The heavy silence that followed Tony Stark's departure hung like lingering smoke in the gothic corridors of the estate. Contracts signed, legal permissions sealed, and boundaries drawn. Stark's humor had faded the moment the ink dried, leaving behind only the weight of understanding: Eden wasn't just a corporation. It was law. It was dominion.
Markus watched their departing helicopter ascend through the sky. Only when the silhouette disappeared beyond the clouds did he turn back toward the his meeting hall.
With a thought, the status window unfurled before him, spectral lines forming the arcane pattern of his being. He didn't need to look, he already knew what it would say. But he reviewed it all the same, with the quiet satisfaction of an artist inspecting a finished mural.
[STATUS]
Name: Markus Tenebris
Codename: Ghost
Titles: Lord of the Undead · Master of Shadows · Godling · Reality Shaper · Spectre · Realm Architect · CEO
Race: Elder God (After absorbing 2 Infinity Stones)
Domain: Creation, Death, Dimensions and Space, Might
Class: Arch Magus*
Level: 502
EXP: ~3.0 M / 58 M
Infinity Stones Absorbed:
Space Stone: (Voidwalker, MP and MP Regen Enhancement)
Power Stone: (Annihilation Pulse, HP/SP and regen Enhancements)
Reality Stone: Not Acquired
Soul Stone: Not Acquired
Mind Stone: Not Acquired
Time Stone: Not Acquired
Core Attributes:
Strength: 90,000
Agility: 35,000
Endurance: 90,000
Intelligence: 95,000
Wisdom: 65,000
Luck: 20,000
Divinity: 160,000,000+ (10,000 per day from Infinity Stones (5,000 each); rest from two worlds worshipping him.)
Free Stat Points: 15,000
Stat Gains per Level:
+1000 to all core stats
+3000 stat points freely distributed per level
Base Stats:
HP: 1,000,000 (Enhanced by Power Stone)
MP: 10,000,000 (Enhanced by Space and Power Stone)
SP: 1,000,000 (Enhanced by Power Stone)
Permanent Enhancements:
Divine Reaper & Mana Subspace:
+50% HP → 1,500,000 effective
+50% MP → 15,000,000 effective
+50% SP → 1,500,000 effective
Regeneration Rates (per minute):
HP Regen: 300,000 (Enhanced by Power Stone)
MP Regen: 3,000,000 (Enhanced by Mana Conduit and Space Stone)
SP Regen: 300,000 (Enhanced by Power Stone)
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. Increases by 10% with each level up.
Combat & Summoning Mastery:
Soul Nexus (Lv 7): Commands and stores 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.
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 [Evolved: 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 an 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 8): 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 6): Fully integrates Mass Effect classes (Engineer, Sentinel, Infiltrator, Vanguard, Adept, Soldier). Continuous adaptive combat superiority and auto counter capabilities. Markus added skills and experiences of thousands of special force unit's and veteran's combined experience of military disciplines and skills. Passive mana upkeep: 2% per minute.
Unique & Strategic Abilities:
Voidwalker: Evolved from World Gate after absorbing the Space Stone. Markus can instantaneously travel across cosmic distances, including interdimensional teleportation and any previously visited location.
Dimensional Drift: Instantaneous travel between different universes and alternate realities.
Annihilation Pulse: A manifestation of the Power Stone's core trait. Limitless destructive force compressed into a single command. Annihilation Pulse allows Markus to channel raw, unfiltered cosmic energy with his mind and body and expel it as a directed surge, a beam, or area wide detonation. The pulse tears through matter, energy fields, magical constructs, and dimensional boundaries, reducing both physical and metaphysical targets to oblivion.
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
As Markus reviewed his status window, his gaze settled on his class designation:
Class: Arch Magus*
The asterisk caught his attention. Focusing on it, a new system prompt materialized:
Class Ascension Available
Upon reaching Level 500, you have unlocked the opportunity to ascend your class. Initiating this ascension requires completion of a specialized trial to determine your eligibility.
Proceed with the Class Ascension Trial?
[Yes] [No]
Markus dismissed the class interface with a thought, the shimmering arcane glyph fading from his vision. The words "Class Ascension Available" dissolved like mist. There would be time for that later. He remembered his first class ascension, wondered what the Arch Magus from the Nightmare Arcane Spire would say to him now. He still remembers the last sentence of the Arch Magus "Do not limit yourself to one reality alone, there are countless others... and you have only just begun". For now, Onyx stood beside him, tablet in hand, posture as precise as ever.
