"Now this is exhilarating."
Drex Valen clenched his fist.
The silver-white armor covering his body hummed with unimaginable power. With the slightest exertion, he rose from the depths of the Gods' Quarry and floated effortlessly back to the surface.
The Infinite Witches were already waiting.
As he emerged, the three ancient crones drifted forward.
"Drex."
"Congratulations."
"You now possess power capable of standing alongside the Five Cosmic Entities."
Drex could feel it.
The strength flowing through him had crossed a threshold.
This wasn't merely another increase in power.
It was a qualitative transformation.
He had stepped into the Multiversal realm.
The sensation was intoxicating.
But after a brief moment of appreciation, he simply smiled.
"Not enough."
The Infinite Witches stared at him.
"I want more."
Surprise flickered across their ancient faces.
Not because no one had ever wanted more.
Many had.
Every single one of them had failed.
Yet as they watched Drex, something far more alarming became apparent.
The safeguards they had hidden within the power.
The restrictions.
The controls.
The invisible chains attached to the energy they had granted him.
Were gone.
Not broken.
Not weakened.
Gone.
The power and authority they had manipulated no longer responded to them.
In less than a few seconds, Drex had completely mastered power on a Multiversal scale.
And somehow...
He had already identified the flaws hidden inside it.
The difference between him and countless previous recipients was simple.
Most beings gained power and immediately rushed off to enjoy it.
To flaunt it.
To waste it.
Drex had been a Kryptonian scientist long before he became a god.
Curiosity was woven into his nature.
Power wasn't something to be used first and understood later.
It was something to be studied.
Dissected.
Mastered.
"How is that possible?"
For the first time, genuine panic entered the witches' voices.
"How could you understand it so quickly?"
Drex gave them an odd look.
"As opposed to what?"
"Why wouldn't I understand it quickly?"
The question seemed perfectly reasonable to him.
After all, he had spent countless ages studying existence itself.
The strange theories and impossible concepts he had encountered throughout his life, combined with a scientist's mindset, had given him a very different perspective on power.
He continued calmly.
"Before obtaining power, did you understand what power actually is?"
"After obtaining it, how deeply did you truly comprehend it?"
"If you lost it tomorrow, could you recreate it through understanding alone?"
The Infinite Witches fell silent.
They had never considered those questions.
Drex continued.
"You assumed power came from enlightenment, instinct, destiny, or some sudden flash of inspiration."
"But the truth is simpler."
"You were born here."
"You inherited power."
"That's all."
"For millions of years."
"For billions."
"For spans of time beyond counting."
"You never truly studied what you possessed."
"You simply accepted it."
"You believed the rules established by the One Above All were absolute and beyond examination."
A faint smile crossed his face.
"And yet look at the result."
He raised one armored hand.
"The fraction of power I received from the Quarry is insignificant compared to the whole."
"And despite that..."
"I've already surpassed you."
The witches had no response.
Not because they disagreed.
Because they couldn't.
Drex looked toward the vast depths of the Quarry.
"When I conquered dimensions, I wasn't merely gathering power."
"I was learning."
"Studying."
"Understanding."
"The Black Hole Dimension was the perfect laboratory."
"There, time had no meaning."
"I could spend as long as I wanted examining every aspect of existence."
His voice remained calm.
Matter-of-fact.
"As a dimensional lord, I possessed near-limitless freedom within my domain."
"So I studied every law I could find."
"Every force."
"Every principle."
"Every fragment of my own strength."
"I know my power completely."
"Even if it were stripped away tomorrow, I could rebuild it."
"Perhaps not instantly."
"But quickly."
He turned his attention back to the witches.
"You want to know why your modifications failed?"
"Because I never allow my strength to increase beyond my understanding."
"Even power handed to me for free gets dissected before I trust it."
One of the witches finally managed to speak.
"That should have been impossible."
"There wasn't enough time."
Drex laughed softly.
"There wasn't enough time for you."
His eyes gleamed.
"At this level, time is negotiable."
"If an event takes one femtosecond to occur, that's already enough."
The witches stared at him.
Drex continued.
