113 Chapter 113 New Allies and Old Enemies.

Chapter 113 New Allies and Old Enemies.

After returning across the dimensional portal back home with his girls, Harry received a message.

*Ping*

[Quest Completed: Another Harry Situation.

Reward: +2 Magic Path Rank]

The message pleased him. His Magic Path Rank had just barely gotten to 66 before he left and now it was Rank 68. Quests increased his Magic Path Rank far more efficiently than dull, repetitive training did.

Harry returned from spending a year there and only a day had passed, but he would not be able to safely access another dimension and return for the same amount of time, so he intended to use it for some down time.

The next few weeks and months passed by rather quickly. Harry still spent endless hours working on various projects but all of that was done in a Time Dilation room so he had plenty of free time to spend with his girls and monitor the interesting things his friends were doing.

Loki was in the middle of negotiations for a merger between Brilliance and Amazon which was the polite way of saying the Magic Users on both sides were fighting against each other and the loser would be devoured. British Magicals were not the correct standard when it came to Modern Magicals. Modern Magicals had replaced their robes with enchanted business suits. They had replaced their wands with magic, jeweled encrusted gold and silver rings. They wore magic empowering cufflinks, tie clips with built in magic shields, and glasses that blocked any form of magic based mental attack or intrusion.

The battle mages of the Modern day lived in Magic Towers which from the outside looked like modern glass walled multi-story office buildings, but had heavily expanded interiors filled with vast amounts of land used to grow magical plants and animals.

Harry had learned of these guys from the Goblins years ago and avoided them all. He found that nearly all of the richest families and companies in the world secretly had Mages backing them, though most didn't know it.

Harry even met one a few months ago. Emma Frost, Scott Summer's girlfriend, had recently taken over her family's business after her father and elder sister both coincidentally died on the same day. The fact that this occurred right after a meeting between Harry and Emma was a coincidence. Harry had nothing to do with the accident. Emma had merely asked his opinion on why the pair survived all the other accidents they had had. Harry checked it out and confirmed they were both wearing magical protections and without either noticing he cast a Finite on them. So he had nothing to do with the accidents which happened afterwards.

After they passed and Emma took over, the Mage backing the Frost Corporation asked for a meeting and Emma invited Harry for protection. That apparently had not been necessary since the moment Emma was in charge, the magic contract the Mage had with the Frost Corporation applied to her and he could do nothing to harm her. The meeting was just a general, 'Magic is real, resource wars up to a certain degree all involve magic, you need me,' yada yada.

The Frost family mage was in fact an Ice Mage and many of the magical ingredients he and his apprentices bred were the secret ingredients to some of the patents of Frost Pharmaceuticals. Harry confirmed everything was on the up and up and Emma reconfirmed their partnership since he wasn't just leeching off her.

Halfway through May, a number of interesting things happened. Gwen Stacy had showed up at Harry's place asking for some help. Apparently during her Internship at Oscorp she'd been bitten by a spider, got sick, got better, and now had Spider Powers. Unlike Peter who thought he'd just go make some money using his newly acquired strength and reflexes, Gwen realized that she could be in huge trouble and die without help and went to someone she trusted who knew a thing or two.

Gwen's powers were similar to Peter's but she lacked the camouflage and charged jolts of electricity. She had the strength, reflexes, and Spider-senses, as Peter called them.

Since she showed up as soon as she could, Harry gave her a few options. He could remove everything, or he could stabilize it. The possibility existed that it could stabilize on its own, but Harry preferred not to leave the lives of his friends up to chance.

After confirming she was not in any great danger, she requested for it to be stabilized.

Gwen's father was a captain of the New York City Police Dept and was one of the first men to be offered Nova Armor. He was trained by Captain America at the Hero Association until he had his new abilities mastered and was a literal Hero Cop.

Gwen already looked up to him before and didn't want to give up superpowers as long as they were not a risk to her health. Harry even offered to be her Sponsor. If he sponsored her, she could work as a Hero without giving out her name and any mail or notifications to her would be given to her Sponsor, Harry, who would direct them to her. Harry was already the Sponsor for Obscurus and the Reds.

She said she wanted to talk with her dad about it first. Since Harry had helped make her safe and given her a clean bill of health, she felt she could take this matter to her father who was both a Police Captain and a Hero. Harry even wrote up a report about her powers for Captain Stacy to look over. Her 'spider-sense' would keep her mostly safe, so it wasn't a huge danger for her to stop muggings.

