Darkseid raised his head and gazed into the endless depths of space.
"That Earthling who killed the Kryptonian..." Darkseid smiled cruelly. "Don't let him die too quickly. I want to crush his hopes myself and show him what true despair feels like."
"Your will is the destiny of the universe." DeSaad prostrated himself.
Back on Earth, in a square in Metropolis.
White smoke rose from Steel Bone Victor's body as he pulled out the data probe. He staggered back a few steps and collapsed onto his backside.
"I... I've disconnected," Steel Bone said weakly. "The rest... is up to him."
Every eye turned to Ego's enormous blue brain.
Ego's divine tendrils had fully merged with the three Mother Boxes.
The three Mother Boxes, which had been glowing an ominous red, gradually settled. A soft, pale-blue halo flowed across their surfaces.
"Done."
At Ego's announcement, the dozens of blue tendrils slowly withdrew from the Mother Boxes.
"What... what did you do?" Barry Allen edged closer, cautiously studying the boxes that had changed color.
"I removed Apokolips's scorched-earth terraforming protocol and loaded the environmental parameters best suited to carbon-based life."
The others could not hide their astonishment.
Those were Mother Boxes! Cosmic artifacts that Superman and Steel Bone had barely managed to separate even with all their strength. Yet this brain, which had appeared out of nowhere, had completely rewritten them in minutes?
Batman Bruce stepped forward. He did not ask what kind of creature Ego was. At a time like this, prying into an ally's origins would be the stupidest thing he could do.
"How disruptive will the transformation be?" Bruce asked, getting straight to his greatest concern. "How much damage will an energy release on this scale do to the surface? Do we need to evacuate civilians worldwide immediately?