The Teen Titans' base was hidden within an abandoned industrial district on the edge of the city. A cluster of weathered factories served as the perfect disguise.
Levi's figure materialized before the alloy gates, calmly observing the defensive fortifications ahead. Infrared scanners, thermal imaging, and biometric systems formed an invisible web, while concealed energy cannons embedded beside the doorway glimmered with dangerous light.
Clearly, uninvited guests were not welcome here.
A shrill alarm shattered the silence as red warning lights flashed wildly.
Levi ignored them and stepped forward.
His body seemed to merge with the air itself, phasing effortlessly through the massive alloy doors.
Rapid footsteps echoed from deeper inside the corridor as a young team rushed over.
Leading them was a blond young man in a red combat suit. Orange-red energy burned around his hands, several coins expertly spinning between his fingers, radiating explosive heat.
Rex. Codename: Rexplode.
Close behind him was a red-haired girl in a pink battle suit that accentuated her graceful figure. A soft pink aura shimmered around her body.
Atom Eve.
As for the others, Levi neither recognized them nor cared to.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Rex shouted sharply, dropping into a standard combat stance.
Levi didn't even slow down. He didn't spare them so much as a glance as he spoke two indifferent words:
"Move."
Rex's face instantly flushed red. As a member of the Teen Titans, he had never been ignored like this before. With a flick of his wrist, three energy-wrapped coins shot forward like lethal streaks of light, aiming for Levi's head, chest, and abdomen.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Violent explosions erupted throughout the narrow corridor. Fire and shockwaves swallowed Levi's figure whole.
"What an idiot." Rex sneered coldly. To him, the fight was already over.
But when the smoke cleared, Levi was still standing there.
Straight-backed. Motionless. Even the hem of his clothes remained untouched, as though the explosions had been nothing more than an illusion.
The violent energy had been completely absorbed by his body without causing the slightest damage.
"I said, move."
His tone remained calm, yet carried an unquestionable pressure.
The smirk on Rex's face froze, replaced by disbelief and horror. A chill surged from his feet to the top of his skull. His legs weakened involuntarily, sweat beading across his forehead.
"Wait! We can talk about this!" Eve immediately stepped forward after sensing something was wrong. Pushing both hands outward, she rapidly wove pink energy into a thick metallic wall, materializing it out of thin air to block Levi's path.
"Matter reconstruction… interesting."
For the first time, Levi stopped walking. His gaze settled on Eve with a hint of appraisal.
He extended a single finger and lightly tapped the metal wall.
There was no explosion. No impact.
The seemingly indestructible wall began unraveling as if reverse-engineered by an invisible force. Starting from the molecular level, it rapidly decomposed into its most basic particles before dispersing back into the air.
"How is that possible…?" Eve's face turned pale.
The ability she prided herself on looked utterly powerless before him.
Levi walked past the stunned pair and looked toward the end of the corridor.
A silver-gray robot over two meters tall stood silently there. Its precise metallic body reflected cold light, blue energy indicators flickering at its joints.
Robot, the most mysterious member of the Teen Titans.
But under Levi's overwhelming psychic scan, no secret could remain hidden. He had already "seen" the heavily secured laboratory three floors underground, where a grotesquely deformed body floated inside a life-support tank.
That was Robot's true body—Rudy Connors.
A genius trapped inside a defective body, yet possessing one of the greatest minds of the era.
Robot stepped forward, the energy emitters in his palms lighting up.
"Intruder. Cease your actions immediately, or—"
"Rudy, stop talking to me through this tin can."
Levi interrupted him with a single sentence.
Robot froze for 0.3 seconds—an extremely abnormal delay for a precision machine.
"I know your real body is on the third underground level," Levi said calmly, as though stating a simple fact. "The genetic defects in that life-support tank are severe. But your brain… without question, it's one of the greatest creations of this age."
The corridor fell into dead silence.
Rex and Eve stared in shock, unable to believe the secret they had just heard.
"…Who are you?" Robot's synthesized voice finally carried a trace of emotion. "How do you know this?"
"Who I am doesn't matter." Levi continued forward, brushing past Robot. "I need your knowledge."
Robot remained silent for several seconds, processors running calculations at unprecedented speeds.
"What do you want?"
"I want to meet the real you. Face to face."
"Impossible. My physical condition won't allow—"
"I can heal you."
The sentence struck like thunder.
Robot went completely still.
