Eating the Mega Fruit

An emergency was an emergency.

But running away wasn't something you could accomplish by shouting a couple of times.

People still had to run forward step by step.

But the family of four Cthulhus was no ordinary bunch.

In those stories, anyone who saw them or heard their voices would, unsurprisingly, go insane.

But who was Grandpa?

After being served a feast of science, Cthulhu's non-physical attacks were directly classified as mental attacks.

And those things actually had an upper limit to their intensity.

Otherwise, where would Cthulhu's sons and daughters have come from...

Wasn't it because the mental attacks between both parents could be completely endured by the other's body, making them practically nonexistent?

So Grandpa's solution to that noise was actually quite simple.

A Universal Language Translator that covered the entire range of hearing, plus a blocking function, solved the problem of those voices.

Well, if the sound took the form of faint energy, then he could add the Multi-Frequency Signal Shield Grandpa used to evade the Galactic Empire's pursuit, leaving it unable to find a target to attack.

If it did find one, then they could use the Energy Dissolver to solve the energy problem.

As for physical attacks...

That was why the grandfather and grandson were running.

From three hundred meters to eight thousand meters—an increase of n times in size meant that, in a sense, these creatures' combat power had also surged by n times.

Fortunately, Cthulhu's absurd appearance had begun to bring apocalypse upon the civilization of a planet.

As the great steward of the galaxy, the Galactic Empire naturally could not stay absent.

Though the Galactic Empire's Flymen looked pretty pathetic in the cartoon, their opponent was Grandpa!!!

Even the Citadel of Ricks had been built to evade the Galactic Empire and other enemies.

So the Flymen's combat power was actually insanely fierce.

It was only because the production team had a limited budget that people got the impression that the Galactic Empire was just a trash faction made up of Flymen and a few dozen ships at a time.

But to deal with this sudden situation, they could casually deploy...

Warships ten thousand kilometers long, pulling them out by the shipload.

Warships one hundred thousand kilometers long, deploying a full two hundred of them at once.

Energy turrets so densely packed they could trigger trypophobia fired countless energy blasts at the four Cthulhus as if ammunition cost nothing.

The entire planet began to tremble beneath the barrage's terrifyingly high frequency!!!

Those incoherent words and savage appearances were also nearly useless against the Flymen.

Their technology had long since advanced to the point of playing with consciousness. How could they possibly overlook mental attacks?

For the Cthulhus, it seemed that only physical combat remained!

"Alright, they're here. Let's keep looking for Mega Fruit!"

Having finally found a communication device on a corpse, Grandpa glanced up at the warships filling the sky, then lowered his head and ran in another direction.

Morty, who had already dealt with the Galactic Empire several times, looked at those gigantic warships painted black and red.

His eyes were full of envy.

Though those things might not even be stronger than Grandpa's little junk ship.

In the interstellar age, who wasn't a disciple of multi-turret supremacy?

After withdrawing his gaze, Morty followed Grandpa.

The two killed creatures and the people of this planet all along the way.

Eventually, they arrived in a valley.

The Mega Fruit Trees stretching out like a forest made both Morty and Grandpa stare wide-eyed.

Although these Mega Fruit Trees had only appeared as an important supporting element in the first season's pilot episode, with only a few brief appearances afterward.

They were actually cultivated on a large scale throughout the Citadel of Ricks.

There was only one reason...

Even for Ricks, these things could push their already infinitely elevated intelligence another huge step forward!

They were one of the rarest yet most artifact-like items in the entire world of Rick and Morty!

Grandpa didn't want to go to the Citadel of Ricks, so naturally, the only way to obtain these Mega Fruits was through gathering them in the wilderness... beyond the stars.

Morty dashed forward. Facing a two-meter-high trunk, he used both hands and feet to climb up.

"Climbing a tree? What are you, some kind of primitive?"

Seeing someone scrambling with both hands and feet, Grandpa mockingly scoffed. Then, from who knew where, he pulled out a pair of shoes.

After activating their adhesion function, he walked up the tree as if on flat ground.

But when he saw Morty actually bite into the flesh of a Mega Fruit, his expression instantly twisted into a knot.

He had long noticed that Morty had always wanted to become stronger.

So he had deliberately been training Morty's abilities.

But... this thing! Even I wouldn't dare eat it unprocessed!

You're trying to get yourself killed!!!

Morty had already entered a wondrous state.

It was a sensation he had never experienced in his life.

It was like a single-core PU had suddenly become a thirty-thousand-core PU. At that moment, his thoughts and consciousness were like those of a god!

Everything before his eyes, starting from the most superficial point, drove him to constantly think deeper and deeper, even producing comprehensive, systematic critical insights.

A single grain of sand—based on the wind blowing past him, the condition of the soil, the periodic table, and a series of other factors, Morty could directly envision what it had looked like ten years ago, one hundred years ago, or one thousand years ago.

The Galactic Empire warships in the sky.

Were directly dismantled by his terrifying computational power.

Their integrated forms were divided into separate units according to functional zones.

Without ever seeing their interiors, he used the most logical approach to envision a colossal warship one hundred thousand kilometers in scale.

From the turrets to a cup of coffee held by a crew member inside, even the water recycling system—everything was calculated by the terrifying processing power of Morty's brain.

Nuclear fusion, the Mr. Meeseeks Box, effortlessly unlocking animal intelligence, and a whole series of technologies.

He began thinking from their most fundamental starting points.

In merely one second, Morty knew how to create nuclear fusion.

By the second second, enhancing animal intelligence had become easy as well.

Was this what it felt like to be Rick...

Nothing could stop me!!!

But when he realized that the Portal Gun was what he truly needed to focus on.

He got stuck...

This was a technology that even Grandpa needed to pay an enormous price to achieve.

It left Morty like a scientist standing before nuclear fusion and losing his hair nonstop.

He had no way to begin!

Because, in a sense, the Portal Gun was practically a bug.

How much energy, how special did it need to be, and how stable did it need to be to create a portal stable enough not to kill its user?

How could one locate the coordinates of another universe?

If the universe had coordinates, did that mean distant universes were actually all gathered together?

Then if universes were arranged neatly together like cigarettes in a cigarette pack, what lay beyond those distant universes?

The deeper Morty thought, the paler his face became. He gradually understood why Grandpa had become a nihilist...

And then.

An immense force struck Morty in the abdomen.

"Ah!!!"