"The Wakandan delegation has arrived," she said simply.
Markus gave a single nod, adjusting the cuff of his black suit. His crimson tie caught the candlelight like a line of drawn blood. Though he maintained the civility of an aristocrat, there was no warmth in his eyes. Not for Wakanda.
Their entire nation, wrapped in a lie of mud huts and tribal pageantry. Cloaked from the world in deliberate ignorance while sitting atop a mountain of miracle metal. Vibranium hoarders who preached tradition while leeching technological superiority in silence. He already knew who they were. As a transmigrator, how could he not?
In truth, Wakanda ranked very high on his list of civilizations overdue for correction.
The sound of soft footfalls echoed down the obsidian tiled hall as twelve Wakandans entered the chamber. Ramonda and T'Chaka were unmistakable at the front of the group. Regal, poised, utterly unreadable to outsiders.
But not to Markus.
He invoked Subjugation silently as he inclined his head in welcome.
Twelve minds unfolded before him like layered parchment. Eight were elite bodyguards, two were military minds disguised in ceremonial garb, and the last two, King and Queen held far deeper thoughts than they dared reveal aloud. Distrust. Suspicion. Beneath it all, a quiet contempt wrapped in diplomatic civility.
Still, Markus greeted them with impeccable decorum.
"Your Majesties. Generals. I bid you welcome." His recognition of the Generals sent a chill through them.
He did not smile, yet he did offer seats as the custom dictates. The hall was cold, the air reverent, the angelic sculptures above watching like judges carved from heaven's stone. And in the back of his mind, Markus wondered, almost idly, if Bast would be watching as well. The so called goddess of protection, Bastet of the Ennead. He almost hoped she would interfere.
It would save him the trouble of finding her dimension.
POV Shift - Wakandan Delegation, En Route to Markus' Estate
Inside the sleek diplomatic motorcade provided upon their arrival, the mood among the delegation was visibly tense. Despite the polished leather seats, soft AI driven suspension, and silence of Eden's Elijah Sinai units, the unease was thick enough to measure.
One of the generals, Zuri's son, a younger man named Kibo broke the silence.
"I still do not understand why we meet this man like he is a king," he muttered. "No throne. No nation. Just machines and whispers."
Queen Ramonda gave him a side glance. "Because the world bends when he breathes. That is reason enough."
T'Chaka's expression was unreadable, but his voice was low. "We do not approach for any diplomatic relation. Wakanda does not need anything from others. We assess and calculate."
Kibo scoffed. "He is no Wakandan."
"No," Ramonda agreed. "He has no Vibranium like we do. He is not blessed by the Goddess like we do. He has no ore to dig. No mountain to hide beneath."
That was what disturbed them.
Even before they reached the estate, they knew the man's power. But it was when the convoy slowed and the silhouette of the estate appeared on the horizon that their discomfort became something deeper. Something primal.
A huge manor of foreign magnificence rose like a cathedral of black flame from the winter forest. Towering Gothic spires reached skyward, ringed by statues not of Wakandan ancestors, but angels. European. Biblical. Alien to the eyes of people whose mythos had never left the cradle of their own soil.
General M'Kete clicked his tongue. "No honor in this stone. No soul. Only conquest."
To the Wakandan mind, this architecture, foreign and cold, was a threat. A civilization born not of heritage, but mathematics, structural science. Not of bloodline, but supremacy of countless generations of research and knowledge. It reeked of a power that did not ask for respect. It already has it.
The entire aesthetic grated against them. This estate had not been built to honor gods or ancestors. It has nothing alike like the mud and huts of their origin.
Ramonda's eyes narrowed as the estate's grand gate opened.
"He did not build this for diplomacy," she whispered. "He built it to remind us. That we are visitors. And he is sovereign."
And though no one said it aloud, they all felt the same sour thread at the back of their thoughts:
This was the first time in generations that Wakandans would walk into a palace built by another hand... and feel out of place.
And for a people whose pride was built upon their perceived superiority, that was the deepest insult of all.
They were greeted by a cadre of Guardian Angels.
Their movements were exact. Their posture, impeccable. There was no idle chatter, no theatrical display of power, only military efficiency honed into ritual. Each member of the Wakandan delegation was scanned silently and guided with an air of courteous indifference, the kind reserved not for enemies, but for guests whose presence changed nothing.
