Faster! Faster! FASTER!
A single thought consumed David's essence as he surged through the void—to merge completely with the Celestial's soul.
BZZZZZ!
What felt like an eternity compressed into a single moment.
The next instant, warmth enveloped his true spirit—like an infant returning to its mother's embrace.
He had successfully entered the god's soul!
His elation was indescribable. Pure essence supported by the surrounding soul energy, David's consciousness began to restore itself. He greedily absorbed the immaculate soul energy surrounding him, strengthening his fragmented awareness.
Gradually, clarity returned. He was David—a sorcerer in pursuit of eternity.
The world had vilified him endlessly, yet he harbored no regrets. His heart contained only twin obsessions: immortality and godhood.
As his consciousness stabilized, David reluctantly ceased absorbing the surrounding soul energy. Not from lack of desire—but from recognition of his limits. Further absorption risked shattering his true spirit entirely.
This was indeed a god's soul. Even as merely a vessel, the energy it contained resembled an infinite ocean whose boundaries David could not perceive.
The minuscule portion he had managed to absorb was comparable to extracting a single drop from the vast seas. And that solitary drop represented the absolute maximum he could safely integrate.
Despite this sobering reality, excitement surged through David as he attempted to assert control over the colossal divine soul.
A soul without its conscious essence was like an animal operating on pure instinct—no intelligence, only primal reactions. It should be easily deceived, easily controlled.
However...
David made a devastating discovery. He could control the god's soul—but only an infinitesimal fraction of it.
The divine soul was simply too vast.
All he managed was the equivalent of flexing a single finger on a cosmic hand.
Upon this realization, bitter irony flooded David's awareness. He had meticulously suppressed a fragment of divine essence, sacrificed his physical form and soul to serve as a medium for control.
He had succeeded in entering the Celestial's soul and gaining nominal control—yet simultaneously failed because the soul's sheer magnitude exceeded his capacity to direct it.
How cruelly unfair!
After all his careful planning and ruthless sacrifice, he stood just half a step from total victory. The Celestial soul was simply too enormous for his true spirit to command fully.
A realization dawned upon him as his thoughts drifted to the original divine essence sphere they had captured. This explained why the god's true essence and soul existed separately—the essence itself had not fully matured and could not yet control its intended vessel.
Comparing the size of the divine essence sphere to his own true spirit, David's consciousness filled with despair.
His essence, while not small by sorcerer standards—roughly the size of an infant's hand—was dwarfed by the divine sphere, which had been approximately half the size of an adult human.
David's metaphysical form quivered with anguish and desolation.
After everything he had sacrificed...
This was his reward?
Had he retained his physical form, he would have vomited blood from sheer rage. But now he existed only as true spirit—his body and soul had been sacrificed in his attempt to seize divinity.
He now possessed nothing beyond his presence within this uncontrollable divine vessel.
The cosmic irony crushed him. He had spent every resource at his disposal to reach the vault containing ultimate power, only to discover he lacked the key to open it.
No words could adequately express his frozen rage, his despair, his bitter anguish.
He had been defeated by his own ambition.
David's true spirit remained suspended within the divine soul, gradually integrating with the surrounding soul energy. The amber sigil marking his presence slowly began transforming and expanding.
He noticed this development but felt no joy—only continuing despair.
Calculating based on his true spirit's current growth rate, he realized the horrifying timeline: to reach a size comparable to the divine essence sphere would require far more than a mere century—at minimum, a thousand years, likely longer.
Even then, fully controlling this immense divine soul would demand tens of thousands of years.
This realization triggered another wave of anguish. He could endure waiting—he possessed the patience—but external reality made such a timeline impossible.
Beyond this divine realm waited Mephisto, Dormammu, and numerous fallen sorcerers. Not to mention Asgard and Kamar-Taj. If necessary, Odin himself and the Sorcerer Supreme would inevitably intervene.
Under such circumstances, how much time realistically remained? A month? Perhaps only hours or days before he would be shattered along with the god's soul.
What meaning did time hold when oblivion loomed so near?
Suddenly David understood why neither Dormammu nor Mephisto had attempted to control the Celestial soul directly—they recognized the impossibility of immediate success.
No wonder the Celestials were so rare, their birth so difficult. Beyond the temporal requirements, the cultivation of both soul and true essence demanded perfect alignment before consciousness could emerge.
WHY?
Desperate hopelessness confronted him still.
Yet surrender remained unthinkable. After all his sacrifices—even betraying Kamar-Taj and allying with cosmic entities of evil—to fall because of such a ridiculous miscalculation...
It was beyond absurd.
No, he would not simply accept defeat. He refused to wait passively for death.
He could die standing, but never kneeling.
A ruthless determination crystallized within David's essence.
WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!
He began absorbing the surrounding soul energy with renewed purpose, accelerating the strengthening of his true spirit. Simultaneously, he discovered he could navigate quickly within this vast soul-body.
He would search for an escape route—or better yet, a central nexus point that might assist him in controlling the soul. Hope flickered within him. His original soul and body, though transformed into energy, had not yet been completely assimilated by the divine soul.
As David frantically absorbed the Celestial's soul energy, his amber soul-mark gradually acquired a platinum tinge.
________________________________________
Mephisto and Dormammu flew side by side, the captured divine essence suspended between them.
The sphere of consciousness was enormous—at least half the height of a person. Mephisto regarded it with undisguised hunger in his ancient eyes.
Compared to a physical body, a soul represented the true essence of divinity. And compared to the soul, the conscious essence embodied divinity's purest expression. Its value transcended ordinary treasures.
Behind the two cosmic entities followed a contingent of fallen sorcerers, watching their every movement with thinly veiled suspicion.
Even the most dim-witted among them recognized the divine essence's incalculable worth. They knew that if either Mephisto or Dormammu decided to claim it, they would face a battle beyond their capacity to win.
After all, these were merely avatars of the true entities—their original forms having suffered grievous damage from previous encounters with the Sorcerer Supreme.
Fear dominated their thoughts, keeping their vigilance razor-sharp.
Suddenly...
Dormammu's voice reached Mephisto, carrying a half-amused tone.
"Mephisto, do you believe David's plan has any chance of success?"