Drax stared at the staggering sight, a muffled, incomprehensible sound catching in his throat.
"This..."
Rocket Raccoon's mouth hung open in a perfect "O" shape, silently mouthing the words 'We are so dead.'
"You are, without a doubt, the single strongest outsider I have encountered since my birth."
Perhaps believing victory was already comfortably within his grasp, Ego's voice shifted back into that long-cultivated tone of serene, noble elegance.
"However... that changes nothing."
"After all, no matter how desperately you struggle, you are doing nothing more than dancing in the palm of my hand."
Hearing these supremely arrogant declarations, Gamora and the others couldn't help but gasp.
Nebula couldn't resist casting a glance toward Sif, her voice stuttering slightly:
"You... aren't you even a little worried about his safety?!"
"Worried?" Sif, who had maintained a completely relaxed expression the entire time, let out a soft chuckle:
"Why should I be worried? You don't honestly believe... this is the full extent of Peter's abilities, do you?"
The moment the words left her mouth—
CRACK! CRACK!
The massive tree roots that Ego had petrified with raw Celestial energy suddenly shattered their stone shells. They flexed, twisted, and converged toward Peter, wrapping around each other and solidifying into a colossal construct.
Slowly, the intertwined roots coalesced into a giant humanoid form.
The silhouette refined, manifesting a scene that struck absolute, breath-stealing awe into the hearts of everyone present.
It was a dignified, majestic wooden Buddha standing well over a hundred meters tall—and sprouting from its back were literally thousands of giant arms.
Sage Art: Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands!
"You know, on my planet, there's a famous legend about a Buddha who trapped a rebellious monkey beneath his palm for five hundred years."
As he spoke, Peter lightly pressed his palm against the colossal statue beneath him.
With that single motion, an inky-black substance fluidly surged over the Buddha's entire structure like a rushing wave.
The serene, majestic wooden deity was instantly clad in pitch-black armor, transforming into an imposing iron construct!
The metallic, shimmering sheen of Armament Haki tightly coated every single arm, making the carved lines gleam brilliantly under Ego's blue-and-white Celestial light.
Completing the transformation, Peter raised his head, looking directly at the thoroughly stunned Ego as he spoke in a measured tone:
"Regrettably, though... you aren't the Buddha, and I certainly am not the monkey!"
The giant statue moved.
The thousands upon thousands of giant hands on its back sprang to life, curling into rock-solid fists, pivoting toward Ego from every conceivable angle, and raining down like a localized apocalypse!
Veritable 1000-Shot Cannon!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A catastrophic storm of iron fists pelted down like relentless rain.
Puffing up his ego, Ego chose to meet the attack head-on.
It was a catastrophic miscalculation he would regret for the rest of his life.
The fists slammed into his energy frame, sending violent shockwaves rippling across his body.
Yet that wasn't what truly terrified him.
What genuinely chilled Ego to the core was the energy feedback generated by each impact.
The impacts triggered a terrifying internal resonance—an insidious, structural disruption that caused the smooth flow of his Celestial energy to stutter and lock up!
Gritting his teeth, Ego attempted to harness his immense regenerative capabilities to repair the damage.
Yet before he could even initiate the process, the second wave of iron fists pummeled down.
Then the third wave.
Then the fourth...
The force behind each punch wasn't diminishing—it was compounding exponential momentum. Wrapped in Armament Haki, every single punch struck his energy form like a heavy-duty industrial pile-driver, drilling deeper into his core with every hit.
Mantis was the first to realize what was happening.
Her gaze shifted sharply toward the chest of the energy giant—the exact location of Ego's core!
On the other side of the battlefield, panic finally began to set into Ego's mind.
He was coming to a terrifying realization:
Because that insidious energy vibration was disrupting his power distribution, his rate of regeneration couldn't keep pace with the sheer speed of Peter's destruction!
Mantis stared unblinkingly at Ego's chest, her antennae quivering violently.
She could sense his true emotional state through her empathy.
Fear.
Not anger toward Peter, but pure, unadulterated terror.
In all the countless millennia she had served Ego, this was the very first time she had ever felt such an emotion surface from his core.
Beside her, Sif offered a confident, knowing smile:
"It's over."
"IMPOSSIBLE!"
Ego screeched in desperation, launching a wild, frantic counteroffensive.
Over a hundred giant fists were blown to pieces in the chaotic clash.
But what difference did it make?
The True Several Thousand Hands possessed thousands of arms that regenerated instantly!
Peter's recovery speed far outstripped Ego's capacity for destruction!
Ego stared at the constantly regenerating arms, watching the cracks in his construct creep inexorably toward his central core.
For the first time in a battle, a thought he had never once considered crossed his ancient mind:
I can't win.
The massive fists kept slamming down, getting closer and closer to his heart.
Ego felt his core vibrating violently—a physical, structural shockwave.
If my core is destroyed, I die!
The instant he realized this, he made a frantic, unhinged decision.
His giant construct began to shrink at an unnatural speed!
His energy reversed its expansion, compressing rapidly from every corner of his planet back toward the center. Instead of expanding outward, he was stacking density straight onto his core.
Nebula noticed the shift in Ego's form; the light at his chest flared with blinding intensity as the ground beneath them began to quake violently:
"What is he doing?!"
Mantis's face drained of color.
"He's overcharging himself."
Gamora frowned sharply: "Overcharging for what?"
Rocket, the resident explosives expert, looked between Peter's relentlessly descending fists and Ego's increasingly frantic expression, before stating the cold truth:
"He wants to... self-destruct."
The air went dead silent.
Star-Lord: ???
"He wants to drag us all down with him?!"
"He's using the entire planet as a bomb," Rocket stated plainly, assessing the threat matter-of-factly. "With a blast yield like that, everything within ten star systems is going up in smoke."
Drax's brow furrowed into a tight line.
Nebula took half a step closer to Gamora, remaining silent but tense.
Hovering directly above his core, Ego stacked hyper-dense energy around his form. His outline began to glow with blinding brilliance, his eyes shifting from normal hues to a pure, incandescent blue-white.
He finally spoke, his voice laced with hysterical madness:
"I have existed for billions of years!"
"Death is not defeat for me!"
"My seeds are scattered across the galaxy. In time, I will inevitably reform in some corner of the cosmos!"
"Whereas you... can only embrace your guaranteed demise!"
Looking down at the rapidly shrinking Ego, Peter let out a long, disappointed sigh:
"Seriously, what is it with you villains?"
"Why do all of you love pulling the self-destruct trope?"
Ego didn't answer, continuing to compress his core into critical mass.
"Zero creativity whatsoever," Peter shook his head, casually leaping down from the head of the wooden Buddha onto Ego's shrinking construct.
"And do you honestly think I didn't see what you were setting up?"
He glanced down at the Omnitrix strapped to his wrist.
With a deliberate motion, he clicked the bezel dial forward one exact notch.
Not a half-turn like before—a precise, locked selection.
The dial flashed brightly, illuminating his face with a vibrant, emerald-green radiance.
Is Peter about to scan Ego's Celestial DNA into the Omnitrix, or will he transform into a specific alien to neutralize the planetary explosion?
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