522,000. The number wasn't some abstract, digital metric—it was physical, crushing gravity. A blinding pressure cracked outward from the Fraternity's headquarters like a thermonuclear shockwave. It violently split the cloud cover overhead for miles and sent a blinding, singular blade of white ki straight up through the atmosphere and into the cold vacuum of open space before he frantically clamped down on it.
Every single bird within a five-kilometer radius left the trees in a frantic, screaming flock. The dark surface of the Pacific Ocean instantly flattened in a massive, perfect ring around the island.
Smith grit his teeth, the veins bulging in his neck, and pulled it back in.
Years of grueling aura training, hours of patient, agonizing work with Korin on suppression techniques—all of it violently collapsed into the single, desperately practiced motion of drawing the titanic energy inward and holding it dead still. The sky stopped flickering. The clouds slowly rolled back in to fill the hole.
He stood alone in his quiet office with his eyes squeezed shut, breathing heavily.
That couldn't happen in a city. He made a cold, clinical note of it and moved on.
At sub-Celestial power, he could effortlessly handle Hela without Kaioken. He could easily test Odin All-Father if the old god pushed for it. The geopolitical and cosmic tactical picture had reorganized itself entirely. He would deal with the physical integration logistics later—he needed open ocean, absolutely no commercial shipping lanes, and at least fifty kilometers from any populated coastline before he dared let the full output run free to test the new ceiling.
What he was thinking about right now was a completely different logistical problem.
He still couldn't naturally survive in the vacuum of space.
The integrated Namekian bloodline granted him photosynthesis and the incredibly useful ability to go entirely without conventional food or water, but Namek's near-extinction from abrupt climate change had definitively answered the obvious question—Namekians were absolutely not vacuum-proof. If they were, they would have just flown off the dying planet.
The Space Stone comfortably covered the instantaneous transit problem, but the Tesseract was a borrowed, external resource, and borrowed external resources eventually failed or got stolen. He had seen enough of this brutal, chaotic universe to know that contingency planning around single points of failure was the exact difference between a transmigrator who adapted and survived, and one who didn't.
Next cycle: one wish entirely dedicated to space survivability. He logged the thought and filed it away.
He also quickly checked the Dragon Ball system interface for a new evolution trigger. Nothing. He had cleared 22,000 and instantly triggered the Dende upgrade. He was now sitting comfortably at 522,000, and the system hadn't moved an inch. The next cosmic threshold was apparently significantly higher—a million, possibly even a hundred million. He accepted the grind without resentment and stepped smoothly out of the system space.
At Kamar-Taj, the Ancient One had been in the exact middle of a measured sentence when the pressure arrived.
It passed through the thick stone walls without a shred of effort. It rolled through the quiet meditation halls, vibrated through the ancient floors, and settled over every single sorcerer in the mountain compound like a dropped lead ceiling.
A few of the junior apprentices physically stumbled. Two masters involuntarily dropped their conjured mandalas in pure shock.
The Ancient One herself simply paused, closing her eyes, feeling the precise shape of it—the staggering density, the geographical origin, the violent trajectory.
And then, just as quickly, it was gone.
Across the low wooden table, Odin had gone very, very still.
"He fused something," the Ancient One stated quietly, picking up her teacup.
Odin let his breath out in a slow, heavy sigh. "That aura... that is firmly sub-Celestial. Core of the sub-Celestial range."
"Yes." She folded her hands primly. "And it is still rapidly climbing."
They sat with that impossible reality for a long moment. Odin had spent an immeasurable, bloody span of years carefully mapping the power tiers of this universe.
Sub-Celestial meant you operated within your own native universe with the casual capacity to unmake entire planets. The Celestial Father level reached beyond that, bending into the multiverse. Above that—the Celestials themselves, the titanic cosmic architects—were still ultimately bounded by single universes despite their staggering scale, but the sheer difference between their floor and the sub-Celestial ceiling was the vast, unfathomable distance between a flickering candle and a burning star.
The Ancient One could navigate the multiverse and displace people across its infinite branches. Odin, in his brutal, conquering prime, had matched a powerful Celestial and survived the apocalyptic exchange, and the millennia of accumulated Odinforce since then had long since papered over whatever gap the Destroyer armor had once filled.
Smith Doyle was sub-Celestial. And he was twenty-one years old.
"You were saying," the Ancient One prompted, her voice perfectly mild, "that you wanted a promise from him."
Odin gathered himself, his posture stiffening. "It is Ragnarok. The apocalyptic prophecy goes all the way back to my father's time. It has never manifested in mine, but I firmly believe it will come for Thor's generation." He paused, the heavy weight of a king bleeding into his tone. "I need a wish. One single wish, to protect the people of Asgard when that time inevitably comes."
"And you arrogantly thought I could help you secure one."
"You possess influence with him," Odin pointed out.
The Ancient One studied him over the rim of her cup. She had not expected Smith to selflessly use the second wish on the victims of New York—that had been a genuine, moving surprise, and it had violently pushed the divergence point of this timeline further from any branch she could confidently map with the Time Stone. She was operating in increasingly unfamiliar, unscripted territory, and the Sorcerer Supreme did not enjoy being blind.
"What makes you think you possess anything that can actually impress him?" she asked bluntly.
Odin opened his mouth. He closed it.
He didn't answer immediately, which told her everything she needed to know: he hadn't fully worked that out yet.
"Let Thor come to Earth when he is finally finished pacifying the Nine Realms," the Ancient One suggested smoothly. "They already have a history. That is a far more direct, organic path to his favor than trying to go through me." She paused, her eyes narrowing slightly. "Smith is also actively managing Hela's situation. If you truly want to build goodwill with the Fraternity, that is the thread to pull."
"Thor will be heavily occupied for quite some time. And Hela..." Odin's single eye darkened. "If she is released and remains on Asgard, drawing from its power, she could reach near-Celestial levels. She is absolutely not a diplomatic asset. She is a catastrophic liability that I am actively containing."
"That is your problem, All-Father." The Ancient One's voice didn't change its pleasant register, but the steel underneath was unmistakable. "I have already extended considerable magical courtesy by allowing Asgardian participation in the Dragon Ball tournament at all. When it comes to those wishes, you follow Smith Doyle's rules. That is strictly non-negotiable."
The silence in the room ran long enough to be deliberately insulting.
"What if," Odin finally rumbled, leaning forward, "I entered the next tournament myself?"
The Ancient One looked at the god-king for exactly two seconds.
"Then I would enter as well."
Another silence. Shorter, sharper this time.
"I see." Odin straightened up slowly, his pride stinging but his logic holding. "Thor will come to Earth when the Nine Realms are settled. And Lorelei will establish a permanent, monitored presence here—something roughly equivalent to an Asgardian embassy."
The Ancient One gave the faintest, thinnest nod of approval.
Odin rose, and did not look back as he left the sanctum. What the All-Father was turning over in his ancient mind was far simpler, and far less dignified, than anything he had said aloud: he couldn't arrogantly petition the boy for a wish directly, and he certainly couldn't pressure or threaten his way to one. Which meant he desperately needed Smith Doyle to simply want to give him one.
That required something infinitely rarer than power.
He thought of his firstborn, Hela, locked away in the agonizing space between realms, and the absolute best-case scenario began to look horrifyingly clear: she didn't trigger it. That grim hope would have to be enough for now.