The throne room of Voidwatch Castle, now mirrored in Noctorrius Primus, was a testament to dominion wrapped in dread. A castle of obsidian spires, arches framed the interior vast, cold, and endlessly reverberating with silent authority. Towering windows made of shadow crystal overlooked the realm's core spectacle: the event horizon of the black hole. Light itself bent into submission as it approached the swirling abyss, casting the throne in a perpetual dusk that was neither day nor night.
Markus sat reclined upon his throne. A monolith of forged gravity, laced with pulsing runes of his own design. The vast chamber knelt to his presence alone. Beside him, standing obediently and silently in a revealing ensemble of twilight threaded silks, was Seraphiel, now matured in both body and devotion. Her radiant form was lit by the dying shimmer of stars being devoured just beyond the windows.
With the realm still and the void singing its mute lullaby, Markus called forth his status screen.
[STATUS]
Name: Markus Tenebris
Codename: Ghost
Titles: Lord of the Undead · Master of Shadows · Godling · Reality Shaper · Spectre · Realm Architect
Race: God
Domain: Creation and Death
Class: Arch Magus
Level: 496
EXP: ~48.0 M / 55 M
Core Attributes
Strength: 25,000
Agility: 30,000
Endurance: 25,000
Intelligence: 85,000
Wisdom: 60,000
Luck: 13,000
Divinity: 1,750,000
Stat Gains per Level:
+1000 to all core stats
+3000 stat points freely distributed per level
Base HP: 250,000
Base MP: 6,000,000
Base SP: 250,000
Permanent Enhancements:
Divine Reaper & Mana Subspace:
+50% HP → 500,000 effective
+50% MP → 9,000,000 effective
+50% SP → 500,000 effective
Regeneration Rates (per minute):
HP Regen: 50,000
MP Regen: 1,500,000 (Enhanced by Mana Conduit)
SP Regen: 50,000
Defensive & Mobility Skills
Arcane Aegis: Mitigates 80% elemental/magical and 60% physical damage.
Void Rift: Instant planetary teleportation with brief invulnerability and heightened spatial awareness upon arrival.
Wraith: Grants complete intangibility and invisibility.
Blitz Lv 1:
Range: 1000 m.
Time Dilation: 90% slow within AoE.
Combat Enhancement: +100% attack & movement speed during activation.
Increase by 10% with each level up.
Combat & Summoning Mastery
Soul Nexus (Lv 7): Commands and store up to 2.4 million undead/hybrid units.
Integrated Soul Vortex: Absorbs souls within 10 km, permanently augmenting summoned army and personal attributes.
Shadow Exchange: Instantaneous positional swap with any summon.
World Gate: Opens portals through reality to any previously visited location.
Dimensional Drift: Instantaneous travel between different universes and alternate realities.
Number of summons increase by 20% of the base amount with every level up.
Mastered Arcane & Special Skills
Divine Reaper: Permanent +50% to HP, MP, SP, and regeneration rates.
Reduces elemental spell costs by 25%, increases elemental damage by 30%.
Seamless shifting between physical and energy based forms.
Mastery level manipulation over Primary, Secondary, Rare and Arcane elements.
Fate's Edict [Fusion with Loom of Fate]
Grants total control over fate threads in all domains. Alter probabilities. Read and manipulate possible futures. Reshape outcomes for optimal gains.
Subjugation [Fusion: Memory Veil]
Markus can now alter memories on individual or mass scale. Can read, rewrite, suppress, or fabricate memories. Perfect success within domains; outside depends on INT/WIS. Effective against organic and synthetic minds.
Bestowal [Fusion: Skill Weave Codex]
Grants, modifies, suppresses or reclaims any known skill. Access to 400K+ skill templates. Conditional, temporary, or full bestowals. Can tailor custom abilities.
Insight (Passive)
Allows perfect comprehension of targets' stats, histories, soul patterns, and hidden potential.
Rule
The ultimate deconstruction and assimilation skill. Can extract templates, races, and systems. Reassign or fuse essences.
Reality Domination (Lv 7):
Cosmic level reality manipulation across Astronomical Unit (AU) distances, allowing large scale restructuring and rewriting of physical and metaphysical laws.
Integrated Skills & Protocols
Apex Fusion Protocol (Passive, Lv 3):
Fully integrates Mass Effect classes (Engineer, Sentinel, Infiltrator, Vanguard, Adept, Soldier). Continuous adaptive combat superiority and auto counter capabilities. Passive mana upkeep: 2% per minute.
