A massive blade formed entirely of dense psychic energy—thirty meters wide and brimming with the force to cleave through anything—sliced through the air beside Kyogre's Mind Sphere.
In the real world, Kyogre seemed to sense something. Its entire body trembled violently.
The vast seas of Hoenn surged as its power sent ripples across the ocean.
But Lucius paid no mind to the outside world. His focus was locked within the psychic ocean, operating with the precision of a master surgeon. With his psychic scalpel, he carefully severed the last remnants of Kyogre's pure mind sphere from the infected expanse of its spiritual sea.
Mewtwo really is a damn genius.
Lucius had been racking his brain for a way to corrupt the last vestige of Kyogre's pure will—never once thinking that extraction, rather than corruption, was the solution.
Once the psychic blade had finished its work—cutting as cleanly as slicing through silk—the last remaining sphere churned and transformed into Kyogre's spiritual form.
Its spiritual body, now fully manifested, stared at Lucius with glowing, venomous eyes, filled with hatred. In his hand, Lucius held a colossal blade of psychic energy.
The sea emperor's spirit had been forcibly torn away—its body now fully overtaken.
"I'll return…"
Kyogre's psychic avatar roared with maddened fury and shot into the sky, trying to escape from within.
But escape... was never an option.
A net of psychic energy wove through the sea, ensnaring its fleeing mind. It was a trap Lucius had prepared in advance—executed flawlessly by Gardevoir.
"As expected of a Mythical Pokémon," Lucius murmured, his awareness returning to the physical world. He glanced at the trapped psychic form now restrained by Gardevoir. "Even this sliver of consciousness holds the strength of a Leader."
"No... don't destroy me. I know secrets—secrets that could grant you unimaginable power."
The once-revered emperor of the ocean had begun to beg, knowing its end was near.
"I've already infected your consciousness. What secrets could you possibly hide from me now?"
Lucius chuckled.
"No—The secrets of the Tree of Beginning are buried deep within the core of my will. What you've seen is only the surface,"
Kyogre's spiritual form twisted and warped, desperate, changing shapes with every plea.
"Let me go, and I'll give you the greatest secret this world holds."
Lucius paused, scanning Kyogre's boundless memories. This ancient being's mind was a sprawling, endless ocean—but he couldn't find the Tree of Origin's secrets.
Interesting.
Gardevoir, boost the pressure.
Gardevoir's eyes blazed blue as immense psychic force crushed Kyogre's spirit.
"Aaaaargh—!"
Kyogre howled as its final consciousness was squeezed, compressed, reshaped by the overwhelming psychic onslaught.
No one would have ever imagined that Kyogre—once worshipped as a god—would fall to such a state.
Lucius's eyes glowed as he too activated Psychic Pressure, joining Gardevoir in the psychic assault.
Once, this level of power would've been nothing to Kyogre. But now, it was torture incarnate.
Boom—
A silent implosion.
Kyogre's final consciousness shattered, dispersing into invisible streams of energy... gone forever.
Lucius frowned. He had originally planned to attempt another infection once Kyogre's psyche neared collapse. But unexpectedly, Kyogre had chosen self-destruction rather than submission.
So this... is the pride of a Mythical Pokémon.
No matter. Kyogre couldn't have been the only one to know about the Tree of Beginning. And it wasn't the only Mythical being in existence.
Even if Kyogre had offered that knowledge, Lucius never would have let it go. As one of the oldest Mythical Pokémon, if Kyogre were somehow revived—perhaps by Ho-Oh or the Life Pokémon, Xerneas—it could become a serious threat.
And given the blood feud now forged between them, it would stop at nothing to destroy Lucius.
With Kyogre's final will extinguished, Lucius received a prompt from his system.
...
Mission Complete: Infect a Mythical Pokémon 1/1
Reward Unlocked: Divine Gene
New Evolution Path Available
Trait Analyzed: Primordial Sea
Virus Evolution +50%
Ability Unlocked: Oceanic Symbiosis
...
The mission was complete. With the last remnants of Kyogre's will removed, the infection had reached 100%.
Lucius exhaled deeply.
He now possessed the strength to stand among the most powerful beings in the world.
He glanced back at his system interface.
A new ability had appeared: Oceanic Symbiosis.
Oceanic Symbiosis: The viral host can dissolve into the sea, command storms, and become one with the ocean.
So long as the sea exists, the virus cannot die.
And in the Evolution Path tab:
Available Evolution:
Leviathan Virus – Divine Gene
(Can consume all spiritual and material energy of its host.)
No wonder it was called the Lord of the Sea. The rewards for infecting Kyogre are beyond anything I imagined.
With Oceanic Symbiosis, the virus had essentially become immortal—a part of the ocean itself.
It was simple, really. Who could truly destroy the ocean? To wipe it out entirely… one would have to annihilate the planet itself.
And now, with a new evolutionary direction—never mind what the Leviathan Virus meant—the suffix alone, Divine Gene, was enough to signal its overwhelming presence.
Leviathan...
Lucius remembered the term. In the culture of his previous life, many civilizations had described it.
Some claimed it was a demon representing envy. Others believed it was a beast that devoured worlds. Still others revered it as a god of fertility and nature.
For Lucius, there was no hesitation—he chose evolution without a second thought.
The Mindworm, the sophisticated mental parasite that had once secured his rise, suddenly surged with change.
What had once been a ghostly, amorphous Emperor Strain was now wrapped in a cerulean energy.
Just like a Pokémon undergoing evolution, the viral entity ballooned in size under a radiant blue-gold glow, its form twisting and morphing.
When the golden-blue light dimmed, Lucius's Emperor Strain had taken on an entirely new form.
Something between a dragon and a serpent, covered in shimmering scales, with a gaping maw that took up half its body length. From its back sprouted countless wings.
It was... perfection.
A far cry from everything that came before.
The Progenitor Virus, the Veronica Virus, even the Mindworm—as viruses, they had shared a common trait: simplicity. Their forms were crude, like microscopic octopuses or worms, no matter how deadly they were.
But the Leviathan Virus? It was something else entirely. It was elegance incarnate, a being that looked sculpted by a divine hand. Every inch of it radiated the intricate complexity of a god—or a demon—in miniature.
And as the Leviathan Virus fully awakened, Lucius found himself gripped by an uncontrollable hunger to consume Volkner's body.
He was the virus, and the virus was him. This newly evolved form filled him with ravenous desire—a need to devour all matter, all energy.
Viruses sustained themselves by absorbing the energy of their hosts. But the evolved Leviathan Virus, empowered by the Divine Gene, had already outgrown the capacity of a mere human host like Volkner.
He needed something stronger.
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