Marvel: The Gourmet God

"A bunch of useless fools! Because of your incompetence, you're stuck here guarding the Divine Realm. And yet, you allowed an intruder into the Divine Realm, forcing me and Odin to intervene!"

Hela's cold voice rang out as she addressed the tardy group of guards. Though she exuded no discernible aura, her words alone made their bodies tremble uncontrollably.

The name Hela, Goddess of Death, was enough to strike fear into her enemies—and even more so into the warriors of the Divine Realm.

After delivering her scathing reprimand, Hela, seeing that no one dared to respond, lost interest in continuing. Her expression remained frosty as she ordered, "Tell me everything that happened in the Divine Realm—every single detail."

Though a woman, Hela carried an air of authority that radiated the majesty of a supreme ruler.

At this point in time, Odin had only one heir: Hela. He held her in high regard, grooming her meticulously as his successor. Hela had not only met but far exceeded Odin's expectations.

The group of Divine Realm warriors who had sounded the alarm dared not hide anything. Trembling, they recounted everything that had transpired.

"An intruder suddenly appeared in the Divine Realm's dungeon, killed all the prisoners and guards, and left nothing but skeletons? You useless fools!"

Hela's expression grew colder with each word, her fury burning within her.

"Lady Hela, it wasn't that we didn't try our best. It's just that the intruder's abilities were too bizarre. Inside the dungeon, everyone—whether prisoners or guards—was reduced to skeletons. The sight was..."

The leading warrior spoke hesitantly, his voice trembling. Others who had witnessed the dungeon's carnage nodded in fearful agreement.

Through their account, Hela gained a general understanding of the situation.

One detail puzzled her, however: according to the guards' descriptions, the intruder was unmistakably a human.

The idea was absurd. Midgard, the realm of humans, was incredibly distant from the Divine Realm. Without the Rainbow Bridge, traversing that distance was nearly impossible. From what Hela knew of Midgard, humans were the weakest of the Nine Realms' races—primitive, uncivilized, and barely emerging from barbarism.

"Regardless of how this human managed to enter the Divine Realm, the fact that he killed our guards makes him unforgivable. Killing Divine Realm warriors is an unpardonable crime. Issue my decree: across all territories under the Divine Realm's rule, this human is to be hunted down. If sighted, he must be eliminated immediately!"

Thus, Hela issued a bounty order, which quickly spread throughout the Divine Realm's conquered worlds.

The human who infiltrated the Divine Realm became known as the Corpse Eater.

News of the decree caused widespread astonishment among the realms under the Divine Realm's rule. The Corpse Eater swiftly became a topic of fervent discussion.

Meanwhile, the Corpse Eater—Johnny—found himself in dire straits.

While fending off Hela's deathly power, Johnny had chosen to escape through a teleportation beam. Upon entering the dark, desolate void, he lost consciousness.

His body, however, had drifted into a strange and distant spacetime—a realm far removed from the Divine Realm's reach.

This peculiar realm, located deep in the cosmos, was chaotic in its temporal and spatial properties, vastly different from the greater universe.

In this realm, time flowed unpredictably. What could be an eternity here might be a fleeting moment in the greater universe—or vice versa.

Unconscious, Johnny remained unaware of the peculiar phenomenon unfolding around him. Within the void, faint, ethereal lights began to drift toward his body, circling around him in stillness.

As time passed, these lights grew in number, eventually enveloping Johnny. They didn't linger on his body but continued to orbit him in a mysterious dance.

Then, at a certain moment, a strange force surged from within Johnny. The surrounding lights, drawn by this force, transformed into threads of energy and seeped into his body.

"Ding! Sufficient cosmic energy detected. Optimization can now be completed. System optimization initiated…"

The crisp voice of the Devourer System echoed in Johnny's mind.

The energy emanating from Johnny's body started gently at first, merely guiding the ethereal light surrounding him into his body.

However, the pull quickly intensified, amplifying tenfold, then a hundredfold, expanding its range drastically.

As the suction grew stronger, more light illuminated the entire space, converging toward Johnny until the area around him glowed brilliantly.

The hazy energy, once absorbed into Johnny's body, transformed him. His figure became crystalline and translucent. As the influx of light increased, Johnny's body itself began to radiate, glowing so intensely that his flesh, bones, and internal organs became visible through his skin and clothing.

The energy within these radiant lights was peculiar. Once inside Johnny's body, it began healing his wounds at an astonishing speed. Injuries large and small disappeared as his body was restored to perfection.

If Johnny had been conscious, rather than in a deep coma caused by his earlier peril, he would have been utterly astonished by the changes happening to his body.

The radiant energy coursed through him, with part of it absorbed by his cells. Each cell seemed to awaken, glowing and undergoing mysterious transformations.

Johnny's cells responded to the energy like parched earth meeting rain. They seemed to sigh in relief, greedily absorbing the endless stream of energy, expanding and revitalizing themselves.

However, the cells alone couldn't process all the energy flooding his body in such a short time. Most of the energy flowed into a specific location within Johnny, as if drawn to an invisible black hole that swallowed it all without any apparent reaction.

The process of devouring the strange energy from this pocket dimension continued for an indeterminate amount of time. In his unconscious state, Johnny perceived only a faint sensation—his body seemed to be immersed in a hot spring, with every pore in his body opening up, releasing a sense of unparalleled comfort.

It was a sensation he had never experienced before.

This pocket dimension, tethered to the greater universe, wasn't especially vast. The strange energy sustaining it was rapidly depleting due to Johnny's relentless consumption. As the energy vanished, the dimension began to shrink and destabilize, trembling with growing intensity.

It seemed that the energy had been crucial to the existence of this space. With Johnny consuming it without restraint, the dimension grew increasingly unstable, teetering on the brink of collapse.

After an uncertain amount of time, Johnny's consciousness gradually returned. He felt his awareness reconnect with his body, and just then, a crisp electronic voice rang out in his mind once more.

"Ding! System optimization complete."

As the voice faded, Johnny's tightly shut eyes slowly opened. A bright, dazzling light flashed briefly in his gaze before fading away.

Want to read the chapters in Advance? Join my Patreon

https://patreon.com/Glimmer09