The spatial rift closed.
The darkness and smell of blood from Svartalfheim were sealed on the other side.
Sea wind drifted into the living room, carrying the salty scent of the ocean. This was Malibu, California.
Levi didn't linger in the living room. He walked straight to the study. Pressing on a copy of Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, the heavy bookshelf slid aside silently, revealing a cold metal door.
Fingerprint, iris, and voice verification passed in sequence. The elevator doors closed behind him and descended smoothly.
This was his secret base, nearly a hundred meters below sea level.
The elevator doors opened again.
Before him stretched a space the size of a football field.
At the center stood a ten-meter-wide pitch-black circular platform. Around it were engraved Asgardian runes Levi couldn't fully understand but instinctively knew were powerful—knowledge that had come with Odin's legacy.
Levi stepped toward the platform and took a deep breath.
He opened his pocket dimension.
A mass of dark red energy—like liquid metal—was carefully released.
It floated above the platform, shapeless, slowly writhing like a living creature.
The Aether.
The Reality Stone.
The moment it appeared, the physical laws in the laboratory began to malfunction.
The ceiling lights flickered violently like rippling water, brightness fluctuating wildly. The electronic thermometer on the wall jumped frantically between –50°C and 100°C.
Alarms blared from the control consoles. Data streams on the monitors devolved into meaningless gibberish. Several high-precision sensors began smoking, their internal components burning out under contradictory physical rules.
The mere existence of this thing was contamination to reality.
Levi's expression darkened. He knew it wouldn't be easy to handle, but he hadn't expected it to be this bad just from releasing it.
He tried activating a material composition scanner from a distance.
Three seconds later, the scanner's core crystal flickered between existence and nonexistence several times—before melting into a puddle of silver liquid with a sharp bang.
Physical analysis: failed.
He raised his hand and invoked the Law of Space, attempting to trap it within a spatial cage.
A transparent cube instantly formed around the Aether.
But the next moment, something bizarre happened.
The Aether ignored the concept of walls. Part of it remained inside the cube, while another part flowed outside—as if the cube didn't exist at all.
It hadn't broken space.
It had redefined inside and outside.
Even the Law of Space was ineffective.
Levi waved his hand, shutting down all the remaining screaming instruments. The laboratory fell completely silent.
He sat cross-legged before the platform and closed his eyes.
If it couldn't be analyzed from the outside, then he would understand it from within.
Calming his mind, he activated the talent he had copied from Loki:
[The Nine Realms' Greatest Mage]
Instantly, the world in his eyes changed.
The shells of matter and energy peeled away, leaving only the countless intersecting threads of laws that governed reality.
The Aether was a massive, chaotic knot tangled within that web of laws.
It had no fixed structure. Every second it reorganized itself, radiating endless streams of incorrect code that interfered with the surrounding normal laws.
Levi condensed his spiritual power into an invisible probe and cautiously extended it forward.
Not to analyze.
Not to control.
Only to listen. To feel.
The moment his mind touched the Aether, it felt as if an entire universe of noise had been poured into his brain.
Contradictory, insane, chaotic visions flooded in like a broken dam.
He saw himself crowned king of Asgard, ruling over countless subjects—
then the next moment he was a nameless soldier on a World War II battlefield, blown apart by artillery.
He saw a square Earth, a green moon, and the sun rising in the west.
He experienced countless histories that had never happened. Heard languages that defied logic. He even felt lifetimes as a stone, a tree, a drop of water.
This was conceptual-level mental contamination—enough to drive even a Skyfather-level being completely insane.
"Willpower Barrier!"
Levi immediately activated the mental defense ability he had copied from Yon-Rogg. An invisible shield rose deep within his consciousness, like a powerful firewall blocking the violent false data while allowing only the pure essence of the law to seep through.
Like a diver navigating a cosmic storm, he pushed deeper into the chaotic core, enduring pressure that threatened to tear his soul apart.
Time lost meaning.
Perhaps a second.
Perhaps a century.
Finally—within that endless chaos—he grasped a pulse that never changed.
It was neither creation nor destruction.
It was modification.
The essence of this thing was like a programmer's root-level permission—able to directly rewrite the underlying code of the universe.
It could turn 1 into 0, truth into falsehood, existence into nothingness.
The prerequisite was that the user must hold an absolutely clear and unwavering result in their mind—and possess enough energy to pay the cost of rewriting reality.
"So that's it… the driving force is willpower, and the fuel is energy."
Levi understood.
He abruptly withdrew his mind, returning to the sensation of the real world.
"System. Analyze the target. Confirm whether it can be copied."
[Ding. Concept-level target detected: Law of Reality (fragment).]
[Based on the host's current comprehension and mental strength, the following ability can be copied:]
[S-Rank Ability: Reality Distortion (Beginner)]
[Description: At the cost of immense willpower and energy, distort reality within a small range for a short time, altering matter properties and physical rules.]
[Warning: Extremely high consumption. Highly unstable. Excessive use may cause permanent distortion of reality structures, leading to irreversible consequences.]
[Copy?]
"Copy."
No energy surged into his body. No physical change occurred.
Instead, a mysterious stream of information etched itself directly into his soul. It wasn't knowledge or power—it was permission.
A permission acknowledged by the universe itself.
The permission to edit reality.
Levi opened his eyes. A faint dark-red glow flashed across them before vanishing.
He stood up, feeling as though half his body had been hollowed out. That mental dive had exhausted him more than fighting Ego.
He walked to a nearby lab bench and picked up a glass of water prepared as a control sample.
He stared at the glass, holding only one thought in his mind:
This glass of water should be whiskey.
Peaty single-malt whiskey from Islay.
He focused his mind, locking the outcome firmly in his will while excluding all distractions.
Then, facing the glass, he hoarsely spoke a single word.
"Change."
The cosmic energy within his body surged like floodgates opening, instantly draining more than half of his reserves. A violent dizziness hit his brain, and he swayed, nearly losing his balance.
The sight before him made his breathing halt.
The clear water in the glass rapidly took on a beautiful amber hue.
A distinctive aroma—smoke, sea salt, and faint medicinal notes—spread through the air.
The water had truly turned into whiskey.
Levi lifted the glass and sniffed it. The scent was perfectly accurate.
But he didn't drink it.
He noticed that the whiskey's edges were flickering unstably. The liquid's color sometimes reverted to transparent, then back to amber again. The glass itself briefly transformed into a rough wooden cup before shifting back.
Reality was self-correcting the bug he had created.
A few seconds later, with a faint pop, the whiskey instantly reverted to clear water.
Everything returned to its original state.
"A beginner-level ability can only 'deceive' reality temporarily… and the cost is this high."
Levi set down the glass and rubbed his aching temples.
That single use had consumed more energy than taking a punch from the Hulk. If his internal energy reserves weren't absurdly large, an ordinary person wouldn't be able to use this ability at all—even if they possessed it.
The power was ridiculously strong.
And ridiculously dangerous.
Levi glanced at the holographic calendar on the wall.
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