"No," Lock said evenly, "I only blocked the detonation signal — temporarily."
Outside, the battlefield was erupting again.
At Lock's telepathic request, Nova Prime had already issued orders. The Nova Corps was now split into dozens of units, each striking a separate mothership block.
When Ronan's warship had been whole, its combined energy shield was virtually impenetrable, beyond Xandar's means to crack.
But now?
The mothership was scattered into separate cubes. On the ground, with no time to reform shields, they were sitting targets.
One after another, the cubes were overwhelmed by Nova strike teams.
Soon, golden battleships rose into the skies, each one carrying a single pitch-black sphere.
Every Xandarian held their breath, praying those bombs wouldn't go off mid-flight.
At last, the battleships passed beyond the upper atmosphere and vanished into space.
Only then did the planet exhale as one.
When the last bomb was secured, Nova Prime sent a ceremonial craft to Lock's position.
But as it drew within a kilometer of Ronan's position, the ship suddenly flipped in midair — striking an invisible wall — and tumbled harmlessly to the ground.
Fortunately, the craft had been flying slowly and low. The crew survived, though shaken.
The courier climbed out of the wreck, battered but alive, and desperately gestured toward Lock.
"Mr. Lock," Nova Prime's voice came through the comms, "what did you just do?"
Lock's expression was calm, almost casual.
"I severed space itself — a radius of one kilometer around Ronan has been cut off from the rest of the world."
Everyone present froze.
"You… cut off space?"
Even among Nova's elite, few had ever even heard of something like this — let alone witnessed it.
Space severance wasn't some battlefield trick.
It was a theoretical high-energy attack usually reserved for doomsday weapons — tearing rifts into reality to obliterate a target.
But Lock had done it with surgical precision, silently, without even shaking the air.
Those on the edge of the field cautiously reached toward the invisible boundary — and recoiled in shock.
Light bent strangely at the border, refracting like a stick dipping into water.
Through the warped glow, the space Lock had sealed now looked like a shimmering oval egg, cut out of reality itself.
Lock looked down at the Cosmic Cube in his hand.
Since obtaining the Space Stone, he had never once stopped studying its power.
After all, manipulating space was its specialty.
He remembered clearly — before Thanos had claimed the Space Stone, even he had been forced to travel by ship.
But with the Stone, he had simply opened wormholes, stepping from planet to planet at will.
At the end of the Infinity War, after the Snap, Thor had buried Stormbreaker deep into Thanos' chest.
And even then, bleeding and battered, Thanos had opened a portal with the Space Stone and escaped to his "Garden" world in an instant.
The Rainbow Bridge of Asgard could barely rival such power.
Lock wasn't yet capable of leaping freely across the galaxy like Thanos had — but space manipulation on a smaller scale, such as this surgical cut, was now within his grasp.
It had taken everything he had to maintain the severed space, but it worked.
And Star-Lord's ridiculous dance had bought him just enough time to complete it.
Radio waves traveled at the speed of light, and no jammer could ever guarantee total suppression.
But if space itself was sealed?
The signal had nowhere to go.
It was a gamble — but one Lock was willing to take.
For a weapon like the Star-Destroyer Bomb, Ronan would never allow a second person to hold the trigger.
Just like nuclear launch protocols on Earth, there could be no risk of rogue soldiers detonating one by accident — or out of spite.
The bet had paid off.
Ronan, standing a few meters away, looked utterly shattered.
"Who are you?!" he roared. "There's no one like you on Xandar!"
He had staked everything — his life, Thanos' borrowed tech, the stolen bombs — to annihilate Xandar.
And still, he had failed.
If he had simply pressed the detonator the instant he landed, even this god might not have stopped him.
But no — he had paused for his villain's speech.
Then he had stopped to gawk at Quill's idiotic dancing.
And now here he was, defeated and humiliated.
The thought made his teeth grind.
"Who are you?" he demanded again.
Lock's answer was calm. "I'm from Earth."
Ronan froze.
"Earth?" His eyes widened. "You— you're another F'rsen?"
That was the name the Kree had given Carol Danvers during her amnesiac years living among them.
Even now, Ronan still used that name, never quite forgiving the woman who had humiliated him in orbit more than twenty years ago.
He had been there — had watched her glowing like a living star, shoving back Kree warheads with her bare hands, ripping through warships like paper.
And now, another one?
Another god from Earth?
"Her name," Lock corrected coldly, "is Carol Danvers. And no — we have never met."
"Impossible!" Ronan's voice cracked. "How can a backward little fringe planet produce two godlike beings?!"
"Our Kree Empire spans half the galaxy — yet we are chained, limited, kept from reaching such power!"
Lock's gaze sharpened.
"You already know why," he said quietly. "Your 'Supreme Intelligence.' The machine-god that rules you. It keeps you stagnant. You cannot birth new gods under its reign."
Ronan blinked — stunned — and then laughed, the sound ragged, almost hysterical.
"Yes… yes! That's it! The reason we cannot advance — the reason no new gods are born — is because of the Supreme Intelligence!"
He whirled toward no one in particular, shouting like a prophet:
"I will go back. I will tell the Council! The Kree must no longer be ruled by a machine! We must destroy the Supreme Intelligence!"
Lock's expression didn't change.
"You think you're going back?" he asked softly.
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A/N: Advanced Chapters Have Been Uploaded On My Patreon
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