The more interesting thing which happened in May of 2015 was that Nidavellir was attacked. After that incident when the Bifrost was down and the Dwarves were threatened with starvation by a blockage of Troll Lords, Harry had left a warning system in place should Nidavellir be visited by the Troll Lords once more or another hostile party.

Harry showed up as soon as he could and was more than a little surprised to see Thanos leading the attack.

*Ping*

[New Quest: Save the Dwarves!

Thanos needs the Dwarves to craft him a new gauntlet that can handle the power of the Infinity Stones. Stop Thanos and save the Dwarves!]

Harry Paused. At this point he had a number of options, hundreds of them in fact. Due to that chair, Thanos could escape anytime he wanted to so killing him would not be possible. There was no way to go back in time and make a trap since Thanos would probably discover it and not come, making this a paradox since he did show up.

Harry was not too concerned for the dwarves. He owed them nothing but would not let them make anything for the Mad Titan. He couldn't kill Thanos, but it wasn't like Thanos could kill him either. The main thing though was that Thanos should not have any strong indication of Harry's abilities and before he led the Mad Titan into a trap he could not refuse, Harry wanted to keep it that way.

The fact that a Quest appeared itself was surprising. Heimdall and Odin should be able to see this and Asgard should be able to send aid long before the Dwarves were forced to meet any of Thanos' demands. The only reason Thanos would have enough time is if Odin was in the Odin sleep and Thor was fighting offworld against something dangerous, causing Heimdall to focus his attention on the Asgardian Prince to make sure he could safely retreat if that was required.

If that was the case, the Asgardian Aid would be too late.

Next, even if Harry could get them to show in force and drive Thanos away, he'd probably come back sooner or later. Odin was getting closer and closer to death and he'd needed Odin Sleep more and more often these days. It didn't help that Thor barely spoke to his father. Odin had actually planned to destroy Midgard because he didn't trust that Midgard could defend itself. Odin had been proven a complete and utter fool that day and according to his wife, he was often seen brooding.

After considering all the possibilities, Harry decided on one that covered the most bases. The Quest was to save the dwarves, but it didn't say anything about Nidavellir. He also needed to test a few things on Thanos to see if some measures he had were viable options against the Mad Titan.

Harry unpaused, and took out cube after cube from his inventory. Within ten seconds he'd taken out a hundred of them and the floating group of cubes grew and grew in the empty space next to him. By the time Thanos's ships were close to Nidavellir, Harry had taken out over a thousand cubes. And last, Harry took out a tablet and started tapping it.

All of the cubes started dissolving. The cubes were the largest they could be and still be stored in Harry's inventory. He had many factories producing nanites and kept them in the form of blocks. He had nearly a million of them, but didn't need that much at the moment.

Though in space, the Nanite swarm could flow like a fish and quickly approached the massive ring structure that was Nidavellir. The moment the swarm reached the surface, it started devouring Nidavellir and replicating.

It was slow at first. The massive structure built around a dwarf star had a hole so small you could barely notice it if you looked closely. But within a few seconds, that hole got bigger and bigger. The nanites could break down any form of matter on a molecular level. A hundred Nanites could merge together to form a machine that could directly be fed raw materials and be used to make more nanites at a terrifying speed.

Within a minute of reaching Nidavellir, the number of nanites doubled. Within another minute, it doubled again. The black swarm looked like smoke and reflective metal particles. Barely any of the ships laying siege on Nidavellir took notice of the swarm when it first touched the exterior of the forge. Now an entire section of the structure looked like it had been melted.

Anyone watching would see that the cloud was eating everything. As walls were devoured, the massive figures of the ironically named dwarves could be seen, but the moment they were exposed to the vacuum of space and the swarm, they were covered in nanites and vanished as if devoured to the bone.

Not that the dwarves had been eaten. Each cube contained a couple Portkeys that would take the 'victim' to a certain planet. They would be out of breath, scared, and confused, but they'd be alive. And they had Thanos and the whole of his fleet as witnesses to their deaths.

Of course, Harry didn't let the Dwarves have all the fun. He sent a few cubes into the ships Thanos had brought with him and let them loose.

