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Ego's core brain hung exposed in the void. The material composing the planet's outer shell churned and heaved, desperately trying to seal the enormous fissure Quill had torn open by force.
Quill hovered at the passage entrance, jaw locked, every scrap of blue divine power in his body burning free without reservation, holding it against the will of the planet itself.
He could feel Ego's power trying to peel away from him, clawing to reclaim control. It felt like flesh and bone being ripped apart.
"Hold on!" Hermione's voice cut through, calm and level.
Quill's head snapped up. She already had her wand raised, its tip aimed straight at the massive, pulsing brain deep within the passage.
Ego wanted to close that passage, he needed to protect his most vulnerable point.
But Quill was commanding nearly half his power right now, and he understood exactly how that power worked. For this one moment, Ego couldn't seal the fissure fast enough.
He could feel it shifting. A few seconds more, and he'd be able to crush Quill's hold and take everything back.
But those seconds were already gone.
Hermione's expression showed nothing. She confirmed the core brain's position, skipped every word that wasn't necessary, and enunciated the forbidden incantation with perfect clarity.
"Avada Kedavra!"
A beam of green light, condensed to its absolute limit, tore through the void in an instant, straight down the passage, straight toward that colossal blue brain.
This was Hermione's plan.
Simple. Brutal. Effective.
Have Quill play the loyal convert, earn Ego's trust step by step — the same way Loki had played the Chitauri leader, slowly siphoning, slowly borrowing Ego's divine power piece by piece. Until Quill held enough to seize control of Ego's body, the planet's outer shell, for one brief window. Long enough to tear a breach down to the core.
Then she would take the shot.
Ego was a living planet. His defenses ranked at the apex of the universe, the thickest armor imaginable. Conventional magic or physical force would barely scratch him. Even the Power Stone would mean peeling him away layer by layer like an onion, slow and inefficient. If he decided to run, finishing him completely would be nearly impossible.
His only vulnerability was the core brain buried deep inside.
Expose it for even a single instant, and the Killing Curse would handle the rest.
He was enormous, but he hadn't reached Dormammu's tier. One level-five Killing Curse was enough to annihilate his soul entirely.
"No —!"
As the green light closed in, Ego finally felt it. Death.
The light sank into the brain without resistance.
Time seemed to stop.
Then the pulsing brain locked rigid. The deep blue glow went out, fading rapidly to gray and ash.
Every blue energy tendril threading through the planet's interior went slack at once, dissolving. The colossal boulders Ego's will had held suspended in the air lost their support and fell.
The whole planet lurched into violent trembling. Spiderweb cracks spread across the outer shell. The internal structure buckled and gave way.
With its core consciousness gone, the planet was coming apart.
"Run! This whole place is going down!" Quill's face had gone the color of chalk. He looked at the world crumbling around him and turned to bolt.
"Run where?"
A hand seized his arm and hauled him back.
Hermione stood beside him, pointing at the colossal brain, every trace of light dead in it now. "What, you don't want to inherit your father's legacy?"
Quill stared at her. "Inherit? You said before that once he died, I'd lose—"
"If you'd physically destroyed his brain, yes. Your power would have vanished with it." Hermione's tone was patient, explanatory. "But I just used magic to annihilate his soul directly. The core is still here. The divine power inside it hasn't dispersed yet. Go absorb it now, while you still can. Wait too long and it's wasted."
Quill's eyes went wide. Elation hit him like a wave.
He didn't hesitate for a single breath. He channeled the residual divine power in his body, blazed into a streak of blue light, and shot straight toward the silent, dead brain.
He hovered beside it, reached out both hands, and pressed them carefully against its surface.
A torrent of energy, vaster and more refined than anything he'd touched before, found its outlet and came flooding in. He could feel his power exploding upward.
Watching him, Hermione reflected that this was, by her count, the second biological father she'd helped someone murder.
Father-Slayer Hermione. She rather liked the sound of that.
She turned her attention inward, to the magic book in her mind. Ego had delivered 200,000 Soul Energy directly to her account. More than enough to level up.
She allocated everything.
[Hermione Jane Granger]
[Magic Level lv6 (83,442 / 5,000,000)]
[Current Soul Energy: 0]
Level 6.
Finally. She stood at the very top of magical power in the Harry Potter world. Dumbledore. Voldemort. In raw magic level, she was on the same tier as both of them.
Hermione nodded to herself, satisfied, and then looked at the requirement for level seven.
Hermione: "..."
Her head started ringing.
5,000,000.
The corner of her eye twitched.
Killing Ego had given her 200,000. To reach 5,000,000, she'd need to take down 25 more Egos. Or 7 Dormammus.
"This is going to be rough," she muttered.
Across the passage, Quill's absorption was nearing its end.
The flood of energy streaming into him began to thin. His form was changing. The leather jacket, the scruffy Earth-guy look, all of it gone. In its place, a humanoid shape radiating intense blue light from every surface.
The last wisp of energy vanished into him. Quill opened his eyes slowly.
He raised one hand and felt the power inside him.
A single thought: the disintegrating planet shuddered to a stop. The violent tremors eased. The countless fissures began closing, visibly, at speed.
The entire planet was his.
Hermione looked at the Doctor Manhattan standing in front of her, raised an eyebrow.
"Hideous."
Quill: "..."
He hovered there, the unprecedented surge of power running through him, and his mind drifted back, back to every encounter with Hermione, being pinned down and manhandled, on the receiving end of casual violence whenever she felt like it. The sheer humiliation of it.
He was genuinely, deeply grateful that she'd helped him settle this score.
That didn't stop a certain thought from surfacing.
He was stronger than before. More than just a little stronger.
Possibly... by a lot.
Which raised an interesting question.
Was now, perhaps, the moment to stop being on the wrong end of things?
➤ Next: Carol Danvers
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