Chapter 960

Chapter 960: 960

Desperate for a solution, the orb shifted tactics and hijacked one of the world’s higher sentient species.

It was within the biological framework of these complex, sapient hosts that something unprecedented occurred, the orb gained the ability to "dream".

In those deep, unconscious states, the drop of Tweet’s blood bonded within its core acted as a beacon. Inside its dreams, the orb saw Tweet clearly. It felt him, a distant, warm anchor echoing across light-years of empty space. But every time the host body awoke, the waking world snapped the illusion, leaving the fragment completely blind once more.

Refusing to surrender to the void, the orb had spent years utilizing its host’s mind and its own adaptive nature, relentlessly seeking a way to build a bridge across the dreamscape and reach its master.

Driven by a desperate devotion, the orb had gone so far as to found a grand religious cult, an act it adapted directly from the native traditions of that world, where mortal beings poured their faith into unseen deities. To the orb, Tweet was no abstract myth, he was tangible, supreme, and real. It calculated that if it could forge a massive, unified choir of faith across the planet, the sheer psychic resonance of their collective worship would shatter the void and trace Tweet’s hidden aura.

The rise of this radical faith was met with violent resistance. Existing empires and rival factions declared war on the burgeoning movement, seeking to crush it. But the orb’s predatory intellect and ruthless adaptability proved overwhelming. It expanded its hosts, reshaped its followers into biological marvels, and established itself as one of the world’s undisputed super-powers. Through sheer force and influence, it solidified the church, spreading the holy icon of a majestic, bird-like god across every continent.

And against all odds, the gambit worked. The collective, focused belief of millions aligned with the drop of divine blood inside the orb, creating a beacon that finally pierced Tweet’s perfect camouflage.

As the full realization of what the orb had accomplished washed over him, Tweet’s shock melted into a sudden, wild fit of laughter. Bright tears welled in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks as the long years of failure, isolation, and dead ends evaporated in an instant. After all this time, the true path forward was finally laid bare before him.

Overwhelmed with joy, Tweet spun around and threw his arms around the main suit of armor, which had shifted into a tall, humanoid form at his side. He swept the heavy entity off its feet, lifting it into the air and spinning around in ecstatic circles on the barren dirt, shouting praises into the quiet void at how truly awesome his strange, faithful companion was.

Through the established tether, Tweet realized he could project his consciousness across the void and descend directly into the orb’s host world. A knot of anxiety tightened in his chest. He hesitated, unsure if making this jump would trigger the world’s immune system to pinpoint him and render everything useless. Gritting his teeth, he pushed past the fear and willed his mind to plunge down the connection.

The shift was instantaneous. The bleak horizon of the desolate, toxic planet vanished, replaced by the damp stone and flickering torchlight of a massive underground sanctuary.

As his vision cleared, Tweet saw countless robed figures kneeling in silent, solemn reverence before him. He immediately closed his eyes, bracing himself, waiting for the sky to tear open or the familiar, suffocating aura of the planet’s defense mechanism to lock onto his presence. He waited in tense silence. Seconds stretched, yet nothing happened, the world’s immune system remained completely unaware.

Overcome with sheer relief and triumph, Tweet burst into a fit of unrestrained, hysterical laughter.

The sudden outburst caught the gathered cultists entirely off guard. But before their confusion could turn into panic, the ground trembled violently. The high pope at the center of the altar slowly floated into the air as the massive cavern ceiling shattered above them. Stone and earth gave way in a cascade of debris, exposing the open sky.

An explosive sonic boom tore through the sanctuary as Tweet’s possesed figure shot skyward, breaking the sound barrier in a fraction of a second. The violent pressure wave echoed through the cavern, sending the cultists tumbling to the floor, screaming and clutching their bleeding ears.

Riding the momentum of his successful test, Tweet’s projected presence surged past the upper atmosphere, shooting straight into the cosmic void where his main body and waiting armor awaited his return.

