Mike clearly remembered the storyline of the Marvel Universe.
Naturally, that included the Reality Stone, which would briefly appear on Earth.
The window for the Reality Stone’s appearance on Earth was extremely short.
Once he missed it, the next time he would see the Reality Stone would be on Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet.
The problem was that Mike only knew the Reality Stone would briefly appear in an abandoned factory in London.
He had no idea where that factory was located.
But that was not a problem.
He might not know, but someone else did.
Jane Foster.
During the events of Thor: The Dark World, Jane Foster and her intern, Darcy Lewis, were investigating an abandoned factory in London where multiple gravity anomalies had been detected.
While tracking the source of the signals, Jane was accidentally transported to a sealed dimension.
And the thing sealed within that dimension was the Reality Stone.
Thousands of years ago, Bor, the All-Father of Asgard, Thor’s grandfather and Odin’s father, had defeated Malekith, the leader of the Dark Elves, and obtained the Reality Stone.
He then sealed it away in a hidden pocket dimension on Earth.
The seal had remained intact for thousands of years.
However, an extremely rare alignment of the Nine Realms was about to occur, causing the pocket dimension to fluctuate and accidentally pulling Jane Foster inside.
So…
As long as Mike followed Jane Foster and entered that pocket dimension before her, he could obtain the Reality Stone.
That was Mike’s plan.
To make sure he did not miss the brief window when the Reality Stone would appear in London, Mike had spent the past year working as a tax preparer in New York while keeping an eye on Jane Foster, her intern Darcy, and the astrophysicist Dr.
Erik Selvig.
Of course, he also had help from his stepsister, Heidi.
Thanks to Heidi’s position as an FBI agent, Mike learned that Jane Foster had purchased a ticket to London.
He immediately booked a flight there as well.
After landing, he followed Jane into the city and watched her enter a hotel.
He then immediately rented a car and began following Darcy Lewis.
Yes.
Not Jane Foster, but her friend and assistant, Darcy Lewis.
Although Jane was the one who would be pulled into the pocket dimension, Darcy was the one who would eventually discover where the Reality Stone was located.
Finally, after following Darcy for six consecutive days, Mike followed her to the abandoned factory where the Reality Stone would briefly appear on Earth.
Soon after confirming that the abandoned factory really did have strange gravitational anomalies, Darcy and her intern hurried out of the factory in their van.
They were heading back to the hotel to bring Jane Foster over so they could investigate the anomalies together.
Only after Darcy left did Mike finally look away from the rearview mirror.
He unfastened his seat belt, opened the door, and stepped out of the car.
The events of Thor: The Dark World were already playing clearly in his mind.
Perhaps because he had lived three lives, Mike had discovered that his memories had not faded through two reincarnations.
Instead, the memories from all three lives remained remarkably clear.
Following the scenes he remembered from the movie, Mike quickly found the building where several teenagers were currently playing around with the strange gravity anomaly.
Mike wore a black fur coat over a dark-gray turtleneck.
It kept him warm against the cold London weather while making his tall, lean figure look even more striking.
The moment he entered the building, several teenagers who were playing inside noticed him.
They exchanged confused looks as they stared at Mike.
Mike stood inside the building and looked up at the surrounding stairways and corridors.
In the open central shaft, a soda bottle repeatedly fell downward in defiance of gravity, only to reappear above and fall again.
The next moment, Mike looked away and started climbing the stairs.
He did not know which floor Jane Foster had been on when she was accidentally pulled into the pocket dimension.
Nor did he dare bet that following Jane would guarantee him the Reality Stone.
What if the Reality Stone chose Jane Foster just as it had in the original story?
More importantly…
Once Jane Foster disappeared from Earth, Thor would find out and come down himself.
What if the Reality Stone chose Mike, but Thor arrived afterward, noticed that something was wrong with him, and took him back to Asgard?
The chances of that happening were low.
But Mike did not dare take that gamble.
He would rather bet that the Reality Stone could allow him to awaken his Cosmo in this universe than gamble on what Thor might do.
So Mike chose the simplest method.
He followed his instincts.
As he walked up the stairs, Mike remained silent and stopped deliberately thinking.
Instead, he let his instincts guide him toward the Reality Stone.
During his second life in the Sanctuary, he had already awakened his Cosmo.
However, there had been no vacant constellation at the time, so he could not become a Saint with his own constellation and Cloth.
He could only remain in the Sanctuary as a trainee Saint.
But his Cosmo had already awakened.
Although it had fallen dormant inside his body in this life, the heightened senses he had developed through his training remained.
Mike believed that if he had become a proper Saint during his second life, he would have been able to awaken his Sixth Sense in a very short time and become a true Saint capable of wielding the power of Cosmo.
Soon, Mike stepped onto another stair and reached the fourth floor of the building.
Suddenly, his heart jolted.
He stopped.
Following the instinct rising from within him, he turned his gaze toward the depths of the corridor on his left.
At the end of the corridor stood a closed door.
It looked almost exactly like the door he remembered from the movie, the one that led to the pocket dimension where the Reality Stone had been sealed and eventually pulled Jane Foster inside.
Mike’s expression shifted slightly.
He stood in the corridor, staring directly at the door at the end of his line of sight.
At that moment, a famous saying suddenly surfaced in his mind.
A very famous one.
It was— When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.
The instant those words appeared in Mike’s mind, a violent gust of wind suddenly erupted through the corridor.
As the wind howled around him, Mike felt an unprecedented force of attraction coming from the door at the end of the corridor.
The enormous force seemed determined to drag him into the abyss.
But!
Mike did not resist.
In the blink of an eye, he was pulled forward and slammed into the door with a loud bang.
Then he disappeared.
It looked as though…
Mike had been swallowed by the door itself!