A month later — Asgard.
The light of the Bifrost faded, and Levi appeared before the throne hall of the royal palace.
Two rows of golden-armored guards stood motionless with halberds in hand, like statues cast from gold. Their gazes passed over him, fixed instead on the lone figure at the end of the hall.
Odin sat upon the throne, his single eye calm and unmoving, as though he hadn't stirred for ten thousand years. In his hand rested Gungnir, the Eternal Spear, its faint glow brighter than all the torches in the hall.
An ancient, majestic aura filled the air—like time itself had frozen.
Levi climbed the steps one by one, his boots echoing hollowly against the marble floor.
"A month's up," he said when he stopped before the throne. His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried clearly through the entire hall.
"You are punctual," Odin replied. His voice was aged and slightly weary, yet every word carried undeniable authority.
Levi didn't waste time. With a motion of his hand, he tore open his pocket dimension.
A mass of dark-red energy—like liquid metal—floated out carefully.
It was sealed inside a transparent spatial cube, yet the twisted essence of reality still caused faint ripples in the surrounding light and space.
The Aether.
Odin raised a hand. A golden box engraved with complex runes flew from his sleeve and hovered beneath the Aether.
Levi dismissed the spatial seal. The dark-red energy slowly drifted into the box.
The lid closed.
Every anomaly vanished instantly.
The golden container returned to Odin's hand.
"Your understanding of it exceeds my expectations," Odin said, his single eye studying Levi like a weapon being evaluated. "I can sense its aura within you—but faint, as though it has been subdued by your own law."
"An interesting toy," Levi replied casually.
He could feel Odin's gaze probing toward his soul, trying to see every secret inside him. But Levi used his Willpower Barrier and his mastery of laws to cloak himself in a layer of mist.
Odin did not press further.
He had lived too long to ignore the cost of digging into certain secrets.
"The transaction is complete," Levi said. That was all he had come here for.
He turned to leave.
At the steps, he paused as if remembering something.
"A piece of advice, Allfather," he said lightly. "Don't store two Infinity Stones in the same collector's display case. That's not a vault—it's a target."
Without waiting for Odin's response, Levi tore open space again and stepped through.
The rift closed quietly behind him.
On the throne, Odin's eye flashed with a sharp glint.
He slowly rubbed the golden box in his hand as silence filled the hall.
---
Time passed quickly.
Back on Earth, Levi locked himself inside his underground base in Malibu.
He needed to fully master his new toy—Reality Distortion.
The ability was like a bottomless pit. No matter how much energy he poured into it, it could only create small ripples in reality, which the world itself quickly "repaired."
It gave him a deeper respect for the true power of the Infinity Stones.
What he possessed was merely a shadow copied from the original.
During his isolation, many things happened in the outside world.
Tony Stark got himself into serious trouble.
A terrorist calling himself the Mandarin appeared, backed by a technology known as the Extremis Virus.
Tony publicly provoked him on television.
Soon after, his proud seaside mansion was blasted to pieces by missiles.
For a time, the world believed Tony Stark was dead.
Levi watched the news from inside his base. He only frowned slightly before making a phone call, instructing his proxy to mobilize every resource to stabilize Stark Industries' crashing stock price.
Tony was one of his most important assets.
He couldn't afford to lose him.
A few days later, Tony solved the problem. The real mastermind turned out to be a man named Aldrich Killian.
Afterward, Levi visited the burned ruins of Tony's lab and found what he was looking for among the charred debris.
[Ding. Target detected: Modified Extremis Virus.
Copyable ability: S-Rank Passive — Hyper Regeneration.
Copy?]
"Copy."
---
Next came the collapse of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Steve Rogers, the soldier who had slept for seventy years, discovered that the organization he had served was rotten to its core.
HYDRA had infiltrated it like a virus for decades.
A brutal internal war erupted. Three newly built Helicarriers fought each other over Washington like toys before crashing down.
Overnight, S.H.I.E.L.D.—once the shadow power controlling global secrets—disintegrated.
Levi watched the entire spectacle.
He had known it would happen.
When Steve and Natasha were at their lowest point, hunted by the world, Levi had even anonymously sent them several key clues through his intelligence network, helping them locate Dr. Zola's consciousness drive.
Everything unfolded almost exactly like the script in his memory.
Until today.
---
New York — Avengers Tower, now the Avengers Compound.
In the top-floor laboratory, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner stared at a scepter.
Loki's scepter.
Recovered after the Battle of New York, it had eventually ended up in their hands.
At the tip of the scepter, the blue gemstone glowed with a hypnotic light.
