Symbiote 0322: Incubating Plot

Once Alex put away the cube, he looked at Wanda and asked her, "So, how are you going to hijack my meticulously thought-out plan?"

"We both know how meticulous your planning is, Alex," Wanda laughed at him. "I'm sure you put no more than a few minutes before deciding to confront Mephisto directly. Did you decide on it before or after we left the spaceship is the question …"

"The moment you become the Source of Chaos," he said. "I had already decided to bring you to this planet. I infiltrated Mephisto's inner circle and spent more than a month observing him before deciding to make my move. His strengths, weaknesses, his arrogance, and tendency to sow discord, I researched everything. I knew that you would be able to take care of the Pandemonium Cube — even if not, I had contingencies prepared. The remnant consciousness wouldn't know what hit him even if he did catch on and fight me."

Wanda shook her head at his overly hurried explanation.

"Come on, darling," she held his hand. "I'm going to make you face your fears, my Apex," the smile on her face made a foreboding feeling dawn upon Alex.

"No …" He narrowed his eyes. "You can't be thinking of that." With the depth of their connection, it took mere moments for him to understand what she was planning.

"Oh, yes," her eyes had an excited gleam. "That is the only place worthy of an entity such as myself. I can't stay in some shabby house made of white stone. After a castle made of Vibranium, I can only go higher."

"You'll antagonize them, Wanda," Alex said solemnly.

"I'm certain I've already antagonized them when I allowed those three versions of myself to continue accessing my Chaos," she leaned forward and cupped his cheek. "And with my current standing, I'm not too far below one of them. As long as you help me get even stronger~"

The gleam in her eyes told Alex exactly what kind of training she was expecting.

"It's my fault for promoting pleasure-based strengthening in the first place …" Alex sighed.

"Come with me, you damn pussy. The Celestials don't have the power to wipe you out with a snap anymore. Not with me around," Wanda's eyes radiated energy as a baleful aura escaped her, coalescing into a spatial rift right in front of her.

"Come on," she lightly yanked Alex's arms, making him frown as he felt a momentary sense of discomfort.

"Why the astral form?" He asked, turning his head around to see his body starting to slump as their perception of time slowed to a crawl. "Fuck … Tell me before you do something like this."

"What happened? Did I cause you problems?"

"Give me a second …" Alex closed his eyes, focusing on his soul for a moment.

[Soul Energy -50]

Utilizing some soul energy that he got by using the ‹Soul Devour› ability of the Dweller-in-Depths to quickly separate while maintaining control over the part of his soul that was connected to this astral projection, Alex regained control over his bodies and synced them with their respective times.

When he opened his eyes, he was greeted by Wanda's concerned expression mixed in with guilt.

"You okay?"

"Yeah … You know what happens when we use the astral projection. The change in perception fucks with my other bodies."

"My bad … I was just excited."

"I know," Alex nodded. "But my question is: Why the astral form?"

"Because I don't want to teleport inside matter, mistakenly destroying part of the Celestial's body," she said. "The magical energy radiating off of the corpse is preventing me from locking onto the spatial coordinates accurately."

"I see … Let's go then."

Wanda's eyes brightened at his words as she excitedly grabbed his hand and pulled him into the rift.

The moment they passed through, Wanda could feel Alex's grip over her hand tighten despite the nature of their current forms.

"You weren't kidding about inaccurate," Alex said tiredly, directly facing the massive head of the incubating celestial. Instead of the expected metallic luster of its armor-clad form, the texture of the head was dry and cracked, as if it had been turned to stone. Observing the rest of the corpse, the Celestial was curled up in a fetal position with multiple large holes all over its petrified corpse. An ethereal energy was escaping its body through those holes, escaping into the outer layer of the Earth's core.

"At least we are inside the eggshell," Wanda said. "That was the thing interfering with my spatial coordinates."

"Now what?"

"Now?" Wanda smiled devilishly. "Now we move to the heart."

She dragged Alex's astral form through the metallic incubation liquid inside the egg, pulling him through the Celestial's head as they found themselves inside its hollow interior. Even though the interior was hollow, Alex could feel an extremely powerful pressure having descended on him and Wanda. It didn't matter that they were in their astral forms. The pressure seemed all-encompassing and seemed to reject their mere presence, trying to prevent them from desecrating the Celestial's corpse.

