Chapter 171: Good Citizen Kratos

From a distance, Atreus glared at the enraged Luthor and spat angrily: "Now you want to talk about rules? You tried to kill my wild dad, and you expect me to follow rules?"

Catwoman shivered. "What's he going to do?"

"His only option is to seek even stronger force. We'll soon find out what his trump card is."

Atreus shot an arrow at Lex, signaling that the only path left for him was to resort to force.

And Atreus, the time traveler, knew all too well what Lex's final move would be.

So, Lex Luthor could only be a loser!

At least by the next day, Lex was still desperately struggling.

He had a restless night, waking up easily at the slightest sound.

Sure enough, when his secretary, Mercy, knocked on his hospital room door, he immediately pressed the button to let her in.

The secretary, with a serious expression, said, "Boss! Bad news, our research on General Zod has been exposed."

Lex quickly turned on the TV, and as expected, there was a crowd protesting in front of the LexCorp building, named after him. They were shouting slogans like:

"No to bio-research!"

"Investigate LexCorp!"

"We've had enough! No more lizard monsters!"

The TV screen showed mostly protesters holding signs, making a loud ruckus, while a TV anchor narrated:

"This is an exclusive report by renowned journalist Lois Lane. After obtaining the body of Kryptonian General Zod, who caused chaos on Earth, LexCorp has been conducting forbidden experiments on the corpse. There's evidence that Mr. Lex Luthor himself is involved in the project and intends to turn the corpse into a super-monster capable of destroying half of the United States."

The next scenes were supposed to be classified, but the footage showed Lex inviting Senator Finch to see Kryptonite, along with scenes of him personally visiting the lab where Zod’s body was kept.

Anyone could see that Zod was no longer just a corpse—he had turned into something resembling a cocoon, with clear signs of biological tissue pulsing inside.

Even if these images were fake, they would still be enough to give Lex a headache.

But Lex knew better than anyone that it was all, unfortunately, true.

He couldn't withstand an investigation.

At this point, Mercy whispered, "Atreus Wayne, the master of using scandals to short stocks, has already started shorting our company's stock. This is accelerating the Luthor Corp stock crash."

At that moment, Lex's face resembled his stock prices—pale and drained of life.

It took him a full half-minute before he frantically dialed a subordinate's number—he had already uncovered Superman’s true identity through secret channels. According to the plan, his men would attack Superman’s childhood home and kidnap his mother, Martha, while Superman was at work.

"Hey, boss! What's up?"

"How's the plan?"

"We’re almost at the target location…"

Before the voice could finish, Mercy suddenly looked horrified. "Boss! Our surveillance on Clark Kent has lost him."

Lex felt a deep sense of foreboding.

Less than a minute later, fate showed how misfortune never comes alone.

He hadn’t even hung up the phone with his subordinate when a scream came from the other side: “Ah! Superman—”

Then there was static, followed by an angry male voice: "Lex Luthor! You've gone too far!"

As they say, even misfortune should spare family.

Lex had stooped so low, trying to blackmail Superman by kidnapping his mother. Even someone as noble as Superman couldn't tolerate that.

Panicking, Lex hung up the phone, and his first thought was: Who sold me out?

(Atreus: It was me!)

Since Atreus had already tipped off Superman’s girlfriend, why wouldn’t he also leak the kidnapping plan?

Betraying Lex didn't weigh on Atreus’s conscience at all.

While Lex was scrambling to escape and rush to the lab where he was modifying Zod’s body, on the other side, Faora, who had been quietly serving Atreus, suddenly leapt up after hearing the news report on TV. Her face turned deathly pale: "Master, can you tell me more about this Lex Luthor?"

The former Kryptonian deputy officer was visibly shaking with fury, her body trembling despite her seemingly delicate frame.

Atreus smiled. "Of course."

The revelations on TV kept coming. Soon, a "well-informed source" who had been paid by Atreus revealed that Senator Finch had accepted bribes from Lex Luthor. On the surface, he claimed to serve the people, but in reality, it was Lex's plan to lure Superman to his death, then turn him into a super-monster to overthrow the government and rule the Earth.

This sort of story would have been laughed off as a joke in the past, but with half of LexCorp's reputation in ruins, even the most outrageous lies started to seem plausible.

Even the bigwigs in the White House couldn’t stay calm. Orders were given to investigate LexCorp and check if Zod’s body had been tampered with.

Atreus wasn’t falsely accusing Lex; the man was guilty, and he would not survive the scrutiny.

When the executives couldn’t reach Lex, their crisis instincts kicked in, and they immediately contacted Nick Fury.

Thanks to his professional instincts, Fury quickly ordered half of the Avengers to assemble, along with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s special operations unit.

The mighty LexCorp was collapsing at lightning speed!

The sudden downfall left even the Wall Street wolves, who were shorting LexCorp stocks alongside Atreus, slack-jawed.

Instead of police cars with sirens blaring, it was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Quinjet fleet that rushed to LexCorp, with the National Guard's Humvees and armored vehicles only relegated to blocking off the perimeter.

With things going so downhill, someone still kept stirring the pot.

"Hey, great Batman! I, Kratos is reporting to you—Lex Luthor plans to kidnap Superman’s mother and use her to blackmail Superman into killing you."

When Kratos’ bald head appeared on the video call, Bruce Wayne had the sudden urge to disown his wild child.

When it came to "business," Bruce was always professional. Silently putting on the Bat-mask, he became the justice-seeking Batman in that instant, no longer some rogue like Atreus’s wild dad.

"I see Lex’s men heading towards Superman’s parents' small farm." Batman had secretly hacked into the surveillance systems in Gotham and even New York.

In fact, he and Tony Stark were a perfect duo, constantly playing around with secret surveillance systems.

(End of Chapter)