Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1741

The strong wind and dense snow blurred Stephen Strange's vision. He could vaguely see two beams of light streaking across the sky in the distance. The towering icebergs gradually fell in the blizzard, collapsing with a terrifying roar. The ridges collapsed on the dark frozen soil, and lava gushed out from the deep trenches, gradually melting the snow on the icebergs.

Pegasus's hooves slammed into the hard frozen ground, and long streams of steam gushed out of his huge nostrils and rolled up. Blood flowed like a trickle, filling the metal gauntlet and then oozing out of the damaged armor's sealed gel. The hot blood fell on the snow, like a burst of steam rising from melted metal. The golden-armored warrior sitting astride his horse looked at the other side of the frozen plain, where an eight-legged Pegasus cast in bronze stepped on the snow, where lightning and ice froze.

Pegasus raised his horse's hoof and charged towards Sleipnir.

The clash of guns and tips released heat and flashes that were too intense for the naked eye to see.

Then the snow disappeared, and lava filled the world, and the unmelted rocks slowly sank into the magma like ice in summer. Then the lava quickly solidified to form plains, and storms ground the rocks to form soil, and trees and shrubs grew rapidly, and finally the flood came and formed the sea again. Stephen Strange remembered clearly that there were no volcanoes near the Faroe Islands, and environmental changes could not be achieved so quickly, as if reality was just a thin paper covering the fragile cognition of human beings that could be easily peeled off.

He saw two huge female figures standing on the beach. Their cyan and pale skin, clothing styles with butterfly and moth characteristics, and scarlet eyes all indicated that they were creatures from another dimension. There was also a towering tree growing on the sea. The bright rune light flickered in the night sky, protecting the figures under the tree from the threat of environmental changes.

Stephen Strange rubbed his eyes, trying to see more clearly—

"Strange," a voice said nearby, "it is time for you to fulfill your duty."

Stephen Strange opened his eyes and found the old mystic with a gray beard looking at him seriously. "Master Hamil, I understand." He lowered his head quickly, "I will start now."

He dared not neglect it, because all the Kamar-Taj secret masters gathered in the three major temples and the Himalayan Temple, together with the petitioners scattered around the world, they jointly maintained the difficult planetary defense system. As a student personally accepted by the former Supreme Sorcerer, Stephen Strange lived up to expectations and demonstrated his outstanding talent.

After a vote by the proxy wizard Hamil and the Arcane Council, Stephen Strange was allowed to use the Eye of Agamotto to participate in the operation. His mission was to use the Eye of Agamotto to reset the planetary defense system when the system fulcrum was about to collapse. Even Baron Mordo didn't care about the taboo of "not playing with time". Now this situation is the result of the secret wizards' efforts to support it.

They did their best to keep most of the storms in the northern Atlantic to prevent the aftermath of the duel from causing an extinction-level disaster.

If unacceptable losses occur, they will try their best to drive the Eye of Agamotto and turn the time of the entire Earth back to before the disaster - this is not something Stephen Strange can do, and the Kamar-Taj mystics must invest all their magical powers because they are not sure whether the Lord of Kamar-Taj will still have the power to use the Eye of Agamotto at that time - fortunately, the spell praying for magical power was answered, and it no longer worked intermittently like before, like an electrical appliance with poor contact.

This means that using the Eye of Agamotto to reset Earth's time no longer requires all mystics to sacrifice their lives.

The supplicants gathered in the hall of the Himalayan Temple to chant spells and share the pressure from the outer dimension with the secret magicians. However, the turbulent waves of the sea of ​​souls were not something that ordinary people could bear. The screams that sounded from time to time reminded Stephen Strange that this was not a disaster that could be easily overcome. Colorful flames spewed out from the eyes, mouth and nasal cavity of a supplicant, forming a creeping flame in the air that emitted disgusting colors. Then the flame devoured the flesh and blood, burned the bones into powder, and left only a charred skull with sparks.

The secret mage at the side hurried over to deal with it, casting a spell to cool the skeleton, and ordered his apprentice to come and clean up the debris. This kind of bones burned by the soul fire will cause pollution, and need to be handled with caution, rather than burning half of it and throwing it into the river like the poor people in the South Asian subcontinent. Librarian Xiao Wang glanced up and continued to stare at his mysterious ring.

