Asmodeus seemingly drifted through space at a casual pace as he searched for his target. He was slightly baffled when he entered the solar system and found far fewer main planetary bodies than he had expected. There was a planet roughly where he was expecting there to be one but based on the images he pulled from the System, it wasn’t quite right. Too green, less water than there should be, though it’s been 100,000 years since we were last here. He thought to himself. He cast about the blackness of space in the vicinity of the body and decided this wasn’t the one, besides being too green, it spun far too slowly and the atmosphere was too thick for the average Human to survive on the surface. It also lacked a satellite body in its orbit. Speaking of, that’s wrong too, it’s on a very, very slow escape trajectory. It’ll leave the system in a couple billion years. Hmph.

So he looked around more and found the remains of a shattered moon further back from the planet he currently orbited. He accelerated over to it and examined it for any remnants of life. He found several man-made objects scattered amongst the debris of what he was certain was the former Moon of the humans home planet. But no home planet. No Earth. And not enough debris to be the planet itself.

Greela?

Yes? Asmodeus’ AI popped into his vision and waited for him to complete his request.

Find the Earth for me.

Ok, give me a moment, I’m checking the backlogs for the last hundred thousand local years… Oh… here we go, I think I’ve got it. Also, you might want to see the playback.

Ooooookaaaay?

Greela pinged the current location of the Earth for Asmodeus. His eyes shot wide at what she indicated.

HOW THE FUCK DID IT END UP AT THE EDGE OF THE SYSTEM!?!?!

Check the playback. His AI insisted.

If he could sigh, he would have, having reached the Transcendent level millennia ago his attributes were so high that silly things like vacuum were beyond his concern. Though even making sound and breathing required some kind of medium to do both. The system empowered him and mana sustained him. He could pick a nice spot in the universe and sleep there until the heat death of the universe overcame him. Problem was the people he worked with didn’t believe the universe had that long. So he turned towards where Earth was currently spiraling out of the system and set a lazy, less than lightspeed, pace to intercept it and watched the playback of how the Sol System came to be in its current state.

Asmodeus studied the playback and determined it started around Earth orbit. Was a beautiful planet. He thought idly as the view zoomed in on the person he had come to find. There was no way to get a scale for how big the man was with the backdrop being Earth with the Moon creeping around from the back. The man, however, was a perfect example of humanity if he had ever seen one. And he had seen many. Humans were scattered across the Universe in one flavor or another. Then the view zoomed out and ships began appearing in the local space. The man waved his hand and they ceased to be. More appeared, and another wave of his hand, and more thousands of lives disappeared.

At first this seemed like suicide, then larger and larger groups of ships would appear. Some groups were destroyed before they were able to fire, but soon a steady slate of fire was falling on the man’s position. None of it touched him. He was beyond these kinds of attacks. But still they came. And even though he struck them down with a wave of his hand over and over again, they still kept arriving. Bigger and more numerous ships came and died and eventually the local space was cluttered with the various races many battle cruisers, battleships, dreadnoughts and even some of the rarer truly massive planet ships. Massive particle, kinetic, and energy weapons rained fire on the man and he weathered the attacks like a man facing tiny biting insects in a jungle. He just shrugged his massive shoulders and swept his hands left and right in front of him and the offending insects would cease to exist.

This went on for what seemed to be days. At one point one of the massive planet ships spun out of control and shattered the Moon in a blinding explosion. When it was over only the portion he found currently remained. He watched as more fire was dumped into the unstoppable man, much of which deflected off of him and struck the planet below. It now burned, no continent left untouched from the bombardment. Asmodeus was beginning to remember this event. He didn’t participate, he was barely halfway through gaining his Mythic class when the forces of a thousand galaxies converged on this man for their revenge.

He flew past the orbit of Jupiter and noticed it was missing some of its satellites. He did a quick check and found the Titanian homeworld was still in place and then returned to reviewing the events of a hundred thousand years past. At this point in the playback all but the largest planet ships had been wiped from the local space and the man moved to remove the last offending barges of life. Before he could engage, the real fighters finally appeared. I guess they thought throwing everything in the burning Universe might soften him up? Men and women of all the galaxies the man had razed in his conquest of power appeared around him. All of these were of the Divine level or higher. First a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand and so on til nearly sixty thousand beings appeared to try and kill the man.

Well, we know that didn’t happen or I wouldn’t be here looking for him. Still doesn’t explain why Earth is all the fuck the way out here. He thought absentmindedly.

Just watch, trust me, it’s actually quite impressive.

Fine. I got time.

While he resolved himself to finish the playback he took a spin by Saturn and saw that it too was missing quite a few satellites. And several of the bigger ones had shifted orbit. He decided that he was in no particular rush and would swing by Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto if it were in a favorable orbit. Or even still existed. Fuck.

He watched as the attackers came against the man and dozens fell only to be replaced by more. This went on for what seemed like a week until only the final hundred or so of the most powerful people in the Universe remained against him. He single handedly cut down sixty thousand of the strongest beings from across this Universe. What kind of monster do they have me seeking out!? The world below him was clouded with ash and smoke from the continents that burned from shore to shore. In the intervening week ships steadily left the cradle of humanity and the man actually did his best to direct the fighting away from the retreating ships. At least he cared about something other than power.

Where before 100’s at a time spent their lives against the man, now the attackers came in tightly coordinated groups of five to ten. All the groups were well balanced with front line attackers with defensive abilities, ranged damage dealers, and the occasional healer or support class. All of these were high tier Divine or low tier Transcendent. These beings gave the man a slight pause, and while the battles were longer and more fierce, they still fell to his hand. He’s not even using a weapon, he doesn’t try to evade or block, he just absorbs everything then lashes out and people die.

