Levi closed his eyes.
His consciousness sank inward along the point where his palm touched the trident. It felt as if he were being dragged into deep water, surrounded on all sides by thick, viscous darkness.
Then, a man appeared in his vision.
The artifact spirit's outline was trembling, twisting from head to toe. It was as if invisible hands were pulling him apart in every direction, warping every inch of his body. The expression on his face shifted from shock to terror in just two or three seconds.
"Impossible… how could you…"
His voice forced its way out from deep in his throat, broken and unsteady.
"This is my domain… I am the master of the trident…"
Before he could finish, his words cut off.
The Law of Death within Levi was devouring the energy inside the trident. The power that once belonged to the artifact spirit seemed to have found an outlet, pouring madly into his body. Every strand of energy carried the aura of decay and finality.
But Levi's system of laws was like a massive net—no matter how much came, it consumed it all.
The artifact spirit's face began to distort.
"You… what kind of monster are you…"
There was real fear in his voice.
Levi didn't answer. He didn't have the time to deal with him.
The changes within his body were too intense.
Hela's divine power of death had only been an appetizer. What Levi copied from her had merely allowed him to touch the threshold of the Law of Death—and nothing more. Hela's abilities relied heavily on Asgard's amplification; her own understanding of death was actually shallow.
Killing, resurrecting undead armies, controlling necroflames—these were techniques, not the Dao.
The Dark Trident was different.
The one who forged it was the first king of Atlantis, the legendary powerhouse who established a civilization beneath the sea. He was someone who had truly reached the conceptual level. To create this trident, he poured all his understanding of death into it.
It took hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of years to complete.
And now, all of that knowledge was being crammed into Levi's mind.
The sheer volume of information was terrifying.
An ordinary person's brain would have exploded long ago. But Levi was different—he possessed the Mind Stone–derived mental laws he had copied from Vision, along with Wanda's Chaos Magic. These powers had pushed his mental strength to an absurd level.
Enough to withstand this level of impact.
More importantly, he already had a foundational framework for the Law of Death.
What he needed to do now was simply integrate this high-level knowledge into his own system.
Like pouring water into a half-filled reservoir—the volume was immense, but the structure was strong enough to hold it.
Knowledge reorganized itself within his mind.
Levi's consciousness gradually became clearer.
He began to understand what true death really was.
Death was not an end, but a transformation. From existence to nothingness, from being to void, from the material level to the conceptual level. It was a fundamental part of the universe's operation—the inevitable path in the cycle of all things.
Life dies—that much is obvious.
But it wasn't just life.
Planets die. Stars die. Galaxies die. Even the universe itself will eventually fall into heat death—that is an outcome written into the laws of physics.
This was rule. This was law.
But the higher applications of the Law of Death were not simply about making things die.
The true Law of Death was about defining what "death" meant.
You could kill a person's body—that was the lowest level. You could also kill their soul, erasing them completely, leaving no chance for reincarnation. Going further, you could kill their concept—erasing every trace of their existence from history, making the entire universe forget they ever existed.
And beyond that…
You could kill a segment of history.
Kill a civilization.
Kill a law itself.
As long as your understanding of death was deep enough, you could kill anything—immortal gods, eternal concepts, even the fundamental rules of the universe.
Hela couldn't do this. She was merely an agent of death, not death itself.
The knowledge in Levi's mind continued to grow.
Layer after layer of the mysteries of death unfolded, like a door opening into an abyss. He saw fragments of the first king's memories—standing in the deepest parts of the ocean, holding the newly forged trident, surrounded by countless corpses.
Those corpses were neither human nor marine creatures.
They were gods.
The old gods once worshipped by Atlantis—slain one by one by the first king. Their divine power, souls, and even their concepts were extracted and fused into the trident. From the moment of its birth, this weapon had been soaked in the essence of death.
It was the embodiment of death itself.
More memory fragments flashed by.
Levi saw additional scenes.
The first king stood upon ruins. This was Atlantis in its time on land, before it sank beneath the sea. The civilization was at its peak.
Then the gods descended.
The old gods came from the heavens, demanding submission. They wanted faith, sacrifices, control over the life and death of the entire civilization.
The first king refused.
He was ruthless—truly ruthless.
One man against an entire pantheon.
The gods likely never expected a mortal to resist. They were accustomed to being worshipped, to ruling through fear. But the first king didn't play by their rules.
He killed the first god.
With the most primitive of weapons—a stone spear.
That god died horribly. Its divinity shattered, its power scattered, its soul forcibly torn from its body. The first king gathered everything it had been—and began forging the trident.
Then came the second, the third, the fourth…
With each god he killed, the trident grew stronger.
The old gods panicked. They joined forces to besiege him.
But it was too late.
With every god he slew, the first king became stronger. From them, he learned the mysteries of death.
In the end, the entire pantheon was annihilated.
The trident was completed.
But the price was immense. Atlantis sank into the sea. The continent split apart, and the civilization was swallowed overnight. The first king led the surviving people to establish a kingdom beneath the ocean.
The trident was sealed in the deepest trench.
Levi withdrew from the memories and took a deep breath.
Now he understood.
This trident had been a trap from the very beginning.
When the first king slaughtered the gods, he absorbed too many concepts of death. The resentment, fear, and unwillingness of those dying gods were all sealed within the trident. Over time, these negative consciousnesses fused into an independent entity.
The Abyssal Will.
It wasn't an artifact spirit, but a collective of countless dead souls. After thousands of years within the trident, it had developed its own awareness. It fed on souls—anyone who tried to control the trident would ultimately become its nourishment.
The man in black robes had just been a disguise.
He had never been a guardian. He was bait—a hook used to lure in fools greedy for the trident's power.
The setup was simple.
First, the black-robed figure would appear overwhelmingly powerful, making challengers believe they had to defeat him to claim the trident. Then, during the fight, he would gradually weaken, giving the illusion of victory. At the final moment, he would reveal his true nature—the essence of the Abyssal Will.
By then, the challenger would already be trapped.
Their consciousness dragged into the trident, their soul slowly devoured. The process could take days—or even decades. To the outside world, the person would simply stand there in a daze, but their soul would have long been torn apart and consumed.
Levi… was an exception.
The Abyssal Will had never expected to encounter a monster like this—
Someone who wielded multiple laws, possessed absurd mental strength, and just happened to already have a foundation in the Law of Death.
To it, this was the worst possible nightmare.
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