"The Cauldron of the Universe is amazing, isn't it?" The librarian Xiao Wang whispered to him, "Few people can use the Cauldron of the Universe to observe, and you are an exception. And you can also use the Eye of Agamotto, which proves that the decision of the previous Supreme Sorcerer was not wrong. Mordo's self-righteousness is unbearable."

"How can you be so indifferent?" Stephen Strange gritted his teeth in indignation, cold sweat running down his forehead and nose. "That's a life!"

"At least his life is valuable. Maybe his life saved a village from the storm. This is a good deal. If we fail, we can't even save a wild dog." Mage Xiao Wang shrugged. "Resetting time is not without benefits. I just had a meal half an hour ago, but now I'm so hungry that I can eat a whale. When the Eye of Agamotto takes effect, I won't be hungry anymore. You see, at least I saved the money for a meal. Speaker Victor von Doom refused to give me more food expenses..."

"You've said this many times." Stephen Strange sighed. He was not distracted. Multitasking was his talent. Otherwise, he would not have become an excellent surgeon and paid off his student loans in such a short time. "Including your evaluation of Mordo."

"Really?" Mage Xiao Wang stroked his chin. "Mordo believes that too many spellcasters can cause trouble. It just so happens that our master shares the same view."

"Do you know he is so powerful? Why can he change reality as easily as peeling off a piece of paper? This is something that humans cannot do. I have confirmed that the scene shown by the Cosmic Cauldron is real. What I saw was not the time echo of the Sea of ​​Souls. In other words, the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean may have really become a continent!"

This was Stephen Strange's first time to come into contact with such a high-level magical instrument as the Cosmic Cauldron, and his knowledge of it was limited to the few words of Master Xiao Wang, who had lived in Kamar-Taj since childhood and knew as much about this high-level magical instrument as the high-level secret masters.

Kamar-Taj has a collection of many famous artifacts, such as the Staff of the Living Tribunal and the Staff of Watum, but those are all made by the secret wizards, and only the Cauldron of the Universe is a real artifact created by the "Gods". However, Stephen Strange now has doubts about the definition of the concept of "Gods". He doesn't know whether the scenes he saw and the powerful beings that caused those scenes can be called gods.

"Are you talking about our master, or the Father of the Gods? For powerful people like them, there is no difference between reality and illusion. As long as they want, reality can run according to their ideas. You have never seen the Supreme Mage deal with a strong enemy, otherwise he would not be so surprised." Mage Xiao Wang shook his head, "The function of the Cauldron of the Universe is to find possibilities. What you see is just one of the possibilities, not the reality that has already happened. Maybe what you see will happen in the next second. We are guarding against this possibility and will not let a piece of land rise from the Atlantic Ocean."

Stephen Strange held the Eye of Agamotto tightly in his hands. He felt that the rustic brass shell was about to burn. "I don't think he is my master. I am free, and I learn magic to save lives."

"You are saving lives now, Strange, and no one in this world is free. That's just an illusion given to you by your cultural environment." "You said that too." Stephen Strange stretched out his hand and flicked the dark green halo.

Master Xiao Wang suddenly shut his mouth.

The wind and petals blowing into the temple stagnated, and even the dust and light solidified, as if the air had turned to glass. Stephen Strange was the only one breathing in the entire Himalayan temple. He pressed a specific rune among hundreds of runes, slowly rotating the dark green halo, and then all the mystics trembled rapidly like a reverse video, leaving afterimages in the air. The mystics became energetic again. Except for the supplicant who was burned to ashes, everything returned to its original state.

Stephen Strange tried to reach out and touch the dead supplicant, but when the wriggling colorful flames were about to touch his fingers, a warning from his soul made him withdraw his hand. He had a premonition that if he decided to reverse the supplicant's death, he would pay an unbearable price. As a spellcaster, his soul received the magical tides from the outer dimension, where the fragments of the past and the future melted, and the so-called premonition was likely a warning from the future.

Stephen Strange hesitated for a moment, and the spell was over.

Wizard Hamil glanced at the skull on the ground. "How many times has this happened?"

"The fourth time." Strange blinked his dry eyes hard, "I can't hold on any longer."

"You can," Master Hamil concluded bluntly, "recite the prayers, keep your mind pure, and don't be tempted by the sea of ​​souls. You are the most talented among us, you can do it."

"I'm not that good," said Stephen Strange. "If I fail..."