This went on for several more days before all that remained were the man and 27 Transcendent beings staring each other down. These attackers were divided into their respective groups and this is when the real fighting began. This is where Asmodeus saw the first attack that elicited more than a sneer from the man. The first group charged in and the man stood passively as he had before all others. Somehow they combined their attacks and managed to cause the man to flinch. He brought his arm up and scowled then launched into the group with a fury he had yet to display.

He seemed to reach into the back of the group and grab a woman by the hair and swing her in a wide circle. The movement was so fast that all that remained of it a second later was a streak of light that plowed through Earth's atmosphere and an explosion as the clouds of smoke and ash parted for a thousand miles in all directions as she was buried into the base of a large mountain on a continent called South America. The mountain turned into a miles wide crater and all that remained of the woman was a red smear that quickly burned away in the lingering friction heat her body caused entering the atmosphere. Asmodeus’ brow furrowed as more of the first party were smashed to paste or buried in Earth’s crust.

Craters formed where Transcendents smashed into the ground, in many of those craters lava began to flow indicating that their bodies had penetrated deeply through Earth’s crust. Then all the remaining twenty or so fighters charged in and began to attack the man with a ferocity. For the first time since the playback started Asmodeus saw the man flag under the pressure of the barrage of attacks. The beings attacking him finally figured out they couldn’t just stand back and take his attacks. I suppose a certain amount of arrogance sets in when you can’t find anything to challenge you.

Still they fell as the battle raged and their number dwindled. The man never gave up and never backed down. The level of attacks released massive bubbles of exotic energy. Greela highlighted one series of attacks for Asmodeus as the ‘one’. They released so much energy in that attack it shifted the orbit of Earth significantly, Gods Above! And still the attacks came and the man still fought. Though it had been close for several days, it was obvious that the man would be worn down soon. He managed to grab a man of a race of beings Asmodeus wasn’t familiar with and rip him in half. He flung the bottom half at a woman of the same race and chucked the top half over his shoulder. The next attack from a pair of different beings was the one that managed to subdue the man.

Brilliant beams of exotic energy struck his chest, then it seemed as if his mana were transferred back to the remaining beings. Then more beams of energy cascaded into him from all directions. The man was in pain and couldn’t fight back. Whatever they were doing wasn’t killing him, but it made it impossible for him to fight back. A woman floated over to him and looked at the others. Confirming he’s subdued? Then she placed a hand on his temple. He flinched and glared at her through clenched teeth. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and moments later the fight was over. He passed out orbiting a destroyed Earth that was on its way to leaving the solar system a hundred thousand years later.

The fuck did they do? Asmodeus wondered.

They severed his connection to the system.

You can DO that!?!?

It’s possible, it won’t last. But if you want to get a supremely powerful being under control. You CAN interrupt his connection. It would last long enough to place him in stasis. Then bury that stasis pod on a dead planet that was, say, on it’s way out of its system of origin?

And they sent me to wake him up. Which one of the Gods did I piss off!?!?

Well, I don’t know, let’s hope you don’t piss this one off.

As he careened past Uranus and Neptune and confirmed they had caught some of Jupiter and Saturn's wayward children he considered pretending he never found the man. What the fuck moved all the sattelites?

A Lot of the Transcendents were using gravity based attacks. You didn’t see it in that playback but all but the supermassive planetary bodies had their orbits wrecked. Mercury finally fell into the Sun, and Mars wasn’t on your sightseeing tour of the Sol System for a reason. Greela said smugly.

Before he could decide otherwise a black blue planetary body about the size of Earth became visible in the distance. Well, since I’m here. He paused in the dark planet's orbit for a long time watching it spin slowly in front of him. This is why we don’t live in our origin Universe anymore once we reach the Ascendant level. The power we hold is not for the younger Universes.

He descended to the ice covered world, the atmosphere had long frozen and offered no resistance as he plunged forward and landed on a crater pocked plain of ice. Greely automatically marked the location he needed to go and he settled into a steady run that devoured miles a minute. Having travelled almost 80 AU to get here there was almost no ambient light to the landscape and he had to rely heavily on his prodigious perception to see the terrain in front of him. He raced up and down the slopes of craters and skidded to a halt when he reached his destination.

This is it?

Yes, do you want me to activate it?

He considered a moment if he was doing the right thing, judging by the playback, billions died to stop this man. Though, if what we suspect is true, the information he holds may save trillions. Do it.

For long minutes nothing happened and Asmodeus wondered if the ancient devices no longer worked. Am I going to have to dig through miles of ice? Then the ambient temperature slowly ticked up. He noticed the ground was beginning to give off a yellow glow as the temperature began to steadily rise. The light increased and suddenly a rectangular beam of heat shot through the ice into space. The surrounding ice exploded as it was instantly turned to vapor around Asmodeus. Fortunately this wasn’t enough to harm the Transcendent Scion of the Ascending Moon.

As quickly as the ice was turned to vapor and thrust into the local vacuum it froze again and was captured by the planet's gravity and settled some distance away from the initial explosion. The hole in the ground still glowed with a yellow light that revealed a miles deep elevator shaft. In the distance he could see a figure climbing out of a stasis pod that was quickly ascending the shaft on the platform. The platform settled at the top and a man stood by the pod he recently slept the last hundred thousand years in.

He stood before Asmodeus naked as the day he was born, standing at nearly 3 meters tall, bald with oddly luminescent silver eyes and a thick brown beard hanging from his face. His body held not an ounce of fat, muscles roped around his form made of seemingly corded steel. He stared down menacingly at the shorter lizard man.

Asmodeus did the only thing one could do when in the presence of a God and dropped to one knee and greeted him.

Hello, Karl Brunett, Celestial Archon of the Shattering Multiverse. My name is Asmodeus.