Beneath Xavier's School, sealed away from all eyes, existed a space like no other—an enclosed dimension that resembled a dome stretching over the land, roughly mirroring the size of the school above.
But this was not just a hidden laboratory or a secret storage vault. No, this was the heart of everything Joseph had been building.
The eastern edge of the space glimmered with ores—piles upon piles of them, seemingly nothing more than raw earth. Yet, they moved as if alive, propelled by unseen forces. Dozens—hundreds—of pieces floated through the air every second, drawn southward into an array of massive arcane furnaces.
There, in the southern zone, the raw ores were purified and reforged through an intricate series of magical smelting processes. Layer upon layer, temperature after temperature, they were tempered until they shrank into alloy shards the size of SIM cards.
Individually, they were unremarkable. Earth's metal. Standard compositions. Nothing exotic.
And yet, they were about to become something no other material on Earth could match.
Because these weren't just alloys—they were blank slates for enchantments.
With a gentle hum, the chips hovered away from the furnaces, flying westward across the chamber, drawn toward a collection of radiant, shimmering "lakes." But these weren't bodies of water—they were tides of raw magic, glistening with every color imaginable, their depths churning with compressed arcane energy.
The moment an alloy chip plunged into a lake, the water rippled with hair-thin threads of light. Energies poured into the chip like rivers flowing into the sea, carving glowing inscriptions onto the surface—runic patterns older than civilization.
Seconds later, as the chips emerged on the northern bank, the inscriptions were gone, sealed within the metal like invisible code. They looked like ordinary tokens again.
But they were anything but ordinary.
If any student or teacher from Xavier's School had been watching, they would've screamed in astonishment.
These were the core chips of the Oasis login devices—the true heart of every bracelet, helmet, and gaming pod linked to the virtual world.
For months, Phoenix had asked Joseph where these miracle chips were created. The external devices were factory-made. But this? This was the answer.
This magical domain was Joseph's most closely guarded secret.
The forge of Oasis itself.
---
At the center of the chamber, atop a high platform, stood Joseph himself.
His coat billowed slightly from the pulsing magical winds. Before him hovered a strange construct of pure gray mist—shaped like a staff, nearly 1.6 meters tall.
It wasn't solid. It didn't belong to this world. Its handle resembled a torch's grip, but the top flared outward like a lotus flower, each petal curving upward to cradle a flickering flame.
On each of the six petals, mysterious vortexes spun, slowly and endlessly.
This was not merely a weapon.
It was the embryonic form of the Infinite Staff.
Joseph's eyes were calm as he raised his hands.
In his right—the Tesseract, blue and pulsing.
In his left—the psychic scepter, still humming with the last traces of Mind control.
With a surge of power, he crushed them both.
"Crack—!" "Shatter—!"
Fragments burst outward as two glistening Infinity Gems emerged—Space and Mind, swirling with blue and yellow energy respectively.
Together, they formed a halo of intersecting light around Joseph, humming with boundless power.
"Let's begin," he whispered.
With perfect precision, he inserted each gem into a vortex on two of the lotus petals.
At once, the chamber quaked.
A storm of energy swept through the room. The lakes boiled. The furnaces howled. Every rune flared to life, a thousand magic circles resonating with the infusion of true cosmic power.
Joseph gripped the gray-mist handle of the staff.
It had no physical mass, and yet it was heavier than the world.
The moment his fingers closed around it...
Blue and yellow flames ignited in his eyes.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
His pupils transformed into dancing fire, each flame alive with eternal, divine essence.
"Infinite Staff..."
"Help me open the true Oasis world."
His voice was soft, reverent.
But the effects were anything but subtle.
From the very base of the platform, thousands of interconnected magic arrays activated simultaneously. They weren't just powering the forge...
They were forming something more.
The true core server of Oasis.
And the staff... wasn't just a magical conduit.
It was the key.
---
With both gems now embedded, the lotus atop the staff began to pulse violently. The six vortex petals turned inward, condensing the flames until—
BOOM!
A cosmic explosion of energy—like the birth of a universe—erupted from the lotus's center.
Reality itself seemed to unravel.
Then reform.
Within the vision of the staff, a world began to appear.
First, a singular blue planet. Structures emerged. Skyscrapers rose. Oceans churned. People walked. Trees swayed.
It was the Oasis—only now, it was no longer digital.
It was real.
And beyond that planet... galaxies began to spiral into existence. Fixed stars, star systems, even interstellar networks of civilization.
Joseph didn't focus on those yet.
His gaze locked on Earth's twin within Oasis.
The people—the NPCs—no longer moved like emotionless code. Their faces bore subtle, complex expressions. They smiled. They frowned. They paused in thought.
This wasn't Alice's AI at work.
This was the Mind Gem, granting each NPC a spark of awareness.
Not quite souls.
But no longer cold algorithms, either.
"This... this is the real Second World."
Joseph's voice trembled slightly.
He had chosen the exact time of the Chitauri invasion to release Oasis because of these two gems.
The Space Gem had created the foundation—a universe unto itself.
The Mind Gem had animated it—turning data into life.
Now, for the first time ever, Oasis was not a virtual world.
It was a dimensional reality.
---
In the world above, players continued to log in and out.
But something had changed.
Now, when a player left Oasis, their body didn't disappear. They weren't just uploading consciousness anymore.
Their souls were transitioning into a parallel plane of reality.
A Second World.
It wasn't perfect yet.
Players lacked physical bodies in the new realm. NPCs, while sentient, still had no complete souls.
But Joseph wasn't done.
With the Reality Gem and Soul Gem, he could fix that.
And if he eventually acquired the Time Gem, he could simulate time flow inside this realm—birth, death, growth, decay.
Oasis would become indistinguishable from the real world.
No—it would be a new Dimension.
And the moment that happened?
Joseph, wielding the Infinite Staff, would become its true Lord.
---
Aboveground, the final moments of the Ancient One's open lecture were coming to a close.
Her words had captivated every listener—Mutants, professors, students, and even the ordinary humans in attendance.
When she finally paused, clearing her throat to signal the end, something shifted.
Her face—serene and unreadable—tightened slightly.
Professor X, Magneto, Storm, and the others immediately noticed. Their eyes scanned the surroundings.
And then—
The ground rumbled.
Everyone went silent.
The earth trembled beneath their feet—not violently, but steadily, like the breathing of a giant.
Clarice, whose power was deeply tied to spatial awareness, gasped in alarm.
"The space... it's expanding! Rapidly!"
Many didn't understand what she meant.
But those who could fly—Storm, Phoenix, Magneto, Polaris, Angel—launched skyward.
What they saw stunned them.
Xavier's School was no longer a three-kilometer campus.
It was now four.
Then five.
The terrain was expanding in all directions. Forests burst from the ground. Waterfalls cascaded. Mountains rose. Beaches formed. Oceans surged.
It was creating a new landscape in real-time.
Polaris blinked, pointing at the distant waves.
"Mr. Lehnsherr... is that a coastline?"
Magneto said nothing.
But in the square, Kraken opened its maw, letting out an eerie infrasound.
Then, with confusion in his voice, it translated:
"Xavier's School now covers a larger area than an entire city. And it's still expanding!"
Gasps echoed across the courtyard.
The impossible was happening.
Only Ancient One remained composed, her gaze far away, peering through the veil of reality.
She spoke softly, mostly to herself.
"What has Joseph done with the Tesseract?"
"This... doesn't feel like Earth anymore."
"This feels like... consciousness."
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