CHAPTER 148

Before me was a wide, near endless, black starry sky that expanded far beyond what I could reach… or it did, not anymore.

I could see the sun in all its gaseous glory without any of the planets in sight. They were too far for me to see after all.

I was still basking on the fact that I could breathe in space, anywhere in fact. 

After a few hours of rest at home, I could no longer take it and blasted off to space. 

One thing I noticed about my body, or rather came to terms with, was that I was the embodiment of Space itself. 

I no longer needed to open a portal to go somewhere as I was the Space of the universe inside the body of a man. 

I was far from being human. 

Even my body was no different from a construct, something to hold the essence of Space together. 

It had taken me mere moments to find myself in space and that was me flying. I had tried to dodge a satellite only for me to find myself thousands of kilometers away from the satellites' orbit. 

The moment I fused with the Space Stone was the moment I stopped being human. Now, I was like a being made of energy. 

I could feel every part of my body and the nigh-boundless energy that flowed through it. 

You could chop my arm off and I would be able to regenerate it immediately since it was just an energy construct. 

That in no way meant that I was invulnerable to anything as they were more than enough weapons and different types of energies that could cause me harm but on earth? Apart from the future Scarlet Witch and a few notable sorcerers, I was mostly unkillable. But in the wider universe? There were people who didn't care about what type of life form you were. If they wanted to, they could kill you just as much as you would kill a chicken and having the Space Stone didn't change that one bit. 

Even with everything that had happened it wasn't as if there weren't a few consequences. One of these being that I was now tied to this universe in more ways than one. I might be able to leave but not for long, reason being that the universe would collapse in on itself all to a singular infinitesimal point since there was no space for it to exist. 

It would be like before the Big Bang.

The Infinity Stones could not be taken from any point in time as it would just make that universe's timeline fall out of order. 

Destroying the stone like Thanos did in the movies was way different. Thanos destroyed the stones but not the energy inside which filtered back into the universe. It was a simple law of energy conservation. 

It was for this reason that the Avengers were required to put the stones back at the same point in time they took it from. 

Imagine taking away the Time Stone from a universe. Past, present and future would happen at once, colliding together until time collapses in on itself and then back to before the Big Bang happened, as the universe cannot come into existence without a specific point in time. 

What happened during my evolution was however, different. The Space Stone never disappeared from the universe, but what happened was that the container of the Space Stone changed. Which meant that at one point in time during my evolution, came a moment where the universe could not decide which was the Space Stone and it was because of this lack of the identification of the Space Stone that caused a crack in the veil of this universe that allowed some… forces to crawl back into the universe. 

To be honest, I was half expecting the universal police force known as the Celestials to come and punish me after what I did with the Space Stone but I guess it wasn't enough of a threat since numerous people had wielded the Infinity Stones since the beginning of time. 

So with the threat of the Celestials out of the way unless maybe I ran afoul of them, the only things I needed to watch out for were those universal beings who would be the ones that came for me. 

Sometimes I felt like those heroes who were trouble magnets as someway or another, trouble always had a reason to gravitate towards me. 

It was one of the reasons why I would be focusing on how quick I could assimilate the stones before moving onto the next one. 

If I were to go after all of them and hoard them together with me, I would just be painting a target on my back. 

My evolution, or rather what transpired during the transfer of the Space Stone must have been felt by some people and once the universe knows that an Infinity Stone has been found and possessed, it would fall into a mad drive for power and me having all those stones without having something capable of wielding them for extended use, or without being able to wield them myself would just be inviting death onto myself and that of my family. 

I would rather assimilate one stone at a time rather than start going for it all at once. 

And unlike everybody else who would want to come for the stones, I had a systematic approach for all of them. I doubt there were that many people who knew where all the stones were located which puts me ahead of all others. Even if some people knew where the stones were, they would be so strong to the point that they wouldn't even bother with them. 

The Power Stone was next as it was the one I needed, arguably more than the Space Stone. 

The reason why I didn't just pop a portal to Morag with the Tesseract was also because I didn't want to hoard them and also because fusing with the Space Stone which was more complex than the Power Stone would make the Power Stone easier to fuse with than vice versa. 

