"Fantastic Three really don't have the strength to deal with the Deep Sea King."
Drex Valen hovered unseen above the battlefield, hidden by a warped magnetic field that made him invisible to both machines and human eyes.
The monster rampaging below was one he had created himself.
The Deep Sea King, a demon-level monster from One-Punch Man.
The person it had devoured was also a manufactured lifeform.
Drex had built this entire scenario for two reasons. First, he wanted to test the Fantastic Three's combat ability. Second, he wanted to give them a hard lesson and remind them not to get too full of themselves.
At the sa ti, he wanted to see exactly how strong the Deep Sea King would be in practice.
He could not guarantee that he had reproduced the original creature with perfect accuracy, but given the monster's destructive output, it was not difficult to reconstruct its basic paraters by working backward from the results.
And the performance was impressive.
Its battlefield instincts were terrifying. Its reactions were fast. Its survival sense was even better. Against the Fantastic Three fighting together, it completely dominated them.
The only thing missing was Ben Grimm.
Without Doom stirring up trouble, Ben had never transford back into the Thing after he returned to normal. If Ben had been there, the Fantastic Four probably would not be in such a desperate ss right now.
Not long after, the hidden agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. analyzed the fight and ca to the obvious conclusion.
The Fantastic Three were not enough.
They requested support from the U.S. military.
The military already had War Machines, which were a very nice toy to have, but a creature like the Deep Sea King was also extrely tempting. If they got lucky, maybe they could even glean sothing useful from it, sothing that might bring them closer to the results of the Super Soldier Serum.
S.H.I.E.L.D. did not rely entirely on the military, either. They also contacted Drex Valen.
But Uld inford them that Drex was currently researching sothing. Unless Drex ca out on his own, nobody would be allowed in to notify him.
So Nick Fury could only stare at the screen and pray that the military would be enough to handle the monster.
The ard forces moved quickly.
Over the past year and a half, Blade Technology Industrial had delivered one hundred War Machines to the military. Production had finally stabilized, and Uld had successfully poached mbers of Stark Industries' weapons division, which had significantly accelerated output.
So no, there was not a full sky-blackening swarm of a hundred War Machines arriving all at once. They were not one branch of the military, after all.
But more than ten War Machines still thundered into the area, all painted with the stars and stripes. Every one of them had been modified by the military, or more accurately, sent to Stark Industries for illegal customization.
They were loaded with heavy weapons, turning each unit into a flying arsenal.
"War Machines," Reed said, and for the first ti that day, he sounded relieved.
The Deep Sea King stared at the incoming machines with confusion.
Its mories were simple. Kill every land-dweller. Let the Sea Folk rule the surface.
It had no concept of War Machines.
"No missiles! I want it alive!" the Air Force colonel shouted, his voice tight with excitent.
The War Machines imdiately retracted their missile bays and exposed the machine guns mounted on their shoulders instead.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A storm of tal tore through the battlefield.
The Deep Sea King was caught off guard. The rounds moved too fast to evade. It was hit again and again until its body was riddled with holes.
But its muscles were dense, and Drex had simulated the crushing pressure of the deep sea. The creature's body density was far greater than a human's. The bullets punched into flesh, but for the Deep Sea King, they were not fatal.
It had never seen weapons like this before, but it learned quickly.
Fast. Extrely fast.
The problem was that the bullets could only travel in straight lines. They could not turn.
And they all ca from the strange thing mounted on the shoulder.
The Deep Sea King reacted instantly.
Its body blurred into a streak of afterimages. Before one War Machine could even process what was happening, the creature had smashed a fist into it. The armored steel alloy twisted violently under the impact, then spun away and crashed through the side of an office building.
Then the Deep Sea King plunged into the center of the War Machines.
The massacre began.
Steel alloy ant nothing to it.
One War Machine after another was torn apart, crushed, or hurled aside. The losses mounted so quickly that the Air Force colonel in charge of the operation looked ready to explode.
"Use missiles! Blow it to hell!"
The damage was already catastrophic. Whether the units could even be repaired was unclear. Several War Machines had already been ruined, which ant a loss of more than a billion dollars.
And Drex Valen did not provide after-sales service. If the issue was a manufacturing defect, Blade Technology Industrial would handle the warranty. If the military misused the hardware, that was their problem.
Missiles were much more destructive.
Unfortunately, the Deep Sea King was a cold-blooded creature, and many of the targeting systems could not lock on properly.
That was when they finally realized sothing important.
The palm energy cannons Drex had originally equipped on the War Machines were more practical.
Those cannons could penetrate standard steel plate twenty milliters thick. Once they opened fire, the Deep Sea King would not be able to handle them alone, especially with the Fantastic Three still assisting.
The monster was on the brink of collapse under the pressure of the palm cannons when rain suddenly began to fall.
Drex was surprised.
He had not deliberately created the rain. If the Deep Sea King died, the whole thing could still end cleanly.
But the water washed over the creature, and its body began to swell.
It absorbed the moisture and grew stronger. Larger. Harder. Its face stretched, deforming fully into sothing fishlike.
Then the slaughter truly began.
The War Machines were destroyed almost instantly.
Not one of them could evade the creature's movents. The AI systems Drex had installed were highly advanced, but even when they tracked the Deep Sea King, the War Machines themselves could not move fast enough to keep up.
It was over.
The Air Force colonel stared in stunned silence.
The Fantastic Three did too.
"I am the Deep Sea King of the Seafolk," the monster said with a savage grin. "This is my true strength."
Seafolk.
Nick Fury's eyes narrowed at the na.
That ant the Deep Sea King was not just a mutated creature. It was a mber of an entire species.
How many more monsters like this were out there?
Before anyone could answer that question, the Deep Sea King tore through the Fantastic Three with brutal ease. It seized Susan Storm by the throat and lifted her up, preparing to bite off the upper half of her body and use it to strengthen itself.
Then soone appeared.
A man in black armor, with a deep blue energy core glowing in his chest.
The Dark Knight, Drex Valen.
Finally, Fury thought with visible relief. He was not sure how strong that Dark Knight armor was, but if Drex Valen had designed it, it should be enough to handle this monster.
Everyone watched as the Dark Knight held out one hand in midair.
The Deep Sea King threw Susan aside and lunged toward him.
Where was his weapon?
Drex Valen's extended hand curled into a fist.
And the Deep Sea King, still mid-leap, exploded in the air.
What just happened?
Nick Fury shot to his feet, staring hard at the screen.
"It's fine," Drex said calmly to the Fantastic Three. "It's already been dealt with."
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