Chapter 16.1- All of Infinity in the Palm of my Hands

If there was one thing the monster did well, it was fight. I thought to myself as I dodged out of the way of another attack, For perhaps the thousandth time, I thanked myself for having to foresight to integrate Zod’s skill and training into myself. If not, this idea of mine would have gotten me in some serious trouble. I doubted he could hurt me. I really did. But I also didn’t particularly want to test it with my body on the line.
Oh, I knew for sure he couldn’t kill me. No matter how well he wielded the double bladed axe of his. The Chain hammer had been only for the first strike it seemed. He’d tossed it right at me, and when I caught it with no trouble, the bastard let go of the other end and tried to use my surprise to his advantage to cut me with that axe of his. Being completely honest, I was making a choice here. A conscious choice to hold back and avoid using the full breadth of my power against him.
Another swipe of the axe followed and this time I leaned to the right to dodge before striking with a punishing blow to his midsection. He didn’t even flinch and the next attack came quickly after. So not that level of strength then. I was trying to find ow much strength it would take to put a creature like this down. He was recognised as the physically mightiest child of Thanos so that meant that the had to be somewhere on the scale of Thanos himself. The Mad Titan wouldn’t tolerate weakness. Nothing about his personality in this universe gave me that impression. Sure, he appreciated different forms of strength. Gamora was more famed as an assassin than a warrior if we were being honest and Nebula was much the same. They weren’t weak by any means, just blessed with a different form of strength.
But not this Black Dwarf. No, he was known for his strength. That meant he had to be fucking good at it. He was slow though. Slow to my perception at least. On the other hand, he also was durable. I’d started with roughly 10% of my strength in each punch and now I was up to 70% and he was still yet to flinch. He could tell my attacks were getting stronger but regardless of that they were having no true effect on him. His rough leathery skin hadn’t a single crack or gash. We were both unharmed after almost five minutes of combat. I would have expected for a creature like him to show some more irritation or even signs at how frustrated he must surely be feeling, but there was nothing. He was still just as calm and disciplined as he’d been from the beginning. I guess the Thanos in this universe had to be roughly similar to the one in the Marvel Cinematic Universe even though he was much wider scale here. Much more universally relevant and feared if I was being honest. The Kree database had a long list of atrocities to his name.
And if the Kree were calling you out on your bullshit then you just know you had a lot of bullshit going on. The point, however, has to be that there is no way a completely mad man could have trained the well honed machine I was fighting right now. He was disciplined, careful and unmoving. It was difficult to call him anything but perfect. Even with his size and the seemingly simple weapon he wielded, his form was perfect. Zod could pick out a well trained warrior from miles away. So could I. Only the fact that the Kryptonian General was a much more skilled fighter and the speed gulf between us allowed me to keep ahead and treat him so lightly.
The next attack was where he switched things up a bit. One slash followed another until he suddenly stabbed at me with the blunt centre end of the weapon. The blade shot out too quickly for most people to react, but I took pleasure in catching it with my teeth from my seemingly offgiuard position. He didn’t even blink, just going on to continue. His next swing wasn’t allowed to make contact as I stepped into his guard instead of stepping backwards this time. He was quick to attempt to retreat on his won but it was too little and too late.
I took great pleasure in striking his solar plexus with 90% of my strength. For the first time all fight, he moved backwards. That one hurt. He looked at me with a different look in his eyes than before, but I didn’t care to interpret it. He stepped, and I stepped with him. He was good, I was better. He dropped the axe instantly once he realised there’d be no retreating on me. He attempted a punch at me with that wide arm of his. I sprung into action before he could complete the movement.
Standing so close together, it was child’s play for me to step on his toes with a commanding stomp at full power. The ground underneath us down to the foundations of this building shook, with a huge chunk of it suffering damage as cracks spread. My opponent was no worse for wear, but he still hesitated for a second from the surprise attack. I did not have to reduce my height much to punch at the Nine feet behemoth’s knee. It did not give way to my strength, too sturdy for that, but I did still hear something creak. He sure felt my full strength even if he did not give way to it. Still, I was forced to reevaluate all my assumptions. He could take my full strength.
“Do you know why they call him the black dwarf?” Tivan asked, still seated behind the desk. He was continuously testing my decision not to kill him yet.
“A play on his height and colouring” I replied in deadpan as I blocked a punch with my arm, barely feeling the force of it before retaliating with a punch of my own. His strength was good, but not enough to overcome me. He grunted inaudibly from that punch. Finally, he was feeling something.
“It’s because he survived the force of a dwarf star in his younger years. You stand no chance” Tivan bragged before bursting into laughter. Surely he didn’t actually believe that. First of all, how would one even encounter a dwarf star to survive it. Tivan couldn’t be that much of an idiot could he?

A/N; No, Kal has not been nerfed. Each of those strikes would shake a planet. The Black Dwarf is just that durable in this fic. Just like the rest of the Black Order, he has been buffed to the most logical limit I could come up with. His strength is somewhat comparable to the Hulk in the first Avengers movie, but his durability is even higher than Infinity War Thor. He’s going to be a problem to put down, for sure. He also has the endurance to match so expect a reasonably lengthy one.