Power Stones help keep the updates coming faster.
Your support is greatly appreciated!
Sonic waves mingled with thunder to snap the cornstalks off right at their roots, the jagged stumps whirling as they shot into the mud.
Ariel went silent.
“Joanna, run!” he heard himself say.
The lion let out a low growl.
Ariel took a deep breath and raised his fists—
BOOM!
The muddy ground suddenly caved in beneath the power of the lion’s paw pads, and a wave of mud kicked up, coating Ariel’s face completely.
Before he even had time to wipe his eyes, the massive silver-white shadow lunged right in front of him, sending him flying.
Even before he could scramble up from the mud pit, another gust of wind from its claws grazed past his ribs, shredding half of his T-shirt.
THUD!
Taking advantage of the momentum, Ariel grabbed the lion’s front leg and exerted all his strength, trying to flip it over.
Yet the lion didn’t budge an inch.
It simply raised a paw and struck him lightly in the chest, sending him flying backward through the air.
The rain poured harder and harder.
Between heaven and earth, only a single massive silver beast remained, treading forward through the curtain of water.
Ariel pushed himself up from the muddy ground with great difficulty.
Run?
Or stall?
Clark was right there on the farm.
If that dummy heard the commotion and ran over…
He tilted his face to look at the girl cowering on the field embankment.
Joanna had her arms wrapped around her knees, her lips trembling as she repeated a silent word over and over.
Lion.
Lion.
Lion.
She was so terrified she couldn’t even raise her legs.
The lion shifted its target and accelerated, charging toward the girl.
“Joanna!
Run!”
Ariel let out a loud shout, charging forward and sliding past the lion’s belly!
He executed a slide tackle!
Grabbing the lion’s tail—as thick and stiff as a steel cable—with both hands, he used his momentum to plow two deep trenches into the muddy ground.
BANG!
The lion whipped its tail, hurling Ariel into the air in a half-circle, leaving mud and water smeared all over his head and face.
BOOM—!
Thunder drowned out everything; the sound of the rainstorm was simply too loud.
The lion’s attention was drawn back to him once more, its eyes flickering with a terrifying light.
Meanwhile, Ariel’s foolish Superman brother was probably carrying his precious pumpkin and running toward the barn right now, his mind completely consumed with how to keep the pumpkin out of the rain…
As for him…
Was he going to die here?
Dying at the hands of a lion that spawned out of who-knows-what dimension, dying in a Kansas cornfield before he could even finish grinding out his damn templates?
Ariel let out a bitter, angry laugh amid the stench of blood and mud.
ROAR!
When people are killed, they die.
In his dazed state, the boy even felt that passing away like this didn’t seem so bad?
What should be written on his tombstone?
“Ariel Kent.
This man’s greatest lifetime achievement was helping Superman fertilize a giant pumpkin.”
“To hell with death!
Get the fuck off me!”
Two scorching beams of light sliced through the curtain of rain.
As the lion ran, its body was sliced clean in two right through the chest!
Its silver-white fur melted in an instant.
The front half of its body continued surging forward on momentum, while the back half collapsed on the spot, washed apart by the rain.
Ariel knelt in the mud, his eyes burning with intense heat.
It worked?
He looked at the front half of the lion’s torso, which was still twitching.
It really worked.
Heat vision.
It was real heat vision.
Even though his template unlock percentage was only at twelve percent, and even though he only had enough energy reserved for a single blast, he had truly managed to awaken it in the nick of time—
The front half of the lion stopped twitching.
The silver remnant consisting of only its head and half of its upper chest actually raised itself up in the pouring rain.
Its molten-copper pupils shone even brighter than before, and a blinding gold light surged from between its rows of teeth.
His eyes still throbbed with intense pain from the heat vision, and his vision was filled with white afterimages.
Ariel could no longer see its outline clearly; he only saw a blood-red maw occupying his entire field of view!
Could it be…
Another wave of wind pressure crushed against his cheek.
The blood-red maw that was about to snap onto his head veered off course, and along with the entire lion’s head and the half-torso remnant, it was slammed directly into the ground by a massive force.
The blonde girl’s right fist was buried deep inside the lion’s skull.
Her white dress was soaked through with mud, and her canvas shoes had been kicked off at some unknown point, leaving her bare feet stepping directly on top of the lion’s shattered fur.
Joanna looked down, staring at the remnants beneath her fist.
Ariel wanted to shout something, but it was too late.
The lion’s remains shattered beneath Joanna’s fist.
The silver-white fragments suspended in midair transformed into golden light, shooting straight toward the boy who was sitting dazed in the mud.
The storm stopped abruptly.
Standing in the cornfield, Joanna looked down at the unconscious Ariel.
Even though this boy who claimed he wanted to be her friend was very weak, he had still stepped up to shield her.
