Despite her clear dominance, the Merciless wasn't without his own edge: the armor was absurdly tough. In their last exchange, Diana had raked the Sword of Hephaestus across his chest—a divine weapon backed by her full strength—and it hadn't cut through. All it left was a scratch one finger wide and just over ten centimeters long.
"The whole suit is Nth Metal. Every last piece of it." Thea was at a loss for words. She thought about Hawkman and Hawkgirl, how those two had scrimped and saved, sharing what little Nth Metal they had between them. Their big mace became a medium mace. Their medium mace became a small mace. And this guy was wealthy enough to forge full-body armor out of the stuff.
Divine power amplification plus Nth Metal reinforcement—that was the source of his enormous strength and the energy pouring off him in waves.
"Let's take him down together. Quick." Thea raised her bow. She didn't want to attract Barbatos's attention. An arrow left the string with a sharp whistle.
With her shot, Round Two officially began.
Whether by design or accident, both of Thea's arrows were swatted aside by the Merciless's Energy Greatsword. A blade of pure energy gave her weapon effects nothing to latch onto.
Her role shrank to pure distraction. Diana carried the offense.
The Merciless ignored Thea entirely, launching a counter-charge at Diana in great, heavy strides.
Trusting his impenetrable armor, he wielded the Energy Greatsword in a storm of strikes, every swing aimed at vitals.
"Don't you dare underestimate me." Thea's eyes narrowed. The original Ares had pulled the exact same stunt—pretending she didn't exist. This Merciless would regret it.
She drew the bowstring to a full moon and fired from range.
This arrow—in terms of both angle and trajectory—was wildly, comically off-target. The Merciless seemed briefly puzzled. Why would anyone fire a shot that spectacularly bad?
The next instant, Diana drove her elbow into his face. The Guardian Bracelets were long retired, but her raw strength was ten times what it had been at her former peak.
The elbow crashed home. The Merciless was sent flying over ten meters—landing right where Thea's arrow waited.
It wasn't prediction. She had simply seen one second into the future.
Their energy reserves weren't impressive—one was an avatar, the other a mere projection—but the skills behind each move were at the absolute pinnacle. Two max-level mains ganging up on the Merciless? It wasn't even close.
This arrow carried no flashy elemental payload—no fire, no ice. Instead, it bore a time-severing effect. The impact zone simply... ceased to exist, scooped clean out of reality.
Left shoulder. Shoulder blade. Collarbone. Upper arm bone. Armor and flesh alike—all swept into the timestream by that single arrow.
His left arm dropped to the ground. Blood fountained from the stump. Critically wounded in one stroke.
He propped himself on the greatsword, barely staying upright, lips still moving in an incoherent mutter.
Diana felt a twinge of anticlimax. There was simply no challenge. Roughly equal in raw energy, perhaps, but the gulf in mastery couldn't be closed by stacking power alone.
"You've lost. Surrender the helmet and I'll let you walk away." Her sword angled at him, voice sharp and cold.
At first, the Merciless gave no response. More than ten seconds crawled by before something like clarity returned to his eyes.
"A God of War... should not be brought low by insects. Order—the world's order still needs me!" One arm severed, blood everywhere, the Merciless was no New God, and certainly no Old God. He was just a mortal with a god's power. Self-repair was out of the question. He could only cauterize the wound with his own Energy Greatsword, searing the stump shut.
"You're all enemies! ALL OF YOU!!" He screamed at the sky like a tragic hero.
Thea let out a quiet scoff and signaled Diana to step aside, then drew her bowstring full once more.
Her aim settled on the Merciless's heart. Thin wisps of death energy were drawn from the world itself—carefully, delicately. She had no intention of alerting Barbatos. She was just a projection; losing it cost her nothing. But Diana was here in avatar form, and taking damage would actually mean something.
The gathered death energy was minuscule. Compressed, it shrank to a fingernail-sized vortex of black energy clinging to the arrowhead.
Thea let out a sharp whistle to draw his attention. Then she released the string.
No shooting-star theatrics. The arrow wasn't even fast. She'd whistled first—zero attempt at stealth. In terms of both power and angle, the shot was neither impressive nor clever. A first-day archery student could have done better.
But this arrow carried the power of Law—a law she had written on the spot.
The Merciless must die.
Though below the threshold of true godhood, the Merciless's energy was substantial enough that some primal instinct screamed a warning. He clawed at the ground, heaved up a massive boulder, and hurled it at the incoming arrow.
The arrow ignored the boulder entirely, phasing through it like a phantom.
A muffled thud.
The Merciless's pride—his full-body Nth Metal armor, the combined divine power of the Greek gods—none of it could stop that feather-light arrow. It struck his chest dead-center and dissolved back into black energy, spreading outward from his heart to every extremity.
In less than two seconds, the Merciless collapsed. His body began crumbling from the inside, the decay spreading to the armor. Even Nth Metal could not resist the power of Law.
He was dead.
Thea reached out and tapped the helmet. The helmet forged by Ares and anointed in the blood of the Greek gods lifted free from the Merciless's skull.
The face beneath was twisted—only the faintest trace of Bruce Wayne visible around the eyes. The rest was Ares.
If the Batman Who Laughs was the fusion of Batman and the Joker, then the Merciless was Ares having body-snatched Batman entirely. The real Batman had probably been dead for a very long time.
Thea handed the helmet to Diana and shot a quick glance at the outside world. Barbatos seemed to have sensed something, but hadn't pinpointed the disturbance yet.
"Let's get out—now!" Through the link to her main body, she pulled both of them back in a reverse summon.
The helmet was of the same origin as the Greek divine system. With Zeus's abilities, direct absorption wouldn't cause any harm—especially since Thea had already purged the remnant of Ares from inside it. If something still went wrong after all that, then Zeus was simply an idiot.
The atmosphere between the parties was hardly warm. Diana volunteered to deliver the helmet to Heaven herself. Thea was content to stay behind.
She watched Diana depart from New Genesis, then fixed her gaze on the Dark Multiverse.
Barbatos emerged again, practically wearing a neon sign that said I am the villain.
Silent vibrations reached Thea's ears. She could tell he was berating her for breaking the rules.
She didn't bother arguing. Yeah, I broke them. What are you going to do about it? Come get me if you can.