CHAPTER 216

[Draul St. Cross POV]

The void faded away leaving me in the Sol System that housed the eight planetary bodies that were sister planets to Earth. 

"Fucking hell." Due to the abruptness of which I left the Overvoid, my form was still nothing more than a swirling mass of darkness and chaos that would douse the most pious believer with the most hellish nightmares. 

In my oversight, I had blocked the sun from shining its rays on Earth and the nearby planet, causing over five planets to spin in perpetual darkness. Even now I could hear the most hardened atheist screaming about the world coming to an end and even some proclaiming that the Armageddon was near. 

I was darkness, chaos and destruction personified – a normal mortal would lose all sense of their mental faculties if they were to gaze directly at me which was the reason for my initial panic as my little stunt was about to send no small population of Earth into a madness induced parade. Thankfully it was nothing a little reality manipulation couldn't fix. 

The darkness shrouding my form dissipated away leaving only my physical form as I descended back to Earth. Being back in the material world was vastly different than what I felt it used to be. 

Right now, I could feel the souls of the damned and also those that were drawn to torment in the Dark Dimension, screaming and cursing at whoever they could. It wasn't only just humans, alien lifeforms too. While I could hold all the souls within numerous universes, those in the Dark Dimension had always been out of my reach but not anymore. 

My talk with Yog-Sothoth had given me a lot to think about now that I knew what I was. 

Different from other beings that could be killed and may even scale up to his level, the only way to kill an Ultimate God like him or any of his kin was to kill the Archetype that was the coagulation of them all. 

When basically explained, they were all part of Azathoth's imagination and the only true way for them to seize existing was to make Azathoth 'think' they don't. And doing that was easier said than done. 

The most I could do was force them back into the Overvoid and prevent them from entering this multiverse because the number of universes that were being turned into dust was getting progressively numerous by the second. 

The only beings I couldn't sense were the Abstracts, most of them at least. Celestials, two beings I could only identify as Lord Chaos and Master Order due to the laws they were exuding… and The Living Tribunal. If I focus harder, I could feel them practically appearing and reappearing all over different universes. And not only that, the darkness I could feel bubbling inside a part of this universe was something that even I dreaded. 

Knull – The King in Black. 

There was something bothering me about the sudden revival of Knull and try as I may, I couldn't banish that fucking planet away from this universe. It was like cancer inside my own body – I just couldn't cut it away but rather deal with it symptom by symptom. 

Knull was someone who had no way to be killed. He had the Celestials and their strongest forces literally running away due to the fear of death and the despair of continuously empowering himself with each Celestial that he killed. 

He was as much of a threat as that of anybody from the nightmare mythology. 

Klyntar had been in my senses since my apotheosis and I was sure the Celestials were already aware since I had felt a few of them popping on and off the vicinity of the planet, most likely estimating how long it will take for him to rise up from his biblical death. 

I was sure I could more than match a few Celestials but I didn't know how I would fare against those on the level of Arishem, a fully grown Tiamut and One Above All – The Celestial, not the Marvel singularity. Seeing as how none of these Celestials would win against Knull in a 1v1, maybe a fully grown Tiamut could but fingers crossed, it probably meant that I still was not on the level that they were. That probably would have been the case if I was going with the stellar scaling that had completely lost its credibility since the heydays of Marvel Comics. 

The Infinity Stones were more than enough to propel someone to a level that few characters such as Franklin Richards and Adam Warlock had attained, but the only caveat was as far as they could achieve that. And then there was Dormammu. To be honest, scaling my abilities at this level is getting stupid because I was coming to realize that there was a simple scale that could only apply to beings of my level. 

You either win against me or you can't – that was the only scale that proved true, and the only one that was proven to work at any time. 

Despite me not knowing how truly strong I've become, I didn't really feel that I'd lose against Knull, if not factoring the weird feeling I always get when I look at him. 

Knull might be really strong but there was something I had learned from my time with Yog-Sothoth. As much as Knull was called the God of the Void, he was only a tenant in it, the strongest tenant, and not really the manifestation of the primordial darkness. Darkness was as much his power as it was mine. He was as much as Dark God as I was and even though he had a special sword – The Necro Sword – so did I. While my axe was nowhere near as strong as his weapon, the realization of my <Null> ability was an edge that I was sure would evenly balance me against the King in Black. 

Unlike my time as a human where I would spend days and weeks literally trying to get used to a new ability, my fusion with the Mind Stone changed all that and the Soul Stone served to bolster what was already there. 

