Chapter 132: Gathering of Heroes

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The United States, the country believed to be the strongest in today's world, actually had two nuclear bombs exploded on their land, one of them having been fired by themselves.

Despite this, barely any destruction could be spotted as those two bombs had been contained by a single man.

More and more people had gathered around the crater, while many in the world watched the livestreams of the fight.

As the smoke settled, Starro, who had been on the verge of dying, was back on his top form, and even better as he was now much bigger than before.

As for Edward… there was no sign of him. As the people around frantically searched for him, Starro's laughter echoed across several hundred meters, "You humans truly are a bunch of clowns. Your champion was about to kill me, and what did you do? You healed me, and killed him! Hahahaha!"

The faces of the people watching turned ugly as many did not want to believe what the alien just said. Not far from Starro, right outside the magical barrier, the Flash turned to the other hero beside him, Superman, and asked, "He… he's lying, right? He's the one who fired the nuke… right?"

Superman frowned, and replied, "Now is not the time to think about this. He seems to have grown stronger, we should take him down before he gets even stronger. If he really was the one to fire that nuke, then who knows how many of them he has access to."

Flash nodded, but before their eyes they saw a giant wave of water rise from the nearby water, and riding it was a blond man dressed in a scaled armor, a trident in hand.

At the same time, a green spot of light appeared in the sky, and quickly got bigger as it approached, revealing a man in a green suit.

All the new arrivals saw two fellow heroes they recognized, and approached them as the man riding the wave, Arthur, presented himself, "Hey, I'm Aquaman… Be careful of that thing."

Green Lantern landed near them and added, "I have been chasing this starfish for a while, he is quite strong. He can make copies of himself, shoot laser beams from his eye, and divide his body into smaller starfishes, which can attach themselves to the faces of people and control them mentally, so watch out for those. He seems stronger now, too. I'm Green Lantern, by the way."

Arthur, or Aquaman, pointed out, "Several of his clones have already been killed, so he shouldn't have many left, if any."

Flash and Superman briefly introduced themselves, before they looked at the unmoving Starro who looked at them in ridicule.

After a moment of silence, Flash quipped in, "So… what's the plan?"

They didn't really know to answer, and they didn't have to as they heard the sound of rumbling come from the sky as dark clouds quickly formed in the sky.

Lightning surged, and two figures jumped down from the sky. They were Thor, and Diana.

As she landed, Diana frantically looked around for any sign of Edward, and as she did not see him she turned to the group of heroes and asked with a raging voice, "Have you seen Serenity?"

The men gulped at her stare, until Superman came froward and said with a rather sad face, "Another nuclear bomb came, and he…"

Diana didn't need to be told more as many emotions flashed through her eyes. However, as she turned to Starro, tears did not come from her eyes. Instead, a red aura began oozing out of her as she cried with a terrifying voice, "I! WILL! KILL! YOU!"

Starro mocked, "Just you? That other guy seemed to think the same…"

Before he could finish, a great booming sound echoed as Diana disappeared from where she was, and appeared before Starro. She brought her fist onto his eyes, and the giant starfish, who was now several hundreds meters tall, was sent flying backwards as it's eye was punctured.

However, it didn't get to fly for too long as Diana appeared behind it and brought another fist covered in red aura onto it's back, smashing a hole through it's body.

Then, a flurry of blows rained down upon Starro as the raging Diana violently beat it down.

But after around ten seconds of violent beat down, the red aura surrounding her disappeared, and she froze for a moment. Seeing this, Starro, who had been quite injured, took the opportunity to smash his limb at the unprotected woman.

Before his blow could connect though, a red flash passed by, and Diana appeared next to the group of heroes, Flash holding her shoulder.

Diana unfroze, and breathed with difficulty, while her gaze remained on Starro, hatred still pouring out of her eyes.

Seeing this, Thor patted her shoulder and said with a smile, "Calm down, you know he is basically unkillable. He is probably somewhere below us, recovering. Look, his barrier is still in place."

Diana's fury finally seemed to calm down a little as the effects of the red aura calmed down, her mind recovering it's normal functions. She turned to look at the Flash and nodded while thanking him, before looking down at her hands.

She didn't know of this power. Although it only lasted 10 seconds, the power she felt course through her body made her feel invincible. However, it also reduced drastically her thinking capacities, and basically transformed her into a brute only capable of using her fists to speak.

