Galactus looked around. The realm of Asgard had already been overlaid by the apocryphal domain.
"So this is your dimension?" A sincere smile appeared on Galactus's imposing face. "I misjudged you. So you are a god of a dimension."
Galactus had clearly mistaken Skyl for some sort of dimensional god. Even his tone warmed by a good ten degrees. The earlier atmosphere of violence and bloodshed vanished on the spot. He had not surrendered, but he was obviously softening.
The Asgardians below broke into jeers.
"Why does the mighty Galactus begin in arrogance and end in courtesy?" Heimdall shook his head.
Thor's friends laughed even harder, feeling Thor's injuries had been suffered for nothing.
Galactus paid no attention to the grating noise. He stared fixedly at Skyl's expression, while also flicking an almost imperceptible glance toward Jormungand.
Skyl manipulated gravity and drew Thor over to him. The mighty God of Thunder had been beaten into something resembling a puddle of mud.
Blood sprayed from Thor's nose and mouth, his consciousness hazy, yet when he saw Skyl, he still grinned. Most of his teeth were nearly gone, so the smile looked awfully goofy.
"Wizard… did I hold him off?"
Skyl nodded. "Victory is already in our hands."
Galactus stood with his arms folded. "The son of Odin has lived up to his name. I will remember him."
"You hurt my friend, god," Skyl said, staring at him. "And you nearly killed your own daughter."
Gali had fallen unconscious and was slowly turning back into a cosmic tapeworm, coiling around Skyl's arm like a silver-white serpent.
"My daughter was injured protecting you. May I assume she shares an unusual degree of intimacy with you?" Galactus's gaze softened. The light in his eyes shifted from a soul-piercing blue to a warm orange-red.
"Gali is a kind and optimistic kid," Skyl said. "She simply trusts me."
"My Galacta has friends now."
"And yet you showed no respect for her friend, and ignored her attempts to stop you."
Galactus spoke now with the tone of nothing less than a father.
"For a time, I suffered from a hunger beyond compare. I had no choice but to roam the universe devouring planets, destroying thousands of civilizations. It filled me with sorrow and guilt. I wanted nothing more than to cut open my own stomach and vomit back up every world I had eaten. But later, I discovered the source of that abnormal hunger. Galacta—she was a tapeworm parasitizing my digestive tract. No matter how much energy I consumed, she siphoned it away.
"Bringing a life into the world is a tremendous responsibility. My love for Galacta was never false. With guilt and anticipation, I waited all that time for her birth. But when the day finally came, she vanished without a trace. For a while, I believed misfortune had befallen her. And now she has appeared again. Fate itself has guided this reunion. No one treasures this moment more than I do."
Skyl could not help being moved by the intensity of emotion this cosmic god was showing.
"If that is true, then why were you unwilling to talk things out properly?"
"Because you were pawing at my granddaughter!" Galactus said, irritated. "What exactly did you feed her? I saw it. A metal cylinder. Were you using her as a trash can?"
"Just a misunderstanding."
Skyl shook his head. He had no intention of telling Galactus the truth about the pen. The thing was more tempting than the One Ring. Even gods would not have been able to resist it.
At that moment, Jormungand fully spat out the Pen of Creation.
Panicking, she flew to her mother's side and called out to her in a childish voice, but got no response. A sobbing edge immediately entered her tone.
Galactus beckoned to Jormungand. "Come, my child. Come to Grandpa."
"You hurt Mom! I saw it!" Jormungand did not know Galactus at all. Her entire body flushed blood-red with rage. "I'll eat you! I'll eat you!"
Before the last word had even faded, the furious serpent swelled to gigantic size again and, like a streak of red lightning, bit Galactus's head clean off.
The sudden turn of events left everyone staring in shock.
Even Skyl had not reacted in time. All he saw was a red blur flash before his eyes, and then Galactus's head was gone.
The invincible Galactus had gone down again.
The great serpent shrank back down, her throat bulging like a cormorant that had swallowed a fish.
"Spit that out, now! That's your grandpa!" Sweat poured down everyone's faces. Skyl rushed forward and grabbed Jormungand by the neck, stopping her from swallowing Galactus's head all the way down.
Jormungand puffed out her cheeks. "What's a grandpa? Is it tasty?"
With a loud ptui, she spat Galactus's head back out. Skyl tried to fit it back onto the body, but unfortunately he was a step too late. The poor old man was already dead as a doornail.
At the moment of Galactus's death, his photon-state body began flickering continuously, vibrating at a frequency of hundreds of millions of times per second and filling everyone with an overwhelming sense of doom.
"Hey… why do I suddenly feel like something's wrong?" the warrior Lady Sif muttered.
Heimdall's normally stone-faced expression twitched violently. "The corpse looks like it's about to explode!"
Galactus had devoured countless planets. The energy stored in his body was on the scale of a galaxy. Their earlier battle had activated that energy, like a bomb slowly going off inside him, feeding him tremendous power. But with his death, that power no longer had anything to restrain it, and it spun out of control.
No one wanted to experience the sight of a galaxy exploding right in front of them.
"Ahhh!!!" someone screamed incoherently.
"We're finished!!!" someone cried in despair.
"Gods above, save us! Wizard! Hurry up and think of something!" someone shouted, invoking Skyl as if casting a summoning spell.
"My friends, it has been an honor to die beside you!" someone had already begun delivering last words.
Not even a divine realm could withstand an impact on this level. The structure of space-time itself would collapse.
Just as the explosion was about to happen, Skyl had a flash of inspiration. He hoisted up Jormungand.
"Quick, eat your grandpa!"
The serpent's mind was roughly on the level of a puppy or kitten. The second she heard the word eat, she brightened up, opened her mouth wide, and gulped down all of Galactus's remains in one bite.
"Grandpa tastes good!"
The cosmic tapeworm's stomach had been inherited from Galactus himself, so it could safely contain that violent planetary energy without any risk of exploding.
The crisis was over.
Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief. As they looked at one another, they all seemed caught between laughter and tears.
Just earlier, Skyl had foreseen Galactus obtaining the Pen of Creation and becoming a god above gods. Who could have guessed that after Skyl's interference, he would end up leaving not even a corpse behind?
Speaking of the Pen of Creation, Skyl hurriedly secured the supreme artifact.
Even by Foundation standards, the Creator's Pen would count as one of the most powerful anomalies imaginable. Its might was beyond description.
And now, it was time to make good on his promise and clean up the mess.
Holding the Pen of Creation, Skyl felt all the laws of existence converge at its tip. He waved it through empty space. Tiny droplets of ink seeped from the nib and sketched out glorious Asgard in the air, as if yesterday itself were returning, though for the moment it was only a darkened outline.
The survivors were overjoyed. Even Thor, sprawled on the ground and unable to stand, still threw up an arm and cheered.
Jormungand suddenly coughed, then spewed out an immense flood of soil, wind, flame, and corpses. These were the chunks of Asgard and the Asgardians she had swallowed.
Firm earth reformed as dust gathered together. The shattered remains of palaces clicked themselves back into place. Flame rose into the heavens and became the sun. Gale winds brought back a full atmosphere, and the sky turned blue once more. Those suffocated corpses naturally revived as well.
From the soaring palace came the faint sound of song. The God-King Odin rode forth on Sleipnir himself to welcome the honored guest.
"Wizard from afar, come. Asgard has fine wine to offer you, for you are now our eternal and dearest friend."
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