Rocket, who was currently transforming the spaceship with mechanical precision, pretended to be calm despite the emotional turmoil from the sky screen conversation with Yondu. What had happened with the High Evolutionary was a nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life - the screams of his friends, the cold indifference of his creators, the endless experiments that had torn him apart and rebuilt him into something that was neither fully animal nor fully machine.
Captain America glanced at the small raccoon working intently on the ship's systems and said gently, "Although we haven't met much, I can see that Yondu is right about you. Don't think too much about protecting yourself from caring! Just accept the care from your friends and family. It will be a good thing for you and them!"
Rocket shrugged his shoulders dismissively and continued minding his own business, his paws moving deftly over the complex wiring. Captain America could only sigh slightly when he saw this reaction. He didn't know much about Rocket's traumatic past and didn't know how to persuade someone who had been hurt so deeply to open his heart again.
Meanwhile, Thor and the Dwarf King Eitri and others were engaged in heated discussion about how they should restart the massive forge and find suitable materials for the weapons they desperately needed.
Eitri had ready-made Uru steel and the proper molds stored in his workshop, but the handle material for Stormbreaker had been destroyed when Thanos and his forces had invaded Nidavellir and slaughtered most of the dwarven population.
Before Captain Marvel and the others had arrived at the space forge, Thor had made a journey back to the Asgard and found the right material from Odin's treasure vault - a small but incredibly powerful branch of Yggdrasil, the World Tree itself!
Captain Marvel flew toward the frozen star ring that encircled the dormant forge, closing her eyes as golden cosmic energy began to escape from her body in brilliant streams. She began to fly in precise circles close to the massive ring structure, her energy signature growing brighter with each pass.
Her speed increased exponentially, and then she used the tremendous inertia she had built up to start pushing against the star ring with her full cosmic might. The incredible force she exerted directly caused sections of metal on the ring to begin buckling and warping under the stress, but the ancient dwarven engineering held firm and the star ring withstood the enormous force she was applying.
Captain Marvel strained against the ring, her energy flaring like a newborn star, and slowly the massive structure began to rotate. The frozen center core also began to turn for the first time in years, and the thick layers of ice that had accumulated on its surface began to crack and shatter continuously, falling away in enormous chunks until the forge was finally and successfully reactivated.
The huge star ring began to revolve around the central core with increasing speed, and the core itself began to glow with the intense heat needed for cosmic-level metalworking. Streams of stellar energy flowed through channels that had been cold and dark since Thanos's attack.
Both Eitri and Thor started to get genuinely excited, their faces lighting up with hope for the first time in months. "This is Nidavellir!" Eitri proclaimed with pride, his massive hands already reaching for his tools. "The greatest forge in all the Nine Realms lives again!"
Then Eitri began the complex process of forging Stormbreaker according to the ancient plans stored in his memory. At the same time, he had agreed to recast Mjolnir, the legendary hammer. This divine weapon had experienced countless battles across the centuries and had actually suffered significant internal damage long ago. It was only because of Odin's powerful enchantments and divine power that it had been able to maintain such devastating capabilities.
It was precisely because of the violent collision between Odin's divine magic and Dormammu's corrupting dark power during their ancient conflict that too much of the hammer's core energy had been consumed over time, which had caused hairline cracks to spread throughout its structure. What Eitri planned to do was not only repair this accumulated damage but also imbue it with even more powerful cosmic energies than it had possessed before.
[Gamora stormed into the room with Nebula close behind her, both of them in a towering rage. Seeing Mantis sitting peacefully and talking to Drax as if nothing was wrong, Gamora's fury exploded. She rushed across the room, grabbed Mantis by her slender neck, and slammed her against the nearest wall with bone-jarring force.]
["Who are you really? Where on earth is this place?!!" Gamora's voice was filled with deadly menace, her assassin training taking over completely.]
[Drax hurriedly stepped forward and tried to intervene: "Gamora! Let her go! She's not our enemy!"]
[Gamora completely ignored Drax's desperate pleas, her eyes blazing with murderous intent as she tightened her grip, "Those bodies in the cave... mountains of bones... Who are they?!! Tell me the truth!"]
[Mantis was being strangled and was rapidly losing the ability to breathe, her face turning blue. In desperation, she had no choice but to use her empathic abilities directly on Gamora: "You are afraid!" she gasped out.]
[As the delicate antennae on her forehead began to radiate brilliant white light, her powerful synesthetic connection was immediately transmitted to Gamora through physical contact, flooding her mind with overwhelming emotional feedback.]
[Gamora's expression changed dramatically as foreign emotions crashed into her consciousness, and she immediately released her grip and staggered backward several steps, feeling waves of terror and horror washing over her like a tsunami of fear.]
[On the other side of the planet, Ego continued his patient work of instilling his grand plan into Star-Lord's increasingly receptive mind, "I call it the Expansion! This has been my ultimate goal for millennia! And now! It will become your goal too, my son!"]
