Star-Lord's emotions were a complete mess right now. Watching the good brother he'd known for about an hour fighting his father, whom he'd only known for five minutes, with everything they had was genuinely painful.
"Stop fighting!"
"If there's something to say, sit down and talk it out!"
Star-Lord shouted at Jovian and his dear father, Ego, as they clashed.
But neither Ego nor Jovian paid him the slightest attention. They just kept fighting harder and harder.
Boom!
Every so often, a massive mountain would be ripped straight out of the ground and hurled into the sky.
"My God... are those two actual gods fighting?"
Rocket Raccoon's tiny eyes were stretched wide. The battle unfolding before him had gone completely beyond anything they could have imagined. The kind of power that shattered the earth and tore apart the heavens with the slightest movement was not something mortals were meant to wield. It looked more like two true gods from myth battling on that beautiful planet.
"Damn it, he can't hear me. Rocket, fly the ship over there. I don't know what happened between them, but I'm pretty sure this is all just a misunderstanding. I'm going to stop this pointless fight."
For once, Star-Lord really did show a little backbone. He straightened up and spoke to Rocket with a serious expression.
"Hold on, you're planning to interfere in their fight? Are you insane?"
"To us, those two might as well be real gods."
Rocket shook his head over and over. That disaster-level battle down there was not something flesh-and-blood people like them could step into.
"I'm not ordinary. If Jovian and my father weren't lying to me, then half the blood in my body should be god-blood, so..."
Truthfully, Star-Lord had no confidence in that at all. But he couldn't just stand there and watch his best friend and his actual dad beat each other to death.
"Fuck!"
"If that's how it is, then I'll go crazy with you just this once. Hang on."
Looking into Star-Lord's determined eyes, Rocket made up his mind.
"Rocket, my brother!"
Star-Lord turned and looked at Rocket, his eyes full of emotion.
Then Rocket flew the ship down, found a relatively safe spot, and dumped Star-Lord there by himself.
"Now that's a real damn brother!"
Star-Lord watched the ship lift off again, tears almost forming in his eyes.
Elsewhere...
"I knew from the start there was something unusual about you."
"That's why I stayed on guard from the very beginning. Heh, just as I thought, you came for my true body. But maybe you don't understand, the moment I stand on this planet, on my true body, I become unbeatable."
Ego's body glowed with a brilliant blue light as he stared at Jovian and spoke coldly.
At that moment, standing on his true body, this avatar of Ego was at its strongest.
"Unbeatable?"
"All that means is that you're a frog in a well. You have no idea how high the sky really goes."
Jovian floated in the air, looking down at Ego with icy indifference.
"A frog in a well? Hahahaha..."
"We'll see who's really the one trapped in a tiny world!"
Ego scoffed at Jovian's words. He was a great Celestial, one of the most powerful beings in the universe. And this guy was calling him a frog in a well?
Jovian merely smiled and couldn't be bothered explaining anything further. His eyes lit up with a red-gold glow.
Crackle...
The next second, those red-gold beams shot from his eyes, tore through space, and slammed into Ego.
Boom!
In an instant, Ego's body was ripped to pieces by the light blazing from Jovian's eyes.
"I already told you, on this planet, you cannot kill me. I truly don't understand what you think you're accomplishing by doing that."
The moment Ego's body was destroyed, it regenerated completely. He looked at Jovian with undisguised contempt.
Crackle...
Jovian answered him with another pair of red-gold energy beams.
Once again, Ego's body was torn to pieces.
"You little bastard."
Ego seemed to be genuinely enraged now. Energy from the earth, the mountains, the sky, from every direction imaginable, came rushing together and formed a colossal giant ten thousand meters tall, which roared at Jovian.
"W, what's going on?"
"Where did my father go? And who the hell is that monster?"
Just as the giant, mountain-like figure was about to attack Jovian, a dumbfounded idiot made his dramatic entrance with a shout.
"Heh."
Jovian glanced down at the fool on the ground, vanished in a flash, appeared behind him, grabbed him by the back of the collar, and flew into the sky.
