As the eerie runes crawling across the Ancient One's body slowly faded, the corruption clinging to her soul was stripped away piece by piece, like soot being scrubbed from glass.
Dormammu's lock was destabilizing.
The realization made him restless—furious, even. He desperately urged the Dark Dimension forward, forcing it closer to this universe with brute will alone. As long as he could arrive before the lock fully collapsed, the state of the Ancient One's soul no longer mattered. Pure, corrupted—he didn't care. Once he crossed over, everything would belong to him.
Time dragged on.
The runes continued to dim, their glow weakening until they were little more than fading scars. The darkness infecting the Ancient One's soul retreated, her true essence steadily reasserting itself.
And yet—
Dormammu smiled.
His pixelated, fractured face twisted into something smug, because he could feel it. The universe was close. So close he could almost taste it. With just a little more force, just one final push, the Dark Dimension would swallow this universe whole and grow even more terrifyingly powerful.
But then—
His smile froze.
The Dark Dimension stopped.
It could no longer advance.
Dormammu instantly understood what that meant.
Someone had interfered.
His awareness snapped outward, piercing the chaos beyond the Dark Dimension. In the roiling, unstable void, he spotted a tiny figure drifting in the cosmic storm.
The creature's skin gleamed like polished steel, its surface reflecting cold starlight. Six eyes burned with an ominous red glow, unblinking and merciless.
A Celestial.
Of course, calling it "tiny" was a matter of perspective. The being still stood over one hundred thousand kilometers tall—a walking god by any reasonable definition. But compared to the sheer vastness of the Dark Dimension, it was little more than a speck. A grain of sand trying to block a tidal wave.
The Celestial extended four massive arms into the chaos, divine light erupting from its body like blazing suns. The radiance slammed into the Dark Dimension, forcibly halting its advance.
"You dare stop me?!"
Dormammu roared. Seeing that it was only a single-universe-level Celestial, his restraint vanished. Darkness exploded from his form, surging forward in a violent flood.
If it had been a multiverse-level Celestial, he would have retreated without hesitation. Pride was one thing—survival was another.
But this?
This was nothing.
In the next instant, a hole tore open in the Dark Dimension itself, and an ocean of dark energy poured through, rushing straight toward the Celestial. The sheer mass of it could have crushed stars. If struck head-on, even a god wouldn't walk away unscathed.
Then—
The Celestial vanished.
No warning. No residual energy. No trace.
It was as if it had never existed.
Dormammu's fury faltered, replaced by cold dread.
Something stronger had stepped in.
This time, he didn't even dare to curse aloud. Instead, he hastily turned his attention back to the Ancient One's corrupted soul, trying to reestablish the connection—
Only to find nothing.
The corruption was gone.
Worse still, the purification was accelerating unnaturally fast, driven by a power far beyond his reach. The coordinates anchoring him to the original universe collapsed, dissolving like smoke.
"No! Damn it!"
Dormammu howled. With a violent shudder, he sealed the entrance to the Dark Dimension. Still unwilling to waste what he could salvage, he tried to retract the dark energy he had unleashed earlier.
That energy alone was equivalent to the mass of at least a thousand stars.
Normally, reclaiming it would have been effortless.
This time, it didn't respond.
The connection was gone. The energy was lost.
"Damn gods," Dormammu snarled, his expression darker than ever, "and damn whoever dared plot against me from the shadows!"
He knew the truth.
This loss was permanent.
…
In the real universe.
Thanos had already sensed the Dark Dimension drawing dangerously close. Yet despite that pressure, a fragment of the Ancient One's soul remained stubbornly impure.
Then, without warning, a mysterious force descended.
In an instant, the remaining corruption was erased completely. The connection to the Dark Dimension snapped like a severed cable.
Thanos' eyes narrowed.
So his instincts had been right after all.
There was something behind the Ancient One—something powerful enough to act directly.
But at the same time, his own attempt to modify her soul had been forcibly interrupted.
Annoying.
Extremely annoying.
This unseen manipulator truly left no loose ends.
He was just about to ask the Ancient One how she was holding up when—
Everything went dark.
An overwhelmingly vast, impossibly pure wave of dark energy surged toward his star system, blotting out the light of countless stars as it advanced.
