In the middle of the night, Josh suddenly woke up from his sleep.
He stared blankly out of his bedroom window, gazing for a long time at the dark and mysterious ocean under the moonlight.
Tiamat...
Was she really the Great Mother of Earth?
Josh couldn't be completely sure, but the great kindness and warmth he felt from her in his dream made him believe it, at least for the most part.
And what Tiamat wanted him to do also fit the role of the Earth's Mother perfectly.
What did she ask of him?
It was both simple and extremely difficult—eliminate the Eternals and stop her birth, preventing the Emergence from happening.
As a Celestial, Tiamat knew from the beginning that her birth would bring disaster to Earth.
In the original timeline, if those few Eternals hadn't decided to stop the Emergence for their own reasons—and if Tiamat hadn't seized the opportunity to take her own life through Sersi—Earth would have been destroyed.
But right now, those Eternals had not yet developed the idea of stopping the Emergence. This made them Tiamat's greatest obstacle, one that had to be removed.
In Tiamat's eyes, the creatures of Earth were her true children, while the Eternals were merely tools sent by other Celestials. Their lives didn't matter.
However, as an incomplete Celestial who couldn't even properly communicate with ordinary humans yet, there was little she could do beyond watching everything unfold.
To change her fate, she needed outside help.
Druig's global psychic outburst gave Tiamat that chance.
The Eternals, as creations of the Celestials, were naturally excellent vessels for Cosmic power.
But since Tiamat's mental power was still weak, she couldn't control them directly. She could only influence them under certain conditions.
Druig's power surge had created such a condition.
His ability, originally intended to control humans, accidentally became a bridge that allowed Tiamat to connect with Josh's mind.
As for why she chose him, Tiamat didn't say, and Josh had no way of knowing.
The effect of Druig's outburst was limited, so Tiamat only had time to send a few simple messages. She couldn't even communicate with Josh when he was awake—only when he was asleep could she send messages through his subconscious.
But there was one way to contact her again.
If Josh could find the Emergence site and physically reach Tiamat's body, he could make direct contact.
The location of her body was included in the information she had left him.
Finding the Emergence site wasn't difficult, but digging down to reach Tiamat's body would be an enormous challenge.
In the movie, her form emerged quickly, but only after a long series of pre-Emergence tremors. Before the actual event, massive earthquakes had already begun shaking the planet—that was Tiamat's body slowly rising to the surface.
At the moment, however, she was still buried deep underground.
The shallowest parts of her body were at least tens of kilometers below the surface, while the deepest parts were close to the Earth's core.
This is also why the birth of a Celestial leads to a planet's destruction—if the planet's core explodes, how could it possibly survive?
But what does "tens of kilometers underground" really mean?
In the future, the deepest human drilling was recorded in 2011, when Russia drilled an oil well on Sakhalin Island that reached 12,345 meters.
Meanwhile, Earth's crust is only about 17 kilometers thick.
With Josh's current abilities, digging to such depths was far from easy.
Even if he relied entirely on robots, he had no idea how many would be destroyed in the process.
And eliminate the Eternals? Easy to say, but not so easy to do.
Preventing Tiamat's birth? Even harder.
Thinking about it all, Josh couldn't help but sigh.
After Tiamat's sudden intervention, he found it impossible to go back to sleep.
Feeling restless, he got up, dressed, and walked onto the deck for some fresh air.
But as soon as he stepped onto the deck, he noticed that someone was already there.
It was Carter.
"Can't sleep either?" Carter asked without looking back, her sharp hearing immediately picking up Josh's footsteps. Then she took a sip from the bottle in her hand.
Josh looked at the label on the bottle and raised an eyebrow.
Damn, "Aqua Vitae"—a vodka with a staggering 96% alcohol content.
Even though Josh didn't drink, he never forbade his subordinates from drinking on their own time. The ship's bar was stocked with almost every type of liquor in the world.
Aqua Vitae was no exception.
But this stuff was usually used as a base for cocktails. Drinking it straight? That was another level. Even the medical disinfectant was only 75% alcohol.
And if it got near a spark, it would turn into a firebomb instantly.
Only someone like Carter could treat it like an everyday drink.
"I've got something on my mind... I don't know what to do about it," Josh sighed.
"Oh? Our fearless Sir Kahn actually has moments of uncertainty?" Carter raised her eyebrows in surprise. In her eyes, Josh had always been extremely confident.
"Do you believe in gods?" Josh asked.
"…If you're talking about the bastard who controlled me, I'd spit in your face," Carter replied with a glance.
"Haha, of course not. Those guys are just aliens with special abilities. Compared to real gods, they're nothing. I mean true gods—ones that are nearly all-powerful," Josh explained.
He was, of course, referring to the Celestials.
In the physical universe, they were as close to omnipotent as one could get.
"I wouldn't have believed it before. But after seeing aliens and even the progenitor of vampires, if you told me that gods do exist, I wouldn't find it too hard to accept," Carter tilted her head thoughtfully.
"Ever heard of Tiamat?" Josh asked, nodding slightly at her answer.
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