Chapter 106
The game was afoot. Fueled by NZT and the [Avatar of Mana] status, my mind operated at a terrifying speed. I didn't consciously process the spell. I simply... willed it. Spontaneous Creation answered immediately.
Intent: "I must see and hear without being seen. Erase my presence."
Bolstered by my recently maxed-out 'Blind Spot' protocol, this directive was guaranteed to succeed. I detached a minuscule, ethereal shard of my consciousness, wrapping it in pure mana.
I infused this particle with a second Will: 'Become nothing. Be the shadow of a thought.'
I didn't cast a spell. I merely... exhaled. No breath left my lips, only a barely perceptible, flickering point. It held no physical form. Against my subdued radiance, it resembled... an 'anti-spark.' The point sank into the magical layer of reality, the Astral Plane, instantly bypassing all barriers to manifest at the target. Or rather, at several targets simultaneously.
Because the 'point' possessed neither physical substance nor a distinct energy signature, detecting it was next to impossible. It simply... observed.
A new, stable channel of perception opened in my mind. Five men. Two Asian bodyguards. And two faces that were painfully familiar. Daniel Whitehall and Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. This 'brave' company sat in a spacious yet oppressive room with a traditional Japanese aesthetic. Tatami mats covered the floor, a small tea table sat in the center, and shoji screens served as walls. Apart from their clothes, the room held no modern amenities. They were discussing the next steps to restore Hydra. But Hydra would not rise again, though they did not know that yet.
I didn't bother deciphering their words. Dead men need no confessions. I "scanned" the room more carefully, pausing on the unfamiliar fifth face. A half-Asian man sat at the head of the table. He looked striking. His skin was pale gray, like light stone, and he wore a long white kimono with red patterns, his long black hair framing his face. That was Tomi Shishido, also known as Gorgon. He seemed bored. Propped lazily on his knuckles, he watched with obvious contempt as the two "great" leaders of Western Hydra engaged in petty squabbles. In his eyes, their current status ranked barely higher than his personal bodyguards.
Dangerous. Undoubtedly so. He was a Jonin of the Hand, one of the current heads of Hydra, unlike these two fugitives, and leader of his own suicide cult. And all before he turned thirty. Shishido had to die. Immediately. If he allied with the remnants of Western Hydra, the fallout would be terrifying to contemplate.
Ideally, I would uproot this rot entirely, track down leads, find new connections, and continue Hydra's total eradication. However, the duration of [Avatar of Mana] was severely limited. Therefore...
I severed the perception channel. Time to act. Spontaneous Creation again.
Intent: "The target must die." Will: "A projectile that cannot be blocked. A projectile that bypasses any defense, be it physical, magical, or technological. A projectile that ends life."
I didn't ask magic for fire or ice. I asked for the End. No elements. Just the pure concept. I felt the Bottomless Well inside me respond, concentrating my Will not on the projectile itself but on the effect.
I "put on" a mask made of mana to conceal my face. The mana intertwined, forming a smooth, blank, faceless disguise. Then I simply opened the familiar portal directly into the center of their room.
The five suicide bombers didn't even have time to stand up. They just stared at the glowing tear in reality, where a figure in simple clothes and a faceless mask stared back at them. I didn't enter. I just stood in my laboratory and, before they could react, pointed my hand at them. Five... not shadows escaped my fingers. Five absences. Five thin, pitch-black cracks in the light itself rushed silently toward their targets.
Embodied Intent worked. These projectiles couldn't be blocked. They weren't physical objects. They were a command from magic itself to 'Cease to Exist,' directed straight at the target's soul. The projectiles were homing. Gorgon... he tried. My Absolute Sense caught his flinch, felt his energy, Mutation and Chi surge, but... too slow.
In a fraction of a second, five healthy, strong men... simply froze. The light in their eyes didn't just go out. It was extinguished. Their bodies, no longer held up by their spirits, collapsed onto the tatami like empty sacks.
I exhaled in relief. Five. Five targets, including three 'bosses,' eliminated in an instant. Everything had gone even more smoothly than I'd planned. But it was too early to relax.
I stepped through the portal into the room, which now lay in absolute dead silence. I immediately activated Absolute Sense and my magical vision. In that same split second, I gasped and stumbled backward into my laboratory in a panic.
The portal slammed shut. I stood there, breathing heavily as I tried to process what I'd seen. Someone else had been in that room.
No, it was a girl. She'd been there when I killed them. She'd been there when I inspected the aftermath. I hadn't noticed her at all. She'd just stood in the corner, invisible to everything. Only an active Absolute Sense had allowed me to spot her.
She looked about twenty. Pale and slight of build, she had long, dark, slightly messy hair. She wore a dark gothic outfit that would have suited a cosplayer better than someone like her.
The girl turned her head slowly, almost in slow motion, the moment I activated my vision. She looked me straight in the eyes. I noted in that instant that she had perfectly black, bottomless irises lacking any gradient. Her face held no emotion at all.
I blinked, realizing I was already back in the lab. Understanding what had happened, I opened a portal to the room with the bodies again and activated Absolute Sense. Naturally, she was no longer inside. That scared me even more.
What the hell just happened? What kind of parade is this? I don't know, a parade of Chthonic planets orbiting me, apparently... First Anansi, then Dormammu, and now this...