These nanites were built using Pym Particles and circuits of Unstable Molecules. As far as Harry was concerned, they could not be hacked using Technomancy. In fact they could not be stopped at all. The more complex they were, the easier it would be to counter them. So Harry only programmed them with three commands. Use a portkey on any organic matter they come across. Devour everything else. And after a certain length of time from the Cube being taken out, disintegrate.

The third order was the most important and the time period until they were programmed to break apart did not reduce when the nanites replicated. These nanites were programmed to disintegrate in ten minutes and Nidavellir would be eaten by then.

Thanos was already inside and the dwarves had figured out something was eating their home. Since Thanos was both skilled in psionics and technopathy, Harry could not watch what Thanos did psychically or broadcast it live since Thanos would detect the signal, but that didn't stop Harry from sending bots to record what was happening for Harry to view later.

Nidavellir already looked like someone took a massive bite out of it and the ring was eroding at a visible pace that got faster and faster.

The various ships surrounding Nidavellir had multiple explosions within from what Harry guessed were poor attempts at containment. Most of them ended up breaking off parts of their ship or launching escape pods.

This made Harry smile. It was one thing if Thanos was a powerful, adaptable technopath. It was another thing entirely if his minions had similar abilities. The ease at which his nanites spread showed him that was not the case. Sure, some of the ships seemed to have impressive occupants capable of slowing the spread, but tiny nanites were not so easy to beat on a spaceship in space.

At the five minute mark more than a quarter of the ring structure that was Nidavellir had been consumed and the quantity of nanites had multiplied to the point the remaining three fourths would be devoured in another two or three minutes.

At that point the spaceships seemed to have been ordered to fire on Nidavellir to break off the pieces infected by the nanites, but only a few got off any shots as all the ships had their own problems, preventing them from concentrating fire or putting up any reasonable countermeasures.

Looking at the carnage and destruction before him, he had a whimsical thought of, 'just who is the bad guy here?' It made him chuckle.

It wasn't that the nanites had no weaknesses, far from it. The Unstable Molecules that made up the circuits were in fact, unstable. When Unstable Molecules are subjected to any form of energy or strain of a certain degree, they change in structure to adapt. Of course if the circuits of a machine suddenly changed, that machine would stop working. So just about any form of damage or energy attack could disable the nanites. It was a very broad weakness. However, that was only a weakness if you could attack them all at the same time. If you only attacked a few, they would certainly be disabled, but after the attack ended, the disabled nanites would be surrounded by the working ones and the Unstable Molecule circuitry would adapt back to its previous configuration in the presence of so many like formatted structures. Due to the properties of Unstable Molecules which change in structure to match what is around it, disabled nanites fix themselves when surrounded by working nanites.

As far as Harry could tell, Thanos did not appear to have any massive area of effect attacks. His Sorcery was focused on Earth, Metal, and Electromagnetic Forces. All of these were not to be underestimated, he could easily wave his hand and summon meteors from the sky to rain down absolute destruction. However, such abilities could only slow down the Nanites. In order to disable them, an attack that heavily damaged 100% of an area without leaving a single spot behind was necessary. A destructive magnetic field would work, but the metallic composition of the Nanites had been altered by Pym Particles to basically no longer be compatible with standard electromagnetism and the copies the nanites made of themselves shared this property. There was still some interaction as it was impossible to remove it entirely, but it had been weakened to an extreme point. Creating a magnetic field strong enough to destroy them was not a simple task. A dozen Magnetos would not be able to accomplish it.

The best Thanos could do was use Sorcery to fuse and transfigure the Nanites together into a solid, but the built-in Unstable Molecules would absorb a majority of the energy used to transfigure them, reducing the effect. They could still be changed, but since a majority of the energy used to change them magically was buffered out, trying to change all of it would only lead to heavy mental exhaustion. And even if Thanos was capable of instantly changing multiple mountain's worth of nanites into a solid piece of metal, the nanites were far too spread out to be able hit them all at once, so the ones that were not hit would devour and remake the ones that were.

Harry didn't expect this to matter too much though. If it was a normal Sorcerer, they would certainly be exhausted to death since even transfigured Nanites would be devoured and changed into more Nanites, making any resistance futile, but Thanos's chair directed Sorcery energy for him, so the only exertion was the mental effort of continuously changing the endless swarm into something else.

The easiest counter to the Nanites was fire and intense heat. But they were in the equivalent of a space station and using fire and heat in space was not very effective unless you wanted to blow everything up.

