Ronan's entire body surged with dark power. He lifted the Kree warhammer in his hand and pointed it straight at Star-Lord, killing intent rolling off him in waves.
Star-Lord didn't even have time to be impressed. He dove sideways on instinct.
A deafening roar split the air.
The warhammer smashed into the ground, blasting out a crater nearly ten meters deep. Dust, stone, and shockwaves rippled outward.
Then came a series of explosive booms, one after another.
Ronan was pure brute force. Speed wasn't his thing. Star-Lord, on the other hand, was slippery as hell. He darted and rolled, narrowly avoiding each devastating strike, the hammer missing him by inches again and again.
After several failed attacks, Ronan finally snapped.
"Ahhh! Die!"
Dark energy surged violently, flooding into the warhammer until it seemed heavier than a mountain. Ronan leaped high into the air and slammed it down with everything he had.
Boom!
The ground convulsed as if the planet itself had been punched. Cracks raced outward for nearly a kilometer. In the distance, mountain peaks collapsed, and nearby volcanoes erupted, spewing molten lava into the sky.
It looked like the end of the world.
Star-Lord, caught at the center of it all, was blasted away by the shockwave. He flew like a rag doll and smashed hard into a massive rock.
"Cough—cough!"
He staggered to his feet, clutching his chest. It felt cracked—maybe actually cracked. Every breath hurt.
That bastard…He's not even human. He's a monster.
Ronan lowered his warhammer and stared at Star-Lord in the distance. Then he bent his knees and leaped again, weapon raised high.
Clearly, after that exchange, Ronan had decided the earlier burst of power was just some kind of equipment-assisted fluke. In his eyes, Star-Lord himself wasn't worth worrying about.
Time to end it.
Fear surged through Star-Lord's gut.
This was the first time he'd ever faced an enemy like this—someone whose raw physical power rivaled a space battleship.
Ignoring the screaming pain in his body, he forced himself to dodge again.
But this time, Ronan changed tactics.
Dark power condensed in midair, forming a massive hand of swirling black smoke. It shot forward and grabbed Star-Lord before he could escape.
Star-Lord's pupils shrank the instant the hand closed around him.
As the warhammer came crashing down toward him, an icy certainty settled in.
I'm going to die.
And then—
Something inside him exploded.
A mysterious force surged outward. Brilliant blue light erupted, blasting the black hand apart like mist in a storm. Star-Lord shot forward, barely slipping past Ronan's attack.
That single moment confirmed it for Ronan.
This man was no ordinary being.
Far away, aboard Sanctuary II, Thanos felt it too—the unmistakable source of that power.
Slowly, Thanos lifted his gaze toward a distant point in the universe.
At the same time, hundreds of thousands of light-years away, another man looked up toward where Thanos was.
They couldn't actually see each other. No one had that kind of ability.
But both felt it.
The sensation of being watched.
Back on the battlefield, Ronan did not immediately attack again. Instead, he spoke, his voice low and heavy.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "And why are you here?"
Star-Lord dragged himself upright, every muscle screaming in protest, his bones groaning as if they were about to fall apart.
"My name is Star-Lord," he said, forcing steadiness into his voice. "I'm an adventurer."
There was no way he'd call himself a raider.
Raiders had a reputation even worse than pirates. Pirates at least followed the rules of the Pirate Alliance, which kept them somewhat in check. Raiders? They were scum who'd do anything for money.
His adoptive father, Yondu, had once been part of the Pirate Alliance—until he broke the rules, got kicked out, and formed the Raiders instead.
Ronan, well-informed as always, knew Star-Lord was lying. He didn't bother calling him out. He simply said coldly, "Hand over what you found here, and we'll let you go."
To Ronan, money was meaningless. At their level, wealth was just a number.
Power and status—those were what truly mattered.
After all, the Second Heavenly Father symbolized authority itself. That wasn't something you could measure in credits.
Unfortunately for Ronan…
Star-Lord did not see things the same way.
For him, money was life itself. In this universe, nothing mattered more than credits—except, perhaps, his partners. Everyone else came a very distant third.
And yet, the guy standing in front of him didn't want to spend a single penny, while still demanding the spoils of this trip.
That was worse than killing him.
"Sorry," Star-Lord said with a shrug that was far more confident than he felt, "I'm just here to explore. Didn't take anything."
The moment the words left his mouth, Ronan's eyes narrowed into icy slits. Without another word, he reached for his massive warhammer and charged forward, murder written plainly across his face.
Although his opponent possessed strength at the level of a sub-Celestial Father—enough to make anyone cautious—Ronan himself stood at the same level.
His hesitation had never come from fear. It came from not wanting to waste time on a pointless fight.
But now? The fight was unavoidable.
The instant Ronan attacked without warning, regret slammed into Star-Lord like a delayed punch.
I should have just handed over something random, he thought bitterly.
Of course, giving up the Cosmic Spirit Orb had never been an option. Someone had offered him a price so high it was practically criminal to refuse. A price so tempting that he had even betrayed his beloved adoptive father for it.
Worth it… probably.
As Star-Lord desperately willed the strange energy inside him to surge again, he suddenly realized something was very wrong.
The power… had stopped responding.
By the time that horrifying realization fully sank in, Ronan was already upon him. The two-meter-long warhammer came crashing down, its shadow swallowing Star-Lord whole.
He didn't even have time to react.
The next second—
Boom.
The impact echoed across the battlefield. Star-Lord was smashed into a bloody pulp, his body utterly obliterated.
From aboard Sanctuary II, Thanos felt a ripple of unease creep through him.
Could it be, he wondered, that I've been wrong all along? That no one—no god—is watching over Star-Lord?
At that very moment, the violent force of Ronan's attack shattered the Cosmic Spirit Orb. Cracks raced across its surface before it burst apart completely, revealing a dazzling purple light within.
The Power Stone.
The sight made Ronan's breath hitch. Greed ignited instantly in his eyes.
With this, he thought, could I finally defeat Thanos?
He reached out—
But before his fingers could touch it, a surge of powerful blue energy erupted from Star-Lord's remains. Space itself screamed as the energy tore open a rift, pulling both Star-Lord's corpse and the Power Stone into it.
Ronan froze, stunned and momentarily at a loss.
Then a voice—vast, furious, and impossibly heavy—rang out across the void.
"You dare!"
In the next instant, Thanos' towering figure appeared before Ronan. Without hesitation, he thrust his arm into the spatial rift and seized the Power Stone.
The rift began to collapse immediately, shrinking rapidly toward Thanos' wrist.
Yet the expected outcome never came.
The spatial rift did not sever his arm.
Instead, as Thanos exerted force, space shattered once more.
At his level of strength, entering subspace with a physical body was trivial. Spatial rifts were little more than an inconvenience.
Moments later, his hand emerged intact, the Power Stone firmly in his grasp.
The instant the gem sensed a living being holding it, it exploded with Father-level energy. A tidal wave of destructive force swept across the surroundings, threatening to tear everything apart.
Any being incapable of withstanding its power would be ripped to shreds, reduced to dust, and erased from existence.
However, once the Power Stone is mastered, it grants its wielder an overwhelming amplification of strength. When wielded properly, it can elevate one's power to the very peak of the Celestial level.
Of course, that is the limit.
A single Power Stone, no matter how mighty, is still insufficient to break through to the level of an entire universe.
.....
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