With my appearance mostly accounted for, there is only one mystery to solve. What does my face look like? I knew from the brief amount of time as a living comet that I do not need eyes to see, but it seems my sight defaults to ocular vision while in a humanoid body. I just need to once again divorce my senses from my body. I focus hard, and with a slight feeling of discomfort reminiscent of crossing one's eyes, my sight divulges from the normal. A new field of vision is added and for a brief moment, I have three fields of vision before I cancel my eyesight and see through mystical means alone.
I slowly turn my vision to my face. Most of my head is covered by the helmet, but my face has the pronounced nose and permanent scowl seen in the comics. I am pleased with this, but I am even more intrigued by my eyes. Behind my mask is pitch-black darkness; even my eyes have no white sclera. The only light that makes my eyes visible is a peculiar iris. A white, square-shaped iris stares out from the darkness, elevating my face from humanity to something else.
With these issues out of the way, it is time to focus on mitigating my curse. Unfortunately, I do not have Galactus' scientific knowledge of a civilization that lasted until the end of the universe. I will either need to move through space under my own power or find a way to acquire advanced technologies. Any use of the Power Cosmic would increase my hunger, which indicates that I should focus on the latter. But how?
Hmm, either I steal the technology or I invent it myself. The planet I destroyed seemed primitive in design, and while it is possible that it was merely barbaric, it is also true that the universe could be young and the technology necessary for interstellar travel rare indeed. I remember that when the original Galactus awoke, it was only millions of years into the new universe. I could wait eons before stumbling upon a suitable civilization or accidentally destroy the planets that would pioneer lightspeed or higher travel in their infancy, if I haven't already.
No, that will not do. I would rather work towards a more certain outcome, for despite my insufficient knowledge, I have two factors that will make lightspeed travel a certainty given time. The first is a high cosmic understanding; the Power Cosmic gives me insight into the underlying fundamental forces governing the cosmos beyond humanity's grasp. The second is knowledge of the universe's beginning.
How do I describe it? A simple answer would be that I witnessed some of the blueprints necessary for the universe. But like many simple answers, it leaves out so much nuance. Despite appearing as blueprints, they were also like... like symphonies. Yes, symphonies with God as the supreme orchestrator. Yet, all of these descriptions fail, for it was as if the language of the choir were whistles and clicks instead of speech, but also that the very sight of the orchestra itself had been suited to a species that saw light on a completely different wavelength, and the music contained billions of pages worth of lines and notes but finished in less than a second. This entire orchestra is packaged to fit in a small container. I could perceive no end to these strange containers when the universe was formed. If even I perceive it as so, a normal man would be grateful if they came out of the experience sane.
Fortunately, I am no normal man.
For the Power Cosmic allows me to gain a small understanding of this Godspeak. Like a child shaking their presents before Christmas, the Power Cosmic that constitutes me promises that I will be able to slowly peel away the wrappings and perceive the truth within. I believe that with some care, I can slowly divulge information about energies, material properties, and comic book level physics foreign to the previous universe. It will take some time, however, so I will use my abilities to construct a base to reside in.
I look back at the smaller planet in front of me; it would be a good choice, as I feel through my cosmic sense that this planet is full of minerals and is also nearby the remains of the destroyed planet. Most of that material that was buried deep within the misfortunate planet is now freely floating in space. I could use materials from both of these planets to create my future ship.
I try another important ability in my toolkit. I imagine myself warping from my current location to about 9 meters (30 feet) above the Earth's surface from my feet to the ground. Space moves around me before I find myself right above the planet's surface. I fell the remaining 3 meters (10 feet) onto the ground. It seems this will require more practice.
"This place is as good as any other, I suppose."
I say before raising my hands, a purple glow suffusing them, before transforming the barren landscape into a massive building. The plain rocks were transmuted into steel, glass, and concrete to create a modern and functional building. The terrain is quite barren, so an excessive display of glass is unnecessary. This leads to a brutalist building to match the desolate surroundings.
I shrink myself to a healthy 10 feet before I walk inside the door and begin work on the interior. The current building is completely hollow inside at the moment. First, I create floors—six of them in total. Then I fashion steps from the right-hand wall up through every floor. The six floors above me will serve as research rooms that I will designate and fully customize when I parse the understanding from the Big Bang. The entry room, however, will be where I live for the most part.
I quickly create a minimalist livable space, as I do not want to waste the precious Power Cosmic at my dispersal, I only create a basic bedroom in the back and transmute the living room into a simplistic modern room consisting of a couple of chairs, marble flooring, and finally a few tables. These were simple to make considering the mostly rock material, but turning them into softer chairs took more out of me than anything else on this level. The many architects whose scraps of memories I have floating around would be livid that I used reality manipulation to make such a barebones structure. They would probably create the greatest and most elegant structures in the world, damn the cost. There is a very thin line between passion and insanity.
Lastly, I will create a bedroom where I will meditate to acquire knowledge. I again transfigured the stone this time into a simplistic bed in the middle of the back wall. The bed is not luxurious in any way; it is a simple platform bed to provide stern support. I do not really need it; I am not cold despite the atmosphere being practically nonexistent, and my body will not cramp no matter what happens. However, I may spend an incredible amount of time lying down; it's better to be comfortable while doing so.
The flooring is marbled, the walls are made of limestone, and there is a window outside to the left of the doorway. It was a tall window that allowed me to see the beautiful stars above.
My armor turns into a shining white light before melding into me; the rest of my body follows, and I am left a vaguely humanoid mass laying on a bed.
It's time for a small taste of enlightenment.
Wow, I spent way to long researching building creation and stair placement for this chapter. I hope you guys will not get bored of the coming chapters, if you do, I'm sorry but slow gathering of both scientific and mystical knowledge and then finding unique applictions for them is a major point of this book. I want to show all the thought processes and work behind them so that when he uses them to great effect it won't just be mystic power bs.