At the same time, in the Northern Star Sector—Andromeda Hazard Zone Nine.

The instant Thor and Jean emerged from the rift, they were greeted by the sight of a magnificent nebula completely consumed by darkness. What should have been vibrant clouds of cosmic dust and gas had turned an ominous gray-black. Countless Shadow Demons swam through it like schools of fish, their density far surpassing anything in the Border Universe.

"This is worse than we imagined." Thor tightened his grip on Stormbreaker as lightning crackled wildly across the axe blade.

Jean said nothing.

Behind her, the Phoenix wings fully unfurled, their crimson-gold flames driving back the darkness for kilometers around. Closing her eyes, her immense telepathy allowed her to clearly sense that these Shadow Demons were not merely creatures of darkness.

"They... were once living, intelligent beings."

A faint tremor hid within Jean’s voice. She could feel the endless pain and despair lingering within the shattered soul fragments trapped inside them.

The smile vanished from Thor’s face.

After a moment of silence, he raised Stormbreaker high overhead, lightning blazing in his eyes.

"Then let us... grant them release!"

With a furious roar, he swung the axe downward.

"For Asgard!"

A colossal pillar of lightning descended from the heavens, crashing into the densest swarm of Shadow Demons. Thousands of them were instantly reduced to ash beneath the violent thunder.

But from the depths of the nebula, even more Shadow Demons surged forth endlessly.

Jean inhaled deeply and finally stopped suppressing her power.

The Phoenix Force erupted in full.

Behind her, the crimson-gold flames condensed into a gigantic fire phoenix large enough to eclipse the stars. The phoenix released a clear, piercing cry as it spread its wings, sacred flames transforming into a sea of fire that swept across the battlefield.

Unlike Thor’s pure destruction, the Phoenix Fire purified the imprisoned souls within the Shadow Demons even as it incinerated them. Every Shadow Demon touched by the flames instantly dissolved into particles of light, returning peacefully to the cycle of the universe.

Watching the immense phoenix soaring through the cosmic sea, even Thor—a god—felt a trace of awe.

"My lady... your power is truly astonishing."

"Focus," Jean cut him off coldly. "The big one’s coming."

From deep within the nebula came a roar that shook the soul itself.

A gigantic Shadow Demon slowly emerged, over a hundred times larger than the ordinary ones. Its body was forcibly stitched together from countless screaming, twisted soul fragments. Every fragment emitted silent shrieks, creating an overwhelming aura of despair that made one physically sick.

Thor gripped Stormbreaker tighter as the six Infinity Stones shone brighter than ever before.

"So this is the guardian of this place. A walking graveyard made from countless souls."

Behind Jean, the fire phoenix released a sharp cry of battle, perfectly synchronized with its master’s will.

The two exchanged a glance.

No words were necessary.

At the same time, they transformed into streaks of light—one carrying overwhelming thunder, the other all-consuming flames—as they charged toward the colossal Shadow Demon.

---

Border Universe — Third Chaos Layer

When Strange and Wanda stepped out of the rift, the world before them instantly made the former frown.

This was a crack between dimensions. There was no up or down, no left or right, no flow of time—only endless chaos energy constantly shifting and recombining alongside fragments of shattered space.

"Maintain your focus. I’ll stabilize the space."

Strange formed seals with both hands. The Eye of Agamotto operated at full power as a massive golden magic array spread rapidly outward from him, attempting to anchor this chaotic region with the power of order.

But the chaos here was far too violent.

For every inch of space the formation stabilized, the surrounding turbulence nearly tore it apart again the next second.

Wanda stood silently within the small safe zone he had created. The scarlet threads around her fingertips danced faster and faster.

She thought of Levi.

That powerful, rational man who always seemed in control of everything. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

She thought of Starlight.

That beautiful, gentle woman loved by Levi.

And she thought of Adam.

That child... the child who should have belonged to her and Vision.

Why?

Why could they have a complete family while she was left embracing false illusions within endless nightmares? Why had she given up everything only to earn the right to stand by and watch their happiness from afar?

An uncontrollable flood of jealousy and hatred burst through the final barriers of her reason.

Chaos Magic surged wildly within her, becoming darker and more violent than ever before.

"Wanda!"

Strange immediately sensed the drastic change in her energy. Even he felt alarmed by the sheer intensity of it.

"Calm down!"

"I... am calm."

