Virus Evolution: Pokémon, Marvel & Beyond

The nine elemental Plates were instantly invaded by a creeping black aura, mottling their surfaces with shadowy blotches. Within them, it looked as though black serpents slithered in the depths.

Drawing on the metaphysical links of the elemental essences, Lucius initiated a reverse contamination along the nine types.

Once again, Arceus, who had just shattered the binding cage, visibly changed expression. A terrifying force had invaded its body.

In that moment, it ceased its assault and immediately invoked the power of the laws to expel the foreign presence.

But it was too late.

The invasive force had already intertwined itself with part of its being, so thoroughly that they were now symbiotic.

To forcefully expel it, Arceus would have to sever that portion of itself entirely.

And if it did, it would no longer be perfect. Its strength would plummet, and it would never again reach its peak.

As it hesitated, Arceus suddenly sensed, its energy source was gone.

What… does that mean?

Its heart sank.

Unleashing its ultimate Judgment, Arceus shattered the prison one final time.

There was no second cage this time.

But what lay before it was far more devastating.

The planetary core had gone dark.

Once a vast, radiant source of light, the core had vanished. The heart of the world was now shrouded in pitch blackness, illuminated only by a gaping, blood-red wormhole that pulsed like a ravenous maw.

This world had become a dead planet.

To Arceus, the vessel of the planet's will, the death of the world meant the collapse of its foundation. No longer would it receive the boundless energy, the endless lifespan granted by its cosmic link.

"RaaaaaAAAAHHHHHH!"

Its wrath echoed through the empty, cavernous abyss.

Stripped of its source, the God of Creation's fury burned so brightly it felt tangible. It surged forward in a flash of divine speed, diving into the still-open wormhole.

In an instant, space twisted. The shadowy core vanished, replaced by another deep subterranean chamber.

The Arceus that had once been drained like a living battery by flesh-like tendrils was gone. In its place hovered a heavy, dark sphere, like a black dwarf star.

Arceus immediately recognized it.

The stolen energy of its world's core.

But it had been thoroughly corrupted by the Virus.

The energy was now tainted beyond repair. Even if Arceus reclaimed it, it would serve no purpose.

Still… if I must die, I'll make sure you die with me.

Arceus gathered every shred of its remaining divine light. High-pressure photons, dense as neutron stars, coalesced, drawn together like comets caught in an inexorable gravity well. The compressed sphere radiated utter annihilation.

This was the full extent of its remaining power, compressed into a singularity of destruction. It burned with such intensity that it warped the space around it.

Arceus was certain—if this hit, it would ignite the core and reduce the planet to cosmic dust.

"Perish…"

The blazing golden sphere shot forth. Though it seemed slow, its mass was immense, gravitational forces already pulling lightning from the black core toward it in streaking arcs.

CRACKLE—ZRRRRRT!

The sphere struck the core. Instantly, it roiled like boiling metal, as if plunged into molten iron. A seething tide of apocalyptic energy surged outward, trembling with the promise of cataclysm.

"Hahahaha! Die with me, then! Die!!" Arceus roared in madness.

It had been cautious, watching closely for interference.

But this… this had gone too smoothly.

Too perfectly.

Waiting for me to strike?

No… something's wrong.

Despite its fury, Arceus was still a divine being. In an instant, it sensed the deception.

Its planet's core had gone out. So why would the Virus leave a wormhole open, exposing such a critical area to attack?

No… this wasn't some alien world's core.

This was—

CRACK—

Like shattering glass, the scene dissolved.

The illusion broke.

Reality came crashing down.

This was still its own planet's core. The very heart it had just unleashed its ultimate attack on.

The once-blazing core, already drained of over 90% of its energy by Lucius, now glowed dimly, on the brink of collapse.

Any further extraction, and it would explode.

But Lucius had stopped just in time.

Instead, he used the Psychic-type energy already infected by the Virus to craft an illusion, a vision of an already-dead core.

When Arceus broke out of the cage, it had already been within the illusion.

The wormhole? A fake.

The tainted core on the other side? A mirage.

Both constructs, born from the last 10% of the real core's energy.

And Arceus had just struck its own dying core with its most devastating attack.

Behind it, the real wormhole, a blood-red spiral only half a meter wide, twisted shut.

[Emergency Mission 'Parallel World Destruction' Completed. Reward: 300,000 Random Species Genes.]

The system notification rang out.

Lucius understood immediately. The Arceus of the parallel world had perished, vaporized with the explosion of its own core.

But the reward…

He opened his mental domain.

Within it, the hive, a vast network of gene slots, now numbering in the millions, had expanded again.

This time, something new had joined.

These weren't the familiar gene signatures of the original world. The new ones were strange, alien, almost chaotic. Some resembled animals or plants. Others were unclassifiable, oddly-shaped, clearly sentient beings.

One gene strand in particular caught Lucius's eye.

A humanoid creature, three meters tall, impossibly beautiful, with no discernible gender. From its back extended two enormous white wings.

What is this… an angel?

Lucius was certain: the vast majority of these 300,000 new gene samples, including that winged figure, were not native to this world.

He even recognized a few from his past life.

Which meant only one thing…

Lucius immediately began channeling Creation Force, instilling life into the world's surface from the gene hive.

In the past, he'd needed to capture the Arceus of this world and use it as a living power source, because the planet's core was running dry.

Now, with the energy from the destroyed parallel world's core in hand, that was no longer necessary. Arceus was freed. As the world's will incarnate, Lucius could now create on his own.

Energy flowed into the Tree of Beginning. Its seeds took to the winds, scattering across the world.

Over time, the seeds fused with nature's varying energies. Some bloomed large, others small. But all crystallized into eggs.

From those eggs, imbued with alien gene material, new species began to hatch.

Lucius only released a fraction of the gene samples for now. He couldn't be sure what kind of havoc these outsiders might wreak on native ecosystems.

He would observe… and decide what to do with the rest later.

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