"Mr. Elric, the Ultron Council has been completely eradicated."
Elric didn't look up from what he was doing. "Took long enough."
"It mainly took so long because the remaining units were hiding across several fractured universes," the report continued. "Tracking them through broken dimensional space requires significantly more resources than standard operations."
"Also, we've collected another two Phoenix fragments in the process."
"Okay," Elric said. "You can go."
The attendant left, and Elric sat with the quiet for a moment.
8,229.
That was the current number of universes operating under his direct or indirect control. And the number was expanding at a rate that had stopped being surprising and started just being a background fact of his existence.
With Way Big clones handling the physical front lines, most carbon-based resistance across those universes had stopped being a meaningful concern. The sheer scale of a hundred-meter cosmic giant that could be mass-produced through Vegapunk's cloning technology had a way of ending most conventional military conversations very quickly.
Wanda had taken care of whatever required more nuance. Two years of training had pushed her to a level where she could genuinely contend with multiversal-tier figures, handling threats that needed something other than overwhelming physical force.
And Hela had fully claimed the Hell dimension, formally and completely, in a way that made her title of Goddess of Death something literal rather than honorific.
Several new power acquisitions from beings who'd arrived with interesting abilities had also contributed to making Elric's overall capability something that was increasingly difficult to put a ceiling on.
Everything was going according to plan.
Which meant it was finally time to take a break.
He opened the connection to the white space and stepped through.
The White Space
He opened his eyes to find the space already populated.
More populated than he remembered, actually.
"Oh, look who finally decided to show up," someone said.
"Okay, okay," Elric raised a hand before anyone could build momentum. "Don't start. I was genuinely busy. You all saw the memories."
Several expressions suggested they had indeed seen the memories and had opinions about various parts of them, but the immediate pressure dissipated.
The group had grown considerably since the last gathering.
There was a version from Solo Leveling. Veldora had apparently made it, representing the world of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime.
And there was a version from High School DxD who had somehow already constructed an impressively large harem situation even before finding his way here, and who seemed entirely at peace with this accomplishment.
"Anyway," someone said, redirecting. "What happened with the Naruto version? Didn't you say he'd already taken over the ninja world?"
The One Piece version answered. "He said some resistance came up, so he's dealing with it. But his overall plan worked—the ninja world transition went smoothly. Less bloodshed than any of us expected, honestly."
"And what about you?" someone turned toward the One Piece version. "Did things get chaotic after the Celestial Dragons were dealt with?"
His face went slightly red around the edges.
"The Way Big clones handled the structural transition fine," he said. "That part worked exactly as planned."
A pause.
"But Hancock is—" He stopped. Started again. "She's sucking me dry every day. I basically can't keep up with managing the world consolidation and also everything else. So I handed most of the administrative work to my clone."
"The clone is handling it," he said with finality.
"Yo," someone said slowly. "Did you forget that all of the clone's memories eventually come back to you?"
The color drained from his face with impressive speed.
"...I almost forgot about that," he said quietly.
"That miserable clone is working twenty-four hours a day," someone else added helpfully.
"I said I forgot."
Laughter moved through the group, genuine and easy, the kind that came from people who understood each other's specific brands of chaos.
Then it stopped.
Not gradually. All at once, as if someone had simply switched it off.
Everyone in the white space went still simultaneously, the same instinct hitting every version of them at the same moment. Heads turning. Postures shifting.
The white space was changing.
It started at the edges—the clean white boundaries that had always simply been there, the background that nobody ever thought about because it had always been consistent and stable. The edges began to darken, the white retreating inward in slow, steady waves.
Then the middle began to darken too.
The light didn't fade gradually. It withdrew, like something was absorbing it. Within perhaps thirty seconds, the entire white space had become pitch black, complete and total, without a single point of light remaining anywhere.
The darkness was absolute.
And yet.
"I can still see you," someone said slowly.
"Not see," another voice corrected. "Feel. It's more like feeling."
They were right. There was no light, no visual information in any normal sense, and yet everyone present could perceive everyone else with complete clarity. Not through sight but through something that felt like a direct awareness of connection, like each of them was a point and they could all sense the positions of the other points without needing to look.
"Hey." The High School DxD version broke the silence with characteristic directness. "What is this? Is a new person joining?"
"Whoever it is must be an absolute boss-level entity," someone said. "Look at the visual presentation."
"You're an idiot," the Solo Leveling version said flatly. "Stop looking and actually feel it. The connection is already there. There's already a new member present."
He was right. Whatever had arrived was already part of the network, already woven into the awareness they all shared in this space.
"Observant as ever."
The voice arrived simultaneously in every mind—not heard through ears, not transmitted through air, just present inside each of them at exactly the same moment. Speaking in a tone that was unmistakably familiar despite belonging to none of them.
"Who are you?" Marvel-Elric asked.
"You could call me the original Elric," the voice said.
Nobody spoke.
"After dying, instead of reincarnating into a new world the way all of you did, I drifted." The voice continued at the same unhurried pace. "Outside the universe first. Then outside the multiverse. Then further, beyond the boundaries of what either of those terms actually describes."
"Outside existence itself," the voice said simply. "I drifted there for a period of time that I genuinely cannot measure, because time as a concept doesn't function the same way outside the framework that generates it."
"Eventually my consciousness began to come back. But the place I was in—nothing can exist there. Not matter, not energy, not even consciousness in any stable form. I could feel myself beginning to dissolve. Not dying, exactly. Dissolving. Becoming nothing, not because something destroyed me but because that place simply doesn't support the continuation of things."
"So I made a decision," the voice said. "I fragmented pieces of my soul and sent them into existing universes. Into the framework of existence itself. Each fragment became an anchor, maintaining my equilibrium with material reality, keeping me from dissolving completely."
A pause.
"You are those fragments."
"Why would we believe that?" someone said after a moment.
"You don't have to," the voice said. "But I can show you."
A hand extended from the darkness—or rather, something that functioned as a hand, a point of presence reaching outward.
Marvel-Elric moved to the front of the group.
"Alright," he said. "Assuming all of this is true. What does it mean? What happens now?"
The darkness that was somehow a presence seemed to settle.
"Nothing changes for any of you," the original Elric said. "I'm not here to direct you or take anything from you. I only need the equilibrium to be maintained—my soul fragments existing inside material reality keep me anchored enough to continue existing at all."
"You all continue exactly as you were."
Another pause.
"Although," the voice added, and something in its tone shifted slightly—the first hint of something that might have been humor. "As a side benefit of this connection, you now have access to void power. The energy of the space outside existence. I thought that was worth mentioning."
"The literal power of the void outside all existence," the voice confirmed. "Is it not cool?"
[Although I wanted to write more, but frankly speaking, I lost interest in this book ]
[Sorry for ending it so abruptly; I hope you guys enjoyed the journey till now]