A cloud of nanites surrounded the area by this point. Many of the escape pods from Thanos's fleet and all of the escape pods launched from Nidavellir came into contact with the nanites which devoured the pods and set Portkeys on the occupants, making it look like they too had vanished.

Harry couldn't program the nanites to differentiate between enemies and not, so they teleported everyone away to the same place. What was worse was that the nanites would eat everything on the people, making them completely naked. Some nanites would be teleported through as well, but these nanites were designed to break during the portkey trip, so the Nanites would not start eating everything on the other side.

Although this meant that the dwarves and their attackers would all be in the same area, Harry wasn't concerned. They would all be disarmed and the dwarves were all on average, twelve feet tall. A entire race of twelve foot tall blacksmiths against unarmed terrorists? It wasn't a contest.

Several of the more decisive aliens fleeing through the nanite cloud fired upon other ships causing them to blow up. They then flew through the hole in the cloud the ship's explosion had created to get to safety.

Another minute later, the entirety of Nidavellir had been consumed and all that remained was a mass of nanites. From within, a massive glowing orb emerged. Harry focused his gaze and saw that within the sphere was Thanos, Eitri, and that chair. It seemed Thanos decided to save the king of the dwarves so he could have him make something for the Mad Titan.

Eitri however used the chance to pull out a sword and chop down on Thanos. It seemed the Titan had not been expecting this because he was delayed in reacting. He threw Eitri out into the void of space too late and the blade bit into Thanos's helmet and through the right side of his face. Coincidentally, it passed through the horizontal scar left by Odin's spear, making a cross on the Mad Titan's purple cheek.

Before Eitri died in the vacuum of space, the Nanites near him swarmed over him and he vanished within, seemingly devoured.

*Ping*

[Quest Complete: Save the Dwarves!

Reward: +5 Crafting Path Rank]

This made Harry smile. His research and development into nanites had already raised his Crafting Path Rank to 58 and now it had leapt to 63. This was an absolutely massive increase.

Harry observed Thanos create a sphere of psionic energy around some of the nanites to take with him. However at that moment, the ten minute mark had been reached.

The black gaseous mass of nanites suddenly stopped moving and broke down. The atoms themselves fell apart and all of the nanites turned into dust and gases. The level of breakdown meant that there was no composition to examine. The only way to restore them was through time magic, but Harry didn't feel any Time Energy from Thanos at all.

Harry could clearly see the sneer on the Titan's face. He obviously should have taken Eitri and teleported away, but it seemed he was too interested in the nanites and stayed to observe. This was actually the main reason Harry used this method. The most difficult part of this Quest wasn't stopping the Dwarves from making Thanos a Gauntlet, it was stopping Thanos from teleporting away the Dwarves. Harry actually thought he was screwed for a moment when he saw Eitri with Thanos since that meant Harry would have to personally intervene, but Eitri had other ideas.

Harry didn't stay and directly teleported to the planet he sent the Dwarves to. Unsurprisingly, Harry found them pummeling the forces of Thanos with their mighty calloused hands.

Harry fired Stunners at the remaining enemies and conjured massive sets of clothing for the Dwarves. His following conversation with Eitri went about as well as could be expected.

Sitting in a massive conjured chair, Eitri looked down at Harry and summarized, "So, rather than delay until Thor arrived or call him yourself, you destroyed our home for the last four thousand years down to the last atom and took us all to this lost planet without even the clothes on our back in order for us to fake our deaths."

Though Harry was surrounded by thousands of angry dwarves, he did not show any concern. They were only a little taller than Hagrid and he'd seen him a bunch of times at Hogwarts.

"That's right. The alteration of your planet into a forge may have granted you greater forging prowess, but it also took away your ability to defend yourself. How would your ancestors look upon you now, knowing that you rely on the Asgardians for protection? How many times have the defenses of Nidavellir failed you, allowing an enemy through who then forced you to create for him? Your world was the perfect Forge, and that is why it was holding you back!"

Harry's last sentence caused nearly every dwarf to frown and clench their fists. How can the forge crafted by their ancestors hold them back when the puny man himself admitted it was perfect? Eitri was no fool. Though not pleased with the claim, he still wanted to ask, "How so?"

