"Conditions?"
Hela frowned in confusion.
"Do you mean obtaining those Stones actually requires conditions?"
Lucas asked calmly, "Was the Soul Stone the only one you hadn't obtained?"
Hela paused, as if recalling the past.
"If I remember correctly," she said slowly, "Odin had already obtained five Stones."
"You're saying the problem was with the Soul Stone?"
Lucas nodded.
"That's right. If you want to obtain the Soul Stone, you must sacrifice the soul of the person you love most in exchange."
"What… so that really was the Soul Stone?"
Hela suddenly seemed to realize something, and her expression darkened.
"Yes," Lucas said directly.
"So when Odin tried to obtain the Soul Stone back then, the price he had to pay… was you."
Hela fell silent.
As intelligent as she was, she quickly pieced everything together.
Lucas wasn't lying.
After a moment, her expression returned to indifference.
"It's too late now. Even if I understand the truth, so what?" she said coldly.
"We'll be dragged in by this supermassive black hole soon enough. Once we cross the boundary, we'll be swallowed completely."
"Everything you're doing now is pointless."
Lucas shook his head.
"No. The one wasting effort is you. I don't think so at all."
Without saying anything more, he reached into his clothes and took out a cube that shimmered with a faint glow.
"That's… the Tesseract?"
Hela showed a trace of surprise.
"So you recognize it," Lucas said.
"Then you should know what it's capable of."
"No," Hela replied flatly.
"Even if you possess it, it's useless. Even Odin himself couldn't easily wield the Infinity Stones."
Lucas curled his lips.
"That's because you didn't understand them. To be honest, I don't fully understand them either."
As he spoke, Lucas began thinking about how to use the Tesseract to get them out of here.
The movies had never shown how the Infinity Stones were actually operated or controlled.
So he could only try one thing—
Slowly feeding his own energy into the Tesseract.
He was extremely careful, using only the faintest amount of power—like a novice lighting the fuse of a firecracker.
After all, each Infinity Stone was an unimaginably powerful energy source.
A single mistake could cause a catastrophe—forget cities or states, even the entire planet could be destroyed.
Humm—
Stimulated by the energy, the Tesseract suddenly began to vibrate and hum.
Lucas's spirits lifted.
Brilliant white energy started to spread from within the cube, and in the next instant, it surged outward.
Visible waves of white energy rippled through space, expanding in all directions.
Thump… thump…
Lucas felt as if a colossal heart had begun to beat.
The surrounding space responded to the Tesseract's pulses, as if tightly compressed reality had been shaken loose.
At the same time, Lucas silently repeated a single thought:
Take me away from here.
The Tesseract seemed to receive the message and immediately responded.
The white energy waves suddenly stopped expanding and violently retracted instead.
In less than half a breath, they enveloped both Lucas and Hela.
The spherical energy barrier separated their space completely from the outside world—like two different realities.
The most obvious change was that they could no longer feel the black hole's terrifying gravitational pull.
"See?" Lucas grinned at Hela.
"Who said we were definitely going to die?"
Hela rolled her eyes at him, unconcerned.
In the next moment, the space outside the energy barrier twisted violently.
Then, the glowing sphere containing Lucas and Hela vanished abruptly from the universe—
Leaving behind no trace at all, as if it had never existed.
As Lucas watched the constantly shifting, indescribable scenery outside the barrier, he knew they had entered a special dimensional space.
But this dimension was very different from the one the Ancient One had used to send them to Asgard.
Even from within the barrier, scenes beyond description flooded his vision.
"We need to leave this place as soon as possible," Lucas muttered.
Something felt deeply wrong.
Being here made him feel like a lone boat on a raging sea during a violent storm—
Or like a small fish in the abyssal depths, where unseen horrors could emerge at any moment and swallow him whole.
Lucas trusted his instincts.
Very much so.
If they lingered, and were noticed by some ancient, unfathomable entity like before, the consequences would be disastrous.
He hated this feeling of being out of control.
So he began trying again.
"Take us back to Asgard… or Earth!"
The thought repeated in his mind.
But this time, the Tesseract responded like an engine that had stalled—no reaction at all.
"Is it missing some kind of activation key?"
Lucas frowned and began channeling more energy into it, trying to restart it the same way as before.
The next instant, the Tesseract flared with brilliant blue light—
And Lucas's expression changed drastically.
This time, it was like an activated pump.
The Tesseract began frantically absorbing his energy—rapidly and in massive quantities.
The energy inside Lucas's body poured out like water from a broken dam.
But this also meant one thing—
The Tesseract had started operating again.
Once more, the protective energy barrier vanished.
And in the next instant, the two of them appeared in an entirely new environment.
They were now standing on the surface of a desolate planet.
As far as the eye could see, the land was a deep crimson—no plants, no rocks, not even a single hill or mountain in sight.
Above them stretched an endless star-filled sky.
"Where… are we?" Lucas muttered.
That was all he managed to say before he had to focus on something far more urgent.
The Tesseract's energy drain had brought his reserves dangerously close to exhaustion.
With no other choice, Lucas decisively cut off the energy supply.
"Get ready!"
As his words fell, the spatial barrier around them dissipated.
In the next instant—
Lucas's expression changed sharply.
_____
T/N:
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