Rather than train to get used to the ability and have it synchronize itself with me to the level of familiarity I had with my other abilities, all I needed to do now was just understand how the ability worked and that was a one-way ticket to instant mastery. 

It was more than just an ability at this point to be honest. 

It had far surpassed something inane as heat energy, or any form of energy. It was even more than a concept at this point. 

It was a law. 

A totality in and off itself. 

Even now, merely touching upon the vestiges of that power, all I could feel was the steady unmoving feeling of void. The only aspect which it exhibited was to turn everything into nothing. Even energy. 

Excitement filled my body as I began to run scenarios and calculations on just how far and how theoretical I could take it. Since I had fused with the six aspects of the Marvel multiverse, at least some of it, an infinitesimally minute sum, what then would happen when I used my Null ability in conjunction with, let's say… Time. 

Yes I could send attacks across the time stream, but it was still through the time 'stream'. With my Null ability, it was entirely possible that I could just destroy the 'stream' and make it affect even acasual beings, since the attack has transcended time itself. 

Combining it with reality, oooh! Now that was something that was worth trying. It wasn't until I started my latest venture of manipulating reality that I realized just how much more dangerous it was than anything else I had. To an almost equal degree, the Reality Stone could function as any other Infinity Stone out there and could pretty much make them redundant, and different from what one might think, it was by far the most easiest of the Infinity Stones to use. 

It literally worked off imagination. Imagine that. 

Tampering with laws and concepts was what it was literally made to do. Turning fundamental laws into something as basic as Hula-hoops was the easiest thing it could do. 

It could literally meld with every other Infinity Stone in an unlikely seamless way that the Power Stone could never dream of achieving. 

Now imagine fusing that with something like Null. 

To be honest, something must have seriously been wrong with my head for me not to realize that I had been sleeping on my most dangerous ability since its conception. I literally only used it to destroy things when I could have been using it for so much more. 

My form phased through the room of my house and landed on the dining table just in time for dinner. 

The multiverse could worry about itself but now, now I had a dinner that wasn't going to eat itself and a frustrated Goddess to appease. 

Could my life get any better? 

… 

I hope I just jinxed it. 

… 

[In a dimension outside the totality of the multiverse] 

"I reckon you cease your attempt at that human, Infinity. There are other more pressing things to worry about."

Two beings stood side by side and watched as the billion fold specks of light become darker with each passing moment before being snuffed out. 

"I'm afraid we are at an impasse. I will not allow a spawn of them to wield my essence, brother. He defeated Dormammu." At the mention of those words, the one identified as brother to Infinity ceased all words he wanted to say. What else could he say? 

Someone defeated Dormammu, in his own domain no less. And the said person had also taken a part of both his and his sister's aspect from quite a number of universes and he was steadily progressing as every moment went on. 

"You say that, but going there is more than certain enough to bring you harm. He wields both our powers, though to a significantly lesser degree, wields the Darkness he usurped from Dormammu and also the Void he impossibly had gotten. He might not have realized just how much power he had and you going there will reveal just that to him. Let him wallow in his ignorance for a little while longer and let the others take care of him. After they have done their part, we will then take our time to absorb back all of our essence from him since it's almost a true impossibility to kill void after all."

She pondered on her brother's words and knew the truth of them. It was better for everyone if he was still ignorant but there was just one tiny problem.

"I can no longer see him."

It would have been way better, infinitely so, if she had not lost sight of him the moment he absorbed Dormammu. Pun doubly intended. As much as she could feel his presence on multiple universes, so could he feel her presence if she were to be anywhere near those universes. 

"What is the Tribunal's verdict?" She asked. 

"They believe it's best if we isolate the universes he's already gotten under his influence as that would stop him from growing stronger and absorbing more of our aspects and ultimately cutting him away from our multiverse." Eternity grunted at his own words since he knew that if not for the incursion they suddenly had to watch out for, they would have already done away with the man as soon as the Tribunal gave the judgment. 

Unfortunately for them, the recent events had taken them by quite the surprise since no single one of them had ever expected Yog-Sothoth to personally act. As someone who stood at the same plane of existence with Living Tribunal, it was on very rare occasions that he would act and he usually was one that hardly ever devolved into madness like the rest, or most, of his kin. 

As if the possibilities of it getting even worse than this was the taboo child of Lord Chaos and the Queen of Nevers, Yog-Sothoth was surprisingly the least of their problems. 

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