The corridors of the estate stretched like a temple carved from midnight stone. Vaulted ceilings swept overhead in perfect arcs. Obsidian pillars lined the path with sculpted seraphim coiled upward in silent vigil. Stained glass filtered pale afternoon light into ribbons of crimson and gold, casting divine sigils across the polished basalt floor.
For the Wakandans, it was a sensory insult. Beauty, yes. But foreign. European. Gothic. Rooted in a culture they had long dismissed as their ancestors could not understand the majesty behind it.
To them, such structures reeked of imperialism, of empires that built monuments not to ancestors souls, but to vanity. It was the antithesis of Wakandan restraint.
And yet… the perfection here was undeniable.
Ramonda felt it in her chest. A bitter whisper of a question she had often buried.
What would Europe have become… if it had been Wakanda who slept in the dark, and they who had found Vibranium?
Would they have hoarded it? Hidden it behind lies and tribal illusions?
Or would they have done… exactly this?
It was a thought too dangerous to entertain. So she walked faster, her silken robes whispering against the stone.
The Guardian Angels led them through a final archway and into the meeting hall.
It was a throne room in all but name.
Long and narrow, lined with cathedral like windows, its high ceiling disappeared into shadow. Twin rows of marble angels flanked the chamber, wings folded in reverence, eyes carved as judging. A long obsidian table ran the center, surrounded by tall backed chairs carved in motifs of constellations.
They entered like pilgrims. Not out of humility, but because the place demanded it.
And at the far end, seated in calm command, was Markus.
His presence was a sculpture made flesh. Black suit, blood red tie, posture unflinching. Onyx stood behind him, impassive, tablet in hand, her gaze never once drifting from the Wakandans.
Markus rose and gestured toward the seats with effortless courtesy.
"Your Majesties. Generals. I bid you welcome."
They sat. Carefully. Only once their elite guards had tested the seats for tampering. Ramonda and T'Chaka took the central chairs, composed but alert.
Onyx tapped a silent command into her slate. Moments later, refreshments arrived on platinum trays, carried by stunningly beautiful and militarily disciplined maids, simple and elegant: herbal infusions, crystal cut fruits, pale wines from ancient cellars.
None of the royals touched them.
Their bodyguards stepped forward, testing, scanning, tasting.
Markus watched the ceremony of paranoia with a smirk curled just faintly at the edge of his mouth.
"You needn't worry," he said, his voice smooth. "If I intended to kill you…"
He leaned forward slightly.
"Would not Bast have intervened by now?"
The words fell like lead into still water.
Ramonda's spine stiffened. T'Chaka's hand twitched ever so slightly on the armrest. The bodyguards froze in perfect silence, scanning Markus anew, as if to determine if they had misheard.
He had said it plainly.
Bast.
Their goddess.
Their protector.
A name not spoken lightly outside of temple walls. Known to the world only as myth, as folklore. The world thought her a statue. A symbol.
But Markus?
He knew.
And worse… he spoke it with casual confidence, as if it were common knowledge. As if she were his acquaintance.
Ramonda was the first to recover.
Her voice remained steady, though her heart raced.
"You speak the name of our goddess with ease, Mr. Tenebris."
Markus's eyes gleamed faintly, but he said nothing.
T'Chaka's tone was harder. "Where did you learn of the Goddess?"
Markus tilted his head ever so slightly, as though weighing how much truth the room deserved.
"I did not learn," he said simply. "I know."
No one spoke.
And for the first time since they arrived, it was not Wakanda who stood above the world's secrets.
It was Markus. And the silence that followed whispered volumes.
Markus leaned back slightly, his gaze unwavering as he addressed the Wakandan delegation.
"I know of her," he stated, his voice calm yet resonant. "Bastet of the Ennead. Though not originally one of the nine deities of the Egyptian pantheon, she was fortunate to have Wakanda's devotion, allowing her to maintain her divinity and godhood."
The atmosphere in the room grew taut. The bodyguards exchanged uneasy glances, muscles coiled in anticipation. Ramonda's eyes narrowed, while T'Chaka's expression hardened into a stoic mask. Markus's words were not just knowledge; they were a provocation. He was baiting Bast, challenging her to reveal herself.
The challenge did not go unanswered.