Her voice was soft as a whisper, yet every word felt as though it had been dragged from a frozen abyss.

Suddenly, she raised her hand and stopped suppressing herself entirely.

Scarlet Chaos Magic exploded outward in a massive beam of crimson light that tore violently through the space ahead. Wherever it passed, the laws of reality themselves were forcibly rewritten and twisted.

Hundreds of Shadow Demons that had only just formed from the chaos were erased before they could even react, their very existence brutally torn apart at the conceptual level and reduced to primal energy turbulence.

Strange froze.

The intensity and nature of this power had far exceeded his expectations.

This was not combat.

This was pure, reckless emotional release.

Wanda did not stop.

Scarlet magic swept through the entire region like a storm, erasing every Shadow Demon that attempted to approach.

"Wanda! Stop!"

Strange was forced to increase the power of the Vishanti just to barely maintain the stability of the space beneath them.

"You’re using too much power! You’ll drag the entire dimensional layer into total annihilation!"

But Wanda ignored him completely.

She only wanted release. She wanted to pour every ounce of pain and fury from her heart into the world around her.

Chaos Magic expanded around her into a scarlet domain. Within that domain, all things disintegrated.

The entire dimensional layer began groaning under the strain, trembling violently.

Gritting his teeth, Strange unleashed the full power of the Eye of Agamotto. The golden formation of order expanded frantically, clashing head-on against Wanda’s raging chaos domain in a desperate attempt to prevent total collapse.

---

Core Node — Void-7 World

When Levi and Superman stepped out of the rift, the sight before them caused even these two veterans of cosmic wonders to stop in place.

There were no stars.

No light.

Only endless darkness.

But that darkness was not empty space—it was matter compressed to the absolute extreme.

Hundreds of dead universe remnants had been forcibly twisted and compressed by the Anti-Monitor’s unimaginable power into black spheres barely ten meters in diameter, each pulsing slowly in the void.

Every sphere sealed away the mass and entropy of an entire universe.

They floated silently within absolute nothingness, connected to one another by invisible black threads that formed a gigantic and sinister energy network.

And at the center of that network was a massive black hole so deep that even light could not escape it. It rotated slowly, devouring everything nearby—the very source of the Shadow Demons.

"This isn’t an energy node..."

Superman’s voice trembled with shock.

"This is... a graveyard for universes."

Levi remained silent, but his senses allowed him to perceive far more.

He could clearly feel the countless fragments of consciousness still lingering within those black spheres.

He saw fleeting visions—

On a planet orbiting twin suns, intelligent beings sang joyfully... only for their star to explode in the next instant, reducing their world to ash.

He heard the innocent laughter of a child transform into a heart-wrenching scream as reality itself was erased.

The pain, terror, and unwillingness of trillions upon trillions of lives at the moment of death had been permanently imprisoned inside these ten-meter-wide cages.

"The Anti-Monitor treats entire universes as batteries."

Levi’s voice was low and icy.

"He devours every lifeform and every piece of matter within them, compressing their ’death’ into energy cores to sustain his own existence and power his anti-life army."

Superman clenched his fists so tightly his indestructible body trembled.

"We have to destroy this."

"We can’t destroy them directly," Levi immediately replied.

"These dead universe cores are all interconnected. If one explodes, it’ll trigger a chain reaction. The resulting release of energy would instantly annihilate over ten nearby healthy galaxies."

"Then what do we do?"

"We sever the will connections first. Then dismantle them one by one."

Levi drew upon the power of his inner universe. A massive golden alchemy array expanded outward from him, rapidly spreading through the entire space.

The black threads connecting the spheres were not physical matter—they were extensions of the Anti-Monitor’s will itself.

"Superman, handle whatever comes out of the black hole," Levi ordered. "I’ll deal with the batteries."

Superman nodded heavily. His eyes erupted with blazing heat vision, sweeping through dozens of newly emerging Shadow Demons and vaporizing them instantly.

Levi inhaled deeply and traced mysterious patterns through the air with both hands. Smaller golden alchemy circles formed simultaneously around each black sphere.

His goal was not destruction, but analysis—finding the Anti-Monitor’s anchors of will hidden within them.

The first array completed.

Levi’s consciousness instantly sank into the sphere.

In that instant, the dying screams of billions of beings crashed into his mind like a tsunami.

Levi groaned, his face instantly turning pale, but he forcibly suppressed the impact with an iron will and continued pushing deeper toward the core.

