After driving Batman into depression that night, Schiller had returned to the Marvel universe.
After he fired up Stark, Daredevil of the Hell’s Kitchen area went into hiding to escape his enemies.
Spidey had just obtained his powers and was too excited to make his official debut, leaving Schiller with some rare free time.
After that night, Schiller discovered he had another opportunity for a random chat.
By now, he had figured out the pattern: as long as he had a significant impact on characters in a certain world, he would gain an opportunity to match with a random chat partner.
Clearly, his conversation with Batman that night had had a profound impact on the Dark Knight.
Schiller planned to use this chat opportunity while he had the time.
Professor Charles seemed busy recruiting students lately, and Spidey was too excited about his new abilities to reply to messages.
With no one to chat with for the moment, Schiller felt a bit lonely.
So, he used the random chat opportunity.
Suddenly, a voice call interface appeared in his mind, which had never happened when chatting with Charles or Spidey.
Those two had both replied with text, appearing as chat boxes in Schiller’s mind.
But this time, it was directly a voice call.
Schiller took one look at the avatar: the Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One!!!
[The Sorcerer Supreme, the Ancient One, has sent you a voice call invitation.
Accept?] Accept or decline?
If he accepted, what should he say?
Schiller scratched his head and ultimately accepted the call.
“…Mysterious voice of the cosmos, where do you come from?…”
Schiller felt a series of sounds.
To call them sounds wasn’t quite accurate; they were more like thoughts and brainwaves.
He didn’t hear any actual sound, but he understood her meaning.
Schiller replied in kind with his thoughts, “…Who are you?…”
Atop the Himalayas, the Ancient One sat cross-legged on a futon, deep in meditation.
Suddenly, she frowned as a voice replied to her.
The Ancient One often sought answers from the noisy cosmic whispers through meditation.
The various echoes in the universe represented different mysterious omens in her mind; she could divine, cleanse her mind, and find peace by listening to these cosmic voices.
But these cosmic whispers had always been chaotic noise, never containing any logical notes.
The Ancient One firmly believed that any conscious spiritual entity wandering the universe was a potential future cosmic demon.
Thus, she immediately raised her vigilance.
She focused her mind fully.
Her consciousness was incredibly powerful, capable of scanning all nearby universes in an instant, but after scanning the area, she found nothing unusual.
The voice responding to her seemed to appear out of thin air, with no origin and no energy anomalies.
Schiller knew the Ancient One was extremely powerful.
If comic book settings were integrated, she would be several times stronger than in the movies.
Moreover, the current Sorcerer Supreme was not the young Batman; she was at the peak of her power.
Yet, Schiller still decided to seek fortune in danger.
He said, “…Answer me…
Answer me…”
stay away from Earth!” The Ancient One’s reply was firm and unyielding.
“…Guardian of Earth?
…Answer me…”
“I am Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme…
Who are you?
Why are you emitting cosmic signals?”
“I come from Carcosa…
Lake Hali in the Aldebaran star system…
The black sun already hangs high in the sky…”
The Ancient One felt a series of incomprehensible messages coming from the other side.
She well knew how dangerous it was to connect and converse with an unidentified cosmic being, but she had to determine whether the other party posed a threat to Earth.
The other party’s messages were incredibly obscure and profound, but the Ancient One heard several recurring terms: Carcosa, Hastur, and Lake Hali.
After a round of completely disjointed, talking-past-each-other communication, the Ancient One more or less figured it out.
The other side seemed to be warning her.
She heard them repeatedly chanting a sentence: “When the stars are right, the Great Old Ones shall return…”
The Ancient One believed the entity on the other side might be named “Hastur,” living in a place called “Carcosa” where there was a “Lake Hali” shrouded in thick fog.
Meanwhile, his enemies—demon gods called the “Great Old Ones”—would return to Earth when the stars were right.
Under the Ancient One’s questioning, she learned that the entity on the other side seemed to be imprisoned, thus unable to deal with his enemies personally.
He was broadcasting signals near Earth precisely to warn its inhabitants.
But the Ancient One knew that humans and these cosmic demon gods had different life forms; ordinary humans couldn’t hear those cosmic signals at all.
If she hadn’t been meditating daily, no one would have understood what the entity was saying.
Even for the Ancient One, she couldn’t fully comprehend the brainwave signals sent by the other party.
They seemed to contain too much information—Great Old Ones, the Lord of Demons, Azathoth…
The other side seemed eager to dump all this information on her, but unfortunately, she couldn’t fully understand him.
She didn’t actually trust this unknown cosmic entity, but she couldn’t perceive its existence, nor did she feel any extra gazes upon Earth.