Harry elaborated, "Perfection is a dead end. After the creation of Nidavellir, the dwarves stopped advancing. Every artifact your people have forged is a treasure, but are any of the ones recently crafted superior to the ones in the past? Without a new world, how do you know you cannot build an even better forge! Why rely on the protection of others when you can create defenses none can bypass!"

If Loki was there, he would have been smiling. Loki once said Harry Potter was not a leader, he was a revolutionist. Loki had him pegged.

Though Harry had literally taken everything from them, his words still lit a fire in the hearts of the dwarves. Indeed, why not? Why not create an even better forge? Why not create defenses that don't leave them at the mercy of others? Are they not the greatest craftsmen in the Universe? What can they not build?

Eitri felt the flames of ambition within his own chest as much or even more than his fellow dwarves. His memory was long. He knew how many times they had been forced to craft something for someone who threatened them. They were under the protection of Asgard, but did that stop the Mad Titan? Eitri was not under any delusions of their fate if Harry had not taken them away. And though he could not say it aloud, he knew that if Nidavellir had been moved and not destroyed, Thanos would not give up looking for it.

Their conversation continued for another day before everything was settled. Though Harry did not leave them the clothes on their back, he didn't leave them empty handed. Destructive nanites were not the only blocks he possessed. Harry also took out a few hundred constructive Nanites and a tablet. He used the tablet to command the Nanites to form into a massive pedestal with a screen at the height of the dwarves and he explained to Eitri how to use it. With it Eitri could command the Nanites to terraform the empty world and build them a new forge. This planet was actually not on any map and was burned by Jean a few years ago. Since then the embers of the Phoenix Flames had died and from the ashes of this world, new life had emerged and was already thriving. What should have taken billions of years took only a few.

Also, Harry's nanites teleported all organic matter, so all the stored food of Nidavellir came with them. For the fun of it, Harry then spent the next few hours in the nearby forests using Pym Particles on every species he could find, including the plants. The forest was now larger than many countries on Earth.

Suddenly the massive dwarves' long term food problems were not issues, especially once the massive animals started breeding. This was impossible for most worlds but the animals and plants here were practically birthed by the ashes of the Phoenix Flames and were quite a bit more adaptive than other creatures. They were literally so full of life they would adjust on their own without dying.

The main reason the Dwarves forgave Harry was that he promised to bring a Phoenix Flame once they had made their new forge. All the metals on this world had been birthed by the Phoenix Flame Reality Bombs Jean used and that caused multiple interesting metals and minerals to appear. Phoenix Flames were not inferior to the heat of a White Dwarf Star and the idea of making things using metals birthed from it and then forged with it made the dwarves blood boil with excitement.

The only real threat to this world was Galactus, but he'd be asleep for a while and on principle he didn't eat worlds freshly burned from the Phoenix Force. Too spicy. The dwarves would be safe from him for at least a few thousand years. By then the planet may not even be edible. One of the reasons the dwarves forged their world into a ring in the first place was to make it something Galactus could not eat. Harry only hoped they made a nature preserve or farmland or something the next time they forged their world.

After settling the dwarves down, Harry decided not to tell Odin or Thor for now. They dropped the ball, and it wasn't Harry's responsibility to tell them where the Dwarves were. Worst case scenario was that Thanos would find them, so for now Harry would be the only one in the Universe who knew the Dwarves were still alive. Nidavellir needed the Asgardians not just for protection, but food, and the steps Harry took ensured the dwarves no longer needed the Asgardians for either.

After returning home, everything went mostly back to normal until the end of summer when Harry got a call from Fury. Apparently a prisoner named Walter Hardy had received a message of some sort and not long afterwards, he escaped from an inescapable prison. Fury was one of the men in charge of the Hero Association and all the parts it inherited from SHIELD, including the prisons.

Harry used a bit of magic and psionics to find him, but learned that he had come to New York because someone kidnapped his daughter, Felicia Hardy. Why? Because Walter knew the formula to the super soldier serum that created Captain America. He had been tricked into finding it and memorizing it as a kid, and that knowledge was the reason he was kept in a prison. Up to this point he had never disclosed it to anyone. That was until someone kidnapped Felicia, made him spill the beans, and even used Felicia as a test subject to ensure that Walter would not purposefully give them the wrong formula.

Rather than do it himself, Harry sent a message to Spider-Man and Spider-woman to go rescue her and her father.

