When he first planted the Gaia Core into this dead rock, Horizon was nothing but a graveyard—a hollow sphere drenched in radiation, stripped of life, riddled with scars from ancient wars. Poisoned oceans. Sky blackened with toxic storms. Entire continents cracked and broken.
And yet, now?
Now it looked like this.
Because Max had done something no sane god—or man—should even think about.
He accelerated time.
Not a year. Not a century. A thousand years, compressed into a shimmering sphere of temporal distortion that wrapped the entire planet. Gaia's algorithms micromanaged evolution, sculpted the land like clay, resurrected ecosystems, and fused them with cutting-edge tech. Cities weren't built—they grew, born from adaptive nanoforges and living metal.
Forests weren't planted—they surged into existence like emerald oceans spilling across the land, their roots drinking clean rivers engineered molecule by molecule.
The sky wasn't empty—it sang. Threaded with auroras, latticed with orbital megastructures camouflaged as constellations, all part of Horizon's defensive grid.
The planet didn't just live. It thrived.
And every square inch of it carried Max's signature.
But Horizon didn't just become a paradise because of him. It changed because it had to survive.
When Max annihilated the Armangda Pirate Dominion and burned their empire to ashes, Horizon's old masters died screaming. The planet was free—too free. Their systems collapsed, their slaver codes wiped out, and for a time, Horizon fell silent.
But silence breeds rebirth.
Gaia accelerated time, yes, but she didn't overwrite culture. She let it evolve.
The remnants of the old pirate clans? The ragged slaves who once tilled poisoned soil? They adapted. They rebuilt. And over a thousand years of subjective time—compressed to mere days for Max—they didn't just survive. They transcended.
Now, Horizon's people walked streets of chrome and light. Neon-drenched spires clawed at the skies. Hoverbikes streaked through magnetic highways suspended above the clouds. Augment clinics pulsed with Nano-tech circuits, grafting flesh and steel into perfect synergy.
They weren't primitive tribes anymore. They were post-human dynasties, dripping with cybernetic elegance, their bloodlines interwoven with arcane biotech. Criminal syndicates thrived in glittering undercities where holographic idols preached chaos, while corporate monarchies ruled from towers like obsidian spears piercing aurora-streaked heavens.
A thousand years of evolution—guided by Gaia's silent hand—had birthed a civilization straight out of Cyberpunk's fever dreams… but sharper, harder, perfected. Their fashion was neon and ritual scars. Their weapons hummed with soulsteel edges. Their data-churches were temples where AI-oracles whispered scripture in streams of pure code.
This wasn't just a planet anymore. It was a living narrative—a hybrid of post-apocalyptic rebirth, cybernetic transhumanism, and Horizon's own signature magic.
And Max? He didn't micromanage it. He just set the stage, let time play out, and now he was back to admire the masterpiece.
He didn't say any of that out loud, of course. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, letting the wind ruffle his hair while the girls tried to process what they were seeing.
Gwen broke the silence first. "So let me get this straight," she said slowly, turning to him with an expression that was half disbelief, half something like awe. "You didn't just terraform a planet. You fast-forwarded it by a millennium?"
Max tilted his head, pretending to think. "Nine hundred and eighty-seven years," he corrected casually. "Give or take."
Mu Qing's brows knit together. "How… is that even possible?"
"Temporal compression fields," Max replied like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "I bent causality around the planet, anchored it to Horizon's core lattice, then pumped the energy through Gaia's zero-point reactor." He shrugged. "Easy stuff."
Lan Xue stared at him like he'd just said he baked a cake. "That's… that's not easy. That's…" She trailed off, unable to find the words.
"Insane?" Gwen supplied.
Lan Xue nodded faintly.
Max grinned. "Yeah, well. I get bored."
They started walking across the bridge, the view opening up as the path curved toward a vast floating terrace. From here, they could see sprawling sky cities levitating above crystal plains, their architecture a flawless marriage of arcane runes and neon-lit alloys. Hovering gardens drifted lazily among them, tethered by shimmering mana-cables that pulsed like veins of light.
Below, bioluminescent rivers snaked through lush jungles, glowing softly under twin suns that bathed the horizon in molten gold. Herds of bio-engineered beasts—half organic, half machine—moved across rolling fields like living sculptures of chrome and bone.
Further away, holo-billboards the size of mountains shimmered above a neon metropolis where maglev rails coiled like serpents, and black-market drones zipped between temples of steel and glass adorned with glowing prayer circuits.
Mu Qing let out a quiet gasp. "It's… alive. All of it."
"Of course it is," Max said simply. "Gaia doesn't just manage the planet—she is the planet now. Every tree, every stone, every particle of air is part of her neural grid. Horizon is more than a world. It's a living system."
Gwen gave a low whistle. "You basically built a god."
Max smirked. "Correction. I forged one."
The girls fell silent at that, taking it all in—the impossible scale, the seamless perfection, the quiet hum of an entire world designed to be eternal. And now, shaped by a thousand years of unbroken evolution, populated by a culture that worshipped neon and power, Horizon felt less like a planet… and more like a dream with teeth.
And then Max stopped suddenly, turning to face them with that familiar glint in his eyes."Tell you what," he said lightly. "Why don't you guys start living here from now on?"
That made them freeze.
"…Wait," Gwen said slowly. "You mean… actually live here? Like… permanently?"
"Sure," Max said, as if inviting them to move into an apartment downtown. "You've seen your rooms in the mansion, right? That's just the starting point. Horizon is yours as much as mine."
"Now," Max said, shoving his hands into his pockets again, his tone casual but his eyes gleaming with something sharper, "no matter what happens… you'll always have a place here."
They didn't respond right away. How could they? They were standing on a world that shouldn't exist—a world sculpted by one man's will and a godlike AI. A paradise of light and steel and magic, layered with a thousand years of history that unfolded while Earth was still counting days.
A world that felt like the future itself.
And now… it was theirs, too.
***
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