Bringing the scence back to the present moment, the latest fragment now forged in the delicate, cold shape of a sleek iron feather.

Having been cast out, the feather immediately began sweeping the void for Tweet’s presence. But his life signature was completely gone, hidden behind the absolute, seamless camouflage he had perfected over the years. Blinded and left without a direct beacon, the iron feather drifted into deep space, driven solely by its ingrained compulsion to survive, adapt, and reunite with its creator.

As it drifted, its heightened biological senses picked up faint, distant life signatures pulsing across the sector.

To the fragment, other living entities were not potential allies, they were raw fuel, hosts, and stepping stones to be harvested in service of its goal. Yet, as its intuitive radar locked onto these specific signatures, a cold wave of instinctual dread washed through its core. These weren’t ordinary native beasts or primitive civilizations. The sheer power radiating from these distant entities signaled absolute, catastrophic danger.

The feather calculated the odds instantly, if it approached them in its true, exposed form, it would be detected as an alien threat, hunted down, and obliterated long before it could even begin to trace Tweet.

It needed to slip past their defenses undetected.

Refusing to fail, the iron feather enacted a brutal, self-sacrificing protocol. It deliberately drove its own systems to near-total exhaustion, burning through its internal reserves to be nothing but a mortal creation with no fluctuation of power.

The liquid metal burrowed deep into the rock, fusing seamlessly with the meteor’s core and hiding its biological signature beneath tons of inert, dead stone. It will stay as an unassuming piece of debris, the hidden fragment rode the meteor’s trajectory, quietly drifting toward the dangerous life signatures in the distance, a silent predator disguised as a falling star, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

The physical merger of the realms brought only the absolute, suffocating weight of two realities colliding into a singular focal point.

In the center of the convergence, Björn moved.

He breached the gap, closing the distance in a red-shifted blur. Mahu’s avatar barely had time to react, her brow arching upward as a gargantuan hand, slick and dripping with blood-red energy swept toward her face. The intent was crude, disrespectful, and brutal, a facepalm designed to slam her direct into the ground.

The palm struck, but instead of the wet crush of bone, the air shattered like brittle crystal. Spiderweb fractures rippled through empty space where the avatar had stood an instant prior, leaving behind only the dissipating shards of a hollow mirror clone.

Before the spatial glass could even hit the ground, a secondary shockwave tore through the clearing. A huge, blood-soaked battleaxe swung in a lethal arc, hurled with enough kinetic force to cleave a mountain range.

The real avatar manifested three steps to the left, her right hand snapping upward. A translucent barrier of absolute zero flared into existence, catching the leading edge of the axe mid-flight. The weapon groaned against the stasis field, its momentum grinding to a violent halt inches from her chest, frost rapidly creeping over its crimson edge.

Her eyes narrowed. Björn hadn’t fallen for the clone. He hadn’t even hesitated. The thrown axe had been buffered into the exact microsecond of her spatial displacement, a blind prediction executed with terrifying precision.

The serene calm that usually rested on the avatar’s features vanished, replaced by a sharp focus.

This was no longer the man recorded in Mahu’s memories. The Björn she knew was a mad warrior, one governed by rage and anger. The creature standing before her now was a streamlined hurricane of pure, predatory instinct, a instinct that knew how to hunt gods.

Sweeping her arm in a swift arc, the avatar redirected the frozen axe into the earth, sending a tremor through the fractured dirt. She surged forward, closing the gap in the breath between heartbeats. Frost encased her right fist, the air around it popping as temperature plummeted to absolute zero.

She drove the ice-clad punch straight for his chest, but Björn’s movement was unnervingly fluid.

He leaned inside the strike’s trajectory, slipping the blow by a fraction of an inch. His left hand clamped down on her wrist like an iron vise, locking her momentum, while his right drove forward in a brutal counter-punch aimed directly at her jaw. Simultaneously, the fallen axe vibrated, tearing itself from the ground and whistling back toward his third free hand, sweeping in a low, murderous arc designed to bisect her at the waist.