"Jovian, where's my father?"
Even now, after being yanked off the ground by Jovian, dumbfounded Star-Lord still had no clue where his father had gone.
"Your father is right in front of you, Star-Lord."
Jovian pointed at the towering giant before them and spoke coldly.
"What? That giant is my father?"
Star-Lord's eyes flickered with disbelief. He couldn't believe that his warm, gentle father's true body was some gigantic monster. For a moment, he actually started feeling sorry for his physically fragile mother.
"No. That giant is only one of your father's avatars."
"Your father's true form is the beautiful planet beneath our feet."
Jovian pointed at the planet beneath the giant's feet as he spoke.
"What the fuck?!"
Star-Lord stared at the enormous planet with bulging eyes. So he was literally the child of a planet and a human? That was just way too insane.
"Come back to my side, my son. Father and son together, we can rule the entire universe!"
In the form of the mountain giant, Ego extended an olive branch to Star-Lord.
"Gamora and the others should all be off this planet by now, right?"
Jovian didn't give Star-Lord any chance to respond to Ego's offer. The moment Ego finished speaking, Jovian asked his own question.
"Gamora and the others left in the ship. They should be out past the atmosphere by now. Probably already in space."
Star-Lord raised a brow. He had no idea why Jovian was asking that, but he still answered.
"Good."
Once Jovian heard that everyone else had already left, he nodded lightly. Now that they were gone, it was time for him to get serious.
"Star-Lord, I'm taking you somewhere."
Grabbing Star-Lord by the collar, Jovian shot straight toward Ego.
"Hey, hey, hey?! What are you doing?!"
"This is terrifying! Ahhh!!!"
As Jovian accelerated faster and faster, Star-Lord let out a full-on macho scream.
Fortunately, Star-Lord's body was wrapped in Jovian's psychic power, so aside from the mental trauma, he wasn't physically harmed at all.
Boom!
The instant Jovian, dragging Star-Lord with him, collided with Ego's giant avatar, Ego split apart violently.
And that still wasn't the end of it. In the moment he tore through the mountain giant, Jovian dragged Star-Lord straight through Ego's planetary shell and kept going deeper.
He continued all the way until they reached a sea of bones and an enormous glowing brain connected to countless nerves. Only then did Jovian finally stop.
"What... what is this?"
Star-Lord stared at the horrifying scene in front of him, his sanity plunging and the pressure crushing down on him, eyes wide with shock.
What kind of hellscape was this?
A glowing brain had been planted above an ocean of skeletons.
It was revolting to look at, and terrifying at the same time.
"These... what are these bodies?"
Star-Lord stared at the corpses covering the ground, eyes wide, utterly confused.
"They're your siblings' bodies."
One hand behind his back, the other gripping Star-Lord by the collar like he was carrying a baby chicken, Jovian answered him calmly.
"My siblings' bodies?"
Star-Lord hadn't expected the field of remains before him to be the bodies of his brothers and sisters. For a second, he felt like his brain had stopped working.
"You're saying these are my siblings' corpses? Come on, that's impossible..."
Star-Lord kept shaking his head. He refused to believe those bodies belonged to his siblings. If they really did, then his father had to be an absolutely unbelievable piece of shit.
Just how many women had that animal of a father slept with? Honestly, it was enough to make Star-Lord jealous, bitter, and furious all at once. Cough. Cough.
"Forget it. Let your dear father explain it to you himself."
Jovian shook his head. He couldn't be bothered wasting more words on Star-Lord. Maybe hearing it from Ego directly would make things sink in better.
"Heh..."
"Ego, aren't you coming out for a chat?"
"Because if you don't, I'm going to start getting rough."
Jovian let out a cold laugh and pointed at the giant brain.
"You shameless bastard..."
Under Jovian's threat, Ego's avatar, the handsome white-haired old man, slowly appeared beside the enormous brain.
"So you finally decided to come out."
Jovian smiled at Ego.
"You shameless bastard. Let go of my son and get out of here."
