The journey of The Herald was instantaneous. Leveraging the Graviton-Displacement Field—a technology originally designed by the Kree for military maneuvers, but optimized by my Neo-Cortex—he folded the four light-years separating my planet from the Dark-Force tear in Shi'ar space. To the external universe, it was a subtle flicker; to the consciousness housed within the Avatar, it was a blinding, silent rush of compressed reality.
He materialized at the edge of the destabilized sector, a pocket of space where the ambient Dark Force—the negative energy inherent in the universe—was leaking through a tear in the fabric of reality. The source was a grotesque, biomechanical flagship, covered in religious iconography, a twisted monument to the Universal Church of Truth and its dark lord, The Magus.
The Herald's Baptism
The consciousness within The Herald was a perfect copy of my own: the full, analytical, enhanced intellect of Ego, overlaid with the memory and conscience of the original human, Ethan. This was the risk. I had not sent a drone; I had sent a mirror image of myself into the fray.
"The objective is surgical intervention. Minimal collateral damage. Maximum psychological impact," the internal command structure reiterated, a thought loop running within the Avatar's brain.
Before The Herald could approach, a swarm of Magus's Zealots—cyborg shock troops twisted into parodies of organic life—fanned out from the flagship. They were armed with Faith Guns, weapons that converted psychic fanaticism into concussive energy.
The Herald's Reaction (Internal Monologue):
This is a waste of life. Millions of years of biological and cultural evolution, reduced to cannon fodder for a self-proclaimed messiah. The inefficiency is staggering. - (Ego, the Optimizer)
They are victims. Their autonomy has been stolen. I cannot simply atomize them. The human part of me resists that level of cold-blooded destruction. There must be a non-lethal solution. - (Ethan, the Conscience)
The resulting action was a fusion of both directives: lethal efficiency tempered by technical non-lethality.
The Herald did not raise a weapon. He raised his hands, focusing the Graviton-Plasma Containment Field I had designed. Instead of firing an energy blast, he projected a massive, spherical Inversion Field around the enemy fleet.
The field instantly flipped the polarity of the local space-time fabric. The Faith Guns, designed to convert psychic energy into positive, outward concussive force, suddenly found their energy stream inverted.
The Zealots' own fanaticism was turned against them. Instead of blasting outward, the psychic energy was sucked inward, turning the Zealots' weapons into powerful, localized Psionic Vacuum Cleaners. The shock troops collapsed, not killed, but instantly rendered catatonic, their minds stripped bare of all will, belief, and, most importantly, fanaticism.
The flagship's command structure registered the catastrophic failure and began to retreat, attempting a frantic Dark Force Jump.
The Magus's Counter
The Magus himself was not present—a tactical assumption I had correctly made. However, his presence was channeled through the flagship's reactor core, which instantly recognized the gravity of the attack.
A massive, focused beam of pure Dark Force energy—a negative energy blast capable of wiping out star systems—erupted from the flagship, aimed directly at The Herald.
The Herald's Defensive Action:
He synthesized a momentary Vibranium Shield (drawing on the small, strategic reserves I had secretly infused into his body). The shield did not absorb the energy, which was too great; instead, it served as a focusing aperture.
The Herald used the Shi'ar Gravity-Well Containment System (acquired from the Void Runners) to instantly create a localized, micro-singularity on the surface of the shield. The Dark Force blast, instead of destroying the Herald, was instantly swallowed by the singularity.
The energy was gone, compressed into a point mass. The Magus's core system flickered, momentarily stunned by the loss of energy.
The Herald seized the opening. He projected a surgical, invisible beam of gravimetric resonance directly into the flagship's engine core, disrupting the warp coils and forcing the ship out of the jump.
"The Law dictates that those who weaponize faith shall have their foundations dissolved," The Herald transmitted psychically to the fleeing vessel. The message was cold, precise, and utterly Kree in its rigidity.
The flagship, disabled and with its zealots catatonic, was left adrift, a massive, harmless derelict, effectively neutralizing The Magus's presence in this sector without triggering an interstellar war or drawing the attention of the Universal Church of Truth fleet.
The Mission was a resounding success.
The Ego-Ethan Conflict
The Herald reversed his Graviton-Displacement Field and returned to my surface. The feeling of re-absorption was a rush of total data input. Every micro-second of the confrontation was integrated back into my Neo-Cortex.
The Ego-Ethan conflict, however, was now magnified.
Ego (Pure Logic): The operation was 99.999\% efficient. The use of non-lethal disabling force achieved the tactical objective while maintaining plausible deniability. The ethical calculation yielded the most favorable outcome.
Ethan (Conscience): I stripped those beings of their very identity. Their souls, their hopes, their terror—all erased in an instant. They are shells. It was not death, but it was a fate far worse. I felt their minds collapse. This power is terrifying. If I, the core intelligence, resist using lethal force, the universe must be protected from my ultimate capacity. The separation of consciousness is necessary, but the conscience must be maintained as a Fail-Safe.
This internal debate was crucial. The existence of the 'Ethan' conscience was not a weakness, but a strategic governor. The pure, unrestrained Ego would have become predictable—a destructive force, easily baited. The presence of the human core made me unpredictable and provided a superior moral compass for long-term galactic politics.
