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The Mind Stone blasted Nolan's psyche open to a staggering horizon.
His mental power soared, and with it, his control over both of his domains, the Psionic Dimension and the Particle Dimension, sharpened to surgical precision.
The arcane arrays branded into his flesh drank deeper currents of magic, channeling far more power than before.
His consciousness expanded like a shockwave.
In a heartbeat, Nolan's awareness covered the entire Earth.
Another heartbeat and it surged past the solar system, spilling outward into the void.
Worlds flickered in his thoughts Xandar rose in his mind's eye until half the cosmos lay mapped across the lattice of his awareness.
"So this," Nolan mused, "is what waits beyond Professor X."
Every escapee from the Baxter Building incident, every zombie vector, and their last known positions crystallized with perfect clarity in his mind.
But he didn't rush.
A new gem rotated above his palm the one that mattered most: the Soul Stone.
It was the keystone of the set, the core of the Infinity architecture, and the final piece Nolan needed to complete his Body of Infinity.
The Ancient One's lesson echoed: the ability to create souls marks a Single-Universe entity. It is a signature of a complete universe.
In some branches of the Prime Universe and the Ultimate Universe, there exists a seventh shard, the Ego Stone. In one strand, Tony Stark carried it, which is why Stark's intellect peaked beyond any sane scale. That shard represented Nemesis in truth and only when all seven were united could Nemesis reform.
Nolan wasn't about to test a multiversal entity. Six were enough for now.
Removing the Ego Stone from the equation, the Soul Stone remained the central processor of the Infinity set. Ironically, it's acquired by the simplest and cruelest method: a soul for a soul the sacrifice of one you truly love.
In Nolan's home reality, that price was unacceptable. Wanda was not a bargaining chip.
But now that he'd attained the Infinity Body, he suspected he could summon the Soul Stone without blood at all when he returned.
The Soul Stone's structure had baffled Otto's lab from day one.
It was intangible, almost unobservable a flicker-field of lights without pattern.
Only when Strange described what he sensed within did Reed posit that the lights behaved like quantum jumps.
With a battery of quantum detectors, they finally caught the lattice and discovered its informational density rivaled the Time Stone, dwarfing the rest.
Nolan set the change in motion.
Every architecture within him began to reconfigure.
He had previously rewritten the Hive gene making each of his cells a sovereign unit bonded to a greater whole.
That unity was the reason his "many" could still act as one.
Now, under the Soul Stone's influence, those individual cell-souls began maturing and awakening. He felt parts of his body testing independence, like sparks trying to leap from a fire.
"Blood-borne rebirth?"
He smiled. This was the outcome he'd sketched in theory and the Soul Stone had just opened the door.
It happened all at once.
Power that had already climbed to terrifying heights ascended again.
Mind and life elevated in tandem; his two domains interwove:
Thought form. Thought to form.
Real to unreal. Unreal to real.
The six Stones within him harmonized — matter and spirit closing into a perfect loop.
A soundless detonation rippled through his soul like the first explosion that ever echoed through a newborn cosmos.
Nolan's body turned slightly translucent.
A pinprick of light flashed within him then every awakened cell folded into that spark.
The spark expanded, drinking in those newborn soul-seeds, ballooning outward until it became a vast, dim horizon with a hazy boundary.
At its center, the power of all six Stones converged and burst.
Change tore through him.
The four fundamental forces danced across his vision: magnetism, gravity, the strong and weak interactions, each a tool, each obeying.
With a thought, he could forge matter from nothing, rewrite elemental lattices, and yes turn lead to gold if he were feeling poetic.
His physical aspect soared beyond familiar charts.
His magical aspect crystallized into razor clarity.
"Have I reached Single-Universe level?" he wondered aloud.
He could create souls now even craft a complete life from zero.
But the insight settled quickly: this apex applied here, in this universe.
His strength partially depended on local specificity patterns unique to this reality that his Infinity Body had synced with.
Remove that scaffolding in another universe, and the construct would require re-tuning.
"The path to a stable Single-Universe being is still ahead," Nolan concluded, calm rather than disappointed. He'd achieved what he came for.
If total attainment were 100%, he now stood at 99%.
The remaining percent demanded he harvest signatures from multiple universes, re-ascend repeatedly, and then breach the final threshold.
"Time to handle cleanup."
With a single impulse, every zombie hero hiding across the stars materialized before him yanked from their burrows and bolt-holes:
Zombie Ant-Man. Zombie Phoenix.
Zombie mutants by the dozen.
The Phoenix avatar snarled, cosmic fire kindling around her. "You— this is your doing?"
The flame guttered out in an instant.
The Phoenix Force proper may be beyond multiversal, but this thin projection hadn't even reached Sky Father levels, that's why the Sentinel broke her, and the infection took root.
Nolan closed his fist.
The zombie pantheon froze, bound by a gentle, absolute pressure. With a flick of thought, he teleported the lot into Osborn Corporation's containment arrays for dissection and cure research.
Then he looked up past the sky to the rifted pocket that housed the Watcher's Hall.
He took a single step.
Space folded.
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