At the edge of the Sun's turbulent core, Mark Grayson floated in a sea of energy, like an infant returning to the womb.
The star's furious and endless light and heat had now become his best healing elixir.
The terrifying wounds left by Old Mark were slowly but steadily healing; shattered bones reassembled, torn tissues regenerated, and depleted energy reserves refilled.
But this process was not without pain.
In an unconscious stupor, Mark's mind was once again dragged into deep dreams.
Initially, it was a repetition of the fierce battle from not long ago.
Old Mark's twisted, mutated body, his murky yellow whirlpool eyes, and his terrifying, unkillable, constantly evolving, and madly devouring characteristics lunged at him again and again.
In his dream, he once again felt the powerlessness of his strength draining away, the excruciating pain of bone spurs piercing his body...
However, just as the dream's torment reached its peak, the scene shattered and reassembled!
He was no longer in a confined battlefield but floating in the boundless depths of outer space.
Before him unfolded a war he could not comprehend, of a scale so immense it transcended the limits of imagination!
Countless bizarre warships filled his entire vision, their numbers so vast that it seemed as if all the stars in the universe had transformed into instruments of war.
Energy beams intertwined like a torrential downpour, each volley capable of dimming an entire star system.
Gigantic, planet-sized bio-weapons clashed in the center of the battlefield, their every collision causing spatial distortions and dimensional tremors.
He saw some figures emanating a familiar aura.
Similar to the Titan Clan, yet even more ancient and powerful, they wielded the power of rules, obliterating enemy fleets along with space itself.
He also saw on the other side, those beings emanating cold, chaotic, and nauseating auras.
They varied in form; some were like colossal chunks of flesh-planets covered in eyes and mouths, while others were pure aggregations of shadow, devouring even light in their wake.
That was the army of the Great Old Ones and their kin!
Two torrents collided furiously in the cosmos, with billions of lives perishing every second, and stars being detonated as weapons.
The scale of the war was so immense that Mark felt the entire Multiverse had become a colossal battlefield, a mad slaughterhouse hurtling towards self-destruction.
This nightmare-like war seemed to last for billions of years, yet also felt like a mere instant.
Eventually, everything came to an end.
He witnessed an ultimate explosion, indescribable in words, a culmination of all the combatants' final power.
There was no sound, only an extreme light.
That light devoured everything—warships, monsters, stars, space, time... everything disintegrated and dissipated within the light.
The entire Multiverse, in this incomprehensible ultimate war, met a complete, destructive end.
A cataclysmic explosion that swept everything away!
In the dream, Mark's consciousness floated in this pure, post-nihilistic void; nothing remained but endless, cold emptiness.
It was in this absolute void that he saw a point.
An extremely tiny, yet tenaciously existing, black speck.
It floated in the void, as if it were the last remnant of all existence, or perhaps something even more ancient and fundamental, proof of its continued existence after the birth and death of the Multiverse.
Mark's consciousness was involuntarily drawn to that black speck.
He felt the speck was somewhat familiar; a vague tremor from the depths of his soul made him want to approach, to see more clearly...
However, just as his consciousness was about to touch the black speck, an irresistible wave of fatigue and darkness surged over him, dragging him into an even deeper, dreamless slumber...
...
In the real Multiverse, the Sun continued to shine, but the various factions monitoring Mark's fate were in turmoil due to his silence.
Regent Mark of Universe 1 could not stay indefinitely; after confirming that Mark of Universe 9's vital signs were stable and continuously improving, he prepared to return.
"My Multiverse also faces threats; I cannot be away for long," he told Rui Jia and the Alliance high command, his tone, though still stern, unusually carried a hint of explanation.
He looked at Rui Jia, this brave woman who had fallen in love with him in another Multiverse, a rare complex emotion flashing in his red eyes.
"He will sleep in the Sun for some time, perhaps days, perhaps months; this is a necessary process for deep recovery."
Regent Mark handed Rui Jia a data core.
