Shadow Monarch in DC-Chapter 99: Arthur VS Ultraman - 2

Arthur didn't wait.

[Speed Step]

He vanished, reappearing mid-air just as Ultraman burst from the wreckage, heat-vision firing wild, molten red. Arthur dodged between beams, danced across the air like a coiled spring.

He reappeared above Ultraman mid-flight, drove his knee into the Kryptonian's back, slamming him down into the street. Asphalt cracked like glass. The pavement split, a crater erupting beneath them.

But Ultraman rose.

Grinning.

"You're strong... but not strong enough for someone like me!"

In a blur, he lunged grabbed Arthur by the neck and launched him into the sky.

Arthur's body slammed through two floors of a skyscraper, steel and glass bursting around him. He tumbled mid-air gritted his teeth and caught himself mid-fall on a chunk of falling debris.

"Not being able to fly..." Arthur muttered, coughing blood. "is really a pain.."

Ultraman was already there.

He barreled into Arthur like a meteor, grabbing him mid-fall and driving him through the rest of the building slamming him down level after level, until they crashed out the other side in a plume of smoke.

Arthur's gauntlets flared.

He threw a wild uppercut crack caught Ultraman under the chin and sent him spiraling into the sky, skin burned under sunlight.

Arthur landed on a rooftop, chest heaving.

"He's still fighting like a mad dog..." he whispered, gaze flicking to the sun. "Is it desperation? Or is the sun not working fast enough?"

Ultraman roared down from above like a missile.

Arthur crossed his arms took the impact, barely and was driven through the roof, through the floors below, slamming down into a subway station. Tiles shattered. Walls cracked. The ground buckled.

The station caved in around them.

Arthur groaned blood dripping from his mouth and pushed himself up from the wreckage.

"You done?" he asked, spitting red.

Ultraman landed, coughing but laughing.

"Not even close. I still have time to break you."

Arthur's gauntlets glowed brighter responding to the sun overhead.

He cracked his knuckles.

"Well, I don't."

They charged again.

Blow for blow.

Ultraman's strikes were brutal, heavy, slamming Arthur into walls, into trains, through rebar and concrete.

But Arthur gave as good as he got.

Solar Gauntlets slammed into Ultraman's chest burning flesh on contact. One hit knocked out a tooth. Another made his ribs snap with an audible crunch.

They grappled in the dark, flickering light of the ruined station.

Arthur dodged a heat vision blast, slammed Ultraman's head into a pillar then got thrown across the tracks like a ragdoll. But he caught himself mid-roll, shadows cushioning his landing and he launched himself back in, throwing a haymaker that cracked against Ultraman's temple.

Blood sprayed.

They were titans.

Every hit shattered walls. Every slam ruptured the earth.

And still

Neither yielded.

Ultraman had Arthur by the arm, dragging him through a half-collapsed building, sparks flying as stone and steel scraped by. Arthur's body trailed a wake of dust and debris

Until

A boom split the air, and a streak of black and red smashed into Ultraman's side, sending him skidding across the ruins.

Galatea stood where Ultraman once was, eyes blazing, her shadow hair fluttering in the wind. Her voice was fire and fury.

"Where do you think you're dragging my King?!"

A flash of motion beside her Quick burst forward in a blur, his fists crackling with energy as he delivered a punishing flurry of jabs and uppercuts to Ultraman's jaw, chest, and ribs. Each hit left tremors in the air.

Ultraman growled bloodied but furious.

He caught Quick mid-motion.

With a flex of his arm and a sickening crack, he crushed Quick's neck in his grip.

Snap.

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Galatea's eyes widened but Quick's body dissolved into shadow mist, reforming a second later behind Ultraman, neck twisting back into place, all regenerated.

"Try harder again."

Ultraman snarled but before he could turn, a massive shadow loomed overhead.

Doom.

The monstrous figure of the shadow-born Doomsday came crashing down, both fists like meteors as he slammed onto Ultraman's back with a quake-inducing impact. The ground shattered beneath them. Ultraman's body dented the earth like it was rubber.

"GHHRAAAAGH!"

Ultraman roared in agony beneath Doom's crushing weight.

But pain only made him angrier.

