“Anger, help me bring out the magical items.”
After calling to the golden retriever, Kez left his bedroom and headed for the storeroom where Balthazar had kept much of his collection.
The moment he opened the door, shelves packed with strange objects came into view.
Kez’s attention first settled on an enchanted carpet sitting on a rack near the entrance.
It wasn’t the sort of flying carpet found in fairy tales.
This one was a trap known as a Quicksand Carpet.
Once spread across the floor, anyone who stepped onto it would cause the surface to liquefy into magical quicksand, dragging the victim inside until they disappeared completely.
Kez picked it up.
A system notification immediately sounded.
[Detected: Quicksand Carpet. Convert into energy?]
“Convert it.”
[Conversion successful. Energy acquired: 50.]
Kez frowned slightly.
Only fifty points.
He had already checked the crafting cost of a Savant potion, and a single Sequence 9 potion required a full three hundred points of energy.
In other words, producing one Sequence 9 potion would cost the equivalent of six Quicksand Carpets.
At that rate, the magical items Balthazar had left behind wouldn’t last very long if Kez kept feeding them into the system.
Still, it wasn’t exactly a bad trade.
Once that energy was converted into a potion and consumed, the resulting Beyonder Characteristic would remain in existence.
The power itself wouldn’t simply disappear.
A moment later, Anger came trotting over with something clamped carefully between his jaws.
Kez looked down.
It was the Grimhold.
The magical prison resembled a Russian nesting doll.
Kez immediately took it from Anger and returned it to the deepest shelf in the storeroom.
“Not this one. We can’t mess around with it yet.”
He gave the dog a serious look.
“Balthazar’s lover is sealed inside.”
Anger nodded as though he understood, then turned around and plunged back into the storeroom to drag out something else.
The Grimhold was far from an ordinary magical prison.
It contained numerous layers, each one imprisoning a different sorcerer.
At the very center were Balthazar’s beloved Veronica and Morgana le Fay, while the outer layers held Morgana’s various followers and servants.
Their magical focuses had been sealed alongside them.
Unlike the standardized wands associated with more traditional schools of magic, the magical focuses used by Merlin’s lineage could take almost any form.
Kez himself wielded the Dragon Ring, inherited from Merlin’s legacy.
Balthazar also used a ring.
Maxim Horvath’s focus took the form of an ornate staff, while others had used belts, bracelets, and similarly unconventional objects.
Those magical focuses could also be converted into energy for potion production.
A more interesting question was whether a dead sorcerer’s body would count as a source of mystical energy.
Merlin’s branch of sorcery wasn’t like Kamar-Taj’s mystic arts, which drew power from external dimensions.
Its practitioners possessed magical power through their own bloodlines and personal training.
Kez had no particular moral objection to converting the remains of dead sorcerers into energy.
Beyonder Characteristics weren’t fundamentally all that different from consuming part of another person anyway.
After a considerable amount of sorting, Kez converted every magical item that was either unimportant or of little practical use.
Twenty magical objects disappeared in total.
[Energy acquired: 1,000.]
Enough for three Sequence 9 potions, with one hundred points left over.
That was sufficient for now.
Kez would eventually need to test what other supernatural substances and artifacts in this universe could be converted into energy, but there was no reason to rush.
He could experiment gradually.
There was something more immediate he needed to settle.
His three-line honorific name.
Kez considered his circumstances for a while.
The first line was easy.
The Fool that doesn’t belong to this era.
The line fit him perfectly.
He truly didn’t belong to this era—or even this universe—and within the Marvel universe, the description pointed uniquely toward him.
Kez nodded, then glanced at the Dragon Ring on his finger.
The second line came just as naturally.
The Prime Merlinean who commands magic.
Whoever was chosen by the Dragon Ring would inherit Merlin’s position and become the Prime Merlinean.
That description likewise pointed directly toward Kez.
For the third line, he settled on:
The mysterious sovereign of Beyonder Characteristics.