Thanos frowned.
Wait.
Hadn't the connection to the Dark Dimension already been severed?
Then where the hell did this come from?
If Dormammu had been able to see it, he would have recognized it instantly—it was the attack he had launched earlier, now cut loose and redirected.
A parting gift.
Understanding dawned on Thanos immediately.
What a clever move.
Using his own power to block Dormammu's arrival… and then turning Dormammu's discarded attack into a weapon aimed straight at him.
Kill two birds with one stone. No, three—stop Dormammu, cleanse the Ancient One, and eliminate a troublesome pawn.
Cold. Efficient. Ruthless.
"This must be the same being who played chess with the God of Death," Thanos muttered. "The Celestials? Or one of the other five Primordial Gods?"
There was no time to dwell on it.
As the catastrophic energy closed in, Thanos spoke without hesitation.
"System," he said calmly, "if you don't act now, I'm finished. And trust me—you won't be doing too well either."
As for the God of Death?
He didn't even consider calling for help.
Their deal had been crystal clear from the start: power in exchange for souls.
No more. No less.
And this?
This wasn't part of the contract.
ChatGPT said:
In order to obtain the other party's energy, the God of Death had already made it clear—he wouldn't lift a finger for him.
Which meant they were officially out of options.
The only thing left was to let the system handle it.
What if the system got exposed?
There wasn't time to care.
Everything happened in a blink. Before the thought could even finish forming, dark power tore through space itself and slammed straight toward Thanos, fast and merciless.
Then, finally, the system spoke.
"Ding! The host has gained the power of ten million stars."
Thanos's lips curved into a faint, satisfied smile.
As expected. I was right.
This system might be petty, stingy, and allergic to generosity—but it absolutely refused to let itself die.
In the next instant, an overwhelming surge of energy erupted inside his body. His aura climbed higher and higher, swelling like a rising tide that refused to stop.
But before he could even savor it, dark energy from another dimension poured down like a cosmic flood, swallowing him—and the entire star around him—in an instant.
"Rumble…"
Titan, its moons, and everything in the surrounding star system—planets, debris, even the star itself—were assimilated by the darkness, then erased as if they had never existed.
Total annihilation.
In that endless black, a single beam of white light suddenly pierced through space, spreading outward and wrapping the entire star system in its glow.
Thanos stood there, suspended in the void, shining like a ridiculously overpowered cosmic light bulb.
Gu Yi stood quietly beside him, head lowered, her robes fluttering faintly in the residual energy.
Moments later, the massive stellar power exploded outward, shredding the surrounding dark forces and scattering them into nothingness.
Light chased away the darkness.
And just like that, the universe returned to silence.
Calm. Empty. As if the catastrophe had been erased from history.
At the same time, the power of millions of stars within Thanos began to fade.
He nodded slowly, watching as that terrifying energy cooled down and settled.
That power had definitely reached multiverse-level territory.
Typical system—normally so miserly it wouldn't give you an extra coin without interest. Yet this time, he'd managed to squeeze something real out of it.
Even if it was only the power of tens of millions of stars that would need more than eight years to fully cool down, it was still one hell of a trump card.
Honestly, if the system hadn't stepped in, his only option would've been to curl up into a defensive ball and ride it out.
The dark energy was powerful, sure—but it was scattered, unfocused, and completely uncontrolled. It couldn't truly kill someone wielding the Power Gem.
The Ancient One, on the other hand…
She probably wouldn't have survived.
No—someone had taken her away.
After a moment, Thanos looked down at what remained of Titan—half-corroded, scarred beyond recognition—and then at the distant, extinguished star. He simply shook his head.
Fortunately, the Black Order, Nebula, Hela, and Laufey were already on their way to Earth. Otherwise, the losses would have been far worse.
The one pulling the strings behind the Ancient One was truly skilled. Devious, patient, and annoyingly clever.
Still, they clearly hadn't expected him to have another ace hidden up his sleeve.
And…
With that thought, he turned to Gu Yi, who was still standing beside him, head lowered and unusually quiet.
"So," he asked calmly, glancing at her, "how are you feeling now?"
.....
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