Chapter 331: Chapter 331: The Fall of the Council of Reeds
The instant the signal vanished, Levi gave no one time to react.
His right hand tore through empty space, and a streak of crimson-gold light ripped apart the laboratory’s spatial structure like lightning.
Flames of the Phoenix Force burned along the edges of the fracture, radiating a suffocating heat.
Tony’s vision blurred. Before he could respond, an irresistible force dragged him into the rift.
Nathaniel didn’t even have time to scream before his body followed Levi into the distorted dimensional passage.
Strange attempted to cast a spell and follow, but Levi glanced back at him.
The coldness in that gaze made the Sorcerer Supreme instantly understand.
No additional help was needed for this mission.
---
The sights within the dimensional tunnel made Tony dizzy.
Countless fragments of shattered universes flashed past them. Every fragment burned with eerie white flames—the traces left behind by the Beyonders.
He saw the ruins of civilizations.
He saw the corpses of planets.
He even saw time itself twisted into indescribable forms.
Levi streaked through the tunnel like a meteor.
He pushed his Origin of Control to its limits, forming an airtight barrier around himself that isolated every detectable danger and lethal threat.
Nathaniel clung tightly to Levi’s coat.
The temporal perception inherited from the Council of Kangs was screaming warnings through his entire being, as though telling him that something beyond comprehension awaited ahead.
Less than three seconds later, the three of them pierced through layer after layer of dimensional barriers.
The moment they stepped out of the rift, Tony Stark froze.
What lay before him sent a shiver through the depths of his soul.
---
This was a special realm existing outside all known universes.
In theory, it should have been the headquarters of the Council of Reeds—the sanctuary where the greatest minds of countless parallel universes gathered.
Now, only death remained.
An endless void stretched in every direction.
Floating within it were tens of thousands of corpses.
Every one of them wore the iconic blue uniform emblazoned with the number 4 on the chest—the symbol of the Fantastic Four and of Reed Richards himself.
The bodies lay in countless grotesque poses.
Some were twisted.
Some were tilted sideways.
Their deaths were chaotic and utterly without order.
Some had been torn cleanly in half, their blood and organs frozen into bizarre crystalline formations within the vacuum.
Others had their heads twisted into impossible angles.
Still others were covered in dense black cracks, as though some conceptual force had ripped them apart from the inside.
What terrified Tony even more was that many of them still retained their final expressions.
Expressions of utter despair.
Emptiness.
Disbelief.
As though, in their final moments, the intelligence they had prided themselves upon their entire lives had become a meaningless joke.
---
Countless technological wrecks floated throughout the void.
Tony recognized them immediately.
Multiversal gateway cores.
Supercomputers capable of tearing through dimensional barriers.
Reality-warping devices capable of rewriting physical constants.
Each one was a treasure that entire civilizations would kill to obtain.
Now they drifted through the void like garbage, melted and twisted beyond recognition.
Even more shocking were the Infinity Gauntlets.
Hundreds—perhaps thousands—floated among the corpses.
Each was embedded with six Infinity Stones, shining with the colors of Space, Time, Reality, Power, Mind, and Soul.
Yet every one of them had failed.
Some gauntlets were shattered, their stones dim and lifeless.
Others had been crushed entirely, their gems scattered like worthless glass beads.
Every Reed in the Council had brought an Infinity Gauntlet from his own universe in an attempt to oppose the invaders with multiversal power.
The result proved one thing:
Artifacts capable of rewriting reality within a single universe were less than cannon fodder in a true multiversal war.
---
Nathaniel’s face had gone completely pale.
He had witnessed the destruction of the Council of Kangs.
He had seen timelines pruned on a massive scale.
Yet nothing compared to what stood before him now.
These Reeds were the smartest beings in the multiverse.
Each possessed enough intellect to alter the fate of entire universes.
Together, they should have been capable of calculating a solution to any crisis.
And yet every single one of them was dead.
Without exception.
Without dignity.