A shimmer rippled through the air, and within moments, a sleek black cat materialized in the center of the hall. Unbeknownst to her, Markus had subtly permitted her entry into his domain, weaving his own spatial manipulations to allow her arrival. Yet, this allowance was a double edged sword; within his realm, no entity could escape his grasp.
Markus turned his attention to the feline manifestation. With a mere thought, he invoked Subjugation and Rule, his consciousness delving into the depths of Bastet's essence. Memories, powers, and secrets unfolded before him. Among her abilities, one stood out: Solar Energy Absorption. This skill enabled Bastet to draw power from the sun, augmenting her divinity through its radiant energy, complementing the worship she received from her followers. Beyond this, there was little else of value to assimilate.
A faint smirk played on Markus's lips as he copied the ancient language of the Egyptians through the newly acquired knowledge. In flawless pronunciation, he addressed her:
"So, the little kitty decided to show up."
******************************************************
Bastet's feline form shimmered in the stillness of the hall. Threads of divine energy laced with gold and obsidian curled outward, distorting the air around her. With slow, deliberate grace, the shadowy silhouette of the black cat expanded, limbs elongating, posture rising. In the span of a breath, the goddess stood in her human form, tall, statuesque, and cloaked in the ageless elegance of a celestial sovereign.
Her skin bore the rich hue of burnished ebony, polished and flawless. High cheekbones gave structure to a striking face, framed by raven black braids adorned with golden beads. Emerald eyes, sharp as falcon steel and lined with kohl, swept across the room with imperious precision. She wore a sleeveless gown of shifting black silk, woven to resemble the starlit sky. Subtle, fluid, and unnervingly alive. Golden cuffs adorned her arms, each etched with sacred hieroglyphs that pulsed faintly with dormant power.
Markus watched the display with a faint smirk curling his lips, the same expression one might wear while indulging a child's attempt at theater. In truth, the moment amused him. Seraphiel, he thought, would finally have a peer to converse with, assuming this one survived the encounter.
Bastet strode forward, barefoot yet regal, her eyes narrowing as she took in Markus's form. She tilted her head slightly, as though deciphering a glyph half remembered from a forgotten age. The sheer concentration of divinity that saturated the air around him disturbed her, though her pride would not admit it. In her arrogance, she assumed it must come from elsewhere, borrowed, perhaps, from some greater deity.
The Wakandan envoys sat in stiff, reverent silence. None among them dared to speak. Their expressions revealed nothing but awe and ignorance. They could not understand the ancient tongue suddenly exchanging between Markus and Bastet, but the air itself whispered that something far older than Wakanda had just entered the room.
Bastet was the first to speak, her voice melodic yet edged with quiet menace. She spoke in the language of Kemet, fluent, graceful, and born of a time before maps had names.
"Who are you," she asked, "to house such power? What master grants you dominion, stranger?"
Markus answered without standing, his tone unhurried, his expression unreadable.
"I serve no master," he replied in the same tongue, flawlessly pronounced, "and my dominion is not borrowed. It is mine."
The goddess paused, assessing him anew. It was clear she had not expected a response in her native tongue, let alone one so confident, so calm.
"No mortal speaks these words as you do," she murmured, eyes narrowing. "No flame flickers this steadily without wind. Tell me, do you speak for another?"
Markus gave a faint laugh, cold and without mirth.
"If you believe this power belongs to someone else," he said, "perhaps it is your senses that fail you as your pride blinds you."
The tension in the chamber thickened like gathering stormclouds. The Wakandans glanced at each other in silent confusion, still unable to grasp the exchange, but sensing the atmosphere shift.
Bastet's lips curled slightly in distaste, though she composed herself swiftly.
"You tread the edge of blasphemy," she warned, her voice softening, dangerously so. "There are consequences for mortals, whom challenge the old thrones."
Markus leaned forward, just slightly, and smiled.
"I am not challenging the old thrones, I am already in a higher one" he said. "You, on the other hand are a simple beast, waiting to be leashed. You have no throne little kitty.."
Her eyes widened, not from fear, but from insult. The silence that followed was deep and holy, as though the marble and obsidian themselves held their breath.
In that pause, Bastet's illusion of superiority began to fracture. She could feel the subtle pressure of something far greater pressing against her senses, something that didn't come from ritual or worship, but from pure creation. It unnerved her.
Markus saw it.
