They crackled and shrieked at high frequency, the sound piercing flesh and bone to reach deep into Norman's skull, like billions of dying, venom-laden abyssal wasps frantically beating their wings without regard for anything, gnawing at his nerves with the last frenzy of their lives!
The agony of the oral inferno suddenly surged to a new peak, nearly drowning out the ecstasy brought by evolution.
Yet Norman could clearly feel an unprecedented, even more powerful vitality erupting from the depths of his marrow!
The newborn power was like rushing subterranean lava, roaring through his blood vessels. Wherever it passed, tissue torn apart by energy sparks regenerated and strengthened at a visible rate.
His body was undergoing a brutal yet magnificent cycle: destruction (damaged by fragment energy) → potential unleashed (Godzilla genes responding) → rebirth (repaired and surpassed by the power of evolution) → destruction once more (the fragments continuing their damage) → even stronger unleashing and rebirth...
Each cycle pushed him closer to that ultimate form—the complete Godzilla life form standing at the pinnacle of Earth's ecosystem!
Every burst of excruciating pain came with a leap in his level of life! His flesh wailed while his genes sang!
As Norman struggled and transformed within the furnace of flesh and blood, Connors was laboriously awakening from his prolonged weakness in a deeper, darker stretch of sea, beside a vent where toxic thermal springs gushed from a crack in the crust.
It had once been reduced to nothing but a damaged head. Relying on the nearly immortal vitality of Godzilla cells, as well as frantically absorbing the minerals and geothermal energy abundant in the hydrothermal vents—and even the highly concentrated radioactive dust that had settled after the earth-shaking nuclear blast not far away, the crucial catalyst in its recovery—it had barely managed