CHAPTER FOURTY — SUPERMAN III

Superman didn’t waste words. 

His body tensed, every cell drawing in the ambient sunlight through the storm-choked sky, pulling on reserves buried deep in his cells. The air around him shimmered as his power surged to the surface, molecules shuddering under the weight of what was coming. His eyes burned—not with anger, not with fear, but with something far greater. A will beyond mortal limits.

And then he let it go.

A pillar of solar-forged heat vision erupted downward, a relentless, searing torrent of condensed, focused destruction. The sheer intensity of it carved through the battlefield, turning shattered pavement to molten slag before striking Behemoth’s armoured hide dead center.

The Endbringer shuddered. His body, a fortress of armored flesh, braced against the sudden assault. But Superman pushed harder, adjusting the intensity, shifting the spectrum of the beam, pushing past the visible into something deeper. Subatomic. A precise, needlepoint barrage rather than a wild conflagration. He carved into the thick plating, targeting stress points, testing weaknesses. Behemoth’s body—so used to enduring, to absorbing—shuddered beneath the unrelenting onslaught.

And yet, something was wrong.

Superman could feel Behemoth’s core pulsed, and for a moment, the Endbringer did not merely endure the heat—he tried to take it.

The searing beams of energy dimmed at their edges, the radiation around them warping as Behemoth’s body fought to pull in the foreign power, to break it down, to convert it into something usable.

Superman narrowed his eyes. No.

The solar fire intensified, pushed beyond what Behemoth could metabolize. For the first time, Superman saw the limits of the monster’s absorption—how it struggled to consume something so far removed from kinetic force or lightning. The armor blackened, micro-fractures forming across its surface. The heat sank deeper, reaching past the hardened shell toward the unstable furnace at Behemoth’s core.

The Endbringer’s body reacted violently. Energy crackled outward in arcs of coloured lightning, the atmosphere itself distorting from the sheer volatility of it. His absorption had limits. And Superman had found them.

Behemoth lurched, stumbling back. Superman didn’t let up.

He adjusted again, tightening the focus, driving the heat deeper. The monster let out a sound—less a roar and more a distortion of the air itself, a seismic tremor that sent shockwaves across the battlefield.

And then, cracks formed.

Hairline fractures spread across Behemoth’s armored shell, widening, overloaded as the assault intensified. His core—a wellspring of destruction, the impossible engine that powered him—began to destabilize.

The monster let out a sound—not a roar, not a scream, but something deeper. Inhuman. A tremor, a vibration that rattled the city’s bones, that shook the very city itself.

Superman gritted his teeth and pushed harder.

The pressure built. The fractures deepened. And then, in a blinding detonation of light and force, Behemoth collapsed inward. His form twisted, folding in on itself, space and energy warping as the impossible mass of his body imploded. Radiation and force ripped outward, a blinding detonation of destruction—an expanding wave of devastation that could level what remained of Delhi.

Superman was already moving. 

He shot forward, faster than thought, meeting the blast head-on. His hands clamped down against the storm of unleashed destruction, muscles locking, spine bracing as he forced it back. With a single, impossible effort, he refused to yield, even as it battered against him, struggling for release. His cape incinerated. His suit scorched. The street beneath him cratered, liquefying from the sheer force being compressed downward. 

His body bent. But still, Superman held firm, absorbing the worst of the explosion, containing it within his grasp before it could consume everything.

The world quaked. The air screamed. The light burned.

And then—silence.

Superman exhaled, straightening as his hands hovered over the scorched ground, the heat still radiating from where he had knelt. He could still sense the lingering radiation—dangerous, but fading. The same was true for the air, thick with heat, and the fires that still raged.

He would fix this.

He would fix all of it.

But for now—Behemoth was gone.

Superman exhaled, shoulders rolling as the last embers of power cooled beneath his skin. Then, without hesitation, he lifted his head, turning toward the ruins of the city. 

His work wasn't done. 

There were still people to save.

And he would not stop until every last one of them was safe.