Though she accepted sponsorship, Gwen never asked who Spider-Man was and Peter never asked who Spider-Woman was, so Harry thought this would be a fun way for them to partner up. Harry and the girls watched their adventure on TV through an invisible drone while eating pizza.

When Gwen and Peter both recognized Felicia, the pair realized they both knew her personally. Gwen only took an eighth of a second to shout, "Peter?!" Felicia recognized her shout and shouted back in surprise, "Gwen?!"

The look on the trio's faces as they all figured it out at the same time had Harry and the girls dying of laughter. Plans were already being made to invite the trio over next weekend to watch it together with them.

After overcoming the initial shock they worked together to rescue Walter and take down the group that had captured him. Peter used the computer in his suit to hack in and remove all the data of the super soldier serum so that others would not try again.

They then took Felicia to Harry's to get her checked up and he offered to sponsor her. She wanted to ensure her father would not go back to prison, so Harry offered to delete the knowledge of the super soldier serum in his head and offer him a position as a consultant for the Hero Association. Walter happily agreed to both and was assigned under Fury. The eyepatched former spy was not entirely pleased but when he understood that Walter didn't know the formula anymore, he relented. Besides, Fury was a man who appreciated competence and Walter was a very competent thief. Having someone like that on the payroll was only a boon.

The Black Cat, Spider-Man, and Spider-Woman were often seen patrolling together.

Once fall started, Harry got a message from Link that he had certainly not expected to get. Immortal Realms had been hacked.

Link was unable to identify the culprit, but there was a Player within the game world who accessed it without a headset made by Harry's gaming company.

There were a number of reasons this was impossible. The headset did not actually send a Player into the game. It connected through the Astral Plane to another device which was paired to the headset and that device sent the Player into the game. Even if someone made an exact duplicate of a headset down to the last atom, at best it could only use the same paired device as the original, both would not be able to be used at the same time. So how did someone without even a headset play the game? They were very good.

Harry got out his own headset and logged in as an Admin before teleporting directly to the city the hacker was located in. There he found a kid who looked about eight sitting on a bench. He had tanned skin but Harry could not identify his ethnicity as his cheeks and bone structure did not perfectly match anything he was familiar with. Oh, and the kid had golden hair.

The kid was just sitting there, smiling, watching everyone walk around, NPCs and Players alike. Harry approached and sat next to him.

Without turning to face him, the kid said, "Hello Harry Potter. I'm Tiamut."

Not recognizing the name, Harry replied, "Hello Tiamut. Can I ask how and why you are here without a Headset?"

Tiamut put his head down a bit and awkwardly smiled. "I'm not really able to buy one, or I absolutely would. This world is incredible. One hundred twenty seven million nine hundred thirty four thousand and fifteen AIs. Each incredibly complex and the world itself is breathtaking as well."

Harry suddenly got the impression Tiamut was not human. He replied, "Link did most of the work. He helped create most of the primary AIs and gathered the data used to make them as detailed as possible."

"Yes, but the technology required to create the servers capable of holding these worlds is outstanding as well."

"Just things I picked up here and there. So who are you Tiamut and why can't you get a Headset?"

Tiamut's smile dimmed a bit and he sighed. "I'm a Celestial Embryo. I exist in a hidden pocket dimension within the Earth where I have been growing bit by bit."

Harry knew many things from the Libraries of Kamar-Taj, but he certainly did not know that. He asked, "Why does that sound like it's a problem?"

The golden haired child leaned back into the bench and answered, "Well, it's not really anymore. But it was before. Celestials create energy. The stars and galaxies of your Universe were created by the energy generated by Celestials. Though they cannot continue doing so forever. Without new Celestials born to create more stars and galaxies, all light and life in the Universe will eventually end. However, being born with the ability to create energy goes against the laws of this Universe. For such a being to come into existence, there must be an exchange. An exchange of a sufficient number of sentient life."

Harry didn't need to guess to see where this was going. "So you can be born only in exchange for the deaths of all the people on Earth."

Tiamut nodded. "Yeah. You're actually really close to the required number. Once it is reached, the pocket dimension separating me from this world will begin to break down. My body is larger than a continent and out of instinct, the moment I emerge I will stretch and move. The whole of the Earth will be destroyed and once all life has ended, my ability to generate energy will be enabled."

