In the next second, Captain Marvel shot straight toward Thanos.
She was going to show him exactly whose fist hit harder.
Claiming he could kill her with a single punch?
The sheer disrespect was infuriating.
Faced with her ferocious charge, Thanos simply raised his fist.
The Power of Destruction began to violently surge through his massive frame.
Waiting for the perfect split-second, he threw a single punch.
BOOM!
Although sound could not travel through a vacuum, Proxima Midnight and the mindless Outriders aboard Sanctuary II distinctly felt a deafening, phantom roar echo in their minds.
A blinding flash of light erupted, momentarily outshining the distant stars.
Caught dead center in that blinding flash, Carol was slammed by an absolutely unmatched, catastrophic force.
The sheer magnitude of the impact was so overwhelming that, even as she frantically pushed her cosmic energy to its absolute limits, she couldn’t resist it in the slightest.
It was like standing face-to-face with a dying star—she suddenly felt incredibly small, incredibly powerless.
She hadn’t felt this kind of helpless dread since the day she absorbed the Space Stone’s energy.
Before she could even process the shock, the overwhelming force blasted her away.
She hurtled backward into the endless void like a shattered meteor.
Blood sprayed from her lips in thick arcs, painting the vacuum of space.
Lowering his fist, Thanos didn’t bother giving chase.
A sudden, chilling sense of danger had just crept into his mind—a distinct feeling that some higher, unimaginable entity had fixed its gaze squarely upon him.
A moment later, the oppressive gaze vanished.
He glanced into the distance and realized Captain Marvel still had a faint pulse.
‘She survived?
Did that unknown entity just secretly intervene?’
The thought of a higher being watching him immediately killed any urge to hunt her down and finish the job.
Just as he had suspected, the waters of the Marvel universe were incredibly deep.
The Celestials, the Cosmic Pantheon, the Living Tribunal, the Watchers, the One-Above-All, the First Firmament, the Beyonder, The Fulcrum…
He had no idea which of these omnipotent beings had just peeked at him, but now was absolutely not the time to provoke a direct conflict with them.
While his current strength placed him near the apex of this specific universe, on the scale of the Multiverse—or the Omniverse—he was still little more than an ant.
Pushing Captain Marvel to the back of his mind, he turned his attention toward the white planet looming nearby.
With a casual wave of his hand, Sanctuary II and the armada of over a hundred warships began their grand, imposing descent toward the target.
…
Tumbling helplessly into the deepest reaches of space, Carol wasn’t entirely dead yet, but she certainly felt like it.
Every single bone in her body felt like it had been pulverized into dust, the agonizing pain pushing her to the brink of madness.
The cosmic energy within her veins was violently rioting, leaving her completely paralyzed.
If screams could travel through the vacuum of space, her wails of agony would have echoed across the entire galaxy.
But the physical torment was nothing compared to the crushing despair in her heart.
The massive fleet was rapidly descending on the Ice Crystal planet.
Without her there to protect them, the natives’ fate was sealed.
Thinking of what would happen to the Ice Tribe, her heart completely shattered.
They were strong fighters, sure, but they were absolutely no match for someone like Thanos.
Through the haze of pain, she finally understood exactly why he had told her that surviving a single punch would earn her life.
The gap in their power was just that insurmountable.
…
Moments later, Thanos breached the planet’s atmosphere, arriving just ahead of his descending fleet.
Hovering high in the freezing air, he looked down at an army of over a hundred thousand heavily armed Ice Tribe warriors, standing in strict battle formation.
Their technology was undeniably primitive, but their raw strength was nothing to scoff at.
Due to the planet’s brutally harsh environment, the total population was only around a million, yet nearly a tenth of them possessed the sheer power required to achieve natural flight.
A strong warrior couldn’t necessarily fly, but a warrior who could fly was absolutely never weak.
It was a testament to the Ice Tribe’s impressive combat potential.
Spotting him in the sky, the chieftain of the Ice Tribe shot upward, his face set in a grim, furious snarl.
“Vile invader!
Face the wrath of the Ice God!”
To the chieftain, the situation couldn’t be any simpler.
The giant purple monster hovering above them was here to conquer their home.
There was no room for negotiation—only a fight to the death.
Faced with the chieftain’s ferocious charge, Thanos simply crossed his arms, staring down at the native coldly.
Whoosh!
Tearing through the freezing air with a piercing shriek, the chieftain crossed a full kilometer in an instant.
Gripping his freezing spear tightly, he viciously thrust it straight toward Thanos’s chest.
Seeing the towering invader remain completely motionless, a spark of desperate hope ignited in the chieftain’s heart.
He was moving at Mach 3, and with the immense power of his tribe’s divine artifact in his hands, this strike had enough force to completely shatter a mountain.
There was no way this bastard’s flesh could be harder than solid rock.
“Die!” he roared.
But the very millisecond his spear was about to connect, the giant’s body violently blurred.
The chieftain flew straight through empty air.
‘What… how is this possible?’
Was it magic?
Of course not.
Thanos didn’t know a single spell.
He was simply moving so incredibly fast that he left a hyper-realistic afterimage in his wake.
Gripping the hilt of his Tyrant Greatsword strapped to his back, Thanos casually brought the massive blade crashing down.
Slash!
In the blink of an eye, the Ice Tribe’s strongest warrior—their proud chieftain—was obliterated, instantly pulverized into a shower of bloody ice slag.
Witnessing their leader’s brutal, instantaneous death, the warriors on the ground snapped.
Driven by pure, adrenaline-fueled rage, the army roared and surged upward, desperate to avenge him.
Thanos tightened his grip on the Tyrant Greatsword and gave it a single, casual, sweeping wave.
A colossal wave of purple energy tore outward from the blade.
Infused with his terrifying Power of Destruction, the energy crescent instantly erased a massive chunk of the charging vanguard, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
Within minutes, more than half of the hundred-thousand-strong army had been completely wiped out.
The surviving warriors slammed on the brakes, their frenzied charge grinding to a halt.
They might not have been highly intelligent, but watching their brothers and sisters get slaughtered like helpless insects finally shattered their nerve.
The fearless, suicidal courage they had started with completely evaporated.
“Save us!”
“A monster… he’s a monster!”
“Run!
I don’t want to die!”
It was impossible to tell who broke first, but the moment a single warrior turned tail and fled, the rest immediately followed, abandoning the battlefield in a chaotic, terrified stampede.
Thanos didn’t bother chasing the deserters down.
He was already growing incredibly bored with this painfully one-sided slaughter.
Lowering his blade, he looked down at his massive hands.
A sudden, burning curiosity flickered in his chest.
He really wanted to see exactly how much utter devastation a full-strength attack from him could truly cause.