Like insects.
---
Levi’s expression remained unchanged.
His crimson-gold and silver-white eyes swept across the battlefield.
The Origin of Control automatically analyzed the residual energy signatures lingering throughout the area.
The battle had taken place three days ago.
There had been only seven attackers.
But their power had long surpassed even the highest ranks of Skyfather-level beings.
Their attacks had been terrifyingly precise.
Every strike had specifically targeted Reed Richards’ greatest weapon: his intellect.
Space had been twisted.
Time had been frozen.
Causality had been rewritten.
The geniuses whose minds operated thousands of times faster than ordinary people had been denied even the opportunity to think.
---
Suppressing his nausea, Tony activated his armor’s scanning systems.
Data streams flooded across his vision.
Every reading told the same brutal story.
More than fifty thousand Reed Richardses had once lived here.
They had built an intelligence network spanning 1,300 universes.
They possessed a supercomputer matrix capable of calculating the operating principles of the entire multiverse.
They had even replicated portions of Beyonder technology.
Now it was all gone.
---
At that moment, footsteps echoed through the void.
It was an impossible sound.
In theory, sound should not exist in a vacuum.
Yet the footsteps rang out clearly.
Levi’s gaze instantly locked onto the source.
Seven figures slowly emerged from the shadows of the battlefield ruins.
All of them were women.
They wore dark purple-black robes embroidered with a symbol of destruction that inspired instinctive dread.
Their faces were concealed beneath hoods.
Only their eyes were visible—glowing with unsettling dark-golden light.
Each held a spear forged from pure dark matter.
Fresh blood still stained the spearheads.
The blood of the Reeds.
---
Tony immediately recognized them.
Black Swans.
More accurately, elite members of the Black Swan Cult.
Yabbat Ummon Turru, the one imprisoned within the Void Fortress, had merely been an ordinary believer.
The seven before them were different.
Every one radiated energy fluctuations equivalent to a mid-tier Skyfather.
At that moment, they were doing something that filled Tony with rage.
They were systematically erasing the battlefield.
Erasing every piece of research data the Reeds had left behind.
One Black Swan placed her hand upon a floating display.
Dark-golden energy surged from her palm.
The immense database stored within was instantly wiped clean.
Another swept her spear across rows of storage devices.
Cracks spread over their surfaces as the quantum drives within were erased on a conceptual level.
Others were destroying the Council’s backup systems.
Data nodes scattered across 1,300 universes went dark one after another.
---
Tony clenched his fists.
His armor’s power output instantly surged to three hundred percent.
He knew what those records represented.
The Council of Reeds had spent centuries gathering intelligence concerning the Beyonders, the Great Dying, and the structure of the multiverse itself.
What was being destroyed here was civilization’s final hope.
The accumulated wisdom of countless Reed Richardses purchased with their lives.
And now the Black Swans were wiping it all away.
Not for loot.
Not for glory.
Simply to ensure that this knowledge disappeared from the multiverse forever.
---
The lead Black Swan seemed to sense their arrival.
She slowly turned her head.
Her dark-golden eyes locked onto Levi, Tony, and Nathaniel.
Her voice was low and hoarse.
It bypassed language entirely and resonated directly within their minds.
> "The Great Destroyer believes that the greatest sin of mortals is using finite wisdom to peer into the infinite laws of the universe."
> "It is the ultimate disrespect toward the divine."
> "An unforgivable blasphemy."
---
Tony finally lost his patience.
He was about to charge forward when Levi raised a hand and stopped him.
Then Levi took a single step forward.
Just one step.
The pressure throughout the entire realm plummeted.
All seven Black Swans froze.
They could feel it.
The pressure emanating from the man before them surpassed anything they had ever encountered.
Levi’s voice was terrifyingly calm.
As though he were stating an undeniable truth.
> "What you destroyed wasn’t data."
> "It was the final hope of countless lives."
> "Now hand over everything you’ve taken."
---
The lead Black Swan let out a mocking laugh.
