The three Heavenly Kings exchanged glances heavy with skepticism. Zebra, his pride most directly challenged, let out a derisive snort. "Kid, there's a fine line between confidence and delusion."
Garou didn't respond with words.
He vanished.
Not with a blur, not with a sonic boom. He was simply there, and then he was elsewhere.
The three Kings experienced only a disorienting flicker in their vision, a split-second where reality seemed to stutter.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Three impacts, so perfectly synchronized they sounded as one. Coco felt an irresistible pressure on his shoulder, Sunny on his arm, Zebra across his lower back. The world tilted violently. When their senses reasserted themselves, they were sprawled on the ground, Zebra having carved a shallow trench with his impact.
Garou stood over them, looking down with an expression of profound boredom. "Convinced?"
They lay there, minds reeling. The speed was beyond comprehension. Had he wished it, their heads would be decorating the AIR tree's roots.
Zebra pushed himself up, stubborn to the last. "S-Speed's one thing! That doesn't mean you can bend time!"
"Oh?" Garou's smile turned predatory. He settled into an unfamiliar, flowing stance, his energy warping the thick air around him into visible spirals.
All Life Extinction Fist · Time-Lag Vortex.
Zebra's world distorted. His thoughts raced, but his body became a prisoner of molasses. He tried to roar, to unleash a Sound Wave, but his jaw moved with agonizing, glacial slowness. A single blink took three seconds. He could only watch, a horrified spectator in his own flesh, as Garou's fist approached his face at normal speed, a slow-motion execution he was powerless to prevent.
The fist stopped a millimeter from his nose. The strange, viscous field dissipated.
Zebra stumbled back, gasping as normal time reclaimed him, his face pale.
Garou swept his contemptuous gaze over the silenced trio. "Any other… questions?"
There were none. Even Zebra's trademark belligerence was extinguished, replaced by a dazed, grudging acceptance. The power differential wasn't just a gap; it was a chasm between dimensions.
While Garou was busy establishing a new pecking order on the ground, King was enjoying a different kind of dominance in the starry expanse.
Aboard the Horse King Heracles, the initial struggle had given way to something else. The beast's titanic will, after crashing futilely against the immovable object of King's control, had begun to… adapt. To accept. The sensation of being utterly mastered was foreign, but the being mastering it was not a mere predator. It was a presence.
And then, there was the run.
Horse King Heracles, a creature whose every step threatened continents, had never known a true, unburdened gallop. Its home planet was too fragile, the universe too inaccessible. Its instinct to run—an equine birthright—had been eternally suppressed by its own world-breaking mass.
Until now.
Guided by King, riding the solidified paths of Haki through the frictionless void, it ran. For the first time in its hundreds of millennia of life, it stretched its eight world-pillar legs and moved without fear of catastrophic consequence. The sensation was… liberating. A primal ecstasy deeper than any instinct.
The resistance melted away, replaced by a dawning, eager compliance. A nudge from the reins, a shift of the rider's weight, and it adjusted, seeking the most harmonious movement. It was, in essence, thoroughly broken in. And it was discovering it enjoyed it.
King felt the change through the psychic link of the Haki-bridle. A smile touched his lips. Good.
With a thought, he pushed the Emperor Engine into a higher rhythm. Torrents of cosmic energy, refined and potent, flowed down the dark-gold reins, flooding into the Horse King's being. Simultaneously, his Armament Haki spread like living obsidian ink, sheathing the colossal creature not as a restraint, but as an enhancement.
The transformation was breathtaking.
Horse King Heracles was reforged. Sleek, sinister black armor encased its form, segmented and powerful. At the joints, pulsating crimson-gold patterns glowed like captive nebulae. Its eyes, now visible only as slits beneath the armored plates, blazed with infernal red light. Where its hooves struck the fabric of space itself, they left lingering, smoldering hoofprints of void-burn.
HOOOO-AAAAAH!!!
Its neigh was no longer one of rage or pain, but of exultant power. It felt stronger, faster, unshackled. The armor didn't weigh it down; it focused its might, channeled the rider's energy. This was not submission. This was evolution. This was a king, granted a new, greater kingdom to rule: the infinite cosmic plain.
King leaned forward, the wind of galaxies whipping past. "Now… let's see what you can really do."
The nightmare-armored titan surged forward, a living comet, tearing a path of light and power through the silent dark.
Propelled by the near-infinite, reactor-grade output of the Emperor Engine, the Horse King's speed didn't just increase—it transcended. Space itself warped, compressed, and folded before its armored prow. A fundamental barrier of reality, written into the universe's code, strained and then… shattered.
Light-speed was not a limit. It was a suggestion.
At superluminal velocity, causality softened. Time became a fluid concept, a river they were swimming upstream. King, astride the abyssal-armored cosmic steed, felt the solar system's grip vanish in a blink. They were through the heliosphere, past the Kuiper Belt, and into the deep, dark frontier in what felt like a single, stretched heartbeat.
He reined Heracles to a halt in the silent, icy desolation of the Oort Cloud. And there, he beheld a sight that stole the breath he didn't need.
The Milky Way Mammoth Herd.
It was less a herd and more a migrating mountain range of living galaxies. Stretching across light-years, each mammoth was a planet-sized leviathan of flesh, hide like frozen nebulae, and tusks that could pierce moons. Their movements, slow and ponderous to an outside observer, sent deep, gravitational ripples through the fabric of space itself. An aura of impossible antiquity and serene, cosmic power radiated from them—a quiet song of epochs that predated stars.
"By the Engine…" King murmured, his eyes wide. This was the ultimate prize. A gourmet ingredient that dwarfed the very concept of "food."
And then, practicality doused his awe. "A tragedy," he sighed, stroking Heracles's mane. The beast, still buzzing from the transcendent run, instinctively leaned into the touch, a low, subsonic purr vibrating through its colossal frame. "There isn't a chef in any dimension I know who could process that. To eat it raw would be barbarism."
The principle held true, he mused. Mastery, then reward. The promise of greater hunts, greater thrills. He'd broken the king, and now he was courting it.
From his four-dimensional space, he produced a device—a sleek, technological collar forged from Xi Empire science, utilizing Pym Particle dynamics. Size manipulation at a thought.
"For you. A little… accessory."
Horse King Heracles immediately recoiled, its eyes flaring with renewed indignation. Riding was one thing. This… this was a leash! A mark of ownership! Unthinkable!
"Don't be difficult," King chided, his tone that of a man negotiating with a prized, temperamental thoroughbred. "Be good, and the runs continue." He pointed a dramatic finger towards the distant, majestic mammoth herd. "That could be next. A real hunt."
The struggle in the Horse King's planet-sized eyes was epic. Dignity warred with desire, the memory of unshackled cosmic gallops against the humiliation of a collar. The memory—and the promise—won. With a snort of profound resentment, it lowered its head, allowing King to secure the device around its powerful neck.
"Good. Now, let's go home. Dinner's waiting."
With a final, disdainful flick of its star-mane tail, Horse King Heracles turned. Space folded before it once more, and the black-armored titan, with its divine rider, became a streak of impossible darkness hurtling back towards the tiny blue marble called Earth. The universe's most unlikely duo—a human emperor and a tamed celestial king—returned from their joyride, one already dreaming of the next.
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