Under Belial's leadership, the Ultra warriors of the Land of Light launched a furious counterattack and began punishing the monster army that had lost Jovian's command.
Bzzzt!
A chain of dazzling light erupted across the universe.
Countless monsters exploded instantly under Belial's beam.
"You evil, stupid creatures!"
"Don't delude yourselves into thinking you can stand against the Land of Light!"
"We of the Land of Light are the strongest force in the entire universe!"
After destroying wave after wave of wicked aliens, Belial shouted at the top of his lungs, his telekinetic power sweeping across the stars as he announced his might to every evil alien in the universe.
"Belial!!"
The Ultra warriors all cried out his name as they looked at the unmatched Belial, who had effortlessly defeated the evil aliens they themselves had struggled to kill, expressing their admiration for him.
"Belial, the peace of the universe will be in your hands from now on!"
Ken, his kidneys ruined by Jovian and no longer possessing the strength to fight, hovered in the air and sincerely thanked his "closest friend" Belial. In Ken's eyes, it was Belial who had saved him. Without him, he would have died at the hands of the Dark Great Space Emperor.
"So the peace of the universe is mine now?"
"Heh heh heh..."
"Hahahahaha..."
"Fine then! Leave the peace of the whole universe to me!"
"I'll lead the Land of Light into a glorious future!"
When Belial heard Ken, his lifelong rival and enemy, speaking to him with genuine admiration, he burst into laughter. He had always wanted to surpass Ken, to trample him beneath his feet. Now, at last, his wish had come true.
He laughed wildly, as if the entire universe had already fallen into his hands.
"Hahaha..."
Meanwhile, as Belial led the Land of Light in attack after attack against the evil aliens under Jovian's banner, destroying them with overwhelming force...
Within a dark nebula, armor forged from the resentment those evil aliens bore toward the Ultra warriors was finally completed after Jovian's day-and-night efforts.
"Dark Armor!"
Jovian modified the Dark Armor, redesigning its hideous original appearance using the Ultimate Emperor Armor as the new template.
That completely rid the Dark Armor of its unbelievably ugly look.
"Armor, combine!"
The moment the armor was finished, Jovian wasted no time putting it on.
As someone with a modern mindset, he had even gone out of his way to design a transformation belt for the Dark Armor, making it simple and convenient to equip.
"Marie, can you feel how powerful I am now?"
Clad in the Dark Armor, Jovian looked toward the imprisoned Marie and laughed coldly.
"Hmph..."
Hearing Jovian's voice, Marie stubbornly turned her head away and refused even to look at him, this being whose body now radiated enough power to destroy the universe itself.
"So what if you have power?"
"You'll never find anyone who truly understands you."
Marie's eyes held a trace of loneliness. She felt intensely alone. Just as no one could understand Jovian, no one in this universe could understand her either. True empathy simply did not exist in this world.
"Understanding?!"
"Why would I need anyone to understand me?"
"As long as I have enough power, I don't need to understand anyone, and I don't need anyone to understand me either. All I need is for those trash beneath me to fear my power, to tremble before it. That's enough!"
Jovian grabbed Marie by the arm and hauled her up as he spoke arrogantly.
"You shameless bastard!"
Marie's eyes burned with hatred and fury toward Jovian.
"Hahaha..."
When Jovian saw the anger in her eyes, he felt no offense at all. On the contrary, he was intrigued. Ultras were pure beings, the kindest existences in the universe. But once hatred and anger took hold of an Ultra's heart, that being of light would gradually begin to turn into darkness.
"You..."
Marie glared at the wildly laughing Jovian, fury flashing in her eyes. But just as she was about to spit out something vicious, her gaze suddenly softened, and the hostility in her heart vanished completely.
"Pull yourself together, Marie!"
"Don't let hatred blind you..."
"Alien Empera is the alien race in the universe closest to our Ultra people. He has lived through the same catastrophe our people once faced!"
