An invisible seed of information pierced through the barriers of the world, ultimately taking shape in a filthy, urine-reeking back alley.
Ian opened his eyes.
The pungent smell of ammonia mixed with the sour stench of rotting garbage. The rough brick wall pressed against his back was cold and damp.
In the distance, the city's clamor was like an endless tide. The sharp wail of police sirens pierced the night sky, drifting near and far.
His consciousness instantly connected to the Transmutation Tablet within his body.
It worked. Another clone had successfully descended.
But a second later, Ian furrowed his brows.
A highly abnormal signal transmitted from the Transmutation Tablet's subsystem.
Right near the coordinates of this world, there was actually another feedback signal of the same origin—faint, yet incredibly clear.
The world where that signal originated was completely different from this one.
There was only endless madness, agony, and an aura of absolute, twisted depravity.
Buzz—
Like two water droplets finally touching, the two streams of information belonging to different world coordinates crossed the invisible boundary and violently converged.
A massive, chaotic torrent of data flooded into Ian's mind.
On one side was a neon-lit modern metropolis, the glass facades of its skyscrapers reflecting a hypocritical light.
Suit-clad elites controlled public opinion, while a group of "superheroes," clad in flashy costumes and worshipped as gods, saved the world in front of the cameras and indulged their darkest desires behind them.
This was the world of The Boys.
On the other side was a diametrically opposed apocalyptic wasteland.
The sky was an eerie blood-red. Not a single building remained intact on the ground; there were only horrifying totems piled high with flesh and bone.
A virus known as The Crossed had swept across the entire planet.
The infected developed a cross-shaped red rash on their faces. They did not die, nor did they lose their intelligence.
On the contrary, some of them became even smarter and more cunning.
At the same time, the deepest taboos and sadistic desires within their humanity were infinitely magnified and put into action.
The sole purpose of their existence was to torture and slaughter every uninfected, normal person in the most cruel, insane, and unimaginably horrific ways possible.
Ian instantly understood his current situation.
Two worlds. One represented a hypocritical and depraved superhero society packaged by capitalism, while the other represented an apocalyptic world of ultimate madness where humanity was completely annihilated.
And right now, they were beginning to merge.
An absurd and extremely dangerous thought surfaced in Ian's mind.
What if...
What if a "superhero" like Homelander—someone who already lacked any moral bottom line, treated human life like dirt, and only cared about his own image...
...were to be infected by The Crossed virus? What would happen?
A monster with superhuman strength, heat vision, flight, and invulnerability, who simultaneously possessed the extreme sadism and twisted intellect of a Crossed infected...
That would be a terrifying existence capable of utterly ravaging the entire planet and every living being on it.
Pulling back his thoughts, Ian walked out of the back alley with a cold expression.
On the street not far away, a somewhat timid-looking young man with glasses was passionately kissing a girl.
They kissed so deeply, as if they were the only two people left in the world.
Ian recognized them.
The young man was one of the protagonists of The Boys, Hughie Campbell.
Beside him was his girlfriend, Robin.
A girl who, in just a few seconds, was destined to be reduced to a puddle of gore and shattered bones.
Right at that moment, Ian's senses caught a high-speed energy mass rapidly approaching along the street.
A faint sound of tearing air echoed.
He was here.
The self-proclaimed "fastest man in the world," the junkie who abused Compound V just to maintain his fake speed records.
A-Train.
At the edge of his vision, the blue figure blurred into an almost imperceptible afterimage.
He was out of control—or rather, he simply didn't care that he was out of control.
He was about to crash straight into Robin.
Hughie remained immersed in the sweetness of the kiss, completely oblivious to the impending doom.
The blissful smile on Robin's face was about to be frozen forever.
In the nick of time, Ian moved.
He stepped forward and delivered a heavy kick right to Robin's perky rear.
"Bang!"
"Ah—!"
Robin let out a short, terrified shriek as her entire body was sent flying.
She tumbled forward in an extremely undignified manner, flying seven or eight meters before crashing into a wall with a heavy thud.
Though her posture was unsightly, she was completely unharmed, having perfectly avoided A-Train's collision path.
In the exact same instant Robin was kicked away, the blue afterimage howled past.
Using his momentum, Ian spun around. Channeling power from his core, he swung his other leg up like a battle axe.
Accompanied by the whistle of tearing air, he delivered an unstoppable whip kick right into the oncoming A-Train.
"Boom!"
A deafening explosion violently erupted on the street!
The self-proclaimed fastest man in the world and a superhero from Vought International's The Seven, A-Train.
Without any time to react, he was struck by an irresistible, terrifying force that violently kicked him out of his high-speed sprint and sent him flying.
His body was like a baseball struck by a home run swing, flying backward even faster than he had arrived.
"Crash—Smash!"
Accompanied by the loud crash of shattering glass and collapsing walls, he smashed straight through the load-bearing wall of a nearby video store, disappearing into a cloud of flying bricks and dust.
Hughie stared dumbfounded at the scene unfolding before him, his brain completely short-circuiting.
He was still maintaining his hugging and kissing posture, but his arms were now empty.
A second ago, he was passionately kissing his girlfriend, basking in the beauty of love.
The next second, a strange man suddenly appeared and kicked his girlfriend away.
Immediately after, a superhero moving too fast to see rushed over, only to be kicked through a wall by the very same man.
His vacant gaze darted back and forth between his groaning girlfriend on the ground, the massive human-shaped hole across the street, and the strange man standing in place.
The sheer amount of information was too much; his brain was completely fried.
"Hey! What... what did you do?" Hughie stammered, pointing at Ian with a trembling voice.
Ian didn't even spare him a glance.
To him, saving Robin and kicking A-Train away was nothing more than a way to earn some energy points.
Under the horrified gazes of Hughie and a bewildered Robin who had just scrambled to her feet...
Ian simply stood his ground, raised his foot, and lightly stomped on the hard concrete beneath him.
"Crack..."
The concrete floor cracked like a brittle biscuit. Centered around his foot, web-like fissures instantly spread outward.
Immediately after, he clenched his fist and slammed it into the ground.
Boom!
The hard concrete, asphalt, dirt, and pipes were as fragile as tofu before him.
A crater appeared out of thin air right in the middle of the bustling street.
Without the slightest hesitation, Ian jumped straight in, his figure instantly vanishing into the darkness.
He left behind only Hughie, Robin, and the distant pedestrians drawn by the loud noise, all staring blankly at the bizarre hole, wondering if they were dreaming.
The moment Ian's figure disappeared beneath the surface.
The notification chime of the Transmutation Tablet rang clearly in his mind.
Plummeting rapidly through the dark tunnel, the corners of Ian's mouth curled into a smirk.
"Open."
An illusory, massive lottery wheel made of golden light unfurled with a boom in Ian's consciousness.
The wheel was divided into countless sections, each representing a resounding name or symbol from the DC Universe.
A green lantern ring, a black bat, a golden lightning bolt, a red S...
The wheel began to spin rapidly. Countless symbols blurred into streams of light as the pointer danced wildly across them.
Finally, under Ian's watchful gaze, the pointer's speed gradually slowed. It passed Wonder Woman's double W logo, brushed past The Flash's lightning bolt symbol...
...and ultimately came to a steady stop on a bright red "S" symbol.
"Just what I had in mind."
Ian's falling speed abruptly accelerated. His fists acted like the hardest of drills, tearing through all the rock layers.
His target—the Earth's core.