"This contains some data on Viltrum energy technology and basic stellar energy utilization; it might be helpful to you.
Guard this place, and wait for him to return."
He said no more, turned, boarded his shuttle, and vanished in a spatial fluctuation.
His arrival and departure were like a brief storm, leaving behind hope and advanced technology, while also taking away some uncertainties.
The Alliance and the GDA organization began urgent aftermath and work.
Director Cecil utilized some of the technology left by Regent Mark to accelerate the upgrade of Earth's defense network, while Len and Eve assisted in training a new generation of super-human warriors to counter potential future threats.
After the initial shock, interstellar society gradually returned to order, but the story of Guardian Mark's epic battle with an unknown terrifying creature in the Solar System, and his eventual plunge into the Sun for healing, had already become part of countless civilizations' legends, sparking widespread discussion, research, and vigilance against unknown threats.
...
Meanwhile, in an extremely secluded corner of the Multiverse, within the Titan Clan's secret research base, a different scene unfolded.
Three Titan Avatars surrounded the powerfully restrained, constantly fluctuating dark energy sphere, which was Old Mark's compressed form.
Their lights flickered erratically, revealing a suppressed excitement and greed.
"Perfect... a perfect prototype for a bio-weapon..." a Titan Avatar's thought waves were filled with fanaticism.
"Infinite evolution, immortal characteristics, and it can devour enemies to strengthen itself..."
"We only need to erase the corrupt consciousness within it and implant our clan's loyalty imprint..." another Avatar interjected.
"It will become the Titan Clan's most powerful spear and shield! Conquering disobedient civilizations, fending off external threats... even confronting those so-called Great Old Ones!"
"Begin; execute the 'Purification' and 'Loyalty Implantation' protocols."
The leading Avatar issued the command.
Powerful Titan technology, specifically designed for consciousness and energy structures, was activated.
Countless delicate energy filaments, composed of pure energy, extended from the surrounding instruments, piercing into the energy sphere, attempting to forcibly strip away the corrupting imprint left by the Great Old Ones and flush out its inherent chaotic consciousness, preparing to implant core commands of absolute loyalty to the Titan Clan.
The process initially seemed smooth.
The energy sphere's fluctuations gradually subsided, and the darkness on its surface appeared to be significantly purified.
But the Titans did not notice, or rather, selectively ignored some subtle anomalies: the most primordial Great Old Ones' corrosive energy, stripped away, was not completely eliminated as expected, but instead Strangely penetrated went into the instruments, silently spreading backward along the energy circuits...
They also did not know that, in the deepest part of this energy sphere, a highly secret energy thread, connected to a certain supreme being, had never been truly severed.
When the Titan Clan's brainwashing program attempted to reach the core consciousness, this connection suddenly flared brightly!
In a decaying Multiverse, too distant to describe with distance, an unspeakable entity stirred slightly.
Its perceptions, spanning countless dimensions, instantly followed that tiny connection, precisely pinpointing the coordinates of the Titan Clan's hidden base!
"Foolish insects... daring to defile an extension of Me..."
A cold whisper, filled with endless malice, seemed to traverse infinite dimensions, echoing within the research base, yet only audible to the energy sphere.
The Titan Avatars only felt the resistance within the energy sphere suddenly become unusually stubborn; the difficulty of stripping away the Great Old Ones' corruption abruptly doubled.
"Increase power! This filth is more stubborn than imagined!"
The leading Avatar commanded, believing they had encountered a technical problem.
They focused all their energy on the purification program, completely unaware that an invisible, terrifying Avatar was slowly coalescing outside their carefully hidden base.
Shadows began to devour starlight, and the rules of space emitted a silent wail...
The Titan Clan's proud concealment methods were rendered useless before the ancient entity that had locked onto them.
The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it.
The Titan Clan coveted a powerful bio-weapon, yet they were oblivious to the impending crisis of their extinction, and they were still single-mindedly attempting to tame a terrifying power from the deepest darkness that was fundamentally untamable.
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