Unique & Strategic Abilities
Hundredfold Experience Acquisition: Augments the user's experience gain by 100 times, encompassing both personal leveling and skill proficiency advancement. This enhancement accelerates overall growth and mastery at an unprecedented rate.
Divine Subspace Creation (Evolved from Unique Subspace Creation Lv 10): Creates isolated dimensions tethered to his soul. Constructs and manages expansive pocket realms for secure storage, instant deployment, and tactical versatility. Expanding capacity, duration, and complexity with each level.
Mana Conduit (Passive): Harnesses virtually unlimited ambient mana absorbed from interconnected subspace realms, ensuring inexhaustible mana regeneration.
Omniscient Awareness (Passive): Instantaneous data assimilation, processing, and interpretation on a galactic scale.
Inventory, Domains, & Strategic Assets
Raven (Flagship):
Reaper Tech enhanced warship featuring 20 Sovereign class lasers, triple layered defensive arrays, and perfect stealth capabilities.
Onyx (Sentient AI):
Highly advanced AI companion integrated with Reaper tech, ensuring flawless operation of Raven, fleet control, and cyber warfare.
Collector Base Domain:
Fully controlled territory extending 100 AU radius from the base, reshaped into Markus's sovereign realm.
Witcher World Subspace Domain:
Entire Witcher world encapsulated securely within subspace, granting total control, protection, and access to unique resources.
Living In This World With Cut & Paste world Subspace Domain:
Entire Living In This World With Cut & Paste world turned to a eternal war domain between humans and monsters.
Noctorrius Primus: A fully converted realm supervising and governing the Living In This World With Cut & Paste world
His eyes, glowing faintly, narrowed as they fixed on the numerical glyph pulsing behind the Divinity line.
"Divinity," he mused, his tone velvet laced steel, "the lifeblood and the poison of gods. A currency of creation that binds its wielder in invisible chains."
Divinity, as it revealed itself to him, was more than spiritual capital. it was compressed existential energy, a refined evolution of mana itself. While mana fueled spells, Divinity carved reality. Gods did not cast magic; they issued decrees. Fire was not summoned, it obeyed.
Most deities were the spiritual ephemera of mortal belief. Born from fears and ideals. Concepts like justice, war, fertility, and lightning congealed into pseudo sapient divine constructs. A pantheon of abstractions, addicted to the validation of their own worshippers. Markus found the idea almost quaint.
He snorted. "Ascend to immortality, only to beg for prayers? Divinity through desperation. Divine welfare. How absolutely revolting."
He had not been born of any myth, legend, or mass hysteria. He was no child of thought. He had been a man, a scientist, then a mercenary (read it as an assassin), a hunter, mercenary again and now, a god by conquest not consensus.
Markus recalled Seraphiel's attributes before he dismantled her autonomy: a mere 950,000 MP, after nearly 2.7 million years of unbroken existence. "If that's the product of divine prayer economy," he muttered dryly, "I should start taxing mediocrity next."
Unlike her, his mana pool dwarfed hers several times over, and with each level, it only expanded. For now, this surplus would suffice. But even he could feel it, The subtle tickle of future starvation. Divinity drained over time. Slowly, yes. But unrelentingly. It had to be fed.
There were two paths to replenishment.
One: accept the worship of mortals, cultivating temples, saints, sacrifices, and psalms like a petty emperor hoarding incense and self delusion.
Two: forge it himself. Somehow. Through conquest. Through creation. Through dominance. But as of now, that method remained a mystery.
Markus leaned back, fingers steepled, his voice as calm as it was final. "Until I unravel that secret, until I learn to generate divinity by merit alone I will take the easier path. For now."
His eyes flared as Subjugation activated in silent waves, subtly rewriting the belief matrices across the Witcher World, and the Cut & Paste realm. Entire civilizations would find themselves dreaming of him, sculpting rituals in his name without understanding why. Temples would rise where none had been planned. Priests would hear his voice and not know whose words they spoke.
"Faith by design," he whispered with a thin smile. "Artificial devotion to power undeserved… delicious irony."
And if he failed to solve the divinity riddle?
"Then I'll find a god, rip the marrow from their soul, and drink their legacy dry."
He turned his gaze once more to the black hole beyond the glass, its spiraling pull echoing the slow, patient hunger of his own rising godhood.
Markus had never been one to indulge in sentimentality, but even he had to admit, having his first goddess wrapped around his body was... satisfying. Seraphiel, once a radiant pillar of ancient divinity, now stood as a perfected creation molded by his rule, her eyes reflecting nothing but absolute devotion. Wide and luminous, those azure pools shimmered with untainted obedience.
