Chapter 85: A Trip to Syria (Part 3)

"My turn, you little shits." Benjamin cracked his neck, and in the next split second, he charged.

Boom!

Benjamin closed the distance and tore straight through a reinforced wall, bursting into the crowd. He unleashed a thoroughly unadorned straight punch.

Thud!

A militant clutching an AK didn’t even have time to scream before his head instantly erupted into a red mist. Without missing a beat, Benjamin casually swung his shield.

Clang!

The hardened shield sheared the machine-gun-mounted pickup truck—along with the terrorists on top—clean in half right through the middle!

Within less than half a minute, Benjamin navigated the camp as if taking a casual stroll. He eschewed any flashy maneuvers. A single punch or a shield strike left a path strewn with severed limbs and mangled firearms.

Only at this point did the militants, brainwashed by religious fanaticism, completely lose their minds.

"It’s a Supe! Goddamn Vought sent a Supe!"

"Run! You can’t fucking kill him!"

Shrieks and wails shattered the skyline. The surviving militants threw down their gear, fleeing in every direction like madmen.

The massive commotion finally alerted the master of the camp. The door to the most heavily reinforced building in the center of the compound was kicked open. A shirtless man strode out, a distinct emblem branded onto his flesh. Naqib—the very Supe-Terrorist who had once infiltrated a CIA safehouse, leveling an entire building with a single self-detonation.

The moment Naqib stepped out, his gaze locked directly onto the towering man standing in a pool of blood with a shield. Recognizing the intruder’s features, Naqib sucked in a sharp breath, his scalp instantly tingling with a raw chill.

"Soldier Boy?!"

As a Supe himself, Naqib naturally knew Soldier Boy. He recognized this legendary figure who represented the absolute pinnacle of American military might at a single glance. Terror rippled through the depths of his chest. Why the hell was Soldier Boy the one deployed to assassinate him?

But very quickly, that terror was supplanted by a wave of morbid insanity. He was a phenomenally powerful Supe in his own right, and while his self-detonation might not outright kill Soldier Boy, it would probably bruise him! If that was the case, maybe he could find a way to finish off Soldier Boy after all.

Naqib lowered his gaze, looking down at the energy surging violently inside his body, ready to disintegrate everything at any given second.

"Heh... Hahaha!" Naqib suddenly burst into a manic laugh.

Naqib glared dead at Benjamin. "Soldier Boy! Today, I’m going to use America’s top superhero to benchmark exactly how far my power has come!" Naqib privately fantasized that if he could heavily cripple Soldier Boy today, the name Naqib would resonate throughout the global dark web, crowning him as a new god.

What he failed to realize, however, was that let alone a point-blank blast, even detonating a tactical nuke inside Soldier Boy’s stomach wouldn’t kill him, and might not even scratch him. After all, the Soviets had spent decades researching how to put Soldier Boy in the dirt.

"All charged up, firecracker?" Benjamin casually planted his shield into the sand at his feet, clapping his hands together as he smiled at Naqib, whose glow was intensifying by the second. "Firecracker, if you’re ready, knock yourself out. Just don’t bore me."

"Burn in the name of truth!!!"

Accompanied by Naqib’s hysterical, fanatical shriek, the magma-like amber glow churning in his chest hit critical mass.

BOOM!!!

A horrific shockwave rippled outward in a devastating radius from Naqib at the epicenter! Rampant flames instantaneously devoured the surrounding dozen meters; reinforced concrete walls and abandoned armored vehicle husks were vaporized effortlessly as if made of paper.

The extreme thermal energy even melted the desert sand into dark red, glass-like crystals. A substantial portion of the camp was utterly reduced to a smoking ruin of ash and flame by this apocalyptic strike. Positioned dead center at the absolute heart of the blast, Benjamin didn’t manifest a single movement to dodge, allowing the full weight of the savage inferno to engulf him completely.

A few seconds later, the aftershocks of the explosion gradually subsided. Naqib panted heavily, staring intently into the smoke-shrouded center up ahead. "Hahaha! Even if you’re the legendary Soldier Boy—"

However, his frantic laughter cut short. A scorching breeze swept away the lingering smoke. The tall, imposing man still stood silently in place. Unscathed.

