The moment after opening the Cosmic Cube from its confinement chamber, Alex found himself manifested within his soul, staring directly at the nigh-incomprehensible five-simplex of infinity stones at its core, which radiated a multicolored glow that covered his entire soul. His expression flattened from his initial confusion into a cold one as he processed the events that had just transpired.
At this moment, he had been completely severed from reality. Not a single one of his bodies remained outside his Soul Dimension. Let alone his bodies, he couldn't even feel his hosts. The only one he could barely sense the presence of was Wanda, but it was so faint and detached that he could do nothing beyond sensing her existence.
He had been completely purged from the universe, even the bodies in layered dimensions like Magik's Limbo weren't spared. The Cosmic Cube had thoroughly purged his entire existence from reality itself, rewriting everything and omitting him entirely.
A sudden yet profound sense of loss struck Alex, almost sapping all his strength away as he frowned, his breathing growing shallower as parts of his soul itself started fluctuating as if responding to the feeling of loss that was assaulting him.
"Aren't you six a little useless?" He asked rhetorically. "No passive defenses at all… It seems I need to keep these stones on my physical form from now on if I'm dealing with things like the Cosmic Cube…"
While very irked at the Stones' lack of action, Alex was far from helpless against the reality-bending powers of the Cosmic Cube. Especially since it hadn't been able to interfere with the Klyntar Soul Dimension, leaving Alex's soul completely unscathed. That was enough for him to reaffirm that his decision to keep himself hidden within this dimension was very good. Even now, he was sure that there was more to this dimension than he had explored. But that could only come once he had a solid grasp over Cosmic Energy so that he could have actual innate defenses against items or entities that could bend reality at a whim.
With his survival affirmed, Alex simply extended his hand toward the simplex and grasped all six stones into a fist before drawing upon his entire Bioenergy reserve.
At this point, Alex's reserve was solidly in the hundreds of thousands of units of Bioenergy, giving him the freedom to act wantonly with the Infinity Stones without any backlash from their utilization.
Closing his eyes, he articulated his thoughts and activated the stones to their fullest potential, invoking a resonating effect between all six of them.
…
A few seconds earlier, just as Alex operated the console to bring the Cosmic Cube from confinement, the glowing blue cube radiated an imposing might, enrapturing Susan for a moment. Instantly after that, a deafening cracking sound echoed throughout the universe itself. Susan's expression immediately broke down as she squatted, covering her ears and letting out a pained groan. Looking closer, her ears were bleeding from the sound of the crack, and her face had turned pale and bloodless as if she was suffering from a severe bout of weakness.
Beside her, Alex's physical form had already turned into a formless puddle beside her.
At the same time, the Cosmic Cube in front of them lost its imposing luster, weakening down to barely a flicker of blue within as if all of its energy had been sucked away.
Seconds later, Susan completely passed out, unable to hold on any longer as Alex's puddle persisted.
Soon, half an hour passed before Alex's puddle showed the faintest flickers of movement.
Fortunately, while Alex had shifted Gaia's core into himself, he hadn't completely removed her from physical servers just yet. That delay ended up benefiting him right now since, despite his current situation, no one had found out about Alex's current state aside from his primary and secondary bonds, and every single one of his women, even Wanda, was currently incapacitated.
Soon, the black slime on the ground rose up slowly, coalescing into Alex's humanoid form as he looked coldly at the weakened Cosmic Cube, as his remaining Bioenergy was reflected in his eyes.
«EP/Bioenergy» :: 0 Units
A wave of annoyance shot through him even as he saw the number actively start to increase by the second as he resumed his operations in Gaia Penitentiary.
"Who put you up to this?" Alex asked, grabbing the cube roughly and looking at it intently. "And don't you dare tell me it was Hydra, Kobik."
Receiving no response from the cube, Alex's expression grew colder as he tapped into the meagre cosmic energy that he had sucked away from the cloned inhuman and used it to activate his fragment of the Mind Stone.
Yellow lightning erupted from his arm that was holding the cube, immediately coursing toward it and dyeing the graying cube yellow for a moment. Unlike normal activation, his infusion of Cosmic Energy into the Infinity Stone seemed to have briefly supercharged it, giving it the same output as a full, unfragmented Infinity Stone.
"Ahh!" A pained groan immediately erupted from within the depths of the cube as it tried a futile resistance, its glow intensifying slightly. This time, Alex simply activated the full force of his lightning divinity and summoned a massive bolt of thunder from the sky as it tore through the ceiling and struck the cube.
