51 Chapter 46: woah

***Half an hour ago 

Kar-el was flying high up in the clouds while carrying the 20-meter spaceship model on his shoulders. His suit's invisibility was covering both of them. 

At the moment, he was flying in the skies of Florida. 

"Let's start the show.", Kar-el muttered to himself before he started to increase his speed. 

In a few seconds, he broke the sound barrier. Every second that passed after that resulted in an increase of two mach to the current speed he was flying at. 

Just twenty seconds later, his previous acceleration of two mach per second increased to a blistering five mach per second increase as he flew upon the border states of the U.S.A.

There was a reason why he chose to do this in the night instead of the day. The speed he was traveling at was many times faster than sound, because of this, he left sonic waves in the air wherever he traveled. 

As these waves traveled in the air and reached nearby human settlements, all the windows started breaking in those places. 

Since it was nighttime, no one would notice him traveling in the sky and get curious enough to look at him by standing beside their windows. 

That's why the chances of people hurting themselves were low.  

Kar-el grinned when he was about to reach his destination. His plan was simple. 

He would throw the spaceship model a few kilometers away from a small town and activate the explosives he inserted inside the model halfway through the descent to make it look as if he crashed. 

Realizing that he could see his destination, Kar-el got ready to throw the model but at that moment, an energy beam struck him. 

The beam caught Kar-el off-guard and unprepared, causing him to lose balance due to the surprising strength behind the sudden impact. Alongside his model, he crashed at the site at extreme speeds, his crash was then followed by a powerful explosion. 

The sound of the explosion most likely woke everyone in the nearby town. 

Icarus coldly looked at the crash site while floating in the sky above. He was clad in his battle armor and in his left hand was a small square device that he likely received from phastos. 

He didn't have to wait for long. Kar-el quickly rose in the air to confront him. 

Both were floating in the air at a distance of 50 meters, staring at each other. 

Kar-el was first to break the silence with a taunting voice.

"That was quite an unruly behavior, Eternal." He patted his chest and shoulders as if there was dust on them. 

"Who are you?" Icarus coldly asked. 

"Someone that you shouldn't have pissed off." 

Kar-el had many questions. He didn't remember any instance where he had done something that warranted a conflict with eternals. While he believed Icarus had some screw loose in his brain ( no pun intended), he was still surprised that Icarus chose to directly attack first. 

"Tell me eternal, what warranted this meeting?" Kar-el was pissed right now. Not because Icarus attacked him but because of the moment he attacked. 

If they clashed right now, shield and many other organizations would likely be able to observe their fight. Or at least to some extent. 

And it would make all the work he did until now waste. 

Icarus didn't reply with words and instead chose to once again fire cosmic energy from his eyes. 

The result was different this time. He was met with equal resistance as Kar-el combatted his cosmic beams halfway with his heat vision. 

Icarus spent millennials combating against deviants. So, while he was surprised, he didn't lose focus for a single millisecond and instantly flew to close the distance similar to Kar-el. 

Just when their fists were about to meet each other, they both noticed that the area around them began behaving weirdly. 

Both thought that their opponent had a hidden ally and chose to disengage instead of clashing stupidly. 

Kar-el chose to fly higher while Icarus chose to fly left. 

Both looked around themselves warily. Kar-el thought Icarus was not alone and he fell under Sprite's illusion, while Icarus thought that his opponent had hidden allies that he failed to notice at first glance. 

"This is all the help you will be receiving for now." Ancient one's voice sounded out. 

"Mirror dimension, hmm." Kar-el mumbled to himself as he once again stared at Icarus. 

'This is just perfect. Now I don't have to worry about mortal surveillance as long as I deal with him inside the mirror dimension.' Kar-el thought as this time he was first to re-start the conflict by firing his heat vision. 

Icarus was no fool. He knew that he was at the disadvantage right now. First, he was inside an unknown, closed space. Second, he still didn't know if his opponent's ally had more tricks that she hadn't used yet. 

He simply dodged the heat vision fired at him and tried to increase the distance between him and his opponent by flying in the opposite direction. He was sure that such an enclosure couldn't be maintained at elevated levels. 

As long as he crossed enough distance, he would be out of this space. 

He was right in his guess. Given that the ancient one was not present here and instead sustaining the mirror dimension from Kamar-taj, she couldn't stop him from escaping the dimension should he fly too far. 

Kar-el was also aware of this fact and swiftly chased Icarus. He then manipulated the mirror dimension laws with the help of the life equation and increased the area of dimension that was summoned by the Ancient One. 