Three long seconds passed.
"…Follow me."
The robot turned around stiffly and began leading the way.
Levi followed.
"Wait!" Eve called out.
Rex forced the orange-red energy back into his hands. "Who the hell do you think you are? What are you planning to do to Rudy?"
Levi glanced back at him.
Just one glance.
His eyes were as deep as the cosmos itself, carrying unimaginable pressure. Rex trembled violently. His fighting spirit collapsed instantly, and the coins slipped from his fingers with a metallic clang.
"Kid, here's a piece of advice," Levi said softly, though every word rang clearly in their ears. "Some people are beyond your ability to provoke. And some people… aren't meant to be understood."
---
Underground Level Three
The air smelled of disinfectant mixed with nutrient solution. Cold metal walls were covered with intricate pipelines and blinking red monitors.
At the center of the room stood a massive cylindrical glass tank over two meters wide.
Inside the pale green fluid floated a "person."
More accurately, a body cursed by fate itself.
His frame was pitifully small, his limbs twisted and withered. His spine bent at an unnatural angle. Skin so pale it was nearly transparent revealed purple veins beneath.
In sharp contrast to the ruined body was his oversized head.
At that moment, a pair of huge eyes stared at Levi through the glass and liquid without blinking. There was no fear. No anger.
Only pure, almost fanatical curiosity and caution.
"How did you know?" Rudy Connors' hoarse, exhausted voice came through the speakers.
Levi walked to the tank and calmly met his gaze.
"I can perceive lifeforms. Your mechanical body has no life signal, only highly complex neural transmissions. I simply traced the signal back to its source."
Rudy fell silent for a moment, processing the impossible explanation.
"Your sensory abilities… exceed my understanding."
"So does your brain," Levi replied while looking at Rudy's enlarged head. "Its neuron density and activity surpass ordinary humans by more than threefold. No wonder you could design and remotely control such advanced mechanical bodies."
A flicker of surprise crossed Rudy's eyes before turning wary.
"You can 'see' that too? What exactly do you want from me? Don't try to placate me with empty promises like 'healing me.' I need a reason."
"I need your knowledge," Levi said directly. "Everything related to genetic bioengineering. I know you've never stopped researching ways to repair your body. Your research is decades beyond anything publicly available."
Rudy's expression grew complicated.
"You want to modify yourself?"
"No." Levi shook his head, his tone becoming solemn. "Reconstruct."
He raised his right hand.
A strand of golden light flickered above his palm.
Merely one ten-thousandth of the Phoenix Force leaking out caused every energy detector in the laboratory to overload instantly.
"There's a power inside me," Levi said quietly. "A power far too great. My body… can't contain it."
Rudy's gaze locked onto the golden light, filled with scientific obsession and fanaticism.
"What kind of energy is that? I've never seen anything so… pure, yet violent."
"You don't need to know what it is," Levi said, closing his hand as the light vanished. "You only need to tell me this: without replacing this body, is it possible to fundamentally alter cellular structure and properties—from the genetic level all the way down to the atomic level?"
Rudy sank into deep thought.
As a top-tier scientist, he instantly grasped the essence of the question.
"In theory… yes." His voice trembled slightly with excitement. "Cellular structure is determined by genetic coding, and genes are ultimately just an unimaginably complex set of informational instructions. Rewrite those instructions, and you can change every property of the cells."
"But doing so would require impossibly precise operations on the atomic and quantum level. Even the slightest error could trigger a chain collapse throughout the entire body, reducing it into primordial organic matter."
Levi's eyes lit up.
"In theory possible" was exactly what he needed to hear.
He stepped forward and placed his hand against the cold glass.
Rudy's body jerked violently as alarm bells exploded in his mind.
"What are you doing?!"
"Borrowing your knowledge to verify my hypothesis."
Levi closed his eyes.
His immense psychic power surged like a tidal wave, passing through the glass and fluid to directly touch the core of Rudy's consciousness.
[Detected target ability: Mastery of Genetic Bioengineering.
Rating: S-Class.
Copy?]
[Copying.]
In the next instant, an information torrent comparable to the birth of the universe flooded Levi's mind.
Genetic sequence decoding and compilation. Cellular restructuring principles. Hyper-complex protein folding patterns. Neural network construction and optimization…
Countless formulas, massive datasets, and Rudy's lifelong research records surged into him like a broken dam.