However, the other party’s warning attitude put pressure on her.
Where on earth did another group of demon gods spring from?
Moreover, they seemed capable of silently approaching Earth to broadcast signals.
Who could guarantee they wouldn’t affect human minds?
It had to be said that the Ancient One hadn’t been the Sorcerer Supreme for all these years for nothing; her worries were highly justified.
If this story hadn’t been made up by Schiller, anyone who crossed paths with the Cthulhu Mythos would indeed go mad.
Fortunately, this was just a story Schiller invented to fool her.
Just as the Ancient One wanted to probe further, the connection cut off.
The other party seemed to have run into some trouble.
He made no demands, didn’t offer to lend his power to anyone, and didn’t babble about ruling the universe.
This actually made the Ancient One believe him a bit more.
Demon gods rarely knew how to hide; they couldn’t suppress their madness and chaos.
If the other side were a dangerous fellow, the experienced Ancient One would have immediately traced the connection and chopped him down.
But now, the demon god on the other side seemed very gentle and rational.
Still, the Ancient One didn’t let her guard down in the slightest; this could just be a facade.
Schiller had mastered the essence of always leaving things half-said.
Before the Ancient One could ask for more details, he hung up, rubbed his hands, and prepared to copy her abilities. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
With a tap, a system notification sounded: [Magic Ability (Low-Tier) loaded.]
Schiller knew the Ancient One’s abilities would definitely be on the mystical side and related to magic.
After loading the magic ability, Schiller began testing it.
He soon discovered that this power was a mixed bag.
The benefit was that he didn’t have to follow the magic rules of the Marvel universe.
Schiller could cast magic without paying any price, and there were no side effects.
The bad news, however, was that this was indeed only a low-tier magic ability.
The things Schiller could do were: telekinesis, fire magic, and a short-distance blink.
His telekinesis range was about 10 meters, somewhat like a levitation charm.
Schiller could move objects within 10 meters at will, but only those that did not exceed his own weight.
Things like houses or cars were impossible to move.
The fire spell was also almost entirely non-offensive.
Schiller could ignite a flame in his palm, but its power was only enough to light a cigarette or burn a piece of paper or a book.
Expecting to use it to fight people was probably asking too much.
The most useful of all was undoubtedly the blink.
Schiller could appear or disappear at any spot within a range of about 20 meters, which was enough for him to dodge many dangers.
However, although casting magic required no price, it still consumed his physical and mental strength.
After blinking five or six times consecutively, Schiller would be too exhausted to stand.
More importantly, his brain would fill with noise, making it hard to concentrate—a consequence of overusing magic.
Still, compared to the heavy toll other sorcerers in Marvel had to pay to cast magic, Schiller was already extremely fortunate.
The abilities he loaded often had “Low-Tier” tagged after them, meaning they could definitely be upgraded.
However, Schiller had not yet found a way to upgrade them.
He guessed that he might need to increase his intimacy with the chat characters, help them, or save them to acquire higher-tier abilities.
Blinking consecutively at his limit allowed Schiller to leave his original spot by over a hundred meters in a very short time.
Furthermore, this ability ignored obstacles along the way, meaning he could pass through walls.
He could completely sit in his psychological clinic and instantly appear in a building two streets away.
The greatest benefit this brought to Schiller was that SHIELD agents could finally no longer pin down his trail.
SHIELD agents had, of course, tracked him to Hell’s Kitchen long ago.
But just as Schiller had anticipated, this place had too many eyes, the gangs were highly vigilant against outsiders, and SHIELD often ran into various obstacles in their operations.
For instance, when they rented the house opposite Schiller’s clinic, they were extorted for a hefty sum of money.
Ever since Schiller started using blink to go out, the SHIELD agents were left completely baffled.
They clearly hadn’t seen Schiller leave, yet after a while, he would walk back from the street.
Or they would see him go out but not see him return, only for him to reappear in the clinic later.
This completely shattered the SHIELD agents’ assumptions about Schiller’s daily routine.
But it only solidified Nick Fury’s belief that Schiller was an unpredictable, dangerous individual—especially with his increasingly close contact with Stark, which was not good news.
SHIELD’s desire to play the Stark card was written all over their faces.
Obviously, Nick Fury wanted to exploit Stark’s sense of justice to make him work for SHIELD.
And SHIELD agents weren’t the only ones experiencing strange things.
Schiller also noticed strange occurrences around his clinic over the past few days.
It wasn’t until the cake he kept in the fridge went missing by another four pounds that Schiller confirmed his clinic had definitely been broken into.