All twenty-two Pathways and the Beyonder Characteristics scattered across this world had arrived because of him, while the title also indirectly pointed toward the system behind him.
All three lines were capable of establishing a connection with Kez himself.
With the honorific name decided, he moved on to the materials required for prayer rituals.
Silver-white candles would represent hope, will, and faith, and they were easy enough to obtain.
Yellow and black flowers would correspond to the Fool’s symbolic colors.
As for an idol or divine image, Kez decided against it for the time being.
His actual level was still nothing more than a sorcerer’s apprentice combined with a Sequence 9 Seer.
Creating a grand statue of himself as though he were already a genuine deity felt more than a little premature.
Then there were offerings.
Kez personally liked whiskey, though nothing particularly fancy like Thunder Bourbon.
Alcohol didn’t feel quite right as the standard ritual offering, however.
His gaze drifted toward Anger, who was lying on the floor nearby.
A bunch of grapes might work nicely.
More importantly, once the ritual was properly established, it could serve as a channel for transferring objects.
Other people could offer Beyonder Characteristics to him through the ritual, while Kez could send potions back as bestowed rewards.
With the broad framework settled, Kez began studying the mysticism knowledge he had just received.
The Sequence 8 Clown Beyonder Characteristic could wait until after tomorrow’s Tarot Club gathering.
…
Elsewhere, Tony Stark returned to his mansion and immediately headed underground to his workshop.
“JARVIS, you there?”
Tony instinctively reached toward the spot where he usually kept the Savant Beyonder Characteristic, only for his fingers to close around empty air.
He paused.
“Huh. Guess I got more used to carrying that thing than I thought.”
Ever since finding the Characteristic in Afghanistan, Tony had rarely let it out of his hand.
Whenever he held it, his thoughts seemed quicker and sharper, and technical knowledge related to machinery came to him almost as effortlessly as accessing information through JARVIS.
Tony rubbed his palms together.
“Create a new project file.”
“Call it Mark II.”
The unfinished armor he’d designed in the cave would be designated Mark I.
It had never been completed, but it was still the origin of the concept—the first expression of the idea that had eventually led him here.
JARVIS responded, “Would you like the project uploaded to Stark Industries’ central database, sir?”
Tony shook his head.
“Honestly? I don’t know who I can trust right now.”
His expression turned colder.
“I definitely don’t remember authorizing the company to sell weapons to terrorists.”
“Keep everything on my private servers unless I specifically tell you otherwise.”
“So this is to be treated as a classified personal project, sir?”
Tony manipulated the holographic projection of the Mark I design as he answered.
“I don’t want this technology ending up in the wrong hands.”
He studied the armor.
“Maybe if I keep it under my control, I can actually do some good with it.”
Then he remembered something else.
“Also, remind me tomorrow at twelve-thirty.”
“I’ve got a… mysterious meeting to attend.”
“Certainly, sir.”
…
Meanwhile, over the course of the week since Wanda obtained the Mystery Pryer Beyonder Characteristic, she had begun acquiring fragments of genuine mysticism knowledge.
Whenever she held the blood-streaked black-and-white eyeball in her hand, strange pieces of information surfaced spontaneously in her mind.
The knowledge was fragmented and incomplete, with entire sections missing or distorted.
Whenever Wanda tried to examine those fragments too closely or force herself to understand them, a sharp ache began spreading through her head.
Yet she couldn’t bring herself to let go.
If anything, the knowledge fascinated her more with every passing day.
Pietro looked at his sister’s bloodshot eyes and exhausted face with growing concern.
“Wanda, Tony Stark survived. You don’t need to stress yourself out this badly over it.”
He tried to reassure her.
“His weapons company stopped selling weapons. They’re probably going bankrupt sooner or later anyway.”
“We’ll still get our chance to settle things with him.”
Wanda shook her head.
“This isn’t about Tony.”
She rubbed her tired eyes.
“Don’t worry. I just need some proper sleep.”
Then she looked at Pietro seriously.
“And don’t disturb me tomorrow.”