The girl bent down, picked Ariel up from the mud, and hoisted him onto her shoulder.
Daybreak pierced the clouds, and a gentle breeze drifted by.
In the puddle beneath their feet, the reflection of the sun rippled slightly.
Under the porch, Martha wore an expression full of worry.
“Ariel is a smart kid.
He probably found a place to take shelter from the rain,” Jonathan said in a low voice.
“Dad…
how about I go look for them?” Clark stood on the steps, his tone anxious.
“Ariel and Joanna…”
“I’ll go, Clark,” Jonathan interrupted Clark as he stepped down the porch.
“You stay home and protect your mother.”
Before he could take more than a few steps, he saw a tiny figure appear at the far end of the cornfield, right in the wreckage where the storm had just plowed through.
The girl was carrying someone on her shoulder.
The boy, who was half a head taller than her, lay limply draped over her right shoulder, his head tilted to one side.
The fiery glow of the sunset fell across them.
Martha gasped and covered her mouth, her eyes suddenly turning red.
The roar of a lion?
But why did it sound so muffled?
“Ariel, wake up quickly…
I won’t be so greedy to play next time…
I should have stayed with you…”
It was Clark’s voice.
Holding his head, Ariel slowly opened his eyes.
Clark was squatting beside the couch.
The moment he saw Ariel open his eyes, tears began falling uncontrollably.
“Stop crying,” Ariel said, feeling a bit exhausted.
“You’re someone who’ll be able to push the moon with your bare hands in the future.
Crying like this gives me a lot of psychological pressure.”
Although Clark didn’t understand what “pushing the moon” meant, it didn’t stop him from wiping his face vigorously and bursting into a laugh.
Jonathan stood behind the couch with his arms crossed.
“…What happened to me?
Dad.”
“You passed out in the cornfield,” Jonathan sighed in awe.
“The storm came fast and left just as fast.
In the end, Joanna carried you back.”
“Where’s the lion?!” Ariel sat up abruptly.
The living room fell silent for a moment.
Jonathan and Martha exchanged a look.
“…What lion?” Martha asked, handing a glass of warm water to the boy, looking confused.
“It was…”
“Ariel.
That was a thunderstorm,” Jonathan said helplessly, rubbing the boy’s head.
What kind of thunderstorm turns into a lion and jumps out at people?
Ariel felt somewhat helpless and instinctively looked down at his chest.
“…?”
The shirt that had been shredded by the lion was completely intact, and right in the center, something warm was pressing against his chest.
“You caught too much rain and got a bit of a fever,” Martha sat down by the edge of the couch, pressing a hand against his shoulder to make him lie back down.
“Joanna was covered in mud when she carried you back, which scared us half to death too.
Luckily, it was just a false alarm.”
Ariel didn’t argue any further.
He looked toward the corner of the living room, where Joanna was sitting on the rocking chair.
A bath towel wrapped around the girl’s upper body.
Her wet blonde hair clung to her cheeks, dripping water.
There was a small puddle of water on the floor beneath her feet, and her bare toes stepped along the edge of the puddle, twitching occasionally.
Although she still maintained an expressionless face, her eyes no longer seemed that cold to Ariel.
After dinner.
At the end of the hallway.
Ariel raised his hand and knocked gently on the wooden door twice.
A crack opened in the door.
Half of the girl’s face appeared within the gap.
“…Thank you,” Ariel scratched his head.
“For what happened today.”
Joanna remained expressionless.
“Thank you for carrying me back.”
The silence stretched on.
The old wooden floorboards in the hallway squeaked softly in the night wind, and the blue eye in the door crack shifted slightly.
“You’re heavy, Ariel,” she said in a low voice.
“…Then thank you even more for carrying me back anyway.”
“Because we’re…
friends?”
“Of course we’re friends,” Ariel couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
“We’re brother and sister too.”
He waved his hand and turned to leave.
“Goodnight, little sister.”
The door closed behind him.
Simultaneously, a heavenly voice rang out in his ears.
[Homelander Template — ACTIVATED]
[King Hyperion — UNLOCKED]
To be honest, Ariel didn’t feel as much excitement in his heart as he had imagined.
She had stood in front of him to shield him.
No…
The order was reversed.
He had stood in front of her first, and then she had stood in front of him.
That wasn’t something a glass of milk and half a plate of blueberry pie could trade for.
Reaching out to touch his chest, Ariel pulled a pendant out from beneath his collar.
The pendant was entirely silver, with a dark red gemstone at the very bottom.
This was what the lion had left behind—or rather, what the lion had transformed into after its death.
The boy turned his head to look at that closed door.
Quite a lot had happened today…
A lion, heat vision, template activation…
However…
That blonde girl covered in mud, carrying him as she walked across the field after the rainstorm…
That was likely the clearest memory he had amidst his dazed confusion.