He had taken her in every sense physically, mentally, spiritually. And in each embrace, her submission had been pure, her pleasure genuine, her worship instinctive. There was no guilt, no resistance, no pretense. Only adoration, softly whispered and passionately given. He found something almost addictive in the way she clung to him. Not out of need, but out of sacred purpose. A tool refined into worshipper. A worshipper refined into a possession.
Yet such amusements could only entertain him for so long. Markus soon turned his attention to the larger design. His realm, his growing domains, and the mechanics of power distribution.
He had experimented with Bestowal, attempting to grant blessings to selected souls across both the human and monster continents. The intent was simple: grant minor strength, shape them subtly, feed their ambitions, and let them destroy one another more efficiently. But the act itself… irked him.
There was something inherently distasteful about giving away power, even when the metaphysical circuit promised its return in worship or sacrifice. The sensation was wrong. It was like peeling away his flesh, draining his blood. Maybe he should have been the god of selfishness he thought.
"Tch… benevolence does not suit me," Markus muttered under his breath, seated atop the obsidian throne carved from a single slab. His voice echoed slightly in the vast, dim lit audience chamber of Voidwatch Castle. From the side, Seraphiel approached, dressed in a revealing, goddess fit ensemble of gossamer shadow silk and silver threaded bands, stood quietly at his side. Her posture was ever so elegant, the devotion in her large, expressive eyes gleaming with reverence that bordered on divine intoxication. She was his first goddess, and in her worshipful silence, he found something dangerously pleasant.. "Seraphiel. The administration of skill distribution is now yours. I tire of this charity."
Her head lowered gracefully. "As you will, my lord."
Markus summoned a surge of divine energy and infused it into her being 200,000 HP, MP, SP, and 200,000 Divinity, a grant worthy of a true administrator. Her form shimmered briefly as the new power flowed into her, stabilizing her role as the Voice of the God of Creation and Death.
"Do not disappoint me, little star," he murmured, his turquoise eyes glowing faintly. "You are the face of my generosity now. Make it look ..divine."
And just like that, Seraphiel vanished in a stream of light, off to carry out her sacred duty.
Markus leaned back in his throne, arms resting on the cold stone, gaze returning to the spiraling void beyond the window. He would find another way to build his Divinity, one that didn't involve pandering to mortal need. That much was certain.
As Seraphiel tended to the administration of bestowing skills with almost mechanical grace, Markus stood still, half contemplative, half bored. For a man who had climbed through the layers of multiple realities, from the shadowed dungeons of Solo Leveling to the high courts of Toussaint, from Mass Relays to mystical forests and lastly to godhood itself. he allowed his thoughts to drift. To Earth, of all places.
Once, he was just a man. A physicist chasing the outer edges of quantum instability, fiddling with particles in realms unfit for mortal hands. Trying to find the border where reality itself dismantled. Results were explosive, literally. He had to call it a success. The explosion tore more than just space. It shattered the veil. It burned the veil to cinders and made way for everything that came after.
Markus chuckled, lips curling with amusement. "Pity I never got to publish that paper."
The time had come to move again. To take another step in his long pilgrimage across creation. But not without preparation. The multiverse, after all, was full of places he had no desire to end up in. He'd read enough drivel to know better.
"No," he murmured coldly, eyes narrowing, "I will not suffer through some hormone crazed harem circus, nor a screaming match between teenage cultivators over who insulted whose dog." His turquoise gaze sharpened. "And by all that is dark and unholy, if I land in a woke themed world where I have to apologize for breathing male, I'll burn it from orbit."
With a gesture, Fate's Edict unfurled, its threads stretching outward like celestial command lines. He rewrote his future, etched in pure mana, directing his path away from those accursed genres. The cost was immense, half his mana pool drained in the blink of an eye. But the relief was worth it.
Only then did he call upon the power.
Dimensional Drift activated.
Reality fractured gently. A ripple of silence swept the chamber. One moment Markus was gazing into the eternal spiral of a black hole. The next, he was gone.
The world reassembled itself around Markus in a slow, controlled fracture.
Gone was the throne of Voidwatch, the silent gaze into the black hole's heart, and the scent of divine silence. Now, there was sound, so much of it. Cars honking, people shouting, shoes slapping pavement. Neon lights flickered and danced across towering glass buildings. The stench of street food mingled with burnt oil and urban humidity.
Markus stood alone in a narrow alley that reeked of piss.
