"Martial Great-Aunt, you're absolutely gorgeous!"
"Martial Great-Great-Aunt, your hair looks amazing today!"
The sorcerers of Kamar-Taj were well acquainted with Bella's quirks. Masters of the Mystic Arts like Daniel knew perfectly well that flattery was quite literally her fuel. Everyone walked their own path, and those who'd mastered it led the way—no one felt the least bit embarrassed. Without a moment's hesitation, the compliments came pouring in like a flood.
Watching a crowd of sorcerers swarm around Bella and shower her with praise, even someone as sharp as Victor was left blinking in confusion.
What on earth is happening? Victor had never met Bella. The two had never crossed paths.
His daily concerns orbited science, social development, economics, and the future of humanity. A woman who "wrote novels and sold cosmetics" was far too small a figure to register on his radar.
He set his sights high. On any given day, his interest in Reed—his closest friend—outweighed his interest in Susan, an objectively beautiful woman. Put a scientist and a beauty in front of him at the same time, and his eyes would go to the scientist first. In his own way, the man was hopelessly immune to feminine charm.
Bella's breathtaking face, her elegant neck, the graceful line of her collarbone—none of it registered.
"Reinforcements? A pity. Your people are simply too weak. No number of bodies can bridge a gulf this wide."
He radiated menace. Arcs of electricity crawled across his fingers, and the high-voltage current ionized the air with a sharp crack. A web of lightning spread outward from where he stood, flooding the entire hall with searing white light.
The younger sorcerers retreated. Nobody said it aloud, but the hopeful glances aimed at Bella made their wishes plain: they wanted the senior to reclaim the Sanctum's honor.
Bella didn't strike immediately. She wanted to say something first.
Victor, however, had no intention of listening to small talk.
The lightning between his hands converged into a single blazing mass, then erupted outward in the shape of a colossal serpentine dragon, hurtling straight at the Kamar-Taj sorcerers.
At least let me get two words in before you start swinging! Bella still had no idea why this man had come to the New York Sanctum. She wanted to understand the situation, but he was charging in with everything he had. She had no choice but to fight.
She took a single glance at the incoming spell, then raised her left hand vertically before her and traced a smooth half-arc, like the sweep of an unfolding fan.
A black vortex of crushing gravitational force materialized in her palm. The lightning dragon was swallowed with a sharp whoosh. The pull was so powerful that it tugged at the magical energy inside Victor's own body, dragging him forward several involuntary steps before he managed to dig in and stop.
"What kind of technique is that!?" He was genuinely shaken. He'd never heard of magic like this.
Bella felt no obligation to explain. She turned to the Sanctum's guardian in his monk-like robes.
"Master Daniel, why is he here?"
Blood still trickling from the corner of his mouth where Victor had kicked him, the guardian said quietly, "Greed. He's after the artifacts stored inside the Sanctum."
Bella let out a knowing "ah." She understood everything now. The man was fearless and clueless in equal measure. The artifacts Kamar-Taj kept under lock and key were entangled with a whole pantheon of eldritch gods—even Bella wouldn't touch them lightly. And here was Victor, a complete greenhorn, demanding to cart them all away. Ignorance truly was its own brand of courage.
"You think knowing a couple of petty tricks gives you the right to dismiss me?" Victor was enraged by Bella's nonchalance. Normally he was the one who looked at others this way. Having the tables turned was intolerable.
It had already been a day of devastating highs and lows. His composure was brittle.
He reached for Gypsy witchcraft again. A cruder, more battered straw doll appeared in his hand.
Dense black mist engulfed him. The stench of Hell seeped through once more.
Hexcraft. Summoning spells. In secret, he also fanned out a deck of tarot cards, the faces flipping in rapid succession—but after more than ten agonizing seconds, the cards refused to produce the result he needed.
Bella spared them a dismissive glance. Gypsies don't know the first thing about real magic.
She didn't take any of it seriously. The gap between them in raw power, mastery, and fundamental understanding of magic was simply too vast. Just as she couldn't beat the Ancient One with everything she had, Victor couldn't touch her.
She drew on the New York Sanctum as a magical node, channeling power from deep within the Sanctum's foundations, leveraged the laws of time, and wove a Time Veil in front of the assembled sorcerers. Every spell Victor cast was neutralized the moment it met the barrier.
Bella addressed Daniel with perfect composure. "Master, this is the New York Sanctum. How would you like me to handle him? Kill him outright? I can have my people come by for the body—they're professionals."
The monk-like guardian shook his head slowly. "Our duty is to protect, not to kill. Expel him. That will suffice."
It wasn't exactly a hardline decision, but it upheld a rule the New York Sanctum had maintained for years. If they killed every intruder who walked through the door, the place would hardly deserve the name Sanctum.
"Have you finished saying your goodbyes? I hope the time I graciously allotted you was sufficient."
Victor still couldn't comprehend the role time played within the architecture of magic. From his perspective, he'd been on a relentless offensive, hammering his opponent into helpless retreat.
He watched the demons he'd summoned wreak havoc across the hall. He saw the strange woman crumple under his hexcraft, barely breathing, lying on the floor and waiting to die.
Time showed him everything he wanted to see. But when Bella collapsed the Veil and regarded him with open amusement, his mood plummeted from the summit straight into the abyss. The brittle composure he'd been clinging to shattered completely.
Keeping one's head through triumph and humiliation—easy to preach, hard to practice. Prodigies like Victor Von Doom and Tony Stark, who'd tasted glory young, simply didn't weather devastating blows the way heroes from ordinary backgrounds like Captain America and Spider-Man could.
Toyed with and humiliated, Victor's poise disintegrated. His self-esteem had been shot full of holes. He screamed.
"You're mocking me? Do you have any idea who I am!" He squeezed every drop of energy from his cells, trying to convert more of it into magical power.
"You don't understand magic at all. That's not how it works." Bella's contempt for Victor's magic was unconcealed. After several rounds of psychological warfare, his willpower and self-control had been ground to their lowest ebb.
Since entering the Sanctum, Bella had done nothing but defend. Now, for the first time, she struck.
Her finger flicked upward. An invisible, intangible thread of psionic energy traced an arcane sigil in the air, then punched straight into Victor's psyche.
Mind Crush. A 5th-circle spell—the enhanced form of Mind Blast.
Who plays spell-for-spell with you? Would Itachi Uchiha trade ninjutsu blow-for-blow with Orochimaru? One move to end it.
The psionic force bored into his mind like a drill bit, then began its systematic work of destruction and suppression.