The two quickly donned their protective suits and entered the elevator.
However, the two mbers of the Eternals, Thena and Sprite, did not get the sa treatnt.
But it didn't matter. The bodies of the Eternals were naturally strong, and as long as they weren't subrged in lava, a little heat or pressure had no effect on them. They didn't need oxygen either.
"Can you feel it?" Josh asked Xu Wenwu through the communication device in his suit as the elevator quickly descended.
"Yes... Majesty... rcy... Vastness... Is this the power of a Celestial?" Xu Wenwu said, feeling the strange energy surrounding him as they went deeper underground.
"Yes, and yet such a great being is willing to sacrifice herself for us, such tiny beings. How can we bear to let her down?" Josh sighed. Even though he was a traveler from another world and had little connection to Tiamat, as a human he couldn't help but feel so empathy.
"Have you found out anything?" Xu Wenwu asked, recalling that Josh had ntioned the potential destruction caused by the ergence.
"I have a rough idea, nothing more." Josh smiled and didn't say much more.
Hearing Josh's answer, Xu Wenwu felt a bit uncomfortable, but didn't push any further.
Ding! After half an hour of descent, the elevator finally reached the bottom.
When the door opened, they were greeted by a bright room the size of a football field. However, the brightness wasn't from nurous lights, but from boiling pools of lava that covered most of the area, except for a path in the middle.
"...I an, if a volcano erupts, we would have no place to escape, right?" Xu Wenwu muttered, his lips curling. If Josh hadn't been with him, he might have suspected that this was so kind of deadly trap.
"Don't worry. The suits we're wearing have spatial teleportation capabilities. If anything changes in the environnt, we'll be teleported to safety." Josh reassured him.
...Well, why didn't you ntion this earlier?
Spatial teleportation? Damn, has the technology really co this far? Xu Wenwu couldn't help but complain inwardly after hearing Josh's explanation.
Carrying a captured mber of the Eternals, the two of them walked along the path and stopped in front of a golden, round "hill" covered in mysterious runes.
"This is...?" Xu Wenwu hesitated as he looked at the golden mound.
Thena and Sprite looked at the mound with despair in their eyes.
So this human really was following Tiamat's orders... But they couldn't understand why the yet unborn celestial would do this, especially since they were supposed to protect her!
"This is Tiamat's fingertip... We can use it to communicate with her. Digging any further would be too risky, and we might hurt her. This distance is just right!" Josh said as he placed his hand on the golden "hill."
Although there was a protective suit between them, the proximity was enough for Josh to ntally communicate with Tiamat.
""Tiamat… I've co!" Josh thought in his mind.
"Josh, my child, I am glad you have returned!" Soon a large and friendly female voice answered in Josh's mind.
"Yes, Tiamat. I have completed the task you gave . All mbers of the Eternals have been dealt with, except for these two... and... no, wait, there's Ikaris. I don't know where he went!" Josh thought.
"You've done well, my child. Don't worry about Ikaris... he's already been sent here!" Tiamat replied quickly.
Josh was confused by Tiamat's answer.
"Damn, how did she get here?" At that mont, Xu Wenwu suddenly spat.
Josh, alert, turned around and saw a very familiar spatial portal forming behind them.
His expression imdiately changed, and Thena and Sprite's eyes sparkled with hope.
Sure enough, after the portal ford, a figure that Josh deeply feared stepped out.
That skinny figure with the shiny bald head, wasn't it the Ancient One?
"Don't worry, my child. She won't hurt you!" Just as Josh felt intense fear, Tiamat's voice soothed him in his mind.
Hearing Tiamat's reassurance, even though Josh's face remained cautious, his heart gained a little courage.
Yes, the Ancient One was indeed powerful, to the point that even a half-ford celestial might not be able to handle her, especially since she had such strong backing. (TL/N: I think the author is talking about dormammu)
But at the end of the day, she was still human. In the face of Tiamat, a Celestial who saw humanity as her children, Josh didn't think the Ancient One would dare disrespect her.
"Nice to et you, Josh Kahn. There's no need to be so tense. I'm not here to cause any trouble, just to deliver soone," Ancient One said, seeing Josh's caution and still maintaining her indifferent expression. Then she waved her hand and the unconscious Ikaris appeared on the floor.
Seeing Ikaris, Thena and Sprite, who had been holding on to a glimr of hope, suddenly lost all interest.
So it turned out that the Ancient One was on this human's side.
Josh was also surprised when the Ancient One brought Ikaris. Considering Tiamat's reaction, he could only conclude that the Ancient One must have known of Tiamat's existence long before and communicated with her.
"Ah, well, thanks for the help, Ancient One!" Josh shrugged, realizing that the Ancient One was on his side, sothing he had not expected.
"My child, bring them here, and the Mind Sphere as well!" Tiamat's voice rang out again in Josh's mind.
Without hesitation, Josh brought the three of them to Tiamat's fingertips and, as if pulling sothing out of his pocket, actually pulled a tal sphere out of his system inventory. This sphere represented the leader of the Eternals, the Mind Sphere Tiamat had ntioned.
