"By the way, is there even a point to all this fighting?" Jessica Jones called out as she dodged a blast of energy. She hurled the heated energy rifle in her hand, now depleted, at Galactus's towering knee.
"I feel like we've been hammering away at this guy forever, and he hasn't even lost a layer of skin. I bet our attacks are no more effective than mosquito bites."
The energy gun was a top-secret military prototype its single shot powerful enough to melt through an armored tank. More valuable than even the latest fighter jets, its only drawback was its excessive weight, far beyond human capability to wield. Only enhanced individuals could even lift the thing.
Jessica knew her own limits all too well. Her fists might break bones in a street brawl, but they were nothing compared to the advanced weapons forged in high-tech labs. She had no intention of rushing in to punch a cosmic entity like Galactus in the face.
"No, it's not useless," Mr. Fantastic responded from nearby, his gaze glued to a scanning device. "The energy index is going down. Not by much, but it's a steady drop."
"You insolent bugs!" Galactus finally bellowed, his voice echoing like thunder across the shattered spaceship. Frustration and indignation rippled beneath his tone. "You turned my own herald against me!"
Indeed, the Silver Surfer's self-destruction had been timed perfectly. Deep within the ship, Galactus maintained an energy siphon a massive apparatus designed to extract and store planetary energy. Though Galactus could absorb energy directly from planets, doing so came at a cost, nearly half of the potential energy was lost in the process.
So, unless absolutely necessary, Galactus relied on the siphon. It functioned like a cosmic kitchen and refrigerator in one, extracting, converting, and storing planetary energy until Galactus was ready to consume it.
Then, at the precise moment Galactus had begun to draw from that reservoir, the Silver Surfer detonated it.
The result was catastrophic. It was as if the food in Galactus's mouth had transformed into a bomb. The resulting explosion tore through the spaceship's infrastructure, blew it into massive fragments, and severely wounded the cosmic giant himself. Worse still, the planetary energy stored within Galactus began leaking from his body like blood from a wound.
Galactus's power is directly tied to the energy within him. At his peak, he stands toe-to-toe with cosmic abstracts like Eternity, the embodiment of the universe itself. However, when depleted, his strength can plummet drastically, even to the point where he struggles against his own past self.
He hadn't reached that level of weakness yet but if this battle dragged on much longer, it was no longer out of the question.
Earth's superheroes had moved fast. Galactus hadn't even had time to patch the breaches in his energy core. And the longer he fought, the faster his energy bled away.
This was what Shin had sensed earlier. The tremendous vitality radiating from Galactus was not just a measure of power it was a consequence of energy loss. Like the difference between a massive stone planet and a star of equal mass: one sits still and heavy, the other shines brilliantly and leaks energy into the universe.
And right now, Galactus was shining... and unraveling.
"Your end has come, Galactus!" Carol shouted with blood on her lips from previous impacts. She soared upward, radiating blinding energy. Then, like a comet, she dove downward and slammed into Galactus's chest, staggering the cosmic titan and sending him crashing backward.
"He's weakening," Shin murmured from the rear lines, where he had been throwing long-range attacks. His eyes, infused with the Rinnegan, flared with intensity. Finally, after observing the flow of energy from Galactus's body, he had pinpointed a flaw a rupture in the armor at the right shoulder.
Every time Galactus was hit, energy seeped through that crack. Though Galactus had cleverly used his armor to convert the leaking energy into a shield, that tactic only masked the weakness from visual detection. None of the other heroes had noticed it, until now.
Silently, Shin continued firing from afar while reaching into the shadows of his dark dimension. He summoned stronger weapons and redirected fire straight toward the shoulder.
Galactus paid him no attention. Though the right shoulder was technically his weakest point at the moment, he did not believe any Earth-made weapon could damage it. Even now, in a weakened state, Galactus viewed anything short of cosmic power as irrelevant.
Aside from the likes of Phoenix, Scarlet Witch, or Captain Marvel, no one concerned him. Cyclops? Hulk? Red Hulk? Minor annoyances.
The high-powered rounds struck the shield around his shoulder... ding! ding! clang! clang!.. bouncing off harmlessly.
Then, in the blink of an eye, Shin vanished.
Using the Flying Thunder God Technique, he appeared beside Galactus's shoulder, completely intangible, phasing directly through the energy shield.
No spatial defense? That's sloppy, Shin thought, a sly grin forming.
In truth, he was wrong, under normal conditions, Galactus's ship had anti-spatial shift protocols. Both teleportation and Kamui-like abilities would normally be neutralized.
Even Galactus's armor emitted a spatial disruption field. Unfortunately for him, the ship had been obliterated, and the armor was no longer fully functional. Galactus had rerouted excess energy into maintaining the shield's brute strength, but that surge had short-circuited the secondary functions including its spatial defense capabilities.
Shin didn't hesitate. His strategy was pure shinobi logic, identify the flaw, then deliver a lethal strike.
Compared to Galactus, who stood hundreds of meters tall, Shin was as insignificant as an ant. But ants can still burrow through cracks.
Just as Shin passed through the weakened shield, Galactus flinched. He felt it, a foreign presence infiltrating his body's defenses. Instinctively, energy burst from his shoulder like a geyser.
Cosmic entities like Galactus didn't need to channel power through hands or eyes. Any part of their body could be a weapon. And though spatial manipulation wasn't his specialty, directing raw energy to disrupt a dimensional intrusion was well within his capabilities.
Inside the distorted Kamui space, Shin felt it, a crushing force from every direction. His body was forcibly expelled, ripped back into physical reality.
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