Norman Osborn's massive jaws snapped shut, tearing another huge chunk of flesh from Connors's enormous body. It was no ordinary flesh.
As that searing, churning substance, flowing with blinding blue light, slid down his throat, Norman felt as though he was not devouring a living creature, but forcibly stuffing a violently burning star into his abdomen.
It was energy condensed to the absolute extreme.
Flames capable of igniting the Star Sea had been forcibly compressed within the prison of flesh.
Every drop of blue blood, every strand of fiber, contained destructive power that could have reduced the old Norman to ashes billions upon billions of times.
It burned its way down his esophagus. What it brought was not warm satisfaction, but the ultimate torture of being thrown into the core of a Stellar Furnace.
His throat, esophagus, and stomach lining—biological tissues that had likewise been modified and could withstand armor-piercing rounds—melted, carbonized, and peeled away like wax the instant they came into contact with that mass of flesh.
Excruciating pain erupted violently from deep within his chest cavity like billions of red-hot steel needles, instantly sweeping through every nerve ending.
A roar mingling wild ecstasy and utter agony burst from the depths of his torn throat, carrying scalding steam and flashing arcs of electricity. It shook even the churning seawater around him, saturated with radioactive toxins, into momentary stillness.
That roar did not come from his will. It was the instinctive wail of a body being incinerated by a stellar core.
The forcibly swallowed "star" finally fell into the enormous, intricate heart within his body, a precision furnace-like Bio-Reactor.
This core organ, located at the center of his chest cavity, far exceeded the design complexity of any human Nuclear Reactor.
Its immense circular chamber was framed by layered, interlocking skeletons