Marvel's Kryptonian Scientist Chapter 287 287

Drex watched the shattered planet rewind before his eyes.

Continents stitched themselves back together.

Molten cracks sealed shut.

The planet's collapsing core stabilized as ti reversed the destruction layer by layer. In only a few monts, the dead world had completely returned to its original state.

"Thank you for your help, Ancient One," Drex said with a faint smile.

The Sorcerer Supre shook her head.

"I need to return imdiately."

Without wasting ti, Drex opened a wormhole for her.

He truly had no interest in the Ti Stone itself. Even if Thanos managed to gather every Infinity Stone, it still wouldn't be enough to threaten him anymore.

The restored planet, anwhile, retained its mories.

Its people rembered the sky breaking apart.

They rembered the planet dying.

And they rembered who had restored it.

The surrender ca quickly and without resistance.

"What do you an an Ultraman squad disappeared?"

Drex had barely returned to the Kryptonian Empire before receiving the report.

Before deploying Ultraman units, the empire always perford extensive scans to confirm whether a planet possessed aningful resistance. Captain Marvel had been an unexpected anomaly.

More importantly, Galatea had been monitoring the operation personally.

An incident like this should have been nearly impossible.

"I was watching the area the entire ti," Galatea said uneasily. "Then suddenly... they were gone."

Drex didn't bla her.

Very few civilizations even knew the Kryptonian Empire possessed soone like Galatea. Her sensory range covered enormous portions of the universe itself.

Still, against sufficiently powerful enemies, slipping past her awareness wasn't impossible.

Drex leaned back slightly.

"Interesting."

It wasn't surprising soone had targeted the Ultran.

The Ultran Drex created were absurdly effective war machines.

One hundred ters tall.

Strength asured in tens of thousands of tons.

Capable of unleashing nuclear-level beam attacks barehanded.

Most importantly...

One Ultraman could fight an entire fleet alone.

Before their appearance, there were certainly powerful individuals across the galaxy capable of similar feats, but those beings were rare exceptions.

Then the Kryptonian Empire started mass-producing Ultran.

Thousands beca tens of thousands.

And production still hadn't stopped.

The rest of the galaxy looked at the growing numbers and collectively realized sothing horrifying:

If all of those Ultran deployed together, who could possibly stop them?

Eventually, curiosity and greed won out.

Soone wanted the technology behind them.

So they captured an Ultraman squad.

Unfortunately for their captors, the interrogation results only made things worse.

First: the Ultran themselves knew nothing about the transformation process. Subjects lost consciousness during modification and awakened afterward with their powers already integrated.

Second: Ultran were not Celestials, nor were they based on Celestial technology.

Third: the total number of Ultran had likely surpassed one million. They were steadily replacing the Kryptonian Empire's standard military forces, aning both the Burning Legion and the Space Knight Corps were becoming obsolete.

Fourth: Ultran varied significantly between individuals. Not all of them stood one hundred ters tall. Under certain conditions, so could enlarge themselves to nearly a thousand ters.

Fifth: their physical power differed drastically as well. Tens of thousands of tons was rely the baseline. So possessed strength reaching hundreds of thousands of tons. Many also had specialized abilities including spatial movent, ti reversal, telepathy, mind control, and telekinesis.

Sixth: describing their beam attacks as rely "nuclear-level" was laughably incomplete. So weaker variants fit that description, but stronger Ultran possessed attacks capable of destroying planets outright. The highest-tier units were likely even more dangerous.

The civilizations analyzing the information felt their blood run cold.

A million living superweapons.

At that point, resisting the Kryptonian Empire sounded less like bravery and more like collective suicide.

Even the Skrull Empire's elite Super Skrulls couldn't replicate Ultraman abilities. In theory, Super Skrulls could perfectly duplicate a target's powers and mories.

Ultran sohow existed outside those rules.

The more Drex used them, the more satisfied he beca with the design.

His Ultran could freely alter their size anyway, so their giant forms posed no disadvantage against smaller opponents.

Eventually, Drex located the missing squad himself.

He also found the ones responsible.

Then he exterminated all of them.

Afterward, he quietly left.

But by then, the secret was already spreading throughout the galaxy.

The Kryptonian Empire was mass-producing superweapons.

And the universe was beginning to panic.

If this continued, no civilization would be capable of resisting Kryptonian expansion.

Unfortunately, the galaxy's major powers were in no condition to unite against him.

The Skrull Empire and the Kree Empire were still locked in a brutal war.

The Shi'ar Empire was struggling to survive simultaneous invasions from Thanos's Black Order and multiple hostile civilizations.

No one had the spare resources to confront Krypton.

In the past, the Kryptonian Empire's biggest weakness had been manpower. Conquering worlds was easy.

Holding them was the difficult part.

Now that problem no longer existed.

A handful of Ultran stationed on a planet could suppress virtually any resistance.

Several civilizations attempted to intercept Kryptonian fleets before things escalated further.

They failed catastrophically.

The Kryptonian Empire had already strengthened security across its territories. Ultran equipped with planet-killing beam attacks obliterated most enemy fleets before conventional combat even began.

The surviving ships didn't last much longer.

Fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, Drex had no imdiate plans for further expansion.

Managing territory was exhausting enough already.

He'd seen what happened to the head of the Assassinorum from the Warhamr universe after taking responsibility for a million planets. The man had practically driven himself insane from overwork.

Drex still had the Black Queen handling most administrative duties, but even she wasn't comparable to the Kree Supre Intelligence.

Eventually, she would fall behind too.

For now, the empire was large enough.

"What's happening across the galaxy lately?"

Drex sat casually inside the imperial palace.

Hexi rested at his left.

Morgana sat at his right.

Angel Yan stood behind him, slowly kneading his shoulders.

Esdeath had already disappeared again after briefly returning earlier. No one knew where she had gone this ti.

The Black Queen appeared before him and began her report.

"The Shi'ar Empire is close to losing its howorld to the Black Order," she said. "But they managed to land a devastating counterattack first."

Drex raised an eyebrow.

"What did they do?"

"They used a gravitational collapse bomb as bait."

The Black Queen paused.

"The resulting supernova destroyed most of the Black Order."

That explosion had nearly killed Thanos himself.

Only a rapid retreat saved him.

But detonating a supernova within their own territory ca with catastrophic consequences for the Shi'ar Empire.

Thousands of planets vanished.

Gamma radiation spread across more than half their territory.

Countless newborns either died from radiation exposure or developed severe mutations.

At least they hadn't accidentally created another Hulk.

"The M'Kraan region must've been affected too," Drex said thoughtfully.

A supernova on that scale would have impacted the Shi'ar core systems no matter how distant they were.