"The great dark god Dormammu will grant us eternal life… Lord Kaecilius will obtain the chance for us to live forever…"
The sorcerers chanted those words repeatedly. Inside his helmet, Alan rolled his eyes—he had heard lines like this way too many times.
Just like the Hydra organization, these people had somehow found a so-called "faith" that drove them insane. One phrase was enough to make them throw away everything. These were Dormammu's deranged zealots!
Magic circles flared from the sorcerers' hands as they charged straight toward the trio led by the Emperor. Their minds held a single belief: to carry out Kaecilius' orders.
Even if they died here, they had no fear. Kaecilius would soon discover the secret to eternal life—and drag them back from Hell.
To die for Kaecilius, to die for Dormammu—that was an honor to them.
"Bunch of lunatics," Wanda muttered, pressing her fingers together. As she rotated them, a surge of Chaos Magic erupted. She had to thank Kaecilius for this opportunity.
Since he hadn't broken the Mirror Dimension, she could unleash as much magic as she wanted inside it without worrying about collateral damage. She could kill freely and without restraint!
Inside the Sanctum Sanctorum, Stephen Strange was summoned by Ancient One. He saw her standing with her back to him.
"Ancient One…" Stephen Strange nervously rubbed his fingertips. Even from behind, he could feel the overwhelming presence emanating from her.
Recently, while studying spells, he had made significant progress—learning to open portals with the Sling Ring and even secretly studying astral projection without the librarian Wong's permission.
Now that he had been summoned out of the blue, Strange had a hunch: Ancient One was likely going to lecture him about it.
"Strange, I once praised your talent—but that wasn't permission to question the curriculum or decide to self-study," Ancient One said calmly, hands behind her back. The bone fan she slowly rotated made Stephen slightly uneasy. After all, this was the Sorcerer Supreme.
He was just a rookie, freshly initiated—no match for her in any sense.
"I'm glad to hear you acknowledge my talent, Ancient One. But those lessons you arranged for me—they're full of boring, senseless rules. I'm not learning anything from them."
Strange figured, since he had already been summoned, he might as well speak his mind directly.
Those rigid, dogmatic lessons weren't the kind of magic he wanted to learn. They had nothing to do with healing his hands either.
He had no interest in learning such dull sorcery—that's why he ignored Ancient One's curriculum and chose to teach himself.
"Dead rules?" Ancient One repeated those words slowly. The bone fan in her hand stopped turning as she slowly turned to face him. "You mean, like not using the Sling Ring freely in the library?"
Stephen wasn't surprised. "Wong tattled on me, didn't he?"
Before being summoned, Strange had already suspected that if anyone had caught him using the Sling Ring in the library to grab forbidden books, it had to be Wong. And now, hearing Ancient One questioning him, he realized he'd guessed correctly.
But in truth, Ancient One wasn't angry at all. Instead, she was secretly pleased—Stephen's rapid learning meant he might soon be ready to inherit something far more important…