"This... this is impossible..." Naqib’s legs suddenly went entirely weak. A maximum-output strike capable of leveling an entire high-rise building hadn’t inflicted a shred of damage?

"Put on quite a show, but a bit cold, don’t you think? Those Soviets back in the day used to give me baths in molten lava at this temperature." Benjamin cracked his neck slightly. "Now, it’s my turn, firecracker."

Within an instant, a heart-stopping white light ignited dead center in Benjamin’s chest. This wasn’t standard thermal luminescence—it was raw radioactive energy. Naqib’s pupils contracted to pinpricks; he unhinged his jaw to scream for mercy, but it was already too late.

BOOM!!!

A catastrophic beam of nuclear energy erupted violently from Benjamin’s chest! In that exact microsecond, Naqib didn’t even squeeze out a shriek. His physical form completely disintegrated upon making contact with the radioactive blast, his body and the very Compound V genome within his DNA systematically erased from existence.

Immediately following that, the nuclear shockwave tore through the remaining insurgent compound like a buzzsaw, expanding outward at an incredibly terrifying velocity.

In the distance, Annie, who had assumed herself safe several hundred meters away, felt a profoundly horrific threat materialize in that exact moment. "Oh my God."

Her face entirely drained of color, she watched helplessly as the flat desert expanse ahead was utterly swept away by the radioactive shockwave. To avoid being vaporized, Annie abandoned all poise, scrambling on all fours to retreat another hundred meters, ducking safely behind a sand dune.

After what felt like an age, the apocalyptic turbulence finally subsided. Her nerves thoroughly shattered, Annie poked half her head out from behind the sand dune. When she registered the panorama before her, she froze completely, her beautiful eyes wide and round.

The heavily fortified militant camp—along with everything else in its vicinity—had completely vanished into thin air. In its place rested a colossal crater.

And inside this hellish, high-temperature wasteland, Benjamin hand-carried his shield, pacing up the gentle slope of the massive crater step by step. Despite standing at absolute ground zero of a nuclear detonation, his suit remained immaculately spotless.

"What are you gaping at? Let’s move, Annie." Benjamin walked up to her, casually tossing a phrase to the still-trembling Starlight.

"Oh, r-right! Yes, sir!" Annie snapped back to reality, swallowing hard as she jogged to match Benjamin’s stride.

She glanced back at the horrific deep crater, then up at Benjamin’s back, which was as broad as a mountain. "Um... sir..." Annie hesitated, but unable to contain the doubt brewing in her mind, she asked with absolute caution, "Didn’t you say earlier that you were going to demonstrate your ability to strip away someone’s superpowers?"

"What about it?" Benjamin stopped, turning around to look at Annie like she was an absolute idiot. "Didn’t I just fucking demonstrate it perfectly?"

"Huh?" Annie was completely baffled. "But... he was completely vaporized, wasn’t he?" 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

"Come on, Annie, use your goddamn brain," Benjamin explained. "The radioactive blast I discharge contains a specific frequency of radiation engineered to completely destroy Compound V. So, I did indeed strip that kid’s powers away. It’s just that the firecracker’s physical body was far too fragile—he couldn’t survive the kinetic impact of my radiation wave. Is that my fucking fault? To put it simply: a Supe durable enough to survive the blast loses their powers. A Supe who can’t tank the blast ceases to exist entirely along with their abilities."

"Incredible..." Starlight was utterly dumbfounded. Meaning if Homelander or Maeve were to tank this blast, there was a chance they’d survive, but once they did, they’d immediately lose their powers too... What a devastatingly broken ability.

"Mind you, I can modulate the payload of the blast," Benjamin continued. "If you ever feel like losing your powers, I can tune down the frequency so it doesn’t leave a scratch on you."

"No thank you, sir! I think things are great just the way they are. I have powers, I can play the superhero, and I can help people who need it!" Starlight replied, frantically shaking her head.

---<>---

A/N: Don’t forget to send Power Stones for more Chapters!!

Want to know what happens next? You can read up to 10+ Chapters ahead on my p@tr~on:

[email protected]/ForgottenDaoist (@ = a, link is in my profile).