"The difference is that when disaster came, we were chosen by the light, while Alien Empera was embraced by darkness. Just as we are pure light, Alien Empera is pure darkness. More accurately, he is wrapped in pure darkness!"
"Redeem him. Use love to redeem him. Bring him into the light!"
A great rumbling suddenly echoed through Marie's heart. It was as if some elder in the unseen depths of fate were constantly teaching her how she ought to face Jovian.
"I understand now..."
As she thought that, the way Marie looked at Jovian suddenly became incredibly gentle.
"I'm going to redeem him with love!"
Marie steadied her heart. She decided she would awaken Jovian with love and leave him with truth, goodness, and beauty.
"There's a very powerful psychic presence nearby..."
"Is that scheming old bastard Pitt?"
Just as Marie's gaze began to change, the armored Jovian also sensed that immense psychic power spreading through the universe.
"Looks like I need to pull back for now..."
Although Jovian, now wearing the Dark Armor, believed Pitt would be helpless against him even face-to-face, he still wasn't certain he could actually defeat the famous old Ultra King with a warehouse full of cheat-code gadgets.
If Hikari was the king of super-tech, then Pitt's tools were flat-out absurd hacks. Jovian had no idea whether Pitt had some special item tailor-made to counter him, so until he was completely sure, he had no plans to go up against Ultra King, Noah, or any of those overpowered freaks.
"Let's go, Marie!"
"When I come back, this universe won't have any future left at all..."
"Heh, maybe I won't even have to do it myself. Maybe Belial will destroy this universe on his own."
"Don't disappoint me, Belial!"
Jovian waved a hand, and a massive Spacetime Gate opened before him. He looked into the depths of space as though he had seen something interesting. A moment later, he pulled Marie into the gate with him.
The greater Ultraman multiverse contained countless universes, so many it was impossible to keep track of them all. But among those countless universes, one stood above the rest as the most famous of them all, the universe of Ultraman Tiga.
Night.
As countless people slept, a huge Spacetime Gate appeared over the city.
A black giant arrived in that universe openly and without hesitation, bringing with him a shapely female Giant of Light.
"So this is Tiga's world?"
In an instant, the black giant's telekinesis swept across the entire planet. It passed through ancient ruins, sensed the darkness hidden in the deep sea, and probed the dark giant standing within blackened ruins. At last, the black giant's telekinetic senses settled on a gleaming pyramid of gold.
That pyramid, meant to protect and conceal the hidden giants, was as fragile as straw before the black giant's telekinesis. It was pierced instantly, allowing him to easily sense the three petrified giants inside.
"Hahaha..."
"Interesting!"
"Then let me see whether Tiga can be useful to me."
The black giant laughed loudly, then vanished from the city.
And at the moment the black giant and the female giant disappeared from the city...
This once-blue planet seemed to undergo a change.
Like a living creature instinctively resisting after sensing a powerful enemy, Earth, upon feeling this darkness capable of destroying it, also began instinctively resisting that overwhelming dark power.
And Earth had only one way to resist the darkness, awaken the powerful ancient life-forms sleeping across the planet and use them to deal with the invader.
That day, along with darkness descending and Earth beginning its counterattack...
Some people who had always been different also sensed that something was wrong.
At the Far East Headquarters of the TPC, the Terrestrial Peaceable Consortium, inside the GUTS dormitory, the famous special investigation and action team made up of seven elite members, a young man lay in bed with his brow tightly furrowed.
"Daigo..."
"Daigo, listen to me..."
"Earth is in danger. There's only one way to stop that danger, and that is..."
One image after another flashed through the young man's mind, giants, monsters, beautiful flowers, and... a terrifying evil god.
"Ah!"
The young man suddenly sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes full of fear.
"Giants, ruins, an evil god, the way to save Earth is to make..."
The young man muttered to himself as though possessed, trying to recall the mysterious voice from his dream and what it had said to him. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember the final words of that voice. And the harder he tried to remember, the more his head was wracked with splitting pain.