The shimmer of his arrival left no trace, no cosmic surge, no gravitational wound. His obsidian robes gave way to a sharp black suit, modern cut, accented with silver threaded lapels and a blood red tie. No insignia, no title. Just presence.
He stepped out into the street like a wolf among blind cattle.
His gaze swept over the urban chaos. Yellow taxis swerved past food carts and suited men. Electric signs burned bright in the early dusk, Stark Industries to Host Expo in Geneva, New Energy Division Doubles Global Output, Tony Stark: The Future in Flesh. His eyes narrowed at the man's face on every third screen.
"Stark… so the fool is alive and very much a celebrity."
Markus strolled down the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, processing. He was in New York City. That much was clear. But which one?
This could be either of the two," he murmured aloud, ignoring the passersby who were looking at him as though he were a walking disaster. He had forgotten that his towering height of 2.5 meters and the muscular build of a body builder made him impossible to ignore. "Comic verse or Cinematic. Mutants… unknown. Gods? Undetermined. But if Stark is already making waves, this is post weapons, pre arc reactor. That narrows it.
He crossed a street, entered Times Square proper, and paused under a billboard of a younger, arrogant Tony Stark laughing beside military drones. A timer on the screen announced Stark Expo: Before 3 Years. A chessboard had just unfolded, and Markus knew the rules… mostly.
As he stood quietly amidst the city's thrum, he felt a sudden shift. It was subtle, but the environment listened. The air changed pitch. The mana.. no, the fabric of the dimension quivered with elegance and restraint. He knew that signature. Not magic… not his magic. But the structured weave of dimensional tampering done through learned, ancient paths.
The spark came first. Then the golden ring.
Markus turned slightly, eyes calm.
A portal bloomed behind him in the air like a curtain being drawn aside. From the edges of the ring, golden sparks fell in perfect geometries, carving symbols in the void. The scent of incense and aged parchment followed the gust of wind that blew through the new gate.
Markus smiled slightly.
"So. She noticed."
The golden circle flared wider, its sparks dancing like controlled lightning across the buildings' shadows, until all color and sound snapped into silence. The world froze. Reflections stretched unnaturally, angles twisted like melting glass. The city blurred and faded, replaced by abstract geometry and bending planes of shifting gravity.
Markus stepped to the side, hands still in his coat pockets, his head tilting slightly as he looked around.
"Mirror Dimension," he said with a trace of amusement, the words rolling off his tongue like velvet over razors. "Well constructed, as expected. Still… Yao, I was not expecting you to arrive this quickly."
The name landed like a stone dropped in still water.
From the circle stepped the Ancient One. Bald, clad in flowing robes of ochre and deep crimson, her stance tranquil, yet there was a tension, a readiness beneath the stillness. Her eyes studied him with the quiet intensity of someone who had long mastered patience and feared little.
But even so, she hesitated. The name.
"You know my name."
Markus didn't bother nodding. Instead, he studied her in return. His gaze was heavier than hers, far heavier. His mind was already working. Rule had long since activated the moment she stepped through the portal. He did not need gestures or incantations. The sorceress's very essence was being peeled apart, catalogued, replicated and assimilated. Her talents in dimensional manipulation, temporal stasis, illusionary frameworks, and spell weaving, Marvel's own flavor of mysticism were absorbed as if by divine inheritance.
There was no struggle. No fanfare. Just inevitability.
"God of an unknown origin," Yao said finally, her tone firm yet not hostile. "Why have you come here?"
Markus's smile deepened, eyes glinting with amusement. "I thought the Eye of Agamotto would have shown you more. Or is it… silent?"
Her gaze sharpened. The mention of the Eye did not surprise her, but the casual irreverence in his voice did.
"You are not just aware. You are informed," she replied slowly, brows tightening. "You've studied us. Watched us."
"And yet, none of that knowledge came from prophecy or belief," Markus said, his voice lowering, "because I am not one from your pantheons. I was never born of this world's fear or need. I am not made of myth, but of will. And conquest."
She took one step forward. "If you've come to disrupt the timeline-"
Markus's chuckle cut her off. Cold. Icy. Without joy.
"You speak of time as if it were yours to govern," he said, lifting one hand lazily. In an instant, cracks formed across the curved walls of the Mirror Dimension. Geometry splintered. Space warped violently. With nothing but a flicker of intent, the entire dimension, an intricate construct of sorcery and balance fractured like stained glass under a hammer.
A moment later, the real world returned with a howl of voices.
They stood once more, the fractured light of Times Square bleeding back into view. The crowd saw nothing. Time resumed.
