Drax looked at the result, a guttural sound escaping his throat.
"This..."
Rocket Raccoon's mouth was also an 'o' shape at this moment, silently mouthing 'we're screwed'.
"You are the strongest outsider I have seen since my birth."
Perhaps feeling that victory was already in his grasp, Ego's voice returned to the elegant calm cultivated over long ages.
"But that's all it is."
"After all, no matter how you struggle, you are merely dancing in the palm of my hand."
Hearing these incredibly arrogant words, Gamora and the others couldn't help but gasp.
Nebula even couldn't help but glance at Sif, stammering:
"You... aren't you worried about his safety at all?"
"Worried?" Sif, who had been relaxed the entire time, chuckled.
"Why should I be worried? You don't think... Peter only has this much ability, do you?"
The moment her voice fell—
Crack, crack!
The tree roots that Ego had petrified with energy suddenly broke free from their petrified shackles, then continuously converged, entangled, and solidified towards Peter's direction.
Gradually, these tree roots gathered into a human form.
Then, that human form slowly became clear, condensing into a scene that left everyone present utterly shocked.
It was a majestic Buddha statue, also over a hundred meters tall, with tens of thousands of hands growing from its back.
Sage Art: Wood Release: True Several Thousand Hands!
"Do you know? On my Planet, there's a legend that a Tathagata Buddha suppressed a monkey for five hundred years with his palm."
As he spoke, Peter placed his hand on the giant Buddha statue beneath him.
With his action, a black substance rapidly covered the entire Buddha statue like flowing water.
The originally majestic Wood Buddha was instantly dyed into an Iron Buddha!
The jet-black luster of Armament Haki tightly wrapped around each arm, making every pattern glow brightly under the blue-white light of Ego.
Having completed all this, Peter looked up at the shocked Ego and slowly said:
"But unfortunately, you are not the Tathagata Buddha, and I am not that monkey!"
As he spoke, the Great Buddha began to move.
The tens of thousands of giant hands on its back seemed to come alive, clenching into fists, then changing direction and descending from all sides of Ego.
Summit Buddha!
Boom, boom, boom!
Iron Fists rained down.
Ego, confident in his strength, simply chose to take the blows head-on.
This wrong decision was destined to make him regret it for life.
The Iron Fists smashed down, creating violent ripples across his body.
But this was not what truly terrified him.
What truly terrified him were the energy ripples generated by the impact of the fists.
Those ripples could vaguely create a terrifying resonance, a strange internal destruction that even made his energy flow sluggish.
Ego gritted his teeth, attempting to repair himself using his powerful self-healing ability.
But before he could complete his recovery, the second round of Iron Fists came crashing down.
The third wave.
The fourth wave...
The force of each punch was not decreasing, but increasing. Each time the Armament Haki-clad Iron Fist touched his body, it drilled deeper, as if driving piles into Ego's core.
Mantis was the first to react.
Her gaze fell upon the heart of the energy giant—that was Ego's energy core!
On the other side, Ego gradually began to panic.
He discovered a terrifying truth—
Because the strange energy vibration restricted the flow of energy, his recovery couldn't keep up with Peter's rate of destruction!
Mantis stared intently at Ego's heart, her antennae on her forehead twitching violently.
She sensed Ego's true state at this moment.
Fear.
Not anger towards Peter, but fear.
This was the first time in all the countless years she had followed Ego that she felt such a strange emotion emanating from his core.
Beside her, Sif also spoke with a smile:
"The victor has been decided."
"Impossible!"
Ego shrieked and began to retaliate with full force.
Hundreds of giant palms were shattered in this counterattack.
But what good was that?
True Several Thousand Hands had thousands of hands, and they could continuously regenerate and recover!
In fact... Peter's recovery speed far exceeded Ego's destruction speed!
Ego watched the continuously regenerating giant palms, and the cracks gradually spreading towards his heart.
For the first time in battle, a thought he had never considered arose.
He couldn't win.
The giant palms continued to fall, getting closer and closer to his heart.
Ego felt the vibration of his core.
A real, physical vibration.
Once the core was destroyed, he would die!
The moment he realized this, he made a crazy decision.
His body strangely shrunk!
Energy began to compress in reverse, gathering inward from every corner of his body, no longer expanding outwards, but stacking towards the core.
Nebula noticed the change in Ego's body; the light at his heart suddenly brightened several times, and at the same time, the earth began to tremble wildly:
"What's happening?"
Mantis's face gradually turned pale.
"He's charging himself."
Gamora frowned: "Charging for what?"
Rocket, the explosion expert, looked at Peter's continuously falling fists, then at Ego's increasingly grim expression, and finally voiced his guess:
"He wants to... self-destruct."
The air paused.
Star-Lord: ?
"He wants to take us all down with him?"
"Using the entire Planet as a bomb," Rocket's tone was flat, not assessing a threat, but stating a fact, "the explosion radius will affect ten surrounding star systems."
Drax's eyebrows furrowed into a line.
Nebula moved half a step closer to Gamora, remaining silent.
Ego stood directly above the core, energy accumulating densely around him. His outline began to glow, and the color of his eyes changed from their normal hue to pure blue and white.
He finally spoke, his voice filled with hysterical madness:
"I have existed for billions of years."
"Death, to me, is not failure."
"My seeds are spread throughout the Universe; after some time, I will always be reborn in some corner of the Universe!"
"And you, you can only accept your predetermined failure!"
Peter looked down at the shrinking Ego, and suddenly let out a sigh:
"You villains,"
"Why do you all love this self-destruct trick so much?"
Ego didn't reply; the core's compression continued.
"It's really unoriginal," Peter shook his head, then jumped down from the True Several Thousand Hands and landed on Ego's body,
"And you think I don't know what you're trying to do?"
He looked down at the Omnitrix on his wrist.
His finger rotated the dial one full notch.
Not the half-turn from before, but a complete, definite notch.
Something on the dial lit up, then a visible green light flashed.
***************************
Thoughts on where the plot is heading? Let me know in the comments! If you're enjoying the ride, please leave a quick review and toss a few Power Stones my way. Every bit of support means the world! 🙌