"Your caution is commendable, Strange. We do have a backup plan," said Master Hamil in a heavy tone. "It is a terrible machine, created by a giant inorganic life form that roams the universe in legend. The machine records all the information since the creation of the earth. It is a soup of life that collects all the intelligence of the earth. The information of every wisp of wind, every grain of sand, and even every microscopic particle is recorded in it. The machine can restore the earth's environment to its original form billions of years ago, from the landform to the ecology."

"Sounds good." Mage Daniel from the New York Temple winked playfully, "I'm also a high-level secret mage, how come I don't know about this thing?"

"Before the Kamar-Taj sanctuary was built, the machine was buried in the Holy Mountain. The current Lord of Kamar-Taj and the first Supreme Sorcerer sealed the machine together." Mage Hamil said. Most high-level secret mages and temple deacons knew that the current Lord of Kamar-Taj was traveling through time. Regent Victor von Doom personally told them that the evidence was a relic from the Immortal City, which recorded the conversation between the current Lord of Kamar-Taj and Agamotto.

Time travel is not uncommon, and all previous Supreme Sorcerers have used time travel to talk with Agamotto, as did the previous Supreme Sorcerer. Perhaps the prerequisite for succeeding the Supreme Sorcerer is to obtain the approval of Agamotto instead of Vishanti, but these are all speculations, and the truth can only be known by the Supreme Sorcerer.

"We have not yet mastered the use of that machine. Even the Lord of Kamar-Taj cannot completely control that machine. Strange, if you fail, the Lord of Kamar-Taj can only activate that machine."

"Maybe that machine will restore the Earth to the dinosaur era." Master Daniel said excitedly, "I really want to touch a dinosaur myself. You know, when I was a kid, humans didn't know much about dinosaurs."

"By that time, we may turn into a ball of atoms, or even algae." Master Hamil glared at Master Daniel unhappily. The old man was not as steady as he should be at his age. "I don't think the Lord of Kamar-Taj will take the time to put us back together. Humans are not Lego toys. He has a lot of things to do."

"Does he know Lego?" Stephen Strange asked in a low voice to Master Xiao Wang.

Master Xiao Wang couldn't help but burst into laughter. "Actually, Dad isn't that old."

The violent wind and snow swept across northeastern Europe in the blink of an eye, and the sudden cold current blew straight from the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of Europe and Canada. Even Victor von Doom, the regent of Yugoslavia, who had seen this doomsday in advance, could not help but curse and urgently summoned officials to take countermeasures. Even if the duel was over, the impact of such abnormal weather would not disappear immediately.

The eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883 and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 set off a low-temperature disaster that affected the world for several years. Moreover, the impact of the Peruvian volcanic eruption that annihilated Quetzalcoatl a year ago has not yet ended, and the planet is now in the "year without summer". He can foresee that humans will soon face global food production cuts, large-scale livestock deaths and typhoid epidemics.

Victor von Doom had to stop military food reserves and start purchasing food so that Yugoslavia could survive the next two years. Although he and the emperor had cast a large-scale weather-changing spell across Yugoslavia in order to increase food production, no one knew whether this large-scale spell could operate normally under the severe psychic interference.

What made him even more exhausted was that increasing the budget for purchasing grain would likely lead to a delay in the systematic construction of the army. The Martian foundry belonged to the emperor's department, and this department also needed industrial raw materials to produce armaments, which meant that the currencies of Mars and Yugoslavia were interchangeable. This was a complex economic issue, and it was not something that the emperor could do by unifying the currencies of Mars and Yugoslavia with administrative orders and ordering Mars to unconditionally supply industrial products to Yugoslavia. That would only lead to the collapse of Mars or Yugoslavia.

He just wanted to make a phone call or go to Kamar-Taj to borrow the Cauldron of the Universe - although he knew that this magic weapon would also be used to monitor the battlefield - so that he could know the situation on the scene. Was he worried that the emperor would fail? No, never, Odin would not be his opponent. The emperor's status was much higher than Odin. As long as he dealt with it seriously, even Odin, who had been worshipped for half a million years and whose soul sea had expanded to a point where his body could not bear it, could not defeat him. Victor von Doom was worried about what would happen next.

It is not Ragnarok. In the future they see, Ragnarok is just the first step in the war of aggression. No matter how long they prepare, backward human technology cannot fill the gap in the orbital defense line. They must deal with a large-scale alien invasion war and use the scarce space naval resources at hand to protect the ground battlefield until the invaders from outer space can no longer bear the losses and the dark overlord Thanos has to face the emperor himself.

Only in this way can humanity achieve victory.