The whole world held its breath as they watched the live feed coming through the portal.
The scene was over Japan.
It was cherry blossom season there, and tourists were milling about at the base of Mount Fuji (though most were actually running for their lives), while traffic still crawled through the streets of Tokyo.
These people, living on the far eastern edge of the globe, were watching the live broadcast of the disaster in New York on their TVs, relieved that the calamity was happening on the other side of the ocean.
Then, the sky turned dark.
An instant, primal terror, a chill that went straight to the soul, enveloped the long, narrow islands.
There was no warning, no air-raid siren.
Just that single, black energy orb, which abruptly materialized directly above the caldera of Mount Fuji.
"What is that?"
"Is it special effects? A meteor?"
Countless people looked up, their confusion instantly morphing into absolute terror.
They felt the presence of death.
[Ding! Detecting mass extreme panic among the Japanese populace! Fear Value +1,000!]
[Ding! Fear Value +1,000!]
[Ding! Fear Value +1,000!]
...
The numbers on the system panel began to jump wildly.
In New York, floating high above Madison Square Garden, Frieza watched the scene unfold. A cruel smile curled his lips, and he snapped his long, slender fingers in the air.
"Snap."
With that sharp, crisp sound, destruction descended upon the other side of the portal.
BOOOM—!!!
There was no mushroom cloud, no fire, and you couldn't even hear the sound of the explosion.
That's because, in the face of such power, even the medium for sound propagation was instantly annihilated.
The moment the black energy orb touched Mount Fuji, it was like a drop of black ink hitting clear water—the dark light instantly expanded!
The sacred mountain, the spiritual symbol of Japan, didn't last even a microsecond. It simply vanished into thin air!
What followed was the wrath of the Earth's crust, suppressed for millions of years.
Stripped of the mountain's containment, the subterranean magma mixed with the destructive energy, transforming into a pillar of black fire that shot straight up into the heavens!
The ground split open, tectonic plates shattered.
Originating from Mount Fuji, a terrifying shockwave, laced with black lightning, swept outward.
Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka...
The bustling cities, the skyscrapers—they were as fragile as sheets of paper before the shockwave.
The figure referred to as the "Emperor" (an adaptation of the Chinese name for the Japanese monarch), who was sitting and sipping tea, instantly vaporized into fundamental particles along with his teacup.
And that infamous war memorial (a direct cultural adaptation of the "shrine" to honor the dead), along with all the tablets inside, was uprooted by the black energy storm and ground into nullifying dust!
Even separated by the portal, the Avengers could feel the despairing aura of destruction.
"No... this is impossible..."
Tony Stark slumped to the ground, his eyes fixed on the portal through his mask, data screaming error messages across his retina.
"The energy yield of that blast... even if you tied every nuclear bomb in the world together and set them off, it wouldn't be one-ten-thousandth of this."
A deep sense of technological futility seized the brilliant inventor's mind.
On the other side, Reed Richards, the leader of the Fantastic Four, found his fingers frozen.
His portable analyzer couldn't compute the data; it was completely overloaded.
"I miscalculated. My previous models were all wrong," Reed, his face slightly slack from being over-stretched, was the picture of a scientist having a breakdown.
"Our chance of winning against him is an absolute zero."
The scene inside the portal continued.
The black energy storm didn't stop. It was like a greedy behemoth, relentlessly devouring the land.
Seawater rushed in, and magma erupted.
In just a few minutes, the entire territory of the long, narrow Japanese archipelago had been completely erased from the Earth's surface.
In its place was a massive, bottomless black vortex, continuously sucking in the surrounding seawater with an unsettling roar.
Whether they were the arrogant corporation CEOs, the average people staying home, or the clueless politicians—at this moment, all were equal.
They were all "old acquaintances" in the sense that they were wiped out together.
They didn't even get the chance to be "old acquaintances"; they were simply turned into annihilated energy.
"Oh ho ho ho..."
"What a spectacular firework show. Though the color is a little plain, it still has a certain charm, wouldn't you agree?"
Frieza hovered in the air, his eyes filled with the delight of someone appreciating a work of art.
Loki looked at Thor's headless corpse on the ground nearby, then back up at the portal displaying the scene of utter hell.
His body trembled violently.
He might hate Thor, Odin, and everything about Asgard.
But watching his brother, his rival for millennia, get crushed like an insect, and watching an entire nation be wiped away like dust—a chilling realization of "grief for a fallen rival" (a rough translation of the Chinese idiom) froze his soul.
"Even the Allfather couldn't stop him..." Loki cried out in despair in his mind.
"Even if Asgard's entire army poured out, they would just be offering more heads to the Great King..."
In that moment, his loyalty to Frieza—or rather, his fear—was absolutely locked at 100%.
The other villains—Apocalypse, Magneto, and Sebastian Shaw (Black King)—were all utterly terrified into silence.
They used to see themselves as the bad guys, the BOSSes, the ones destined to rule the world.
Now, their past acts of destruction seemed like child's play.
Compared to the being before them, they looked like philanthropists!
[Ding! Congratulations to the Host! Japan has been erased, causing global, cataclysmic panic!]
[Fear Value +200 Billion!]
[Ding! Current cumulative Fear Value has surpassed 500 Billion!]
[Unlock condition achieved! Frieza template (Third Form) is unlocking...]
BOOOM!!!
An aura even more terrifying and malevolent than before burst from Frieza's body.
Though his external appearance hadn't changed, he could feel his power undergo another massive leap!
Third Form!
This is the monstrous, elongated form, and his battle power is about to surge again!
According to the official Dragon Ball settings, this form's battle power exceeds 2 Million!
[Next Stage Unlock Goal (Final Form): 15 Billion / 1 Trillion Fear Value.]
Frieza glanced at the system panel, his smile growing wider.
He slowly descended until his toes touched the ground.
His composed demeanor stood in stark contrast to the completely incapacitated superheroes around him.
"What's wrong? Did you scare yourselves into silence?"
Frieza tilted his head, looking at Captain America's ashen face, his voice dripping with mockery.
"I know what you're thinking."
"You're calculating my energy, my destructive power, and how you might possibly defeat me."
Frieza raised a single finger and gently wagged it.
"Don't bother."
"Just to put your minds at ease, allow me to share a little secret."
He pointed to the portal, which was still showing the ruins of the Japanese islands, then pointed back to himself.
"That attack just now... the one that wiped out an entire nation."
"The battle power I used..."
Frieza paused, then showed his two rows of perfectly white teeth, smiling viciously.
"...was less than 130."
"And my full strength used to be 530,000... Oh, wait, it's a lot more than that now."
This sentence was the final straw that broke the camel's back.
Less than 130?
Wiping out a nation with less than one-ten-thousandth of his power?
How could they possibly fight this?
An overwhelming sense of despair spread like a plague through the heart of every Avenger.
Frieza was satisfied as he watched the heroes, now completely devoid of fight, and he turned away.
"Heh heh heh..."
"Ho ho ho ho ho...!"
"This is the chasm you can never cross between you and me, the Great King!"