Harry didn't need to ask why Tiamut sounded like he would never wake up. Immortal Realms would cause a sharp drop in the rate of births. Countries did not want their population to decrease, but they wouldn't be able to stop it. The number of humans being born would still rise for a few years but Immortal Realms was already spreading like a plague across the world, drawing everyone within and allowing them to live out their dreams and fantasies while extending their lives.

There was something he did want to ask though. "Why are you okay with not hatching?"

Tiamut looked around and admired everything for a bit before answering, "This world is very different from others. I think a Celestial must have died here a long time ago. His lifeblood seeped into this world and the many races have this blood flowing within them. It is responsible for what you call the X-Gene. It is also responsible for me waking up early, otherwise I wouldn't be aware of the world above."

"If you're in a pocket dimension, how are you aware in the first place?"

"Well, had I been born, my designation was going to be Tiamut the Communicator. I am talented at communications and since you have been sending signals through the Astral Plane, I have had the ability to read the Internet as I wished. Thanks for stopping Galactus by the way."

"You know about that?"

"Yeah, I can access all stored information like reading a book. I'm still surprised you chased him off. Galactus represents the death of the Universe and the birth of the next one. He always targets worlds with Celestial Embryos to keep down the population of Celestials."

That was certainly something Harry didn't know. Didn't that mean that for some worlds, even if Galactus didn't eat them, they would have been destroyed anyways? Something to think about.

Harry asked, "Will the other Celestials be okay with this?"

"Not usually, but I can explain it to them. Since humans have the blood of celestials, you can be considered members of our race if you stretch the definition a bit."

Harry chuckled at that. It certainly explained why Peter Quill had active Celestial genes when all of Ego's other children did not. He got it from both his father and mother.

Harry added, "Since you're going to stay asleep then, I'll give you some good dreams. I'll create a node for you to log into and you can play as you wish. You can use your full strength here, train to get stronger, and I'll even give you Admin privileges."

Since he was deciding not to destroy the Earth when it was what he was literally born to do, Harry would help the Sleeping Celestial out as much as he could.

With admin privileges, even if Tiamut got bored, he could change or add to the game as he wished. He could use the Players for company or entertainment.

Tiamut turned and faced Harry with a smile. The pair talked for a few days which only amounted to a day and a half outside the game, but Harry really profited. Tiamut's ability to manipulate matter and energy would put his Magic Path Rank in the 80s or 90s. Without the Infinity stones, Harry doubted he could defeat a Celestial, and even that wasn't a guarantee since according to Tiamut, the first Celestials predate the birth of the Infinity Stones.

If someone predated the Infinity Stones which were born at the creation of this Universe, then that someone probably came from another Universe. If that was the case, the Infinity Stones would not be nearly as effective on them since they were only Admin codes for this Universe, and visitors from another Universe may not count as existences affected by this Universe's Admin codes.

In other words, best not to deliberately piss them off if.

Probably the most interesting thing for the year happened on October 31st. Because of course it did.

Harry came home one day to find three figures sitting on the couch. One was Chthon, the other, Mephisto, and the last was a being known as Nightmare. Chthon was thankfully here in the form of a male and seemed to be arguing with Goose who was sitting on the table calmly staring down the Universe's greatest Evil and the Elder Demon God of Chaos. Nightmare had green hair and wore an ugly green cloak and was looking both incredibly irritated and uncomfortable.

Harry only froze for a moment upon seeing them within, having breached his house's defenses.

Mephisto looked over and gave a sharp tooth smile, "We need to talk."

Suddenly the space in the room changed, but it was not caused by the uninvited guests. Harry had been expecting something like this for a number of years and the only thing that surprised him was that it took so long.

Jean, Jade, Wanda, and Rogue appeared at the four corners of the room and Red Sonja appeared next to Harry

Jean's eyes were pure fire, showing off her complete access to the Phoenix Force. Around Jade was undulating currents of magic which spread out and bounced around the room. Wanda was covered head to toe in purple light rather than her usually red showing that what she was using was not standard Chaos energy. Externally Rogue didn't seem any different, but the pressure from her was greatest of all, as she accessed every powerful mutant she physically could, which included Jean and Wanda. Red Sonja stayed at Harry's side like a knight, her armor and sword glowed with divine radiance and the floating runes around the walls seemed to grant her enormous power.

Harry walked to the couch opposite the intruders, relishing in the instant of shock the trio had at Harry's response. He sat down without the slightest hint of fear and said, "Yes. I think we do."