Mark traversed the silent star fields, seeing nothing but the graveyards of civilizations along the way.
Shattered planets, like gnawed bones, floated in the cold void, silently narrating the cruelty of The Old Ones' Tide.
He followed the vague directions provided by the Kotarans, expanding his senses to the maximum, searching for any signs of life or battle fluctuations.
Finally, at the edge of a distorted galaxy, he caught it!
This was not a harmonious star-song, but a desperate shriek, an explosion of energy, and that nauseating resonance of corruption and proliferation he would never mistake!
He instantly adjusted his direction, speeding away at a velocity that almost tore space apart!
The scene before him was suffocating.
A planet that might once have been lush and green was now largely covered by a writhing, purplish-black biological fungal mat.
Giant, vein-like structures pulsed on the mat, constantly spewing out more bizarre Great Old Ones' minions made of flesh and twisted metal.
The planet's resistance was a group of alien native warriors, haphazardly equipped and with a motley assortment of ship models, who were steadily retreating.
Their attacks often required several concentrated volleys to barely eliminate a low-level minion, while the larger monsters, like walking slaughterhouses, would tear open a breach in their defenses with every charge.
This was a completely desperate, asymmetrical war of attrition.
Without hesitation, cold golden flames ignited in Mark's pupils.
Saving lives, gathering intelligence, weakening the enemy.
These three objectives perfectly coincided at this moment.
The next moment, all resistors and invaders on this dying planet witnessed a meteor tearing through the dim sky!
The meteor, with an utterly barbaric posture, directly crashed into the densest area of The Old Ones' Tide!
There were no fancy techniques, only the purest, most extreme burst of power!
Boom!!!
With a thunderous roar, the upper body of a Great Old Ones' creation, as massive as a mountain and covered in tentacles and pustules, instantly vanished!
It wasn't melted or vaporized, but utterly smashed and annihilated into its most basic molecules by an absolute force!
The shockwave spread in a perfect sphere, directly pulverizing hundreds of smaller minions in its vicinity.
Mark's figure appeared at the center of the explosion, maintaining his punching posture, his bulging arm muscles unstained by a single speck of filth, only the faint smell of scorching from the air ionized by extreme speed and power in front of his fist.
A momentary silence fell over the battlefield.
Whether it was the native warriors struggling for survival or the madly proliferating Great Old Ones' minions, all seemed stunned by this sudden, utterly incomprehensible method of destruction.
Immediately following was a storm-like sweep!
Mark moved.
His speed surpassed the limits of biological visual capture, leaving only a series of fleeting afterimages in the air; each flash was accompanied by the destructive collapse of a Great Old Ones' minion cluster.
He tore apart giant beasts clad in biological armor with his bare hands as if ripping a thin sheet of paper, and the mere force of his casual punches could level kilometers of fungal mat and the monsters upon it.
He even grabbed a large flying unit attempting to dive towards a civilian shelter, used it as a weapon, and swung it in a wide arc into another group of enemies, triggering a violent explosion!
This was a pure, overwhelming, violent cleansing.
The corrupting power of the Great Old Ones seemed clumsy and ridiculous in the face of his absolute strength and speed.
Their attacks couldn't even keep up with his figure; occasional energy beams or acid strikes would be easily deflected by the invisible force field of extreme density and strength on his body, leaving not a trace.
The native resistance army went from initial shock to disbelief, then to shouts of ecstatic joy!
They didn't know where this god-like figure came from, but he was on their side, he was destroying the monsters that were annihilating their home!
That was enough!
The morale of the remaining army soared, and they began to counterattack, coordinating with Mark's direction of cleansing.
The battle lasted for nearly an entire planetary rotation.
Mark was tireless; every breath he took seemed to draw power from the stars, and every strike he delivered contained the mighty force to shatter mountains.
He, by himself, forcibly pushed back the purplish-black plague covering the planet, uprooting and utterly destroying those twisted creations along with the fungal mats they were rooted in.
When the last major corruption nest was completely pulverized into elementary particles by Mark's pure shockwave, the pervasive corrupt hum in the air finally vanished.
It was replaced by the smell of gunpowder, scorching, and… the silence of survivors.
For the first time, sunlight struggled through the atmosphere, polluted for years, and cast its rays upon the ravaged land.
Mark slowly descended from the sky, landing before the exhausted, scarred native warriors who looked at him with a mix of awe, fear, and gratitude.
His towering body was without a single scratch, his combat suit still pristine, only the ground beneath his feet, crystallized by the immense pressure, bore witness to his inhuman strength.
Quickly learning and simulating the basics of their language through his portable device, Mark sent out a friendly signal.
"I come from a distant galaxy, seeking allies against the Great Old Ones. Do you know of the Alliance?"
The leader among the native warriors, a tall creature with multiple burns and claw marks on its body and heavily damaged armor, stepped forward with difficulty, its compound eyes filled with complex emotions.
"Thank… thank you, powerful stranger… you saved the last bloodline of our Koriya race… We have heard of the Alliance, and once tried to send distress signals, but it was too far, too chaotic… we couldn't make contact…"
Mark's heart sank, but he wasn't surprised.
Just as he was about to inquire further about the Great Old Ones' forces and the situation in the nearby star systems.
Suddenly!
An indescribably evil, bloated, and simultaneously pregnant with procreation and decay, terrifying will descended without warning!
The sky, which had just cleared, was instantly enveloped in a deeper, more suffocating dark red!
It wasn't clouds, but as if the entire atmosphere had turned into congealed blood, and every surviving life on the planet, from Mark to the weakest Koriya cub, felt an uncontrollable, primal shiver and terror erupt from the depths of its soul.
The ground began to tremble violently, not from an earthquake, but as if the entire planet was quivering under the gaze of some entity!
Mark sharply looked up, his molten-gold pupils contracting to their extreme!
He saw the highest point of the sky, where the dark red firmament was forcibly torn open like a curtain, revealing a massive rift!
Countless twisted, writhing, indescribable fleshy organs and blood vessels squeezed out from behind the rift, intertwining and merging!
A colossal, embryonic form, seemingly cobbled together from billions of wailing souls and decaying flesh, was rapidly coalescing!
It had no fixed shape, as if it were an amalgamation of all life's most negative and foul imaginings, yet its core emanated a cold, greedy will capable of extinguishing galaxies.
This was the Third Great Old Ones.
The Black Goat of a Thousand Young, Shub-Niggurath!
Although not its true body, merely a projected flesh avatar, the oppressive feeling it brought far surpassed the sum of all previous Great Old Ones' minions!
The Koriyans had long since collapsed to the ground, their breathing almost stopped, plunged into complete paralysis and despair.
Every cell in Mark's body was blaring the highest alert; every atom within him seemed to scream to flee!
But he suppressed this fear stemming from the instinct of life, clenched his fists tightly, his bulging muscles tensed again, and his golden pupils locked onto the nightmare forming in the sky!
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