(Author note: So for example, let's say ancient one used 10k mana points to summon 20k Square meters of mirror dimension around them. What Kar-el did was basically cheating the laws of mirror dimension with the help of his life equation powers. So, 10k mana = 20k sq.meter turned into 10k mana = 2000k sq.meter instead. Given that the life equation is one of the singularities which is higher in hierarchy than law of dimension like mirror dimension. 

Of course, it's just an example to easily explain what happened and don't take it literally as you know that there is no concept of mana in MCU mystic arts.) 

Icarus was fast, really fast, but he couldn't compete against a Kryptonian in terms of speed. (Author note 😅: I am taking the specs from man of steel here in which superman flew from New York and reached middle of indian ocean in 7 seconds which is more than Mach 140. I think he can fly even faster than that though if he wants to since in a recent comic chapter, Superman killed millions of space aliens attacking all around the earth in seconds by circling around the globe multiple times.)

Kar-el nimbly caught one of the feet of Icarus and flung him back to the ground. 

Icarus bounced a few times leaving craters on the ground. Kar-el gave him no chance to retaliate, before he could even rise to his feet, Kar-el was upon him. 

Kar-el didn't waste his momentum and kicked Icarus's head like a football. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately for Icarus, his eternal body was strong enough to take such abuse as he survived the kick with his head still attached to the rest of his body. 

When you participate in as many battles as Icarus has, you can tell the outcome of a fight from the first few moves shared between the fighters.  

And right now Icarus could tell that he was absolutely incapable of facing his opponent. He was not even sure if he could win the fight with all his eternal family fighting beside him. 

Quite a few thoughts were going in his mind now. First, there was a sense of regret, the regret of the premature attack instead of just scouting. 

Second, there was a sense of guilt and remorse that if he died here, how will sersi react? What if she tries to take revenge and ended up meeting the same fate as him? 

And most importantly, What about Arishem's plan? What about his will? Will they fail at completing their job assigned by him?

"What happened, eternal? Gave up already?" Kar-el grabbed Icarus by his hair with one arm and raised him to his eye level. 

He didn't wait for a reply and punched Icarus in the stomach. Icarus's body folded like a reverse C as his body sailed in the opposite direction. 

"Is that all that you got? I thought that I had finally received a decent punching bag. But this… This is just embarrassing." Kar-el said while mockingly shaking his head. 

"Ohh how I wished that we both clashed while sailing through metropolitan cities. Leveling giant buildings and changing the shape of the landscape itself." 

"Hehehe…." Icarus laughed while looking at the moon," Yeah, that would be cool. Let's do that." 

Kar-el tilted his head at the sudden change in behavior. Before he felt like he was fighting an emotionless warrior but now it felt like he was facing a berserker instead.

Every eternal has an infinite source of cosmic energy inside them, the tricky part is that there is a limit to how much energy their physical body can withstand and use at once. 

While the amount itself is not fixed and can be increased by training to some extent, there is still a wall that they can't cross, otherwise, their bodies would slowly start to break. 

And at the moment, Icarus had already chosen to cross that limit. 

"AarhhhhhhHHHHH~", Icarus screamed as cosmic energy leaked every part of his body. 

"Woah~... Super Saiyan." Kar-el subconsciously said before he dodged a cosmic ray ten times stronger than the earlier ones. 

Earlier, Icarus could only release cosmic energy blasts from his eyes, but now, every time he punched or kicked, it came with saturated cosmic energy that exploded on impact. 

Finally, both of them were at a stalemate. As both of them flew through the landscape, shockwaves were produced every time they exchanged moves. 

Kar-el's every move was calculated and precise, utilizing his capabilities. Although he still wasn't using the full potential of his body and was still holding back. but that was not because he didn't want to use it. 

The reason for him not completely going out was because he couldn't control that much strength right now. It would lead to collateral damage, said damage would spill outside of the mirror dimension and lead to casualties. 

(Author note 😅: So what Kar-el is referring to by using the word potential is how there were some superman variants that are capable of even breaking the boundaries of parallel universes itself just by a punch. For example, superboy-prime)

In contrast to Kar-el, Icarus was fighting like a complete maniac. There was no form or stance in his attacks. He was completely relying on his instincts which gave him an advantage, this advantage was the difficulty of reading his attacks. 

Everywhere they flew, they left destruction in their wake. The nearby town was first to face the unnatural disaster. 

Icarus leaned sideways as he flew toward Kar-el, effectively dodging the fist flying at his face before he tried to strike his knee at Kar-el's chest. 

But Kar-el quickly used his other hand and stuck the knee from the right flank to misdirect the blow. 

He still got hit and flew backward without any self-control hitting a two-story house that instantly collapsed due to the immense momentum behind his flight before he exited through the other side, leaving deep cuts through the concrete street. 

