Further regret was pointless. In response to Malcolm's questions, Faust answered everything truthfully, ultimately revealing the location of the Morgan le Fay temple he had discovered within Peru.
"How should we deal with this guy?" Malcolm knocked Faust unconscious with a single punch and looked at Thea. He still remembered that his daughter was supposed to be a hero.
"Up to you." Thea turned her head aside and replied calmly. Faust was no decent person—during the future major event Forever Evil, he would bring catastrophic disaster upon the entire world. Eliminating him early wasn't a bad thing.
With a sharp crack, Malcolm seized Faust's forehead and jaw, twisted both hands, and ended his life.
"Come back with me first. We'll discuss the next step afterward," Thea said to the two of them, subtly giving Malcolm a meaningful look.
Though he didn't know what she was planning, Malcolm genuinely needed time to recover and nodded in agreement.
The three passed through the portal, leaving the desolate cave behind and arriving in a room filled with a heavy technological atmosphere.
"This is my laboratory in Metropolis. Rest here for now," Thea said as she poured each of them a glass of water. Jason Blood sensed that the father and daughter had private matters to discuss and tactfully excused himself.
Bringing Malcolm back to Star City for a father–son reunion wouldn't have been a bad idea, but Thea had no desire to see him clash with Oliver Queen. Between them lay the death of Robert Queen—a blood debt that could never truly be repaid.
Malcolm was both Tommy and Thea's father, and Oliver's sworn enemy. Caught between his best friend and his sister, Oliver would be trapped in an impossible position. The best solution was to keep them permanently separated—never meeting again in this lifetime.
Father and daughter caught each other up on everything that had happened since their separation. Thea deliberately mentioned that Tommy Merlyn had already injected divine blood, urging Malcolm not to hesitate any longer. She then retrieved a vial of Genetic Optimization Fluid from the lab and handed it to him.
By now, all her close family members had been enhanced. As for making the Genetic Optimization Fluid universally available, Thea abandoned the idea as soon as it crossed her mind.
The benefits involved were simply too great. Free distribution was impossible, and exorbitant pricing would only deepen social divisions—those with wealth and power would grow even stronger, while the poor would become even more helpless.
Setting everything else aside, if the fluid ever hit the market, Batman would absolutely lose his mind. Imagine every villain carrying one—an enhanced Joker, a strengthened Penguin, a boosted Scarecrow. Gotham's danger level would skyrocket instantly. The image was both terrifying and absurdly beautiful. Maintaining the status quo was the correct path.
"It's like this…" Thea organized her thoughts. "I've come up with a way to forcibly activate your bloodline."
"How?" Malcolm asked.
"You don't need to do much. Inject the divine blood and the genetic optimization fluid separately. Bring your body to peak condition. We begin in three days."
Three days later, Malcolm—having undergone a series of enhancements—stood there radiating vitality as he watched Thea work.
The changes were unmistakable. After injecting the divine blood and optimization fluid, a renewed power surged through his body. His physical condition, which had been declining, felt as though it had reverted to twenty years earlier. Strength, speed, endurance—the sensation of returning to his prime was intoxicating.
Jason Blood's injuries had completely healed over those three days. Standing beside Malcolm, he watched Thea in the distance, still drawing a magic array on the ground for the third consecutive day.
"Your daughter treats you well," he said. "But can this really awaken a bloodline?"
The knight was skeptical. In his experience, even Merlin couldn't accomplish something like this. Either one could awaken magic, or one couldn't. If it were that easy, the world would already be full of mages.
Malcolm glanced at him but said nothing. Thea hadn't slept or rested for three straight days—he would never back down at this point.
In truth, the knight wasn't wrong. Merlin truly couldn't do this—not because he lacked power, but because his era was simply too distant. While modern mages couldn't rival his age in raw spell power, a thousand years of development had pushed magic down a different path—toward refinement, precision, and ingenious design.
Moreover, Merlin's standards were far too high. He focused exclusively on the upper echelons of magic. He had neither the time nor the inclination to handle something as basic as a mage initiation ritual.
That was how an objective reality formed—something Merlin couldn't do, Thea could.
The array before them was a fusion of ancient and modern magic. Its most crucial component was the Backward Magic pioneered by Zatanna and her father, turning the impossible into the possible by forcibly drawing out Malcolm's originally faint-to-invisible bloodline.
Afterward, vast quantities of magic would scour and restructure it. In theory, it was feasible.
What Thea had drawn was a massive Backward Magic array, incorporating a great deal of Sargon's knowledge as well. It could be called a culmination of contemporary magical techniques.
She tossed Malcolm three gemstones, each containing a powerful healing spell, crafted using gemstone magic.
Once Malcolm stepped into the array, Thea began chanting. The entire incantation had to be spoken in reverse. The mental strain was immense—even with her exceptional intelligence, she stumbled through the words, her face turning pale.
Fortunately, aided by the array and several rare artifacts supplied by the Cult of the Cold Flame, the first phase passed without disaster. A faint shadow of magical energy appeared within Malcolm's body.
"Hold steady! This is where it really begins!" Thea shouted as she produced the Dead King's Scepter.
Earlier, when she had summoned the sea beast to destroy Faust's observatory, the creature had fed a portion of its remaining energy back into the scepter before dissipating. Thea had originally intended to absorb that untyped magic herself, but after long consideration, she abandoned the idea.
That energy had been accumulated by the observatory over several centuries, drawn from its pocket dimension—scattered and impure. For Thea, it amounted to only two or three years' worth of mana, barely a bonus. But for strengthening Malcolm through the array, it was something else entirely—true lifesaving aid.
Raising the scepter, Thea guided the stored magic along the array's pathways, converging it at the center—Malcolm himself.
The untyped magic ignited the blood-red array, pouring into Malcolm in vast quantities. The faint spark of magic within him, once no brighter than a candle flame, was visibly nourished and began to grow stronger.
"That's it?" the knight asked, curiosity written all over his face.
"Not even close," Thea replied grimly. Purification began with extraction. This magic merely gave Malcolm the conditions necessary for extraction—it was still far from success.
Seeing Malcolm's body begin to sway, Thea knew he had reached his tolerance limit. She cut off the untyped mana flow. Within the array, a smaller formation emerged—the same step used on Damian back then.
This was the true bloodline purification array.