"I'm not so sure about this …"

"Don't be a pussy," Wanda released her own imposing pressure to counter the Celestial's, also enveloping Alex, not realizing that he seemed perfectly unaffected by the pressure when he spoke to her. "We aren't going back now."

"Fine …" Alex sighed and allowed Wanda to lead him through the body as they got closer to the source of the pressure that was affecting them. Even though the intensity of the pressure was increasing, Wanda simply radiated even more energy to counter it, quickly reaching a spherical structure within the chest of the Celestial.

It looked similar to a Dyson Core, with countless rings that seemed to encompass an energy source completely, making sure that all of its released energy was being collected. That core was the source of all of the pressure and magical energy that was emitted by the Celestial.

"Someone put this here …" Alex mumbled.

"This planet seems like a part of a bigger scheme, don't you think, Alex?" Wanda said as she approached the sphere of rotating rings.

"Yeah … Could it be possible to weaponize an entire planet by permeating it with cosmic energy …"

"The real question is whether or not this pre-conjunction or post," Wanda said.

"Pre-conjunction sounds better than the alternative… similar to what happened with Earth-Z. The Kree's invasion led to its current state, but they were ultimately left behind. If this was done after … that means we have someone capable of doing all this running around freely."

"How long since those magical hotspots started appearing?" Wanda asked.

"A little over a month,"

"Firmly in the post-conjunction timeline then …" Wanda said. "Well, pity for them. Because I'm taking this for myself now."

Suddenly, Wanda summoned both her and Alex's bodies into the Celestial and sent back their astral forms.

The moment Wanda opened her eyes, her presence got immensely more overbearing as her eyes glowed a demonic crimson, and glassy red energy escaped her palms.

"Help me out, Alex. I need support to cast this spell," Wanda turned to him and asked.

"You know …" Alex approached her. "You're the only person who can frown so cutely with your current state."

She chuckled as Alex merged into her, "With glowing demonic eyes and a baleful aura all around me that would vapourize a normal human, you are the only person in the universe who can call me cute at such a juncture. Now sync with me~" Her voice came out as a pleasured moan as she felt her and Alex's thoughts syncing, giving them access to an immense range of mental energy.

Apex's energy output suddenly magnified exponentially as they tapped into the true power of Wanda's Source of Chaos and channeled it to release a glassy liquid that looked like blood from their hands. Wanda's sleek form became bulky and demonic as Apex's maw covered her head, with bloody streaks pulsing throughout the body as Wanda's red hair came through the maw and floated around Apex's head like a crown.

Four crimson tentacles burst out of Apex's back and grabbed the spherical heart of the Celestial, pulling it closer. The bloody energy escaping from their hands seemed to have a mind of its own as it approached the structure covering the Celestial's heart, infiltrating the casing. Slowly, the massive core that was large enough to rival an average mansion in diameter started shrinking as if being compressed by the combined actions of Apex's tentacles and the bloody Chaos liquid.

[CP +0.001 Unit]

The notification chimed in their mind, but Apex didn't let it bother them. Their full focus was on sucking the core of the Celestial toward them as the Source of Chaos infiltrated its casing, making it smaller by the second.

As the minutes passed, the core grew smaller and smaller, drawing ever closer to Apex's chest. The skin on their chest cracked from the center, and multiple hard tentacles stiffly spread apart like ribs to reveal a pitch-black void of nothingness.

Multiple similar notifications of Celestial Energy being absorbed chimed in their mind, but Apex's focus was solely on taking the core for themselves, for it was now as small as the size of a basketball.

As the core drew closer, half of it entered the cavity of nothingness in Apex's chest, suddenly, the Apex threw their monstrous maw backward, roaring loud enough to make their voice reverberate through the entire hollow structure that was the corpse of the Celestial. The bloody liquid that was slowly being released from their hands suddenly gushed out of them like a waterfall, flooding the body of the Celestial and even spreading outward to envelop the entire eggshell that was the core of the Planet.

***

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