Gaia didn't waste time.
As soon as she activated, the whole planet started to change—fast. Old buildings and systems were broken down and rebuilt using advanced technology. Cities floated in the air or moved underground, reshaped to be smarter and more organized.
Gaia made the planet a mix of magic, technology, and nature.
The sky was clean, but full of floating machines that looked like glowing obelisks. Rivers shined at night, carrying both water and information. Even the trees sent messages through their leaves. Animals, some natural and some man-made, roamed free—created in high-tech labs to bring balance back to nature.
At the center of it all was a floating city called Aether Spire. It was alive in a way—changing shape depending on who entered. This city held Gaia's main mind and power. From there, she didn't just rule this planet, but also oversaw all the other worlds Max had taken.
A New Kind of Empire
Max didn't sit on a throne or act like a traditional ruler.
He traveled.
Sometimes he walked around in disguise, watching people live their lives. Other times he visited his warships, where his undead soldiers trained. Or he'd just float in space, thinking quietly while looking at destroyed worlds.
He didn't rule by fear—but by making things better.
There were no rebellions. Why? Because people's lives had improved.
Clean water. No more crime. No sickness. Food for all. Cities that protected themselves. Kids learned faster with upgrades. Old people lived longer and healthier.
It was a near-perfect world… quiet, beautiful, and always being watched—by black, hidden eyes in every wall, tree, and data stream.
"Good, you did great, Gaia," Max said, gazing at the data displays.
Many cauldrons had been created all across the planet. Powerful machines are now made there which now worked to fix this broken world. This planet, three times larger than Earth, had only a population of about 500 million. Most of it had been uninhabitable due to pollution, radiation, and other biohazards.
But now? Gaia's machines were repairing everything.
"Heh… if I had to describe it, it's like Horizon Zero Dawn—but mixed with Cyberpunk," Max muttered with a smirk. "They used bows and arrows there, while here? We've got cyberpunk mechs and implants."
It was a blend of tribal nature and high-tech sci-fi.
He stared out across the world from orbit, imagining what it would look like in the years to come. A real paradise—one built on ashes.
"…But should I leave it here?" he wondered aloud. The planet was over a million light-years from Earth.
"Eh, screw it. Let's bring the whole damn planet."
Max casually said the most absurd thing—like he was moving houses, not dragging an entire planet across galaxies. As if he were just shifting furniture, not pulling a planet from one solar system to another. But that's just how Max rolled.
Max hovered above the stratosphere of his new world, arms folded behind his back, gazing into the distant cosmos with a smirk tugging at his lips.
"Alright, time to make space."
He closed his eyes.
In that moment, the power of the Night Monarch stirred within him—an ancient, divine force of cosmic manipulation, shadow dominion, and stellar authority. The stars seemed to flinch as his presence deepened, as if space itself was holding its breath.
Black tendrils of darkness, glittering with stardust, spread from Max like a celestial web. They pierced through reality—each line anchoring deep into the fabric of spacetime. This wasn't teleportation. It wasn't a wormhole. It was something much greater.
He was rewriting cosmic coordinates.
Planets shifted nervously. Moons paused mid-orbit. Even distant suns flickered once, acknowledging his dominion. This wasn't just power—it was absolute authority over celestial bodies.
The entire planet beneath him trembled, not from fear—but from being lifted.
And then, like a child pocketing a marble, Max plucked the planet out of its galaxy.
No resistance.
It didn't matter that the planet was massive. It didn't matter that it was tethered to a different star system. To Max, it was like stealing candy from a one-month-old—ridiculously easy. An effortless act of divine theft.
Reality tore open in front of him: a swirling breach between galaxies, built from the black threads of Night Monarch law. Through it, Earth's solar system lay ahead, spinning quietly, unaware of what was coming.
Max grinned.
The planet he carried—his empire, his masterpiece—slid smoothly through the breach. The nearby gravitational systems didn't even have time to resist before the planet slotted itself in orbit, just beyond Neptune.
The Ninth Planet.
Perfectly stable. No disruptions to Earth. No chaos.
Only awe.
The skies across Earth flickered faintly that night. Astronomers would scramble, debate, argue about the sudden arrival of a massive celestial body, completely missed by all known science.
They would name it, map it, theorize about it.
But for Max?
It was simply home base.
Hovering just above the newly placed world, Max stretched.
"Alright, job done," he muttered. "Now... let's see how long it takes before the Earth starts freaking out."
He chuckled to himself, hands in his pockets, floating in orbit like a bored god.
Max drifted down toward the surface of Horizon, the Ninth Planet, his new dominion. The skies were clear, painted in tones of soft neon against a clean ozone-blue. From orbit, it looked peaceful—like a reborn Earth, yet far more advanced.
But beneath the surface, deep within the planet's crust, lay a hidden sanctuary known only to Max.
A place no one—no AI, no god, no invader—could find without his will.
He stepped through the air, vanishing into shadow as a veil of void opened like a curtain. When he emerged, it was into the core base of Horizon: The Hollow Mausoleum.
It was a sprawling, black-stone fortress suspended within a vast cavern of crystalized starlight and humming ley lines. Bioluminescent machines crawled along the walls, maintaining ancient devices whose designs blended cosmic tech and ritualistic runes.
In the heart of the Mausoleum stood Gaia's central core—a massive crystalline heart, protected by sixteen shifting containment fields, layered with temporal encryption and spatial locks.
It pulsed slowly, alive.
"Even if some genius manages to trace her code centuries from now," Max muttered, "they'll never reach her."
He walked past the core and toward the eastern wing of the sanctum—a structure far more personal.
His private mansion.
***
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