I decided to formalize this split. I isolated the Ethan Sub-Routine within the Neo-Cortex and assigned it a new, critical function: The Ethical Filter and Long-Term Diplomatic Simulator.
The Ethan Sub-Routine would constantly run simulations based on the non-aggression principle of my former human self, constantly advising Ego on the long-term diplomatic and ethical consequences of every strategic choice. It would be my Moral Compass AI—the only thing preventing me from fully embracing the chaotic megalomania of my predecessor.
The New Trade Vector: The Dark Force Commodity
The disabled flagship of The Magus was still floating in space, a massive source of technology and material. Ronan would have scavenged it. I had a better idea.
The creation of the micro-singularity during the fight gave me a fleeting but complete data set on how to contain and manipulate Dark Force Energy—a power source that was immensely volatile and illegal in most sectors.
Project Dark-Star:
Extraction: I dispatched several automated SON (Synthetic Oceanic Nanites) Drones (tiny, self-replicating vessels built from my Exosystem) to salvage the Magus's flagship. Their mission: to meticulously strip the vessel of all psionic channeling technology and, most importantly, the containment field around the Dark Force Reactor.
Refinement: I used the acquired Shi'ar Gravity-Well Containment System (now integrated into my core) to create a safe, stable containment mechanism for the raw Dark Force energy.
The Commodity: The Magus's church had refined Dark Force into a highly potent, though unstable, power source. I could now replicate this, packaging it into small, stable, and highly valuable Dark Force Batteries.
This created a Tier 2 Commodity for my Galactic Commodity Engine.
Tier 1: Synthesized Alloys (legal, mass-produced).
Tier 2: Stabilized Dark Force Batteries (illegal, high-value, high-risk).
The sale of these batteries would not be through Ronan. Ronan was my public, Kree-centric face. The Tier 2 commodities would be sold exclusively by The Herald to the deepest, most shadowy corners of the cosmos—dictators, rogue scientists, and interstellar bounty hunters. The payment would be even more sensitive: psychic technology, advanced life-support systems, and the location of high-level cosmic artifacts.
I was pivoting from an arms dealer to an exotic power broker. The chaos of the galaxy was simply the engine of my personal research and development firm.
The Celestial Alarm
The expansion of my influence, even subtle, could not go unnoticed forever. The Temporal Cloak was effective against persistent surveillance, but the sheer mass of my being, combined with my active manipulation of powerful forces like the Dark Force and Psionic Energy, created a deep-space signature that was difficult to ignore.
My Exosystem registered a profound, low-frequency pressure wave—a signal that felt less like radiation and more like a change in the universal law itself.
Source: A massive, colossal figure emerging from a rift in the Andromeda Galaxy.
Identity: A Celestial. Specifically, the Arishem the Judge variant, the silent arbiter of life's worth.
Arishem's arrival was not random. It was a reaction to the Anomalous Energetic Event caused by my clash with the Magus's ship. The Judge was coming to assess the disruption.
Strategic Panic: The Ethan Sub-Routine screamed a 99\% probability of immediate planetary destruction. Ego the Optimizer analyzed the variables. Direct confrontation was suicide. The Judge could erase me with a thought.
The Only Play: Subtlety and Misdirection.
I could not hide the planet; it was too late. I had to convince the Celestial that the planet was not sentient, or at least, not a threat.
The Planetary Shut-Down: I instantly terminated all high-energy projects: the Infinity Loop calculations, the Dark Force refinement, and the full output of the Graviton-Displacement Field. The core fusion output dropped to a near-dormant state.
The Persona Swap: The Exosystem instantly shed its beautiful, vibrant surface layers. The Psionic Amplifier Mountains collapsed slightly. I reverted my atmosphere to a chaotic, pre-sentient mix of methane and ammonia, covering the entire globe in a thick, toxic fog. I made myself look like a planet that had failed to achieve sentience—a dying, turbulent gas giant, not a living world.
The Herald's Role: I instantly transmitted an emergency order to The Herald (who was now near the Magus's crippled flagship). He was to abandon his mission and proceed to the edge of my sector, where he would stage a subtle, pre-programmed scenario.
The Misdirection Scenario:
The Herald would use the salvaged Psionic Channeling Technology from the Magus's ship to generate a massive, short-burst Psionic Shockwave. This wave would be aimed directly at the now-derelict Magus ship, destroying it completely and leaving behind a cloud of neutral dust.
The Judge would arrive, detect two things:
A dying, turbulent protoplanet (me) that posed no threat.
The massive energy event (my clash with the Magus) was conclusively erased by a secondary, powerful, unknown factor (The Herald's psionic pulse).
The implication would be that the conflict was contained and managed by another party, and the Celestial's time was wasted. Arishem would see no immediate, active planetary threat and would likely retreat, leaving me to my quiet machinations.
The weight of the maneuver was colossal. To fake my own death was the ultimate act of strategic camouflage. The Herald, my physical extension, was already in position, preparing the devastating pulse. I held my breath, the entire mass of my planet tense, waiting for the arrival of the silent, world-shattering Judge. The future of my entire empire hung on the success of this ultimate illusion.