"Tell me who it was, Kobik," Alex repeated coldly. "Before I completely wipe out your spiritual consciousness and turn you into the raw material for a toy that I'm building."
"I can't!" The voice that came through the cube was slightly childish, but that did nothing to dissuade Alex. The Cosmic Cube wasn't just acting in self-defense, but was outright attacking Alex's entire existence as if fulfilling a personal vendetta, going as far as to completely exhaust itself in the attempt.
Naturally, all this happened once Alex started mounting his resistance by using the Infinity Stones; otherwise, the Cosmic Cube would have been done after simply wiping Alex's existence out of reality.
"Then your continued existence serves no purpose," Alex didn't give Kobik another moment to mount a final resistance and reversed the effects of the Mind Stone entirely. Still powered by the scraps of Cosmic Energy that he possessed, it completely wiped Kobik's consciousness away from the Cosmic Cube, turning the conscious artifact inert as its blue glow disappeared, leaving it gray with hints of blue at the core.
He continued looking at the cube for a few seconds, contemplating whether he wanted to risk pulling it into his ‹Inventory› or not. While a Mystic Arts portal was also an option, it was something that could be traced by others and wasn't as secure a method. Ultimately, he decided to go with the ‹Inventory› method, but with a precaution. He tapped into his slowly increasing Bioenergy and used all six Infinity Stones to form a barrier that formed an isolated space within his soul. Only then did he absorb the Cosmic Cube into it to transfer it away to Wanda, immediately pulling the cube out of his soul to minimize both the risk of keeping it there and the consumption of his Bioenergy.
With the Cube dealt with, he turned to the unconscious Susan beside him. The rest of his primary hosts had already regained their consciousness and were in the process of being coaxed by him, leaving only Susan. Despite her high potential, her bond with him wasn't nearly as deep as the others, so the passive benefits that she received from bonding with Alex were naturally far weaker.
He knelt down beside Susan and gently pulled her up into his arms, using a third tentacle that emerged from his back to hold her head up and let her rest against his chest.
"Well, I'm sort of done with this place now… All that's left is the final thing…"
Stepping forward, Alex passed through a Mystic arts portal and emerged in the space above the planet. A significantly larger blue sphere was already close enough to blot out a significant part of his view as Alex remotely activated his preparations for this planet. Since there was no Celestial in its core, the shield generator was the same as the rest of the Gaia Cluster. The hexagonal pattern quickly spread through the entire celestial body, covering it in a blue shield. From the larger blue shield that held the Gaia cluster, a beam of blue light erupted that enveloped the entire planet in a controlled glow that guided it toward the cluster.
Mere minutes later, Earth-61311B, or as Alex called it, Hydra Earth, had become the fourth Earth to join the Gaia cluster, and the fifth overall when counting Earth-65, which was still some ways away. Not to mention the threat of the incubating celestial within that particular planet's core that Alex had to eventually deal with.
Watching the new planet seamlessly become a part of Alex's domain, he exhaled, seemingly unaffected by the fact that he was floating in the middle of space. After the ambush that he had just encountered, Alex was extremely concerned about the situation. Not only the current situation with Kobik, but also the previous one with Ultron. If it were just the situation with Ultron, he would have chalked it up to a coincidence and left it be. But the ambush by a literal Cosmic Cube left him somewhat rattled and concerned.
This was a targeted assault. Hydra Earth itself was a trap. This had to have been planned even before I brought Laura here the last time… Cosmic Cubes have immense power, but it isn't enough to force me to fully activate all six stones, even fragmented. And that was merely me holding on defensively until the cube was exhausted. I couldn't counter it even after running out of my full reserve of Bioenergy.
Alex's mood worsened as he looked at Susan's powerless state. The stones had impacted all of his hosts quite intensely, leaving all of the primary and secondary bonded women unconscious. And that was after Alex bore the brunt of the backlash of using them all at the same time.
"Let's go home," Alex said. "I'll fix you right up. And then, we can deepen our bond… You're lagging quite a bit behind the others."
I really need to up my caution now that I've come into the eyes of truly dangerous entities. That Scarlet Angel variant of Wanda is probably also someone's pawn, otherwise she couldn't have overtly held on to five planets all by herself… I need to start taking more precautions.
***
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