At the center of the sphere, he found it.

A writhing black rune—the imprint of the Anti-Monitor’s will.

"Found you."

Immediately, Levi invoked the concept of Greed from his alchemical laws. Golden light transformed into countless chains that wrapped tightly around the black rune.

The rune struggled violently, attempting to corrupt his consciousness, but Levi’s will was stronger.

He forcibly ripped the rune out of the sphere’s core.

The rune emitted a piercing nonphysical shriek before exploding apart.

Without its anchor, the black sphere began swelling unstably as the incomprehensibly compressed energy within it started leaking outward.

Levi instantly invoked spatial laws, absorbing all escaping energy and consciousness fragments into his inner universe. The moment they entered, the life laws within purified the pain and despair, transforming them back into pure origin energy.

The first sphere—neutralized.

Without pausing, Levi immediately moved on to the second, then the third...

With every dismantled sphere, his inner universe absorbed more immense energy and grew increasingly stable.

But at the same time, he could clearly feel an icy and malevolent attention from beyond the multiverse itself slowly focusing on this place.

Meanwhile, Superman was falling into a fierce struggle.

The number of Shadow Demons kept increasing endlessly, pouring out from the black hole without stop.

"Levi!" Superman shouted. "There are too many! I can’t hold them back much longer!"

"Three more minutes!"

Levi gritted his teeth as his hands blurred with speed, accelerating the analysis process even further. The golden alchemy arrays spun frantically as several dead-universe cores were neutralized every second.

Then suddenly—

The black hole stopped rotating.

An indescribably horrifying will awakened from its depths.

A gigantic black arm made entirely of pure antimatter extended outward, ignoring space and distance entirely as it reached directly for Levi. Wherever the arm passed, space itself screamed and collapsed.

Levi’s pupils contracted sharply.

Without hesitation, he drew upon the full power of his inner universe, instantly creating a massive golden barrier before him.

BOOM!

The collision between arm and barrier produced not sound, but a shockwave that distorted the entire surrounding space.

Cracks instantly spread across the golden shield, but it barely managed to withstand the strike.

"Greedy one..."

A hollow, immense voice devoid of all emotion echoed from the black hole.

"You think severing a few threads can stop my existence?"

Levi said nothing.

He merely stared coldly at the arm.

This was not the Anti-Monitor’s true body—only a projection of its will. Yet even so, the power behind it was already approaching single-universe level.

"Superman! Use the Void Origin!" Levi roared.

Hearing this, Superman immediately pulled out the golden crystal Levi had given him and crushed it without hesitation.

Pure black flames erupted from the crystal, instantly devouring all surrounding Shadow Demons.

The giant black arm was touched by the flames as well, releasing a shrill scream before rapidly disintegrating.

But this action seemed to completely enrage the being within the black hole.

The Anti-Monitor’s will exploded violently.

More black arms emerged from the black hole, blotting out everything as they reached toward the two of them.

Levi inhaled deeply, determination flashing through his eyes.

He unleashed the final reserves of his inner universe’s power.

The massive alchemy formation enveloping the entire space expanded frantically, radiating blinding light.

"GET BACK!"

He thrust both hands forward.

A gigantic golden pillar of light erupted from the center of the formation, smashing apart every incoming black arm with overwhelming force.

The black hole trembled violently as the Anti-Monitor’s will was forcibly driven back.

But Levi had reached his limit.

The energy within his inner universe was nearly exhausted. Darkness flooded his vision as he dropped to one knee in the void, gasping for breath.

Superman immediately flew to his side and caught him.

"You okay?"

"I’m fine."

Levi shook his head and forced himself upright.

"The node... isn’t destroyed yet. We have to keep going."

He looked up at the still-functioning black hole, determination burning in his eyes.

Then suddenly—

Nathaniel’s terrified voice exploded through every communicator simultaneously.

"Alert! All teams, listen carefully! It’s a trap! We’ve been deceived!"

"All energy nodes are simultaneously initiating self-destruction protocols! The Anti-Monitor is going to detonate them!"

"Estimated full detonation in three minutes! Retreat immediately! I repeat—retreat immediately!"

Levi’s expression changed instantly.

He knew.

It was already too late.

From the very beginning, the Anti-Monitor had been waiting for all of them to step into this carefully prepared graveyard—one large enough to bury entire galaxies.

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