All the people saw from afar when the explosion took place. This explosion was something that this universe had never seen before. Cosmic waves travelled all of the universe. Every major empire sensed that something big had happened. All their sensors went haywire after this.
John and others just waited and saw this explosion, all of them prayed that this explosion was enough to bring down Black Winter. They had expected Black Winter to be very dangerous but this turned out to be more nightmarish than they imagined.
The sheer size of this being changed the outlook of the people.
"I should have been the one delivering the last blow. That is my destiny." Thor said.
"Don't talk about destiny at this point. I will be grateful if I get out of this alive. This just turned out to be my worst nightmare. I will stop being a hero after this." Pietro said.
"John, are you alright?" Wayne asked as he saw John was exhausted. Even though he was still in Alien X form, everybody could notice that he was spent. Using all his strength and magic took a toll on him.
"I am fine. Just tired. Victor, take us back to where we are after the explosion dies down. We need to determine if he is dead. We can only rejoice after that." John said.
"What if he isn't dead?" Wanda asked.
"Then the Gods were right to isolate the whole universe to stop the Black Winter." John replied in a grave tone. This meant that their universe was doomed to die.
But John wasn't somebody to give up. He had been amassing fan values and not spending even a single point from this for a long time. Even after the update he didn't spend almost nothing. Only on Clark which cost him less than half a billion.
The total fan values that he had accumulated had now crossed 50 billion. So if he saw that there was no escape from it, he would directly call Goku. Even if he couldn't get the most powerful version of Goku, at least the version which would cost him around 50 billion would not be too shabby.
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And that version would be enough to defeat Black Winter if he was alive.
After a minute the explosion died down and Victor finally opened a boom tube to the location of the explosion. All entered the huge boom tube and crossed a long distance in just a few seconds. They left Galactus behind.
When John teleported he took away Galactus too. Even though he would have loved the death of Galactus, he was one of those necessary evil ones. Galactus was a kind of balance of this multiverse and killing him would just release another monster more terrifying than him. So it was better for Galactus to be alive.
When they all reached the place of explosion, there was nothing but ashes flying around. The explosion had died down and obliterated everything in its path, leaving nothing behind for thousands of light years around.
There was no sign of Black Winter.
"We won." Steve said slowly as he had a look of relief on his face. All had been waiting for those exact words for the last few years and finally they had won after such struggle and preparation for this moment.
The moment they all had been eagerly waiting for.
But then a small speck of black dust flew towards them. That small speck black dust in a moment changed into a huge black void surrounding all the people. All the blood drained from people's faces when this happened.
"You had to say it, Captain." Thor said now in a very sad tone. None of them had any juice left to fight Black Winter. They had given their everything before the explosion. And now all of them were on the end of their ropes. All had only faces of despair written on them.
"I have got to say, no other universe has ever put up such a huge fight against me. I have been living since time immemorial but never have I faced such opposition. But this is where the show ends." Black Winter said. Even though his voice sounded meek there was a sense of anger in it.
That explosion was big enough to almost kill him. He somehow was able to escape. But not without damage. He had lost almost 90% of his body. This attack had thoroughly angered him. So when the people returned to see if he was dead he didn't take any chances and directly covered them from all sides leaving no place to escape.
John who saw this sighed. There was really no other way except for Goku. He was his final trump card.
"So Goku it....Huh."
As he was ready to spend billions to get Goku here, he felt something from his Gate of Babylon. And before he could understand what was going on, a huge fiery bird appeared in front of him after coming out of the Gate.