With that out of the way, I teleported back to earth. 

Before I could decide on what to do, I sensed someone who I had also grown very close to, almost to the point of how I viewed Yelena and the others. 

I somehow had forgotten that we talked yesterday and was coming over to see me. 

I did not tell her what I was doing or was going to do, not that I didn't trust her, which I did to a high degree, but it was just that I didn't see the need to let her know, not yet at least. 

Since I had nothing to do but try and acclimate to the changes in me, I decided that it might not be that bad to spend the day with Ororo while at the same time searching for the minute changes in my body. 

With that train of thought, I warped to her side only to receive a right hook which I didn't react to, and just watched it sail right through me. 

Ororo seemed surprised for a moment as her hand phased right through my body but she quickly got over it. 

"You could have given me a heads up before doing that." She hit me on the shoulders after getting over the fact that she just saw me use a new ability. 

"I could but I would have missed your reactions." Which honestly was not what I was expecting. She really did have a right grasp in her emotions. 

"It's times like these that makes it hard to picture you as a serious person." She sighed as she saw the smirk on my face. "Anyway, I called a few days ago but Natasha said you were not around and won't be for a couple of days. What happened?"

"Nothing much, just some magic stuff. I needed the help of some of my magic peers which held me up for the past few days." I have told Ororo pretty much everything I could of about myself, not like there was that much about me to know, so the numbers of things I kept secret from her could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare 

The main reason why I did not tell her about the stone wasn't due to a small loss in trust level. It was because of the fact that she had a lot going on for her. 

If she knew I was going around the universe, fusing with relics of creation while putting myself out there for threats of the unseen kind, then she'd want to help in any way she could. And why I appreciated that, I knew she had way too much on her plate right now. 

Trying to build a nation or even a small city from scratch was such a humongous amount of work and effort and she was already putting in double the amount. And besides, I could always tell her when she didn't have as much to worry about without me bothering her with it. 

She had her own battles to fight, same with me. As long as we both knew when to ask the other for help then all was good. 

"And how does that relate to you suddenly knowing how to phase through things? It's like the more time passes, the more abilities you have. I think I lost count at ten. It's too absurd."

I chuckled at her words because they were true. The sub-strata of one of my main abilities could be divided into many others that would normally be the ability of a mutant. 

Take for example, Magnetism. 

I could control metals, gravity, force fields, sonic waves and EMPs, generate electricity etc. 

"I think that's just what it means to be an Omega level meta. That aside, I'm pretty bored so I'm quite glad you came. Need to get my mind off some things. You down?"

"Sure. And you'll tell me about this magical trip you went on." We walked side by side for a while before the scenery around us changed. 

"That wasn't you opening a portal. Is that… teleportation?" At this point, she couldn't be surprised anymore and just took it with stride. 

"Yes, it is."

"Well that's a new one." Was all she said. 

"Hey Draul."

"Yeah?"

"How do you do it? Get stronger, I mean."

That was abruptly out of the left field. But this is interesting. Ororo wouldn't ask this if she didn't need it, either for herself or someone close to her. 

"Well for me it's trying to strengthen the little parts of the abilities I already have."

"How so?"

"Hmm, let's take your weather manipulation as an example. As you know, I can do basically everything that you do and that's not because I can copy abilities but because I can expand on what I already have." 

I explained further. "Take your weather manipulation for example. Obviously, you are a master of your own abilities so there's nothing I can say there, but it's what is under your weather manipulation that's the prize."

"That would be controlling the weather, the elements and lightning."

"Bingo."

"You already have vast control over the elements you can control but now it's time to branch out. Rather than just hurtling lightning, try imbuing it in your body since you have a certain level of immunity or learn how vast the spectrum is. There is no meta ability that is linear. With lightning manipulation, you can create force fields, even tamper with magnetic poles."

She looked a bit surprised at what I said. "But that's just control."

"Believe me, control is better. It piles up rather than just having more energy in stocks and not knowing what to do with it. Trust me on this."

"You, I trust."

"Aww! Ain't that sweet."

…

"And that, kids, was how the lovely Mama and Papa Bear came together and lived happily ever after. Sike! And that's it for Uncle Wade's story time."

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