Preparations in various directions proceeded in full swing. The good news was that only one parademon had been discovered so far, and it had been caught by Batman. Darkseid's infiltration had just begun.
Two days later, Faora told her some good news: "The Dead King they'd been searching for months had finally been captured."
Faora called Thea to a deserted planet. Livewire and Grodd were both there. The three had spent considerable effort to find the Dead King, who'd been missing for years, then teleported him to an alien world. After a hard battle, they finally managed to take down Atlantis's first king with difficulty.
"Old zombie!" Thea couldn't help exclaiming when she saw this guy's appearance.
Gray-white hair, a fierce face, tattered armor covering his body, with only a layer of skin wrapped around his skeleton—this appearance could play a Lich King without makeup.
Disturbed in his long slumber, the Dead King was furiously angry. The three surrounded and attacked him, throwing out various control skills. Ultimately, they relied on Faora's fierce strikes to knock the old zombie unconscious.
"Can his memories be read?" Thea asked. The gorilla nodded.
Grodd then began displaying the Dead King's entire life to Thea through psychic connection.
His youthful ambitions, middle-aged unification of the four seas, up until his betrayal by close kin in old age and the sinking of Atlantis—Thea rapidly scanned through the memories.
"He's still hiding something. Continue probing deeper." She commanded. The gorilla increased the mind control intensity.
After searching four times repeatedly, Thea finally saw what she'd been hoping for in the depths of the Dead King's memories.
"Tsk, this guy really wasted it. He actually squandered Poseidon's essence." Thea felt heartache just watching.
As Poseidon's chosen, their attributes were completely identical. To live for the long term, after sinking Atlantis, the Dead King made a ruthless move against the deeply slumbering Poseidon.
Unlike when Thea had absorbed Black Adam's divine power to elevate her own divine power ceiling and improve her life essence, this was different.
The Dead King utilized his same-source attributes with Poseidon and artificially downgraded the divine power, storing it like a hamster preparing for winter to maintain his own consumption.
Thea watched for a long time, clicking her tongue. The Dead King's methods were far from sophisticated. Just look at how he'd aged into a zombie—he fundamentally didn't understand divine power's mysteries and treated it as a force equivalent to magical power.
He'd completely wasted the essence of divine power, buying the box and returning the pearl. The original Poseidon divine power essence had been squandered entirely.
Thea even felt sorry for Poseidon. The old guy couldn't get his divine power back. This Dead King had been weathered into a zombie by time. Even if Poseidon took it back, he couldn't restore his former divine might. Better to continue being the eternal second place in the Greek pantheon.
"Find a small asteroid without water to lock him up." Thea instructed Faora. The Dead King's identity still had some value. Whether to hand him over to Poseidon or give him to the Atlanteans required further consideration.
His method of absorbing divine power seemed foolish and clumsy at the mortal and demigod stages, but at the divine stage, it precisely addressed the current situation where Thea and Diana had divine positions but insufficient divine power.
Though simply forcing absorption and conversion like the Dead King had extremely low efficiency, Thea's understanding of divine power, combined with sufficiently rich magical knowledge, would definitely develop more efficient methods.
Using the Dead King's approach as inspiration, Thea returned to Earth and immediately shut herself in with Diana to discuss. Mm, very serious research.
The two finally worked busily for five days, melting down the magic sword obtained from Ra's al Ghul and using its essence to forge two necklaces. The necklaces had a small space sealed inside with a powerful energy absorption spell fixed on the outside.
The Greek gods' blessings Diana had abandoned after ascending to godhood could now be put to waste—might as well use them once to test the effect.
"Such a familiar feeling. Divine power is indeed growing." The warrior goddess put on the necklace and closed her eyes to carefully experience it.
The gods' blessings were loaded into the necklace's internal space. Through the external energy absorption spell, bit by bit they converted, with the gods' various characteristics filtered layer by layer, restoring to the most essential divine power and supplementing the divine positions of Perseverance and Protection.
"This divine power originally accompanied you for a thousand years, so the conversion rate is highest." Thea's understanding of divine power already surpassed Diana's. She spoke with considerable experience.
Diana had originally proposed returning this divine power to the gods, but Thea forcibly suppressed that. Are you kidding? Return meat already in our mouths? Once given out, don't think about taking it back!
With her lover's strong opposition, plus Diana having no love for those siblings anyway, she half-reluctantly accepted this matter by default.
"Ahh—" The warrior goddess let out a long moan. Her nearly depleted divine position finally had replenishment. That feeling of complete bodily comfort—even with her composure, she couldn't help crying out.
"New Gods are too troublesome." After stopping absorption for a day, Diana frowned her beautiful brows, her tone quite dissatisfied.
Thea could only spread her hands to show helplessness. "Old God and New God divine power have different properties. New God divine power recovers slowly, but similarly consumes slowly. Each has advantages and disadvantages."
Diana's divine power recovery problem was barely resolved. Relying on absorbing the gods' blessings plus self-recovery, she could probably recover about seventy to eighty percent before the great battle.
Thea's own recovery problem still hadn't been solved.
The Dead King could absorb Poseidon, Diana could absorb the gods' blessings, because they were either same-attribute or deeply connected. This kind of opportunity wasn't common.
Six-attribute Thea needed to absorb something equally comprehensive in attributes. Black Adam had already been drained dry. The remaining divine power was all with Doctor Sivana. She wouldn't move against her own people, so Shazam was the only choice.
But Billy Batson was still being a brat, still hadn't obtained divine power. Thea figured it was mostly because she'd killed Black Adam, so the Wizard Shazam wasn't as urgent as in the original timeline.
If he wasn't urgent, she was! Thea changed strategy, deciding to stop passively waiting. She'd take the initiative and forcibly take down the old wizard Shazam.
This old guy was hiding in the Rock of Eternity—a space created by merging one stone from Heaven and one from Hell.
Heaven and Hell's great powers acted simultaneously on that place. It wasn't bound by space or time rules.
Neither Thea nor Madame Xanadu's divination could find this space.
Since magic had no solution, she prepared to use scientific means.
Cisco's shockwave ability could find the Speed Force space. Finding another Rock of Eternity not bound by time and space shouldn't be too difficult.
But searching blindly would be tough for him. Thea still needed to find someone who'd been inside the Rock of Eternity, searching for the entrance from that person's past memories.
There were only a few candidates. Billy Batson had never been inside. Black Adam had died directly, not even a single cell left—cloning was impossible. That left the Crime Trinity.