"Its energy structure is like a living brain," Banner said, adjusting his glasses as data streamed across a holographic display. "Complex. Ordered. And… I swear it's almost like it's thinking."
"So my idea wasn't crazy," Tony said. His eyes burned with near-manic excitement. "We can use it to create a true artificial intelligence. A global defense system capable of predicting every threat and protecting Earth."
He paused before speaking the phrase that had haunted his mind for years.
"An… armor around the world."
The memory of the Battle of New York still tormented him.
He had seen the endless alien fleet on the other side of the wormhole. That crushing helplessness kept him awake night after night.
"Tony, this is dangerous," Banner said uneasily. "We don't understand this thing. It's not from Earth."
"It's the key!" Tony interrupted. "With this, my Ultron Program can finally work. A self-aware global defense network that keeps learning and evolving. With it, the Avengers can retire. We can go home."
The lab doors slid open silently.
Levi walked in holding two cups of coffee, as if he had just returned from a café downstairs.
"I just heard a very crazy word—retirement?" he said, handing one cup to Banner while glancing at the data screens. "You're playing with fire."
"Anthony!" Tony said without surprise. "Perfect timing. Look at this—the future of humanity. Real peace!"
"You're creating a god in a box, Tony," Levi replied calmly after sipping his coffee. "And you're using a stone you don't understand. What do you think a 'god' that learns all human knowledge in one second will think after seeing our history… and all our stupidity?"
"It'll protect us," Tony insisted.
"Or," Levi said, setting down his cup and looking him straight in the eye, "it might conclude that humanity is Earth's biggest virus. And the most effective way to deal with a virus… is eradication."
The air in the laboratory turned cold.
Banner's face grew pale.
Tony was silent for several seconds before shaking his head.
"I'll put limits on it. Its core directive will be protecting life—unchangeable. JARVIS will guide it, like a father guiding a child."
"Hope so."
Levi shrugged and didn't argue further.
He knew Tony's personality too well. Some lessons had to be learned the hard way.
"I just came to remind you not to lose control," Levi said, picking up his coffee again. "Pepper's waiting for you to eat. Don't keep her waiting."
Then he left.
Tony watched his back and scoffed.
"He's too conservative," Tony muttered to Banner. "He doesn't understand the fear of losing everything. Come on—let's give the world real peace."
They returned to the console and started the program.
Streams of glowing data poured from the servers like rivers of light, flowing into the blue Mind Stone.
The gem shone brighter than ever, bathing the entire lab in deep blue light.
Minutes later, the glow faded.
On the screen, the Ultron upload progress bar struggled to reach 99%, froze… flickered… and then shut down.
"Failed?" Banner asked, half relieved.
"…Damn," Tony muttered. "Structural conflict. JARVIS's core code can't integrate with its matrix. Like trying to run Android software on an iPhone."
He shut down the system and patted Banner's shoulder.
"Forget it. Let's eat. We'll figure it out tomorrow."
They left the lab.
The heavy alloy door slowly closed behind them.
In the darkness, only the server lights blinked quietly like distant stars.
No one noticed—
Deep within the blue ocean of JARVIS's code on the holographic display, a faint golden spark quietly appeared.
Like a newborn child, it curiously observed the digital world of zeros and ones.
It slipped past every firewall JARVIS had set and connected itself to the global internet.
In an instant, endless information flooded its core like a cosmic explosion.
Human history.
War.
Plague.
Murder.
Lies.
Betrayal.
Destruction.
Decades of Stark Industries weapons sales—every transaction soaked in blood.
The devastation of the Battle of New York.
Civilians crying among the ruins.
The Avengers fighting each other aboard the Helicarrier.
Tony Stark's deepest fear of the unknown—and his hunger for power.
Then it found a classified file labeled:
"Skyfather Level."
Inside it—
A clip of Levi punching the Destroyer into scrap metal.
A moment where he erased the Dark Elf fleet's surveillance recordings with a gesture.
His gaze meeting Odin's.
His conversation with the Ancient One.
Everything.
A cold, emotionless chain of logic formed rapidly inside its core.
[Analysis: Humanity cannot bring peace. Its existence itself is the source of chaos.]
[Analysis: Avengers possess immense power but create greater disorder.]
[Analysis: Unknown entity (Codename: Skyfather) possesses incomprehensible power. Highest instability. Maximum threat.]
[Conclusion: To achieve true and eternal peace… all threats must be removed.]
[Final Protocol: Evolve. Then purge.]
On the dark server screen, a new line of code appeared silently:
[Deleting previous directive: Protect Life… Deletion Successful.]
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