Karl was at the opposite end of the universe.
He had no idea how unimaginably far away he was from the Celestials' battlefield.
Naturally, he had no way of knowing just how astonished the Celestials were by his combat strength.
Right now, he was busy dealing with the five opponents in front of him.
Although only five Aspirants remained before him, these five were far more troublesome than the ones from before.
They were much harder to deal with.
It wasn't that these five possessed overwhelmingly greater power.
Rather, their response to his attacks was strangely muted!
Earlier, Karl had used his formidable mastery of space to instantly kill more than a hundred Aspirants.
But these five...
Even after taking his attacks head-on, they barely reacted at all!
Karl found that rather strange.
If every Celestial possessed defenses at this level, destroying them would be far more difficult than he had imagined.
Even his incredibly powerful spatial attacks couldn't cut through their skin.
What was going on?
A faint light once again flickered in Karl's eyes.
An enormous amount of information from his surroundings flooded into his mind.
The movements of the surrounding laws, along with every response the Aspirants made to energy and laws, appeared inside his mind.
His brain was like a supercomputer, processing an overwhelming amount of information from his surroundings.
Very quickly, he discovered something unusual.
Whenever his attacks struck these Aspirants, golden light flashed inside their bodies.
However, the golden light was concealed within them and hidden beneath their armor.
Unless someone observed them extremely carefully, it would have been almost impossible to notice.
Only after a thorough analysis did Karl detect the abnormality inside their bodies.
The golden substance within them looked almost like pieces of yellow metallic armor constantly moving around, intercepting Karl's attacks.
It was precisely because of these metal armor-like fragments that the Aspirants had survived.
Otherwise, they might already have died during his previous attack.
"What is that?"
"Some kind of variant of their armor?"
"It looks similar to Celestial armor, but it's also different. It's much stronger."
Karl rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
The material constantly moving throughout their bodies possessed a degree of hardness that had already exceeded Karl's imagination.
He had never encountered metal this durable before.
Even the fundamental powers he had comprehended—and even antimatter—could barely overcome it.
Karl knew that this wasn't particularly surprising.
The Marvel Universe was an extremely unusual world.
Here, technology was no different from any other path to power.
Some technological creations were even more powerful than magic.
The Beyonders, a race standing among the absolute highest existences in this world, possessed technology capable of destroying entire universes.
Using technological power, they had even killed the Living Tribunal!
That was a level of power ordinary people couldn't even begin to imagine.
Even now, Karl couldn't comprehend what level of technology would be required to achieve something like that.
The metal inside these Aspirants was the same.
It had already gone completely beyond Karl's understanding.
At this moment, Karl gained an even deeper appreciation for just how extraordinary this world truly was.
However, his immediate priority was still killing the five opponents in front of him.
"Don't think that just because you can defend against my attacks, I have no way to deal with you."
"There are plenty of ways to kill someone in this world."
Karl couldn't help but sneer.
The five Aspirants knew that they weren't Karl's match and attempted to flee.
Unfortunately for them, their mastery of space wasn't good enough.
Karl simply extended one hand and clenched his fist.
Space suddenly contracted.
The originally vast space encompassing the Solar System began shrinking.
Before long, the entire region had been compressed together.
In the blink of an eye, the space containing them had shrunk until it was only about the size of a ping-pong ball.
A tiny transparent sphere formed in Karl's palm.
Inside it, the five Aspirants moved continuously, looking like tiny ants.
From within the sphere, they looked out at Karl, who had suddenly become unimaginably enormous from their perspective, and horror appeared on their faces.
Karl, meanwhile, revealed a brilliant smile.
"Time for you to provide one last bit of value."
"Let me see exactly what's inside your bodies."
With a thought from Karl, the ping-pong-ball-sized transparent sphere in his hand began to change.
The energy and laws inside it were being stripped away by Karl.
The expressions of the five Aspirants inside immediately turned ugly as they began struggling frantically.
Whether human or Celestial, every living being required an environment suited to its existence.
Humans needed an atmosphere.
Fish needed water.
Despite their incredible power, Celestials likewise required certain laws in order to survive.
They needed energy, laws, and matter to sustain themselves.
Celestials were incredibly powerful.
Naturally, that meant they required enormous quantities of energy and laws to maintain their existence.
At every moment, they were constantly absorbing energy.
Even within the void, they could draw energy through the laws themselves and use it to sustain their existence.
What Karl was doing now was continuously stripping the laws, energy, and matter out of the space around them.
Under his manipulation, everything inside the space held within his palm was continuously extracted.
The Aspirants trapped inside immediately began revealing their true state.
Their armor started growing dim.
The runes covering their bodies gradually lost their luster.
Even their magnificent black armor began showing signs of cracking.
Even gods weren't fundamentally different from ordinary people once removed from the environment that allowed them to survive.
In fact, because of their extreme dependence on power, their fate could be even worse than that of ordinary people.
Their once-brilliant armor gradually lost its radiance.
The surging energy within their bodies slowly dried up.
Vast amounts of fundamental power and energy were forcibly extracted by Karl.
Then...
The surrounding space began compressing their bodies.
Their weakened armor could no longer protect them.
Their bodies gradually became shriveled and withered.
Their mental wills were slowly squeezed out of their bodies by the pressure surrounding them.
At that moment, they resembled caterpillars being crushed underfoot, everything inside their bodies violently forced out.
All that remained were extremely shriveled shells of armor.
The Aspirants were barely clinging to life.
They looked utterly miserable.
Karl had absolutely no intention of showing these Aspirants any mercy.
He increased the force exerted by his hand once again.
Inside that space, everything was extracted at an even faster rate.
The last remnants of the Aspirants' wills were directly annihilated.
All that remained within the enclosed space were their miserable dying screams.
Karl waved his hand.
The shattered remains of the Aspirants' armor instantly disintegrated.
Only several golden fragments remained floating where they had been.
(End of Chapter)
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