Ego was still putting on a tough front. He didn't understand why Jovian hadn't killed him yet, and he didn't understand why Jovian had dragged his idiot son Star-Lord down here either. But if Jovian hadn't killed him, then that meant Jovian had some kind of concern holding him back.
"Tch."
Jovian's eyes sharpened a little after hearing Ego threaten him. This asshole was really trying to threaten him now? If not for the fact that Jovian was worried that skipping over the actual plot character and killing the final boss himself might cause some new nightmare, something like the Ultimate Sentinel, to pop out of nowhere, he would have punched Ego to death a long time ago.
Jovian raised a hand toward Ego's avatar and gave him the middle finger. Then he casually poked the giant brain.
"Ah, ah, ah, that hurts!"
The instant Jovian's godly finger touched Ego's brain, Ego's entire body jerked like he'd been electrocuted.
"Old man, I suggest you start acting right."
Jovian looked at Ego and spoke coldly.
"Y, yes. Those are all my children..."
"But so what? Star-Lord, as my son, you understand me, don't you?"
"You understand why your father had to do this, right?"
Ego looked at Star-Lord and spoke in a heavy voice.
"Understand my ass."
Star-Lord's eye twitched. Today he had experienced one piece of good news and one piece of terrible news. The good news was that he had finally met his biological father. The bad news was that his biological father was a psychotic lunatic.
"So you still haven't awakened."
"For thousands upon thousands of years, I traveled through the endless universe. I witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations. I saw the births, aging, sickness, and deaths of endless forms of life. And in the end, I reached one conclusion..."
Up to that point, Ego still wore the warm, kind smile of a loving father. But in the next instant, his expression twisted completely, becoming distorted, savage, and terrifying.
"The conclusion I reached was this..."
"Those inferior creatures, those things that do nothing but endlessly consume the universe's resources, do not deserve to live in the same universe as me."
"I will create a higher universe, one with no inferior lifeforms at all!" Ego roared madly. "But my power alone isn't enough. I need my offspring to provide me with the energy I lack. And now only one piece is missing. Just you. Once I have you, I can cleanse the entire universe. Now come, let us become one, my last son!"
"I refuse."
Star-Lord's face was filled with disgust and revulsion. For the first time, he wore the exact same expression Gamora always gave people. In that moment, Star-Lord finally understood her on a spiritual level.
"What?!"
Ego clearly hadn't expected Star-Lord to reject him so cleanly.
"What, what's this? Not even my own son can understand the greatness of what I'm trying to accomplish?"
Ego looked genuinely pained. He had thought that, as his son, Star-Lord would at least be able to understand him. Apparently, he had overestimated that possibility, and now he couldn't help feeling disappointed.
"Then I'll just rip the power from your body by force and turn you into one more skeleton down here."
At this point, Ego had gone completely insane. He was going to forcibly absorb Star-Lord's power.
"Jovian, help me kill him already!"
Faced with the raving Ego, Star-Lord immediately showed his true patricidal colors.
"You said it."
After Star-Lord made the request, Jovian stepped up to Ego's brain.
At this point, Jovian felt the timing was about right. Star-Lord had at least participated in taking down Ego, which meant he'd gotten to soak up a little experience and grow from this.
"I said it. Goodbye, Father. I'm glad I got to meet you at least once in this lifetime."
Star-Lord said it without the slightest burden. Honestly, he didn't feel any real attachment to this ten-minute father of his.
"No, you ungrateful bastard!"
Ego glared at Star-Lord with overwhelming rage. He had been truly, genuinely pissed off by his son.
Boom!
But that became the last emotion Ego would ever feel.
Jovian drew back his fist and smashed it down hard onto Ego's true body, that enormous brain.
The instant Jovian's flaming fist landed on it, Ego's brain disintegrated like tofu, vanishing into ash.
At the same time, a vast flood of power poured into Jovian's body.
"Ego's dealt with. Now it's time for my next big move."
Feeling the power surging inside him, Jovian's lips curled upward.
A crazy plan was already taking shape in his mind.
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