Of course, the way he hid it seed a bit naive to both the Ancient One and Tiamat, but neither of them had any intention of investigating Josh's secret. They just assud that Josh had a unique spatial ability.
You could say that the system was sothing beyond the imagination of these two powerful beings.
The mont the tal sphere appeared, it quickly flew to the tip of Tiamat's finger.
Then Josh saw the bodies of Ikaris, Thena, and Sprite, the three mbers of the Eternals, begin to lt. At the sa ti, he thought he saw a huge red figure on the tal sphere.
Was that... the Judge Arishem?
Was Tiamat communicating with him?
"If this is your will, I respect your decision. However, after this, I will have soone retrieve the Mind Sphere," Arishem's voice said after a long pause as he looked at Tiamat's still-forming consciousness in a space Josh couldn't perceive.
Then his figure disappeared again.
In Josh's line of sight, the bodies of Ikaris and the others lted into a long golden sword with the Mind Sphere embedded in the hilt.
"All right, child, use this sword to pierce my body and this will all be over!" After the golden long sword took shape, Tiamat's voice, now slightly tired, echoed in Josh's mind.
What? So it's co down to this—she still wants to die, even going as far as to forge a weapon from the materials of the Eternals capable of killing herself... Incredible!
Josh thought with a face full of black lines.
This wasn't the first ti Josh had communicated with Tiamat. After the first excavation, they had already talked about this, and at that ti Josh had assured Tiamat that she didn't have to rush to end her life. He would find a way for her to successfully co into being without harming Earth.
But now it seed that Tiamat hadn't taken Josh's words seriously and didn't believe he could do it.
Could Josh tolerate this?
He imdiately grabbed the long sword and stored it in his system inventory under the Ancient One's satisfied gaze.
"Child, why do you have to do this?" After Tiamat felt the disappearance of the sword she had forged to kill a Celestial, she sighed heavily in Josh's mind. But at the sa ti, a sense of comfort seed to rise within her.
"No need to say more, Tiamat. I won't just let you die. At worst, when you're born, I'll snap my fingers and transfer all life on this planet away first!" Josh casually stroked Tiamat's mountain-like fingertip and reassured her, not intending to pull out the sword.
Tiamat was helpless against this. Before her ergence, she couldn't do anything about Josh.
As a Celestial—even a not yet born one—Tiamat knew exactly what Josh ant when he talked about snapping his fingers.
The Infinity Stones. Every Celestial's legacy contained knowledge of them.
But collecting them wasn't so easy, was it?
Tiamat decided to take Josh's words as comfort—after all, she had chosen him as her agent.
"Since that's the case, I look forward to that day... But promise , child, if things beco impossible... don't push yourself too hard!" Tiamat replied kindly.
"Of course, Tiamat..." Josh gently stroked Tiamat's fingertip, harder than vibranium, and replied in his mind.
"Enough. I'm tired and need to rest. This is no place for you to linger..." Tiamat said nothing more and gave the order to leave.
But the main reason for the intense discomfort was the harsh underground environnt, over 40,000 ters deep. Even with a Vibranium-based protective suit and a high-end cooling system inside, Josh was still sweating profusely... Tiamat was quite concerned.
"All right, Tiamat, we won't bother you anymore!" Josh replied without hesitation.
But just as he was about to leave, sothing suddenly ca to mind.
"By the way, Tiamat, I would like to ask you sothing!" Josh said.
"What is it?" Tiamat's tone remained as soft as ever.
"About the underground ruins in Java. Do you know what it is?" Josh asked. "It seems to require this sword as a key."
Josh rembered the strange ancient underground ruins that had been discovered in Java. He had assigned a team to study the ruins, but they were at a loss. Everything inside seed unrelated to any known civilization on Earth. Josh had even interrogated the captured Kingo, but that person only knew about the Broken Steel Sword and nothing about the ruins. His confused expression didn't seem fake either.
This suggested that the Broken Steel Sword and the ruins were even older than the ti the Eternals had been on Earth, possibly much older—way over 7,000 years.
Suddenly, Josh thought that Tiamat, who had existed for billions of years, might know the origins of the ruins. But he wasn't sure if Tiamat had ford consciousness back then.
"Ah... I see. I rember that sword. Yes, that was from over a hundred thousand years ago, around the ti the first generation of humans developed civilization..." Tiamat spoke, and Josh imdiately went into shock.
What? Over a hundred thousand years ago?
This was about to rewrite human history.
While human origins could be traced back millions of years, that was before the advent of civilization. The earliest known civilizations, such as Sur, appeared much later—around the ti the Eternals arrived on Earth.
But here was Tiamat talking about a civilization over a hundred thousand years old... It was mind-boggling!
What followed shattered Josh's worldview even more. According to Tiamat, the ruins were actually a large interstellar teleportation device.
The first generation of humans had used this device to travel to other planets.
However, the creators of the interstellar teleportation device weren't Earth's civilization but another alien civilization.
The reason was simple. An alien queen had fallen in love with the human king of Earth's prehistoric civilization, and together they embarked on a journey, the story of which was shared by the first human civilization.
And the na of this great human king from prehistoric tis was Conan.
Of course, this Conan wasn't the famous "Death God" from the fictional world, but the Barbarian King Conan!
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