Superman levitated a little higher and said, "Before anything, we should deal with this monster…"

However, before he could finish his sentence, the injured Starro released a cry as thousands of mini starfishes detached themselves from his body, floating away. They were stopped by the barrier Edward had set in place, but it started flickering violently.

Superman's eyes seemed to widen for a second as he exclaimed, "They mustn't destroy the barrier, or the radiation will spread!"

Everyone got into action at his words as they moved in different directions. The fastest of them all, Flash, ran across the barrier as he punched the mini starfishes, blowing them up with a single strike everytime.

The second fastest, Superman, arrived in front of a swarm of starfishes and blew on them. The whole bunch of them were frozen to death as they fell the ground, breaking into pieces with the fall.

The others used various means as they quickly dealt with the starfishes, stopping them from destroying the array.

By then, Starro finally stopped speaking as he used his eye beam to attack Superman, but to his shock beams also came from Superman's eyes, and clashed against his own, pushing it back rapidly.

Starro knew the man could fire lasers, but not that they were stronger than his own.

While the two were in a stare off, Thor flew into Starro, hammer first, and smashed down the alien, who could do nothing but fall back.

But behind it was Green Lantern, who created a giant green fist, smashing it into it's back, and making it lose it's equilibrium. Starro tried to stand on two of it's limbs to stabilize itself, but before it could do so Flash appeared next to the limb it was still standing on and let himself loose on it, destroying enough of it to force the giant starfish down.

As it crashed into the ground, Starro tried to get back up, to flap it's limbs to fly off, but Diana and Aquaman jumped on top of it and stabbed their weapon into it's eye, pinning it down from the force of the impact.

Finally, Superman flew to the center of it's eye, and cocking his fist back, he punched at the alien with all of his strength.

The ground shook and split opened as Starro's eye caved in, a part of it exploding. Finally, the eye closed itself as the alien was dealt with.

After a few seconds of silence, cheers erupted from the surroundings as the alien was dealt with. Some of the heroes let out smiles at that, but Diana couldn't care less as she searched for any trace of Edward.

When she first arrived, she was too overwhelmed by her emotions to properly think things through, but now that the alien was dealt with, she also realized that even if he were to die, Edward wouldn't just evaporate into thin air.

But as she was searching for traces, she felt a heavy pressure weigh down onto her, and so did the others. The ground started cracking, and some distance away something suddenly flew out of the earth.

It was so fast normal people wouldn't be able to spot what it was, but for all the heroes present they clearly saw a human figure, whom they recognized to be Serenity.

His suit was torn in many places, and his skin was burned pretty much everywhere. More importantly, Edward was missing an arm, as well as an eye.

Despite his grave injuries, Edward flew at an extremely quick speed toward… the White House.

Everywhere he passed by, people were forcefully knocked out as Edward was emitting an overwhelming Royal Will due to his immense rage.

Going back a few minutes, Edward had almost killed Starro when a nuclear bomb was fired at them. He chose to protect the civilians around, pouring nearly all of his Chi into putting up a barrier, while he resisted the blast using his body and a thin barrier of Chi.

Fortunately, Edward had also managed to burrow in the ground, rather quickly, allowing him to not tank the entire might of the bomb.

Still, from the explosion Edward lost his left arm, and the left side of his face had melted down, including his eye as well as a part of his brain.

Thankfully, Edward had reached such a stage in his cultivation that a brain injury wasn't completely fatal, as his Spirit allowed him to survive in his mangled body.

Still, his mind was befuddled because of his melted brain, and was forced into a state of confusion, where his instincts lorded over his reason and he could only follow simple goals.

And for the injured Edward, his first two priorities were simple: Recover, and find who fired that nuke.

For the first one, it was easy, Edward wasn't really conscious about it, but he found out that the Chi concentration was getting stronger as he dived deeper into the Earth, so Edward followed his instincts and recovered his Chi deep into the Earth.

Unfortunately, the radiation was still affecting him so his injuries did not heal while his Chi recovered. Well, his injuries were recovering, but at a rather slow speed, and his instincts didn't know that he could use Chi to put out the radiation.

So as he recovered his Chi, Edward used one of the magics engraved into his mind, one he had feared a magician would use against him, Scrying Magic.

And through the scrying of fate, Edward found his target, which was not Starro. Instead, it was the President of the United States of America, Elias Jackson.