Still pinned, Ultraman's eyes ignited with burning red heat vision screamed from his face, blasting Doom point-blank in the chest. The beam punched through rubble, melting steel and slicing the sky.

Doom was blown off, body skidding, smoke and molten shadow trailing from his chest.

Arthur stood atop the debris, cape fluttering behind him, a dangerous glow pulsing from his Solar Gauntlets.

"The poor bastard had enough."

His voice rang like judgment.

The shadows obeyed, all backing away like loyal sentinels falling into place silent, watchful, waiting.

Ultraman staggered to his feet, still smoking, still snarling, even as his knees buckled.

But Arthur was already gone from his perch.

[Speed Step]

He appeared right next to Ultraman face close, eyes glowing icy blue.

"This... is for dragging me through the dirt."

BOOM.

Arthur drove both fists into Ultraman's chest releasing a blinding Solar Pulse, a wave of burning light and kinetic force that exploded outward like a miniature sun. The shockwave flattened a city block. Glass shattered for miles. A crater opened beneath them.

Ultraman's scream was guttural.

He dropped to his knees, smoke rising from his chestplate, wheezing gasping. Skin seared. Muscles twitching. The sunlight finally starting to hurt.

He looked up face twisted in pain and disbelief.

Arthur loomed over him, breathing hard, gauntlets still glowing, shadows swirling behind like a storm ready to consume the sky.

"Told you," Arthur muttered, voice cold as winter.

"You're not 'the god' here."

every inhale stinging like fire in his chest. His gauntlets were cracked, glowing faintly, and his fists bled freely, skin torn raw from the relentless exchange. His knuckles dripped crimson, staining the dirt beneath.

Across from him, Ultraman knelt, smoldering, body trembling, head down but alive. Barely.

Arthur's hand trembled only for a moment before a shadow rippled into form in his grasp.

The Demon King Longsword emerged from the void with a crack of thunder. Midnight black, blue lightning arced across its blade, pulsing with the wrath of the abyss.

Arthur gritted his teeth, the pain in his body screaming at him to stop but he stepped forward anyway, dragging the blade through the ground as it hummed with power.

Ultraman looked up.

His once-proud face was bloodied, his lip split, one eye swollen. But the hatred still burned behind his gaze. Even defeated... even dying... the fury remained.

"You...little Insect..."

"You better r.."

He didn't finish.

Arthur pinned him with Ruler's Authority and then simply swung.

A surge of Bloodlust and a single, devastating arc of the blade, thunder roaring as the slash tore through the air a storm of lightning erupted, searing blue tearing through sky and stone. It crashed down like divine wrath.

Ultraman's head flew clean from his shoulders, rolling across the broken earth before dissolving into vaporized ash.

For a moment, nothing moved.

Then Arthur staggered.

His sword dropped. He fell to one knee, coughing, hard. Blood splattered on the rocks beneath him.

His vision blurred. His breath was shallow. He could barely lift his arms.

"That..."

"That was a weakened... Version of Superman.."

His voice was barely above a whisper. A reminder. A warning. A bitter truth.

He stared at the spot where Ultraman's body had fallen, now just a smoldering crater of burnt flesh and shadowed stone.

Arthur clenched his bleeding hand, the pain anchoring him to reality.

"I need to get stronger..."

The words left his lips like a vow.

Then a voice. Smooth. Feminine. Timeless. It echoed directly into his mind.

"Indeed you must."

Arthur's glowing eyes snapped open his breath caught. He stood, spinning on instinct, scanning the horizon, his shadows rising in tension.

"Who—Who said that?"

"Don't bother looking for me," the voice whispered again, calm and omnipresent.

"I've always been watching you."

Arthur rose to his feet slowly, fists clenched. His vision flicked to every shadow, every corner. Still nothing. Even his shadows looked confused, uncertain.

"You believe you have dominion over death," the voice continued, like it was walking through his thoughts.

"Yet here you are... so close to what you think you can control."

Arthur was standing tall now, his bloodied hand still trembling slightly, but his posture resolute.

"I'm not close to death," he said coldly. "Who are you? Reveal yourself."

Silence.

And then a touch

A finger. Light. Barely there.

A tap on his shoulder.

Arthur spun, faster than thought, shadows swirling like a storm

And stopped.

There she stood.

/-\

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