American comics: From Hogwarts to God on Earth

Chapter 383 Johnny Quick and Atom

The person who arrived was wearing a red combat uniform, adorned with golden lightning bolt patterns. As far as the clothes were concerned, Rune thought they looked quite good.

His mask was strange, though; the long, protruding back of his head looked almost like the back of an alien's head.

Johnny Quick isn't actually the exclusive name for the three villains on Earth; there's also a superhero named Johnny Quick in the main universe. However, he's a genius mathematics student who discovered a strange mathematical formula and gained the Speed ​​Force from it.

Johnny Quick, the villain from Earth-3, is clearly inferior to the former. His real name is Jonathan Allen. At the time, he and his girlfriend were standing on the roof of STAR Laboratory. Johnny Quick was struck by lightning, while his girlfriend fell into a pair of mysterious instruments and was struck by the energy inside.

From then on, they gained superpowers and became Johnny Quick and Atom.

However, Johnny Quick himself isn't very bright and has a terrible knack for developing his abilities, or rather, he doesn't have any at all. Forget about inventing a time-traveling cosmic treadmill; he doesn't even possess abilities like the Molecular Vibration Heart-Piercing Palm or the Speed ​​Force's Circumpolar Field.

If the heroes hadn't exhausted themselves fighting each other in the Three-Body Problem war, and if Barry Allen had given him a half-second's grace, Johnny Quick might not have been able to defeat Barry.

As for Atomic Girl, she and Johnny Quick were evenly matched, and neither of them were particularly bright. At this moment, she had shrunk to the size of half a palm, standing on Johnny Quick's shoulder, staring directly at Rune.

However, Rune felt a little disgusted by Atomic Girl's ability to shrink and grow. This was all because there was a guy in the Boys with the same ability; after entering his friend's body, his power went out of control, and the result was...

"Hey!"

Perhaps it was something in Rune's eyes that made Atomic Girl unhappy, or perhaps it was Rune's long silence that made her feel ignored. In any case, this woman, for some unknown reason, had the audacity to bark at Rune.

"You still haven't told me how you found us!" she said, dissatisfied.

Rune glanced at the woman; she had slightly dark skin and appeared to be of Latin descent. She was plump and pretty, but her later actions were truly infuriating.

Disguised as an ordinary superhuman, she joined the Justice League, incited Amanda to oppose the Justice League, provoked the Trisolaran War, implanted Kryptonite fragments in Superman's brain, and assassinated Doctor Light—all these things make it difficult to feel any goodwill towards her.

"There's no reason, it's just a gut feeling," Rune said calmly.

Thanks to his ability to sense wild beasts, Rune felt a chill run down his spine when Johnny Quick ran around him at a speed invisible to the naked eye.

Considering the superpowers of all Syndicate members on Earth, Rune could even deduce that the one who attacked him was Johnny Quick, and that he was most likely accompanied by Atom Girl.

"Now, it's my turn to ask you questions. What makes you think you can challenge me?" Rune continued.

He was genuinely curious as to why these two dared to challenge him, the one who had killed Superpower, when they didn't dare to challenge Superpower. It just didn't make much sense.

"Killing Superpower is nothing," Johnny Quick grinned, a twisted smile playing on his lips, his eyes behind his goggles cold and mocking. "We can do that too!"

In an instant, a yellow bolt of lightning tore through the air of Gotham, accompanied by a piercing sound, as Johnny Quick launched an attack on the stationary Rune at near the speed of light.

His fists rained down like raindrops. Although Johnny Quick's own strength was not great, under the influence of the Speed ​​Force, each of his attacks contained the power to shatter steel and tear mountains apart.

Even the wind generated by running is enough to completely crush a pitiful ordinary person.

Even the air was ionized by Johnny Express's extremely fast attack, emitting a peculiar grassy smell—the smell of ozone.

However, all of these terrible attacks were in vain.

Face, chest, temples—these were the weak points he was attacking fiercely, but Rune didn't even think about dodging the punches.

In Rune's beast-like perception, these fists could not cause him any harm at all.

However, for ordinary mages, it would be really difficult to deal with a high-speed killer like Johnny Quick who has no bottom line. Even if they are equipped with some kind of protective amulet, it would be difficult to fight against a user of the Speed ​​Force.

Despite the numerous revisions to the Speed ​​Force's design, it remains one of the top forces in the DC Universe, even comparable to the Equation of Life and the Anti-Life Equation.

For example, Barry Allen once kissed his wife who was under the control of the Anti-Life Equation, after which the Speed ​​Force surrounded her and restored her self-awareness.

Barry could even create a speed storm, in which any life form within it would have its time taken away.

Unfortunately, the one who uses this ability is Johnny Quick, a villain without any convictions, an utterly pure idiot. He can't even achieve faster-than-light speed! But his opponent is Rune, whose magic and physical body are constantly reinforcing each other.

Rune is not a traditional mage; he can act as a long-range artillery turret in the traditional sense, or as a powerful melee mage like Black Adam and Shazam.

When Johnny Quick discovered that his all-out attack could only make his opponent's skin turn slightly red, his first thought was not to devise a countermeasure, but to vent his emotions.

"That's impossible!"

Johnny Quick stopped with a roar, still panting heavily. Besides disbelief and rage, there was also a hint of surprise on his face.

"Finished?"

Rune raised an eyebrow. Johnny Quick's attack definitely had some effect, but not much. At most, it would just make the skin red and a little itchy after being hit.

Having suffered a defeat on the front lines, Atomic Girl blinked.

Although surprised that someone had blocked Johnny Quick's attack, she knew it was time for her to unleash her power.

Although the boy appeared to have a very high level of physical defense, she didn't believe that his internal organs were as strong as they appeared—in fact, she had done this many times before.

She shrunk her body and then leaped down while Johnny was distracting Rune.

Although her body had shrunk, Atomic Girl was not afraid of raindrops. She leaped off Johnny and, riding the flow of air, drifted toward Rune's nostrils.

As she expected, Atomic Girl easily passed through the skin barrier that even the Speed ​​Force couldn't break and entered the microscopic world inside Rune's body.

"Ha! Now, I'll make you beg for mercy on your knees!"