Levi's brain operated at unprecedented speed—digesting, integrating, deducing, reconstructing.
And then…
He saw it.
He saw the Viltrumite cellular structure copied from Nolan.
The core of those cells was not ordinary carbon-based matter, but a special substance he previously couldn't comprehend—
Smart Atoms.
These atoms possessed astonishing self-replication and regenerative abilities, forming the foundation of Viltrumite physiology.
And now, empowered by Rudy's S-Class genetic engineering knowledge, Levi finally understood their deeper truth.
Smart Atoms weren't merely matter.
They were programmable atomic-level nanomachines.
Every atom carried and executed specific genetic instructions, determining its function and behavioral pattern.
The Smart Atoms inside Nolan had been programmed for ultimate physical defense—enhancing muscle density, strengthening bones, accelerating metabolism and regeneration.
But…
What if those instructions were rewritten?
Levi's thoughts surpassed the speed of light.
A brand-new, insane, yet magnificent concept rapidly formed in his mind.
Not physical defense—
But energy accommodation.
Reprogram every Smart Atom into a microscopic energy container. Teach them to absorb, store, convert, and stabilize the incomparably violent Phoenix Force.
Not replacing the body.
Upgrading the body's foundational architecture.
Transforming this Viltrumite body into a divine vessel capable of containing cosmic-level energy.
Levi slowly opened his eyes, a confident smile appearing at the corner of his lips.
"Thank you, Rudy."
Rudy's face was deathly pale. The mental exhaustion nearly made him faint. That instant of knowledge extraction felt as though part of his soul had been ripped away.
"You… what exactly… are you?"
"A passerby." Levi turned to leave. "As payment, this gift may help you escape that glass tank."
He paused and looked back.
"Alchemy. A system of knowledge capable of reconstructing matter at the molecular level. If you're intelligent enough, repairing your own body—or even creating an entirely new perfect one—won't be impossible."
As he spoke, he pointed a finger forward.
A pure golden beam shot from his fingertip, piercing through the glass and entering Rudy's forehead.
It was the foundational theory of Alchemy he had acquired from The Boys universe—a gift capable of overturning this world's technological tree.
"Wait!" Rudy shouted urgently through the mental strain. "Tell me your name!"
Levi's figure was already becoming blurry and transparent.
The next second, he vanished completely, leaving behind only a faint echo.
"You may call me… Prometheus."
---
After leaving the Teen Titans' base, Levi did not return to the city.
Instead, he transformed into a streak of light and shot into the sky, finally stopping thirty thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean.
Above the sea of clouds, he closed his eyes and organized his gains.
Smart Atoms—the source of Viltrumite power—were fundamentally programmable atomic nanomachines. Nolan's atoms had been set to "Physical Mode," making him nearly indestructible.
But Levi didn't need stronger physical defense.
He needed Energy Mode.
The Phoenix Force was too violent. Using ordinary cells to contain it was no different from using a glass cup to hold the core of the sun.
But what if the container itself consisted of countless miniature suns?
The path forward became crystal clear:
No body replacement. Upgrade the body itself.
Rewrite the underlying commands of all seven hundred sextillion Smart Atoms throughout his body, transforming them from physical defense units into energy accommodation units.
The theory was flawless.
But in practice, there was one massive problem.
Rewriting atomic commands required an unimaginably vast startup energy source. And the process had to be completed in one uninterrupted attempt.
If interrupted midway, the partially rewritten atoms would destabilize instantly, causing his entire body to collapse from the microscopic level and disintegrate into cosmic dust.
Even though this was only a clone, its destruction would inevitably disturb the original body's secluded cultivation.
Using the knowledge he had just acquired, Levi rapidly calculated the requirements.
To fully reconstruct every Smart Atom in his body would require energy equivalent to the total output of a medium-sized star burning for one hundred years.
He frowned slightly.
All of his current energy reserves combined—the cosmic energy from his Binary Form, solar energy absorbed through his Kryptonian physiology, and the remnants of the Phoenix Force inside him—were nowhere near enough.
He needed an energy source so massive it bordered on infinite.
Levi opened his eyes and gazed beyond the atmosphere into the depths of the universe.
In this universe… what could provide such an enormous amount of energy?
Absorb a star directly? Too slow. He couldn't remain inside a stellar core for a hundred years.
Infinity Stones? This universe didn't seem to contain them.
Then… what else was there?
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