She raised her black spear high.
The spearhead erupted with devouring darkness that seemed intent on swallowing everything nearby.
The other six moved simultaneously.
Complex arrays of runes appeared throughout the void.
Every rune contained enough antimatter energy to annihilate entire star systems.
Seven pillars of black light shot toward Levi.
This was one of the Black Swan Cult’s most feared forbidden spells.
It had once been used to exterminate thirty-seven civilizations that refused to surrender.
Tony’s armor blared urgent warnings.
Its sensors estimated that each beam possessed enough power to instantly vaporize a star.
---
Levi merely raised his right hand.
The Origin of Control expanded around him, forming an absolute domain one hundred meters across.
The moment the black beams entered the domain, they struck an invisible wall.
Their speed plummeted.
Then they stopped completely.
Three meters in front of Levi.
The antimatter energy infused with concepts of destruction solidified in midair, becoming seven frozen black pillars.
The beams twisted and struggled.
Unable to advance even a fraction further.
Levi casually clenched his fist.
The seven pillars shattered simultaneously.
Countless fragments of black light scattered and vanished into the void.
---
The seven Black Swans froze.
They could clearly sense it.
Their proud antimatter sorcery had been crushed at the conceptual level.
Like a child’s toy.
The lead Black Swan tried to speak.
She discovered she could no longer move her mouth.
Invisible pressure descended from every direction.
It crushed their bodies.
Their souls.
Their very existence.
Levi had not even used a technique.
Simply standing there and releasing the pressure of the Origin of Control was enough to suppress seven mid-tier Skyfather-level beings completely.
---
Watching the scene, Tony felt complicated emotions.
He knew Levi was powerful.
Powerful enough to fight the Anti-Monitor alone.
Powerful enough to rewrite the rules of universes.
Yet every time he witnessed it firsthand, the gap still left him shaken.
This wasn’t a battle.
It was a higher-dimensional lifeform crushing lower-dimensional beings.
---
Levi walked forward.
Each step doubled the pressure weighing down upon the Black Swans.
By the time he reached their leader, she had collapsed to her knees.
Every bone in her body creaked under the strain.
Levi placed a hand on her forehead.
Golden light flowed from his palm.
He tore through her mental defenses and forcibly read her memories.
A flood of images poured into his mind.
Deep beneath the endless wreckage existed a hidden refuge protected by distorted space.
Concealed extraordinarily well.
He saw the orders the Black Swan Cult had received:
Erase all knowledge that might threaten the Battleworld Project before the Beyonders formally arrived.
He also witnessed the truth behind the Council of Reeds’ destruction.
The Reeds had indeed discovered a method to fight the Beyonders.
They had even begun constructing a device capable of launching a reverse invasion into the Beyond Realm.
But on the eve of their success, Rabum Alal personally descended.
With a single hand, he destroyed the entire Council.
---
Through the memory stream, Levi finally saw the appearance of the being known as Rabum Alal—the Great Destroyer.
He wore a green cloak.
A metallic mask covered his face.
Yet beneath that mask lurked a consciousness so twisted and malevolent that even gods could descend into madness merely by perceiving it.
The Council had not fallen because the Reeds were weak.
It had fallen because Rabum Alal possessed a portion of the Beyonders’ authority.
His very existence stood above the laws of the multiverse.
---
Levi released the Black Swan.
She collapsed limply into the void, her eyes unfocused.
The brutal memory extraction had shattered her mind.
Levi turned and looked deeper into the darkness.
Amidst the floating corpses and wreckage, he sensed a faint trace of life.
Beneath the lowest layers of debris, hidden within a pocket protected by warped space, something remained.
Levi tore open space itself.
Together with Tony and Nathaniel, he teleported directly there.
Curled within the hidden corner was a blood-soaked Reed Richards.
His uniform was in tatters.
A massive wound pierced his chest clean through.
Through the hole, they could clearly see his heart—
still beating weakly.