And with a slight nod, as if granting permission to a pet allowed to stay in the room, he whispered in flawless Ancient Egyptian.
"So the little cat has decided to show her claws."
The atmosphere within the meeting hall thickened as Bastet's form shimmered, her gaze narrowing to feline slits. She pounced, her body a blur of speed and power, claws extended, teeth bared, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat.
Markus did not move.
With a simple thought, the space between them ruptured. A vertical arc of gravity magic surged upward like a wall of pressurized glass. Bastet struck it mid lunge and was thrown back, skidding across the polished basalt with a feline snarl. She recovered mid roll and darted again, this time weaving in time disrupting blinks, her form bending light in sharp curves.
Markus used Blitz and attacked her dozens of times within seconds. A lattice of Death Magic spread across the floor afterwards, pale, skeletal threads lacing the room with hungry cracks. Her movements slowed as the chill of entropy clung to her limbs. But she pushed through burning her divinity to heal herself, golden claws scraping against conjured gravity wells, time traps that will freeze her in moment. Markus had summoned aetheric blades midair, each slashing at her turning her strikes into defensive maneuvers, hopeless struggles.
"Cute," he murmured, raising one hand.
A ring of orbiting crystals materialized behind him, humming with Arcane frequencies. Each one burst into a different spell, time fracture, spatial dislocation, gravity spike, lightning bolts, all targeted with unerring accuracy. Bastet was fast, divine even, but her power was rooted in brute precision and animal instinct. Her highest stat was her agility sitting at five thousand. It was as if in all her speed she was moving in slow motion to Markus' superior stats. Reality itself was bowing to him and she had not fought a man who rewrote reality for sport before.
"Still standing?" he asked, stepping forward, his silhouette swallowed by black and violet motes of Aether.
She growled, coalescing her divine form and throwing herself at him one final time in a flurry of clawed strikes and raw solar fury.
Markus didn't even raise a shield.
The floor beneath her erupted with reverse gravitational force, slamming her into the ceiling. Before she could drop, a crushing downforce yanked her violently to the ground. She hit the floor like a meteor, divinity rippling off her form in fractals of golden light.
The body of the feline goddess twitched under the weight of Markus's magic, yet she could not rise.
He walked toward her with slow, deliberate steps, With each step the devastation to his meeting hall was reversed, repaired as time moved in reverse. The soles of his shoes echoing against the stone. As he drew near, he spoke, this time in English. For the sake of the watchers from Wakanda. He wanted them to understand the depth of the well they were in.
"That was a cute attempt, little kitty," he said with amused coldness, eyes glowing a sovereign turquoise. "To think you dared attack an Elder God. In his domain, no less."
He looked down at the glinting amulets adorning her broken form, ceremonial tokens of her 'godhood.'
"It is better that you came wearing a collar," he added. "It will make this next part easier."
Bastet's emerald eyes widened. Not from pain. But understanding.
The power wasn't borrowed.
It was his.
With a soft in the air, Markus extended his will. Bastet tried to retreat, a shimmer of light sparked as she began teleportation. Markus watched, unmoved, as he traced the exact coordinates of her dimension. With a whisper of power, he sealed that space. Locking it shut with Space Magic, Dimension Control, and Dominion rights.
She was going nowhere.
He reached down, holding her delicate chin harshly, locking gazes with the goddess.
Subjugation activated.
Then Rule.
He didn't just scan her.
He tore through her divine self, memory, origin, core, dissecting everything. The location of the other deities of her Pantheon and details of her worshippers. Her domain. Her mind. Her story.
Then he rewrote it.
Seven hundred thousand divinity points, culminated over centuries, drained from her in seconds, leaving only a single tether, a frail thread to keep her godhood from collapsing into nothing. Her divine realm fractured, then faded… only to reform within Noctorrius Primus, bound to Markus's will. The skies turned darker. Her temples collapsed in Wakanda.
Bastet's scream was not of pain.
It was loss.
A collapse of self.
Of pride.
Of divinity.
He gazed down as her form twitched, now clad in subtle chains of light wrapped around her wrists and neck, marked by Aetheric sigils of control.
Her identity, or what remained of it hung by a thread.
And Markus?
He smiled.
Predatory. Triumphant. Patient.
"Welcome home," he whispered. "You'll make a lovely pet."
The goddess formerly known as Bastet lay still.
Her leash was in his hand.