Dormammu didn't answer, but the corners of his mouth curled in dark amusement.
Did Ragna actually believe he could kill him?
The ruler of the Dark Dimension, an eternal entity beyond mortal comprehension?
Ridiculous.
Ragna saw the taunt in Dormammu's burning, void-like gaze and responded with a knowing smile. He stopped using the Mind Gem against Dormammu—there was no need anymore.
Instead, the Reality Gem flared with a violent crimson glow.
Reality, rewritten!
The Dark Dimension remained intact, and Dormammu was still alive. But Ragna wasn't aiming to destroy the Dark Dimension—not yet. He knew that to shatter the entire Dark Dimension would require all six Infinity Gems working in unison, something that not even the Celestials had accomplished.
Dormammu had always relied on this unbreakable bond with his realm, believing it made him untouchable. But what if there was another way?
What if Dormammu could be separated from the Dark Dimension?
It was almost impossible. Almost.
The Dark Dimension was Dormammu's body, his throne, his power source—he and it were one. But while the Dark Dimension was infinite, Dormammu himself had only one consciousness anchoring his power.
That was the weak point.
The Reality Gem pulsed violently, and in an instant, Ragna altered what could never be altered—the concept of Dormammu's unity with the Dark Dimension.
The impossible became possible.
For a fleeting second, Dormammu and the Dark Dimension were split apart.
The moment his consciousness was severed, Dormammu's flaming visage twisted in genuine alarm.
The Time Gem glowed next.
While Time itself could not affect Dormammu's will, it could absolutely manipulate a fragment of the Dark Dimension—especially one that was cut away from the whole.
Time slowed.
The process of Dormammu re-merging with the Dark Dimension stretched out, taking longer and longer.
But even this wasn't enough.
Even if Dormammu was trapped in this severed fragment forever, he still wouldn't die.
His existence was not only tied to the Dark Dimension.
Dormammu was fueled by the fear of death and the pursuit of eternity.
The faith of countless beings across realities constantly fed his essence, keeping him immortal and ever-growing.
Dormammu's mocking grin finally vanished.
For the first time, he felt uncertainty.
As the fragment of the Dark Dimension violently trembled, Dormammu roared, pouring all his power into trying to force his way back into the whole.
He lashed out, unleashing torrents of raw, chaotic magic, seeking to annihilate Ragna and shatter the Infinity Gem-based trap holding him in place.
But Ragna was not alone.
Holy Keisha had already been laying the groundwork for this battle long before it began.
Even as Dormammu's infernal magic raged, the Space Gem in Keisha's palm blazed with an unstoppable force.
She amplified the distance between Dormammu and the rest of the Dark Dimension, stretching it across countless folds of reality.
No matter how much Dormammu struggled, the Dark Dimension was further and further away.
"You cannot stop me!" Dormammu bellowed, his voice shaking entire planes of existence.
Perhaps that was true.
They couldn't "stop" Dormammu.
But they could starve him.
Dormammu's immortality was bound to the faith of those who feared death and sought eternity.
But what if that connection was severed?
What if Dormammu could no longer draw power from those beliefs?
Ragna would find out.
The Mind Gem and Space Gem flared together.
Keisha used the Space Gem to compress reality, collapsing the severed fragment of the Dark Dimension into a pocket dimension.
Ragna wielded the Mind Gem, cutting Dormammu's link to the faith that had sustained him for countless millennia.
For the first time since the birth of the cosmos, Dormammu's power began to wither.
But even this was not enough.
The cage they had built was temporary.
As long as Ragna and Keisha had to continuously pour their own power into maintaining it, they were just stalling.
They needed something eternal, something that would erase Dormammu's essence forever.
That was when Ragna turned to the Reincarnation Pool.
Dormammu's consciousness was thrown into the collective mind of the Angels, an eternal network where concepts of death and eternity did not exist.
The Angels had never feared death, nor had they ever sought eternity.
And that was the perfect cage.
"You cannot kill me!" Dormammu's voice thundered across the ethereal mindscape.
He lashed out, attempting to corrupt the Angels, to infect them with his belief in eternal dominion.
But the Angels had already proven resistant to his influence when they traveled into the Dark Dimension before.
Instead of them succumbing to Dormammu's will, it was Dormammu's essence that weakened.
With every moment that passed, Dormammu's consciousness was slowly being drowned in an ocean of thought that did not recognize his existence.
Even so, it still wasn't enough.
Dormammu's true essence existed beyond even the mindscape, still drawing residual fear from the outer cosmos.
Unless that final energy source was destroyed, Dormammu could never be truly erased.
Ragna looked at the three powerful artifacts suspended above the Reincarnation Pool—
1. The Flames of Heaven
2. The Furnace of Hell
3. The Dark Shadow
He smirked.
The solution was right in front of him.
Taking the Mind Gem, he handed it to Lian Bing, instructing her to use it daily to sever Dormammu's link to the outer cosmos.
Slowly.
Relentlessly.
Like water carving away at stone, Dormammu would eventually fade into nothingness.
With the threat of Dormammu neutralized, Ragna turned to Holy Keisha and signaled her to rescue Angel Yan from the depths of the Dark Dimension.
The battle was over—for now.
As he idly played with the Time Gem, Ragna considered its incredible, cosmic power. It was second only to the Soul Gem in terms of true, fundamental control over reality.
Then, he handed the Time Gem to Angel Rose, Lian Bing's second-in-command, who had recently ascended to King-Rank Angel.
The moment she received it, a flash of green light erupted.
Her body blurred across multiple points in space-time.
Rose grinned mischievously, surrounding Ragna with countless afterimages.
"Look at me, Ragna! What do you think?" she teased, using the Time Gem to appear beside him again and again.
Ragna chuckled, placing a hand on her head with a wry smile.
"Angel warriors under Lian Bing's command… What exactly have you been learning from her?"
Regardless, another warrior had now reached the Fourth-Tier Limit.
And the power of time would be crucial in the final battle.
The final battle against the Three Great Forces was approaching.
And yet…
Why had Thanos still not found Gamora?
Ragna narrowed his gaze toward the void, whispering to himself.
"The Soul Gem… When will it finally reveal itself?"
At that moment, across the cosmic planes, Heimdall's voice whispered in his ear.
"Odin… is about to enter the Eternal Sleep."
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