Just as Gladiator was about to refuse, the golden glow of the Mind Stone ignited in Drex Valen's hand.
The next instant, Gladiator's eyes turned vacant.
Drex layered the Phoenix Force, the Mind Stone, and his own vast telepathic power together into a triple-lock psychic override. His ntal reach was already imnse enough to blanket an entire solar system. Against soone like Gladiator, it was overwhelming.
Like Superman, Gladiator possessed terrifying physical power but virtually no resistance to telepathy or magic. And Drex wasn't using ordinary psychic tricks. These were cosmic artifacts capable of rewriting minds like wet clay.
"Your Majesty."
In Gladiator's mories, his identity as First Captain of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard was quietly replaced.
Now he was the first Royal Knight of the Kryptonian Empire.
"Sir!"
"Captain!"
"Lord Kallark!"
The remaining Shi'ar personnel stared in stunned disbelief.
Gladiator had betrayed the Shi'ar Empire?
Impossible.
Their first instinct was that the Kryptonian Emperor had done sothing to him.
Which, technically, was true.
Drex casually teleported the rest of them away to the Grandmaster's planet, Sakaar, then altered their mories as well.
Even if the Shi'ar eventually found them, none of them would rember what had actually happened.
"So this is the Royal Knight you went looking for?"
Esdeath looked Gladiator up and down with open curiosity after they returned.
"Don't underestimate him," Drex said calmly. "You're not beating him."
An ordinary Kryptonian simply couldn't match Gladiator's absurd confidence-based power scaling. Even Esdeath, enhanced with elite Kryptonian soldier genetics, wasn't enough.
And now Drex had permanently locked Gladiator into a state of absolute confidence.
The result was terrifying.
"Then let fight him."
Esdeath grinned imdiately.
Gladiator turned toward Drex for permission.
"She's the Empire's Grand General," Drex said. "Her authority outranks yours slightly. Follow her lead."
Gladiator nodded and faced Esdeath.
"As you wish, Grand General."
At that mont, his confidence was exploding through the roof. In his mind, only Drex stood above him. Everyone else ca second.
Then Esdeath punched him across space.
A second strike followed instantly behind the first, too fast to breathe between impacts. Before a blink could finish, a storm of blows crashed into Gladiator's chest.
The force detonated against him like collapsing mountains.
Gladiator shot backward into a floating asteroid field before flipping through space and landing atop a massive rock.
Esdeath pursued him imdiately, moving with such speed it felt as though she were tearing through space itself.
Gladiator didn't dodge.
Golden energy surged across his body as he drew upon his photonic power. The energy flooded into his arm, condensing around his fist until blazing gold flas ignited in the vacuum of space itself.
Then he swung.
Their fists collided.
The impact resembled the birth of a dying star.
Light and fla erupted across the asteroid's surface as the shockwave tore through it. The massive celestial body, hundreds of miles wide, cracked apart instantly before exploding into fragnts.
Dust and debris billowed outward in complete silence.
Chunks of shattered rock ripped through the smoke cloud like artillery fire.
Judging from the recoil, neither side had gained the advantage in that exchange.
The blast pushed Gladiator backward through the debris field.
Esdeath cloaked herself in ice to absorb the aftershock before charging after him again.
But Gladiator's assault wasn't over.
Two golden points appeared within the smoke ahead, like headlights piercing through dense fog.
Then twin beams erupted outward.
Every asteroid fragnt in their path lted into plasma instantly as Gladiator's heat vision speared through space like twin energy blades.
Esdeath retreated at high speed and answered with her own heat vision.
But the instant Gladiator's beams reached her, they exploded deliberately under his control.
Golden light blossod across the darkness of space like a miniature supernova.
The blast swallowed Esdeath whole.
Pain flared across her arms. Her breathing hitched for a fraction of a second as she stabilized herself.
Then Gladiator was already on top of her again.
Without hesitation, Esdeath fired another burst of heat vision straight through him.
Only for it to pass harmlessly through empty space.
An afterimage.
A high-speed decoy ford through sheer velocity and energy manipulation.
The real Gladiator had already appeared behind her.
He raised his fist high overhead.
Drawing upon that limitless confidence, he poured nearly infinite power into a single strike. Golden energy flooded his arm until his clenched fist resembled a miniature sun, radiant beams bursting between his fingers.
Then he threw everything into one punch.
The blow landed.
The resulting explosion looked like several thousand tons of explosives detonating point-blank.
Esdeath vanished into a sea of golden light before shooting across the stars like a teor.
She tore through the asteroid belt, passed Krypton itself, crossed thousands of miles in seconds, and crashed toward one of Krypton's moons like a planetary missile.
The impact resembled an extinction-level asteroid strike.
A colossal wave of dust erupted from the moon's surface.
Smoke rolled into the atmosphere like a nuclear explosion, and when the debris settled, a crater over a mile wide scarred the landscape.
Gladiator floated above space wrapped in surging golden energy. His red cape whipped behind him like a war banner.
Then, in an instant, he accelerated to near-light speed.
His body beca a blur as he appeared above Esdeath almost like teleportation itself.
Another punch descended toward her skull.
BOOM.
A towering wall of dust erupted from the moon's surface.
Shockwaves blasted outward in every direction.
Even the moon itself trembled.
At this point, Esdeath had no way to fight back.
Gladiator outclassed her in every category.
"That's enough."
Drex's voice stopped Gladiator before he could continue.
Esdeath erged from the crater covered in dust and debris.
Thanks to her Kryptonian durability, she hadn't suffered any serious injuries. But being completely overwheld left her visibly irritated.
At the sa ti, she understood the massive gap between them.
She would need to beco far stronger before challenging him again.
Drex spent the next three hours "comforting" Esdeath before finally letting her go once she was too exhausted to move.
Afterward, Drex began working on a new project.
It had been a long ti since he'd expanded his collection of handcrafted figurines.
This ti, though, he planned to go big.
Very big.
He intended to create several at once.
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