"I can stretch my perception."
"Expand my subjective experience."
"That single femtosecond becomes an eternity of thought."
"More than enough to analyze what's happening."
His gaze sharpened.
"The speed of thought determines everything."
"A civilization capable of thinking at light-speed would dominate nearly any competitor."
"A lifeform capable of thinking at light-speed would become almost unstoppable."
"You wield aspects of time itself."
"And yet you've never fully explored what that means."
Silence filled the space.
Then Drex delivered the final blow.
"Ignorance creates weakness."
"Your authority came from the unknown."
"But when you had the power to investigate it, you chose not to."
"Now you've lost control."
"And with it..."
"You've lost everything."
Within Drex's body, a complete cosmic system had taken shape.
For now, it existed as a single internal universe.
But it was growing.
Expanding.
Evolving.
Given enough time, enough cycles, enough accumulation, it would eventually become a true Multiverse.
That had always been the goal.
Originally, Drex had expected to spend inconceivable ages devouring dimensions and harvesting power to accelerate that process.
The endpoint had seemed impossibly distant.
Then the Infinite Witches had practically delivered a feast directly into his hands.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
Many cosmic beings in this universe possessed incredible power.
Yet very few truly understood it.
They treated power as a possession rather than a subject of study.
As long as they had enough strength, they were satisfied.
Drex found that mindset baffling.
His future self had once been capable of intimidating Franklin Richards, a Multiversal-level reality warper.
That wasn't because of raw power alone.
It was because of understanding.
The universe inside him might currently consist of only a single cosmos.
But that wasn't the important part.
The key wasn't the universe.
It was the fact that it was internal.
Self-contained.
Self-generated.
Its fundamental nature differed completely from naturally occurring universes.
Even as a mere embryonic structure, its level of existence surpassed ordinary universes by an immeasurable margin.
And once such understanding was attained, it could never truly be lost.
It would remain valid no matter which Multiverse he entered.
That was why the Infinite Witches could no longer reclaim his power.
A true internal universe possessed one defining characteristic.
Infinity.
Not absolute infinity.
But enough.
Enough to overwhelm almost anything beneath it.
Even a self-contained Single-Universe system possessed the ability to influence a larger Multiverse.
The cost would be enormous.
But it could be done.
Drex spread his hands.
"You can't kill me."
The statement wasn't arrogant.
It was simply factual.
"Your power may exceed mine."
"You may possess more techniques."
"More experience."
"More tools."
"It doesn't matter."
His voice echoed across the Quarry.
"My existence has already been written into the laws of reality."
"For me, death no longer exists as a meaningful concept."
"This isn't regeneration."
"It isn't molecular reconstruction."
"It isn't endless cellular division."
"It's something much simpler."
His eyes met theirs.
"My existence is immutable."
"No attack can erase it."
"No force can remove it."
"No power can destroy the fact that I exist."
The Infinite Witches finally understood what was happening.
And panic exploded across their faces.
"No!"
The cry echoed through the Cemetery of Gods.
Because Drex had begun consuming the Quarry itself.
Infinite streams of cosmic source energy surged toward him.
The witches attempted to stop him.
They failed.
The moment they acted, Drex devoured them.
Completely.
The guardians of the Cemetery of Gods vanished.
The energy inside his internal universe exploded upward.
Its growth rate exceeded any conventional model.
It wasn't exponential.
It was something far beyond that.
Throughout the Marvel Omniverse, one rule had always remained absolute:
When a cosmic god died, its power and authority would inevitably return to the Cemetery of Gods.
No being could interfere.
No force could reverse it.
No event could alter it.
The law had been established by the One Above All.
And only the One Above All could rewrite it.
The One Above All stood at the pinnacle of existence.
The supreme creator.
The source from which the entire Omniverse had emerged.
There was only one other entity who approached that level.
The One Below All.
The embodiment of everything dark, destructive, and negative within creation.
Though still beneath the One Above All, it occupied a similarly incomprehensible tier of existence.
Together, they represented the highest powers in all reality.
And now...
Drex was drawing ever closer to that horizon.