[Countless holographic planets materialized and were projected in the air around them, creating a three-dimensional map of the galaxy. There was a distinctive spot on each planet that pulsed with eerie blue-white light. Star-Lord looked up at the hundreds of planets surrounding them with an increasingly vacant look in his eyes as Ego's influence grew stronger: "Special... or not..." he mumbled.]
["For thousands of years, I have carefully planted thousands of extensions of myself on thousands of worlds across the universe! I have been preparing for the only true purpose that life can serve! To grow... to spread... to cover all existence! Until everything... every living thing... becomes me!" Ego's voice rose with messianic fervor.]
[On the detailed screen hovering in front of them, the projection showed Ego in his humanoid form taking a flower that glowed with intense blue and white energy from within his own chest cavity and carefully planting it deep in alien soil.]
[The roots of this seemingly innocent flower immediately began to spread with frightening speed, penetrating through layers of rock and soil, burrowing through the planet's crust, and extending all the way down into the molten core itself. The scene shifted to show a cross-section view as the blue-white energy began to expand outward from the insertion point, rapidly engulfing and completely consuming the entire planet in a wave of transformation!]
[This consumption was not merely surface-level destruction, but rather a complete and total replacement from the molecular level outward, rewriting the very essence of matter itself until these once-unique worlds became nothing more than extensions of Ego's consciousness.]
Nova Prime's eyes filled with absolute shock and growing horror. She hadn't expected Ego to harbor such monumentally destructive ambitions! The scope of his plan was beyond anything the Nova Corps had ever encountered.
She immediately spun around and fixed her gaze on Rhomann Dey, her expression grim with urgency.
"Go! Mobilize every available unit and search all the land on Xandar at maximum priority! Search every single inch of our world! You must find this flower if it exists here!" Her voice carried the authority of someone who understood that their entire civilization might hang in the balance.
"Yes, sir!!!" Rhomann Dey snapped a crisp salute and immediately rushed out of the command center to coordinate the planet-wide search.
After Rhomann Dey left to organize the emergency response, Nova Prime quickly opened communication channels and ordered all planets under Nova Corps protection to begin immediate and comprehensive searches for any sign of Ego's biological weapons.
At the same time, word of Ego's terrifying expansion plan spread throughout the galaxy, and civilizations across multiple sectors fell into widespread panic. Governments began massive planetary self-examination operations, deploying every available scanner and sensor array, desperately fearing that Ego's genocidal plan would succeed and that their worlds would become mere stepping stones in his path to universal domination.
Nova Prime remained standing in the command center, staring out at the stars, not daring to imagine what would happen to the trillions of beings under her protection if Ego's expansion plan actually succeeded.
She thought of the Guardians of the Galaxy team currently facing this threat, so she turned to Captain Denarian Saal: "Open a secure channel to the Guardians of the Galaxy. Tell them that the Nova Corps is willing to commit every resource we have to help them fight against Ego!"
Saal looked uncertain and questioned her decision, "Will Star-Lord even stand on our side? That monster is his father! Look at the footage - he's becoming completely immersed in Ego's evil plan!"
Nova Prime's voice carried absolute conviction: "Yes! I believe he will choose to stand with the innocent when the moment comes! Peter Quill has saved our world before. Now, prepare our entire fleet for potential combat operations!"
[Gamora's face was filled with absolute horror, her normally steady voice now trembling with a fear she had rarely experienced, "What did you do to me?"]
[Drax stepped closer, his expression grave: "She has told me everything about this place!"]
[Mantis struggled to stand, rubbing her bruised throat, "Those corpses in the cavern are all his children! Every single skeleton belongs to one of Ego's offspring!"]
[Back in the grand hall, Ego continued his seductive explanation: "I have just one question for you to consider, Peter! One god alone doesn't have sufficient energy to accomplish such a monumental feat across the entire universe! But two gods working in perfect harmony! Well! Then maybe such a transformation can actually be accomplished!"]
[Influenced by his father's hypnotic words and cosmic power, Star-Lord slowly turned his head and looked directly at Ego with growing understanding and terrible acceptance.]
["My favorite part of everything I do," Ego continued with disturbing enthusiasm, "is trying to graft my superior divine DNA onto other species! To see if I can create more beings like us!"]
[On the screen beside him, holographic images showed Ego throughout history, taking human form to court and kiss several human women of different ethnicities and backgrounds. The scene rapidly changed to show seven or eight females of various alien species, then more and more appeared - dozens, then hundreds of different beings. They were so numerous and diverse that the screen could hardly contain all the images at once.]
["I had hoped that such extensive biological pairings would be enough to provide the energy source needed for universal expansion. I contracted Yondu to deliver some of my offspring to me for testing. This was strictly against the sacred code of the Ravagers, but I compensated him very generously for breaking his people's laws!"]
[The scene shifted to show Yondu striding purposefully into a massive warehouse alongside Rocket, both of them moving with grim determination.]
["And to help ease his troubled conscience, I promised him I would never hurt any of the children! That part was actually true - they felt no pain when I discovered their inadequacy! But they all disappointed me, one by one, generation after generation! None of them carried the divine spark, the celestial power that flows through my essence! Until you appeared, Peter! Until you proved yourself worthy!"]