"Tell me what you know," Smith said, his voice echoing in the dead air of Netherheim. "I just need a reference point."
Hela nodded slowly. "The Celestial Father level isn't primarily about increased raw destructive output. It is fundamentally about changes in the essential nature of life, and certain profound abilities that naturally come with that change." She paused, checking how best to frame the cosmic concept for a mortal mind. "You understand the theoretical multiverse."
"Yes."
"Good. Then—according to what I have read in Asgard's most ancient, guarded texts, and what Odin All-Father has reluctantly told me—a true Celestial-level being can naturally perceive other universes. Observe them clearly. Enter them at will. See backward into the causal past and forward into probable, branching futures."
She let the staggering weight of that settle. "For sub-Celestial beings like us, this single universe is the absolute boundary. It physically contains you. For Celestial-level beings, the infinite multiverse is simply navigable terrain."
"And in terms of raw power?" Smith prompted.
"I have also read that if more than twenty Celestial Father-level beings gathered in one localized area and coordinated their intent, they could theoretically reshape the architecture of an entire universe from the ground up. I obviously can't verify it. But the gap between the absolute top of the sub-Celestial tier and the bare floor of the Celestial tier is categorical—it is not a matter of degree or training. The weakest, newest Celestial Father-level being is simply, mathematically out of reach for the strongest sub-Celestial."
Smith absorbed this massive data dump and quickly arrived at the obvious, glaring question.
"If you understood all of that cosmic scaling so well," Smith asked, narrowing his eyes, "why exactly did you go to war with Odin?"
Hela went completely quiet.
The heavy silence ran long enough that Smith genuinely thought she might proudly refuse to answer. Then, the Goddess of Death let out a long, ragged exhale.
"I understood the scaling completely," she said, her voice stripped of its usual mockery. "And I deliberately went to war anyway."
She looked down at the cracked, gray ground of her sealed prison. "We were expanding. Constantly. Violently. That was exactly what Asgard did—it moved outward into the dark, took territory in blood, and held it with an iron fist. I was his Executioner. His vanguard. He brutally trained me for centuries to be exactly that." A bitter pause. "Then, one day, he simply stopped. No warning. No strategic explanation. He suddenly decided to become a benevolent, peaceful ruler, and freely gave up vast swaths of hard-won territory. Territories my loyal armies had conquered. My soldiers had bled and died for those places."
"And you couldn't accept it."
"Neither could they. I was their commander. But more than the politics..." She stopped again, her pale throat working. "I also desperately wanted to use the apocalyptic fight to break through. I wanted to reach the Celestial Father level in a single, glorious battle. Force the cosmic threshold open by violently fighting someone who had already crossed it."
Her voice settled into something incredibly flat, ancient, and honest. "I failed. Even with Asgard's full, localized power firmly behind my back, I couldn't break through the ceiling. And then the connection was severed by the All-Father, and I have been rotting in this box ever since."
Smith finally understood the true shape of the ancient conflict. It wasn't just Asgardian politics. It wasn't just a spoiled princess harboring a grievance. It had been a calculated, desperate gamble at divine transcendence, using her own father as the ultimate whetstone. And the gamble had catastrophically failed.
He ran his own system numbers. Celestial Father threshold: comfortably over a hundred million in combat power. Multiverse access. Perception of past and future. In Dragon Ball terms, that pointed unmistakably toward somewhere around the Super Saiyan God tier—not just the raw energy output of red-haired Goku, but the genuine, alchemical elevation of life essence, the divine nature that came with Blue, stepping fully into the untouchable realm of gods.
"Let me give you two cosmic levels back," Smith said smoothly. "Directly above what you've just described."
Hela looked at him with undisguised, mocking skepticism. The boy had just been asking her to explain basic sub-Celestial physics, and now he was lecturing the Goddess of Death.
"Single-universe level," Smith stated, ignoring her glare. "A being sitting at this terrifying tier can effortlessly destroy an entire universe. That is just the floor. They also have the profound capacity to create—destruction and creation are both equally available to them. A pinnacle Celestial Father-level being is absolutely not a match for the lowest-tier single-universe-level entity."
He paused, letting the impossible scale register in her eyes.
"Above that: Multiverse level. The total reconstruction of fundamental causality. The casual deletion of entire branching timelines. The creation of brand-new, infinite multiverses from nothing."
Hela was completely quiet for several long seconds.
"I have never encountered those impossible categories in anything I have ever read," she said slowly. "Are you absolutely certain you are not just speculating to impress me?"
"I have absolutely no reason to lie to you, Hela. Check it with Odin himself when you're finally out of here."
She still looked deeply uncertain, so Smith gave her the final, devastating piece of the puzzle that would permanently anchor it.
"There is an ancient, cosmic group called the Celestials. You know the name. What you may not know is that the strongest among them comfortably reach single-universe level, and some of the prime architects reach multiverse level."
He let her sit with that horrifying reality. "Your father left Asgard once, a long time ago. Fully armed for absolute war—wearing the indestructible Destroyer armor, wielding several Infinity Stones in a forged gauntlet. He came back battered and suddenly announced the permanent end of Asgardian expansion. That wasn't a sudden, moral change of philosophy."
Hela's pale expression shifted violently. Smith watched her physically go back through the ancient memory—the All-Father's furious departure, the arrogant confidence, the hollow return that explained absolutely nothing to his generals.
"He encountered a Celestial at the single-universe tier," Smith said softly. "He lost. Badly. And he was told to stop expanding."
The heavy silence that followed was a completely different quality than the previous ones.
"That's why," Hela whispered, the revelation shattering her worldview. "That's why."
She didn't speak again for a long moment. He could physically see her exhausted mind rapidly reordering centuries of bitter, toxic resentment against the actual, terrifying architecture of what had happened out there in the dark. The bloody civil war she had fought, the divine ceiling she had failed to break—it all looked profoundly different when you finally knew what Odin had arrogantly walked into, and what he had barely walked back from.
Smith didn't aggressively press it. He had exactly what he needed from this conversation, and there was one more major, destructive thing he desperately wanted to test.
"I need to try something," Smith said, stepping back into the open clearing. "Another form. You mentioned the dimensional seal holds regardless of internal output level—Odin sealed you at your absolute peak, and the seal held."
"It is still holding," Hela confirmed, her eyes snapping back to the present.
"Good." Smith looked around at the dead, cracked ground and the bruised, torn sky of Netherheim. "Then you won't mind the mess."
He reached deep into his newly integrated biology, pulled the Artificial Moon technique from Vegeta's royal bloodline, and let the cosmic radiation run.