Icarus didn't waste any time firing his cosmic rays at Kar-el. Kar-el defended himself by grabbing a nearby electric pole with the help of his gravity control and putting it between the route of cosmic ray. 

The pole melted almost instantly, but it gave much-needed time to Kar-el that he utilized to once again take to the skies. 

Both of them equally delivered blows after blows to one another while constantly changing the battlefield, but only Icarus was taking any damage. 

While Icarus's attack was by no means less powerful, in fact, they were capable of leveling a whole skyscraper, but not only did Kar-el have the basic durability of a Kryptonian, but he also had a gravitational force field protecting his body that absorbs some of the energy of every blow he receives. 

(Author note 😅: Did you guys ever wondered why Lois Lane remains perfectly fine while flying besides Superman at extreme speeds? Like she should have broken multiple times in the movie itself due to G-force. Well, the answer is that Superman has a personal gravity field around him that could be expanded to some extent which covers Lois during flight. And it also works as a protecting field too.) 

That was by no means saying that an eternal had a weaker body and could be easily damaged. In fact, most of the damage that Icarus was taking was given by the huge amount of cosmic energy he was producing and using. 

He was well aware that what he is doing is extremely dangerous and even the prime eternal herself would not be able to heal him. He would be unable to use cosmic energy for centuries to come after this battle ends, no matter the outcome. 

"Tell me, eternal. Why are you doing this?" Kar-el caught the metal block Icarus threw at him before using it as a baseball bat to attack Icarus. 

"You know that you can't keep this up for long. I can do this all day, but you obviously can't." Icarus flew inside a tunnel made through the side of a mountain and Kar-el followed. 

"SHUT UPPPP~" Icarus looked behind and fired multiple cosmic blasts randomly. Quite a few hit the nearby vehicles, which caused a chain reaction of explosions. 

Kar-el didn't hesitate to fly right through the explosions as he followed Icarus. 

"While I do have some issues with your master, I don't remember having done something that might require a suicide mission from you." Kar-el continued to monologue as they finally exited the tunnel and ended up just at the border of a big and developed city. 

"You won't be able to escape this space no matter how fast or far you fly." Kar-el remarked to Icarus while narrowly dodging a falling skyscraper. 

"Damn you." Icarus grounded his teeth in resentment as Kar-el utilized the moment a falling building collided with another nearby building to disappear from his line of sight. 

Icarus was slowly losing control over his emotions as more time passed. His brain was also being corroded by cosmic energy just like any other part of his body. 

Losing sight of Kar-el caused his anger to skyrocket and he started to fire cosmic blasts indiscriminately. 

"At this rate he might just explode." Kar-el observed from inside an office hidden from Icarus. 

'I have to catch him alive somehow but how? The moment we get out of the mirror dimension, he will most likely contact the other eternals, and if he dies here, that's a no-no too because it would attract Arishem's attention which I don't want right now.' Kar-el thought in frustration. 

'Why the fuck is he even here? This makes no f***ing sense.' He complained to himself as Icarus turned another skyscraper into rubble. 

Kar-el sighed before exiting the building and trying to close distance with Icarus by flying low. He wanted to make use of all the rubble and dust that rose as skyscrapers fell into oblivion. 

Icarus was looking left and right in anger when Kar-el suddenly appeared behind him and grabbed his head with just one hand and threw him inside the pile of rubble that was previously a skyscraper, a skyscraper that he had just demolished. 

Kar-el quickly followed behind. Making use of his X-ray vision, Kar-el continued his assault on Icarus inside the rubble and dust cloud. 

Icarus's mind had been so corrupted that he couldn't even think properly. It was like fighting against a raging beast. He didn't even try to exit the rubble and dust cloud so he could see properly. 

"Aaargh~", Icarus released an omnidirectional cosmic blast in anger. 

Kar-el realized the grim situation that was about to happen if he didn't deal with Icarus right now. 

He had become a ticking time bomb that could create an cosmic energy explosion at the rate things were going. 

"Dammit!" Kar-el gritted his teeth before once again attacking Icarus from behind. 

Icarus slammed on the ground face first, creating a 5-meter-deep crater. But before he could rise again, Kar-el put both of his feet on his back. 

He then grabbed his left hand with both hands and yanked with a force so immense that it could move tectonic plates. 

"Grrrrhaahhhhhhhh", Kar-el pulled and Icarus completely lost his left arm. 

He then did the same with his right arm before getting on his knees and raining punch after punch to Icarus's head to somehow make him lose consciousness. 

"GO TO SLEEP ALREADY, YOU SUICIDAL MANIAC!" Kar-el screamed in anger while holding both of his hands together like a hammer and slamming them on the back of his head. 

Edited by GrimHræzlyr

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There was an terrorism attack in the adjacent city to my own so internet was down for a few days.