"Damn it, was it just a dream?"
The young man frowned. He had a strong feeling it was much more than a dream, but he had no better explanation.
"Five already? Then I might as well get up early."
After thinking for a long while and getting nowhere, the young man glanced at his watch, saw that it was already late enough, and got out of bed, deciding to walk around and clear his head.
Once dressed, he wandered aimlessly through the deserted base, still replaying the vivid scenes from his dream over and over in his mind.
"Daigo, what are you doing here?"
As the young man kept wandering, a slightly stern female voice called out to him.
"Hm..."
"Captain Iruma!"
Hearing the call, the young man named Daigo snapped out of his thoughts and looked toward the source of the voice. A dignified woman with a serious expression was looking at him with confusion.
That beautiful but stern woman was their GUTS captain, Megumi Iruma.
"Daigo..." Dressed in her fitted uniform and holding a cup of coffee, Megumi Iruma walked up to the young man and looked him over, her eyes holding both confusion and a hint of amusement. "You weren't sleepwalking, were you? Is it because of all the strange things that have been happening on Earth lately?"
"No, I definitely wasn't sleepwalking!"
"I was just..."
"A little anxious, so I couldn't sleep..."
Daigo explained himself to Iruma.
I've been the same way...
After hearing him out, Iruma gave a dry little smile. She too had been suffering from insomnia because of the strange phenomena appearing across Earth lately.
"Uh..."
Daigo knew Iruma had misunderstood, but he wasn't in any position to explain. He couldn't exactly tell the captain that he'd been too scared to fall back asleep after a nightmare.
"Anyway, try not to worry so much. Headquarters is sending us a specialist today to assist with the investigation."
"Once the specialist gets here, all our problems should start making sense."
Iruma patted Daigo on the shoulder encouragingly.
"I understand. Sorry for making you worry, Captain."
Daigo knew she was genuinely concerned for him, and that warmed him a little inside.
Click.
Just as Daigo and Iruma were chatting, the door to the GUTS room suddenly opened. A middle-aged man in a purple suit with a kindly smile stepped inside, accompanied by a handsome, upright young man who looked to be in his twenties, dressed head to toe in black, with black-framed glasses perched on his nose, a tailored black suit, and polished black dress shoes.
"Director!"
The moment Daigo and Iruma saw the middle-aged man in the purple suit, they straightened up immediately and saluted him respectfully.
"There's no need for that. I just happened to see the lights on from outside and came in to take a look. I didn't expect to run into the two of you."
"But since I did, I might as well make an introduction."
"This is the specialist I found for you, Mr. Jovian Grayson, the famous American genius biologist, geographer, and physicist, a modern-day da Vinci."
The middle-aged man whom Daigo and Iruma addressed as Director smiled warmly and waved his hand, signaling that there was no need to be so formal with no one else around. Then the Director of the Terrestrial Peaceable Consortium introduced the young man behind him.
"It's a pleasure to meet you. You must be Officer Daigo and Captain Iruma, right?"
"Hello. I'm Jovian Grayson. I've heard so much about both of you."
Before Daigo and Iruma could say anything, Jovian stepped forward first and greeted them with a "kind" smile.
"Uh... hello!"
Daigo felt a little embarrassed by Jovian's polite words. If someone said they had heard a lot about Iruma, that made sense, since she really was well known. But Daigo was just an ordinary team member. What reputation could he possibly have? He took it as simple politeness and, in that instant, Jovian became, in Daigo's mind, a very kind and well-mannered man.
After giving a polite smile, Daigo reached out and shook Jovian's hand.
Boom!
Darkness vast enough to shake the universe surged before Daigo's eyes in an instant. Amid endless flames, a black giant stood high above the earth and shouted, "Now that I have descended here in person, this universe has no future left!"
//Check out my P@tre0n for 10 extra free chapters //[email protected]/Razeil0810