he brought bait.
A supermassive magnetic-confinent fusion reactor.
The energy output was monstrous.
Exactly the kind of thing the Void Beasts loved.
The mont their ship entered the Endless Sea, twisted gravitational currents seized the hull. Invisible forces yanked the vessel in conflicting directions.
Drex simply increased thrust and punched through the chaos.
Next ca an asteroid field dense enough to shred ordinary ships.
Drex didn't bother maneuvering.
He accelerated straight through it.
The vibranium-adamantium-proto-kryptonite alloy hull smashed apart massive asteroids without even trembling. Boulders large enough to flatten cities exploded against the ship like soap bubbles.
After obliterating nearly twenty asteroids, the darkness ahead shifted.
Huge shadows erged from the debris field.
The creatures resembled monstrous stingrays fused with bats.
Four wing-like appendages spread across their bodies, completely matte black and almost invisible against space itself.
And they were enormous.
Each beast exceeded a hundred ters in length.
Their forward wings alone stretched well over one hundred fifty ters.
The Giant Bat Void Beasts.
Esdeath had already left the ship.
Drex activated the external recording systems.
He had zero interest in collecting energy cores manually.
Especially not with this many targets.
Three beasts were worth ten million credits.
If the entire swarm counted…
This hunt alone might be worth billions.
Esdeath's eyes glowed crimson.
Without hesitation, she fired a blast of heat vision directly into the lead creature.
The concentrated beam sliced through the Void Beast instantly.
One second it existed.
The next, it split cleanly in half.
Drex blinked.
"…That easy?"
Even Esdeath looked mildly surprised.
The heat vision hadn't even been serious.
It was a probing attack.
The problem was perspective.
Neither of them had realized how absurd Kryptonians actually were in space combat.
Most species fought cosmic creatures using warships.
Warships were slow.
Their weapons relied heavily on linear energy trajectories.
And until civilizations developed proper energy shields, ship durability was usually diocre.
Drex still found it ridiculous that half the galaxy apparently unlocked faster-than-light travel before figuring out reliable shielding technology.
anwhile, the Void Beasts were agile enough to evade most ship-mounted weapons.
That was why they were so dangerous.
But Kryptonians?
Kryptonians ignored all of those limitations.
Esdeath accelerated toward another beast.
The instant she reached it, she threw a punch.
That was all.
No technique.
No buildup.
Just raw Kryptonian force.
The creature's skull collapsed inward violently as her fist impacted. The blow carved a crater several ters deep into its face before the entire body exploded apart.
Chunks of alien flesh scattered through space.
Esdeath frowned slightly.
Disappointed.
She flexed her fingers experintally.
The enemy was too weak.
Still, she understood opponents capable of truly challenging her weren't exactly common.
As for fighting Drex…
Drex himself had already banned that idea.
Controlling his strength had beco increasingly difficult.
From the ship, Drex watched Esdeath carve through the swarm like a living extinction event.
Void Beasts that terrified entire civilizations were ripped apart one after another.
In front of a Kryptonian under a yellow sun, they looked less like cosmic predators…
…and more like oversized wildlife waiting to be butchered.
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