Markus turned his back to her, not out of arrogance, but of certainty.
"I will forgive this little containment attempt, Yao," he said over his shoulder. His voice, now deathly calm, carried like a blade across stone. "But there will be no next time. Try to bind me again, and not just Kamar Taj, not just Nepal but Asia, will be little more than memory and ash."
His turquoise eyes shimmered faintly as they caught the light of a passing car.
The Ancient One stood silently. She watched his silhouette as he walked away, his footsteps unnaturally silent, his presence clear with his towering height eclipsing, the folds of the crowd.
Her eyes narrowed.
He had shattered the Mirror Dimension.
With a thought.
She had prepared for many threats, demonic invasions, temporal anomalies, incursions. But this… this was something else.
As Markus vanished from view, her mind was already racing.
Not how to fight him.
How to survive him.
Markus walked down the sidewalk with unhurried steps, trying to blend in despite standing a full head.. or more.. above the tallest man in the crowd. At 2.5 meters, with shoulders carved from divinity and a physique sculpted by impossible power, he looked like a monument had stepped off its pedestal and decided to take a stroll through New York.
Times Square buzzed around him: tourists, flashing billboards, taxis blaring horns, smells of grilled pretzels, roasted chestnuts, and hotdog stands. But Markus wasn't here to vanish into the background. Not this time.
He passed a billboard plastered with "Tony Stark: Genius. Billionaire. Playboy. Philanthropist."
A smirk tugged at his lips.
Stark… well then. MCU it is. Or a close cousin of it.
With his hands tucked neatly behind his back, he turned toward the NYPD Times Square Substation. A small but bustling precinct wedged under a massive screen display like an afterthought. He entered with regal calm, his boots striking the floor with the slow, deliberate cadence of inevitability.
The officer at the reception desk, a broad shouldered man in his mid thirties with a face that looked like it had survived two divorces and three riots stood up the moment he saw Markus. His hand drifted instinctively toward his holster, not quite touching the grip, but close.
And who could blame him?
Markus was a sight. A walking slab of imperious muscle wrapped in tailored shadows, bearing an expression of calm so absolute it became the very definition of unnerving.
"I'd like to report a mugging," Markus said, voice smooth, precise, tinged with just the right amount of drama.
The silence in response was almost polite.
The officer blinked. Once. Twice. Then coughed. "You?"
"Yes," Markus replied, arching a brow. "They took my wallet and phone."
"…Was the SWAT team in on it, or just the regiment of SEAL?" the officer muttered under his breath.
But protocols were protocols. Begrudgingly, the cop pulled out a complaint form and began asking questions. Name. Address. Contact. Occupation. Markus answered each without hesitation, speaking as if reciting facts that had always been there.
"Markus Tenebris," he began. "From Arkansas. No living relatives. Age twenty eight. Single. Graduate of MIT. Fields: computer engineering, mechanical systems, aeronautics, astronautics, and biological sciences."
The officer looked up. "You saying you've got five degrees?"
"Six. I forgot electronics," Markus replied, smile widening just enough to leave room for mischief.
Of course, behind the scenes, Markus was already working. Subjugation quietly slithered into the station's network systems. Primitive tech, compared to what Onyx had operated back in Mass Effect space. Vulnerable. Fragile. Trivial. He forged digital records in real time, birth certificates, school transcripts, public achievements, bank accounts, tax records. He seeded financial trails that led to respectable brokerage firms, respectable donations, and a modest little inheritance that happened to total two hundred million dollars spread across five perfectly legal bank accounts.
Then came the minds.
Through subtle mental nudges and memory implants, he sculpted the recollections of key administrators, data engineers, and background checkers across half a dozen government departments. By the time anyone bothered looking, they would remember Markus as someone they had approved, interviewed, or verified already.
His story had weight.
His identity was real.
By all official accounts, he existed.
"Phone number?" the cop asked finally, tapping the screen.
Markus's smile brightened. "It was stolen. Along with the phone."
"And your address?"
"No permanent residence yet," Markus said with feigned politeness. "I travel light."
The officer stared at him for a long beat, then sighed. "Come back tomorrow. We'll process your ID and license. You're… uh… clear."
"I appreciate your assistance, Officer," Markus said, as a gentleman he was always a polite young man after all. Extending his hand with the sort of grace that made it feel like the cop should be kneeling instead of shaking it.
And with that, he turned and walked out, leaving behind a precinct confused, suspicious and fully overwritten.
Markus inhaled the New York air again. Loud. Dirty. Mortal.
He smiled.
Time to live a little.