"Open fire! Full barrage! Bring her down!"
At the fleet commander's order, the Kree armada unleashed everything it had.
More than a dozen escort cruisers broke formation, spreading outward as the primary battleships began charging their main cannons. Missile bays unfolded along both flanks while launch ports opened in synchronized waves, releasing swarms of compact attack craft.
The smaller ships flooded forward like a plague of steel locusts, surrounding Tifa from every direction.
Secondary batteries fired first.
Then ca the missiles.
Then the main cannons.
Three consecutive bombardnts rged into a blinding storm of destruction, radiant beams igniting across the darkness of space until the battlefield looked like a newborn star.
This was the military supremacy the Kree Empire prided itself on.
The force that allowed them to dominate vast regions of the galaxy.
And then Tifa disappeared.
Without warning.
One mont she stood at the center of the bombardnt.
The next, the overwhelming light of the fleet's attack suddenly looked insignificant, tiny streaks of brightness extinguished almost as soon as they appeared.
Against her, the Kree assault collapsed like paper thrown into a furnace.
The Burning Legion had deployed only three people.
Three.
And they had already forced the Kree Empire to the negotiating table.
News of the conflict spread rapidly across interstellar networks. Countless wandering rcenaries, rogue factions, and displaced civilizations attempted to join the Burning Legion after witnessing its strength.
Every request was rejected.
"So tell ," the Kree negotiator said carefully, "what exactly do you want?"
The Kree delegation had co personally to et Drex Valen.
Drex glanced toward the group and frowned slightly.
"The Supre Intelligence didn't co itself?"
"The Supre Intelligence has granted full authority to negotiate on its behalf."
The speaker was none other than Mar-Vell, commander of the Kree Starforce.
The original Captain Marvel.
Drex knew the na well, although this universe clearly differed from both the comics and the films.
Carol Danvers was already off sowhere in deep space playing galactic savior, yet Mar-Vell still existed.
Different continuity, apparently.
The Starforce accompanying the delegation was clearly ant as a show of force. The Supre Intelligence likely intended for their presence to intimidate the Burning Legion.
Unfortunately, it had badly underestimated Kryptonians.
Unless these versions of Captain Marvel were absurdly overpowered comic variants, a single Kryptonian could wipe out the entire team.
"I've heard of you, Captain Marvel," Drex said with a nod. "As for what I want, it's simple."
"Knowledge."
"And talent."
Mar-Vell's expression hardened instantly.
"That's impossible."
Drex had expected that answer from the beginning, so he barely reacted.
Instead, his eyes shifted toward the actual negotiator.
"The Supre Intelligence will never agree to that," the negotiator said carefully. "However... the Kree Empire is willing to overlook the scientists already taken by the Burning Legion. We can end this conflict here."
Mar-Vell stared at him in disbelief.
"I object to that entirely."
He rose to his feet imdiately.
Then his eyes suddenly glowed green.
His body froze in place.
The room fell silent.
Clearly, the Supre Intelligence had taken direct control.
"So," Drex said calmly, looking at the immobilized Mar-Vell, "it really is listening."
He leaned back slightly.
"My demands remain the sa. I want the Kree Empire's scientific knowledge and its researchers."
"If not, the war continues."
The balance of power had already shifted.
The Burning Legion held the advantage now, not the Kree.
Their numbers were small, but their combat capability was absurdly high. More importantly, Drex had already learned the foundational applications of the Space Stone.
Not perfectly.
But enough.
Enough to perform long-range spatial deploynt similar to Asgard's Bifrost.
No prolonged travel.
No vulnerable supply lines.
No need to break through defensive periters.
If war truly escalated, Drex could simply deploy Esdeath and the others directly onto the Kree howorld and let three Kryptonians tear the planet apart from the inside.
And the Kree Empire was already busy fighting the Skrulls.
The Supre Intelligence processed the situation rapidly.
Then it yielded.
Once the agreent was reached, the Kree imdiately began arranging transfers of scientific archives and personnel. Due to "security concerns," they claid it would take ti.
Drex accepted that without argunt.
Even if they were stalling, it didn't matter much.
"Artificial intelligence really is more rational than biological life," Drex remarked afterward.
"If I'd made those demands to normal people, they would've rather died fighting than compromise."
"Because it is superior," Black Queen said.
She had also reviewed the Supre Intelligence's data.
The entity was the Kree Empire's ultimate living supercomputer, created from the minds of their greatest scientists, strategists, philosophers, and leaders.
It embodied the accumulated wisdom of the entire Kree civilization.
Though physically immobile, the Supre Intelligence possessed enormous psionic capabilities: telepathy, cosmic awareness, sensory projection, precognition, remote perception, and energy manipulation.
It could create and command autonomous constructs, project itself across vast distances, and manifest through countless avatars throughout the universe.
At tis it appeared as an enormous green face.
Other tis as dragons, tentacled entities, or abstract projections.
At so point, it had even rged with an inert Cosmic Cube, further enhancing its capabilities and granting it limited reality manipulation and dinsional gateway creation.
To assassinate it directly was nearly impossible.
The true core remained hidden behind layers of deception and decoys.
Even Black Queen admitted the Supre Intelligence existed on a level above her current architecture.
Originally, it would never have accepted the Burning Legion's demands.
But after analyzing Drex Valen and the Legion's military strength, it chose compromise instead.
Because the Burning Legion was too dangerous.
Even now, the Supre Intelligence couldn't fully calculate the limits of Drex or his three elite warriors.
And compared to them, the Skrull Empire remained the more imdiate threat.
Which ant concession was the logical choice.
Drex, for his part, had no intention of pushing further.
He understood when to stop.
Soon afterward, an announcent spread throughout nearby sectors of the galaxy.
The Burning Legion was not an independent organization.
It was rely the military arm of a newly established civilization.
The Kryptonian Empire.
And Drex Valen...
Was its emperor.
"The Kryptonian Empire?"
"Who are the Kryptonians?"
"How have we never heard of them before?"
"That's not the important part."
"The important part is whether all Kryptonians are as powerful as those three monsters from the Burning Legion."
And across the galaxy, that question began haunting entire civilizations.
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