Everyone's pupils were now filled with the blinding azure light. Even after it faded, the afterimage lingered—blue radiance and, within it, the silhouette of that shadowy, gray-black figure.
"Quill, looks like your father's dead," Drax muttered blankly.
"Who is this guy?" Gamora stared at Gene's figure, quietly floating in the air. "I've never heard of anyone like him in the entire universe. Not even Thanos might be able to wield this kind of power."
"…Strong," Nebula said coldly.
Gene hovered silently above, as if waiting for something. Though it seemed moments ago he'd obliterated Ego's avatar, he knew the battle was far from over—because Ego's true body was the planet itself. More precisely, Ego's consciousness was stored within the planet's core.
And, just as Gene expected…
"Mortal, today you will learn the price of defying a god!" The voice, laced with fury and hysteria, seemed to come from the very planet beneath him. At Gene's feet, a colossal face—seething with unparalleled rage—formed from the surface itself.
The face appeared sculpted from stone, capturing Ego's expression with uncanny precision. Two crimson eyes blazed from within, locking on Gene's dark, floating silhouette. Since gaining sentience, Ego had never been driven to such humiliation. He was a Celestial—how dare a mere mortal push him this far? It was unthinkable.
Gene's earlier energy beam had completely scattered Ego's energy-form, forcing the self-proclaimed god to admit that his avatar alone was no match. He would need… far greater power.
Not far from Ego's orbit, a spacecraft was speeding toward the planet—Yondu's ship, carrying Rocket and Groot. After quelling a mutiny aboard his own vessel, Yondu had teamed up with Rocket and the others to find Star-Lord.
Through the ship's viewport, they could see Ego's upper atmosphere shifting—morphing into the shape of a massive human face, twisted with fury and madness. Its gaping mouth opened and shut in silent screams, giving the unnerving impression that this was not just a planet… but a living, breathing being.
"Well, looks trip's turning into one hell of an adventure," Rocket said, piloting the craft like a dart shooting through Ego's dense atmosphere, racing toward where Star-Lord and the others were.
The ground quaked violently. Rock and soil shaped themselves into enormous limbs—hundreds of kilometers long—swinging toward Gene at incomprehensible speeds. Air compressed into an immense wall, surging toward him like a titanic weapon forged from the atmosphere itself.
Gene's V-shaped visor flashed. Azure light surged from his body, and in an instant he blinked above Ego's giant stone face. A blast from his palm cannon detonated against the rocky forehead, ripping a massive crack across it.
"I told you," Ego roared, "on this planet, I am invincible!"
From the stony visage erupted countless silver-white energy tendrils—unlike the ones Gene had faced before, these radiated immense power. The silver glow bathed Gene's armor until it shone almost pure white.
The planet shook with monstrous quakes. Far away, Star-Lord and the others struggled to stay upright, wide fissures splitting open beneath their feet, silver light flickering deep within the cracks.
"Damn, I've got a bad feeling about this," Quill muttered bitterly. "Why do I feel like we've stumbled into the middle of a catastrophic fight?"
Drax gave him a look as if to say, You're just realizing that now?
Suddenly, a thunderous boom split the air. The ground's tremors intensified, throwing the struggling group off balance. They crashed onto their backsides in unison.
Gene's golden longsword blazed to life. The black-and-gray figure plummeted from the sky, driving the blade straight through Ego's massive rocky face. But piercing the surface wasn't enough—Gene's form dove underground, carving through everything in his path with the Vishanti's Holy Sword. He tunneled forward like the universe's most advanced drill, racing toward the planet's core—the storage place of Ego's consciousness.
Ego fought with all his might to halt Gene's advance, finally managing to stop him mere hundreds of meters from the core. Feeling that spike of mortal danger, Ego's body trembled involuntarily. How does this mortal know? How does he know my weakness?
From Ego's core, blinding silver-white light erupted, engulfing Gene entirely. The searing brilliance shot up through the fissures, piercing the heavens and lancing into space.
Vast tracts of land trembled and heaved, as if they could be obliterated at any moment by the overwhelming flood of silver light…
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