The air on the continent of Oros was thick with the scent of ozone and burning Rassbur flora. High above, the planet-sized Deship continued to blot out the stars, its massive extraction arrays humming like distant thunder.
On the shattered ground, Iron-Guard Boros was dying.
The anti-matter blast from the Duplict skiffs had done catastrophic damage. His 110-meter frame of diamond and platinum was leaking a luminous, synthetic green sap—the lifeblood of the Nedoms' biomechanical biology. His heavy regenerative cells were firing blindly, trying to patch the gaping crater in his torso, but the anti-matter radiation was actively eating away at his molecular structure. The proud, faceless titan was losing power, his massive branch-like limbs trembling against the ash.
Floating just inches from his ruined chest, the unhatched Zeniork child flickered violently.
Through its telepathic link, the child could feel the titan's fading consciousness. Boros was ready to sacrifice his millions-of-years-old existence just to keep this premature godling safe. A profound surge of ancestral emotion—a data-burst of pure, divine protective instinct—erupted within the young Zeniork's mind.
"Accessing archive…" the child's thoughts hummed.
Deep within its inherited memories, a specific sequence unlocked. It was a classified technique used by the ancient Zeniork gods during the cosmic wars of the first era—a method to manipulate and re-forge lower matter. The child didn't have the fully evolved strength to manipulate space-time yet, but it did possess raw quantum heat.
The three-meter cloud of stardust suddenly compressed, turning into a blinding, white-hot pinpoint of light.
Bzzzt!
A series of brilliant silver quantum tendrils shot out from the child's core, wrapping tightly around Boros's shattered torso. The young Zeniork was diving straight into the titan's cellular structure, using its own divine energy as a bridge.
The child's ancestral memories guided the tendrils with absolute mathematical precision. It located the scattered shards of diamond and melted platinum littering the ash around them. Under the intense, localized quantum heat of the Zeniork, the raw elements began to lift off the ground, floating in a swirling vortex of molten metal and gemstone.
"Hold firm, Guardian," the child's telepathic frequency echoed, surprisingly steady for a newborn.
Boros's faceless form shuddered as the molten platinum and diamond were violently fused back into his chest cavity. The Zeniork child wasn't just patching the wound; it was using its own stardust to neutralize the anti-matter radiation, artificially stimulating the Nedom's biological plant cells to hyper-accelerate their growth.
The diamond plates on Boros's limbs glowed with a fierce, unnatural silver luminescence. The raw platinum veins across his torso re-knit themselves, thicker and denser than before.
Within seconds, the blinding light faded.
The Zeniork child expanded back into its cloudy, transparent form, noticeably dimmer and exhausted from the massive expenditure of energy.
But on the battlefield, Iron-Guard Boros stood completely upright.
The crater in his chest was gone, replaced by a gleaming, silver-tinted alloy armor that pulsed with faint quantum energy. His branch-like arms snapped forward, his diamond-tipped fingers flexing as full power flooded back into his systems. His scanner arrays whirred in absolute awe. He had not just been healed; he had been temporarily upgraded by the touch of a god.
Before Boros could broadcast his gratitude, a deafening sonic boom tore through the burning sky.
Dozens of heavy Duplict troop-carriers were descending through the smoke clouds, their hull lights glowing an ominous red. The vanguard was sending reinforcements to secure the anomaly.
Boros stepped over the floating Zeniork child, his newly reinforced platinum frame radiating immense kinetic power.
"My core is yours, Little Star," Boros's telepathic voice boomed, his confidence fully restored. "Let them come. They will learn why we are called the Guardians of Torol."