Now that my heart, which had been pounding with panic even under NZT, had calmed down, I began to analyze. I wasn't in danger. She didn't radiate hostility. She simply was. It was Death. The living, physical, or perhaps astral embodiment of that concept. This was the very concept I had used so frivolously in my arrogance. I didn't just kill. I ordered "Cease to Exist." I had tugged on the very threads their souls hung upon. Naturally, she had to come see who was issuing conceptual orders around here. Bitch. It was the same mistake I'd made with the boots. Arrogance.
But how... how is anyone supposed to live in this world when you can't take a single step without tripping over some multiversal, conceptual, divine, ancient, broken Chthonic being?
Okay, again. Inhale. Exhale. Memories of Dormammu are too fresh in my mind. But Dormammu is an asshole. An aggressor. A predator who wanted my system. And Death... it's just Death. I don't have any meta-knowledge about this, but it seems concepts don't usually meddle in the fates of simple mortals. It's simple mortals who try to meddle in their fates and... I don't know, marry them. Well, or whatever Thanos wants to do with this Lady if he actually wins her love? Although calling Thanos a simple mortal is hard to swallow.
I got carried away with my thoughts. The gothic girl, Death, had left. Very good-looking, by the way, even if a bit apathetic, in my humble opinion. She only watched. That meant I could get back to work. Take the bodies. After checking them for nasty surprises first, of course.
Spontaneous Creation. Intent: Analyze. Learn everything about this. Composition, properties, weaknesses.
Looking at the bodies, I saw more than just corpses now. Absolute Sense showed me their residual aura, their fading "source code." I began to "read" Gorgon like an open book. Information flooded my brain as pure knowledge. Gorgon was only twenty-six years old. A mutant. Chi mastery level... borderline Master. In his body... oh, yes. Nanobots wouldn't detect this immediately. Several poison needles in the knuckles. A couple of retractable blades in the forearms. And... a titanium garrote wire wrapped around one of the major veins in a manner I couldn't quite comprehend, ready for immediate use. Vile, but effective.
Fortunately, the spell hadn't found any explosive surprises. No implanted bombs. No dead man's switches that might trigger from a random sneeze. These people loved life. They were predators, not suicide bombers. They wanted to live forever. That worked against them this time. Moving on.
One by one, I dragged the corpses out of the Japanese room, unceremoniously dumping them in the corner of the lab. Five sacks of meat. Five eliminated problems. Gorgon, Strucker, Whitehall... Fury would take care of their disposal.
Thinking about my next steps, I couldn't help but consider concepts like the Noosphere, the Akashic Chronicles, the Informational Shell of the Earth, or call it what you will. The point was that through interaction with this very Noosphere, I could theoretically obtain any knowledge. So naturally, I tried. A brief intent to acquire information about the Magic of this world and make that knowledge part of myself. Naive? Of course it couldn't be that simple.
A blinding pain tore through my head, and for a moment I lost all sense of direction. Magic... The knowledge wasn't just extensive. It was vast. Even if I operated with extreme caution, even by providing clearer criteria for spells and establishing so-called filters, structuring this volume of information would still take time. Months. Possibly years. Even if I ignored the risk to my brain, hoping Extremis regeneration and some healing spell would mitigate the damage, I wouldn't accelerate the process significantly. No. It was too early to interact with the Noosphere. I needed a more sensible approach to this issue. I needed to create some kind of information-conducting artifact, or something similar...
Too bad I'd only received pure magic, without any ability to craft artifacts. I'd have to find another path to personal power. Unfortunately, this wasn't Magic. Attracting the attention of chthonic beings like the Ancient One or Merlin wasn't part of my plans.
I "cast" the Observation spell once more, utilizing that specific [Anti-Spark]. This time, my target was Davos. I had special plans for him. Plans that required a delicate touch.
There were two reasons for this. First, Davos presented a problem. After Kingpin's death, the destruction of the base, and the fracturing of his metahuman forces, Davos no longer sat on an established throne. He was forced to rebuild his criminal empire from scratch, a situation that infuriated him. Davos was a Master of Chi. His domain was direct combat; the rule of the strong. Instead, he found himself bogged down in intrigue, negotiations, and the constant search for opportunities to consolidate his position. According to Rubedo's analysis, which I had no reason to doubt, Davos currently couldn't even find time for proper training. This pissed him off. After all, emotions were the first step toward losing control.
The second (and primary) reason was different. I didn't plan to kill Davos. Not immediately; that would be wasteful. He wasn't just an enemy. He was a walking database. He possessed knowledge I couldn't obtain from makeshift sources like "Minecraft" or "Improvisation." This was knowledge of Chi. More importantly, it was ongoing knowledge.
The [Anti-spark] from Observation located him. He was in a luxurious office in one of Manhattan's penthouses. Davos sat there, looking somber as he read a report. The time had come.
Spontaneous Creation. Intent: "The target must sleep. Immediately. Deeply." Will: Consciousness, body, and spirit transfer into full, unshakable stasis. Bypass all defenses, including the internal barrier of Chi!
I opened a portal directly behind him. Davos sensed it immediately. He was not as simple as those five others. He started to turn, his hand already flaring with orange light. I stepped through.
"Who?!" he barked.
I didn't answer. I simply activated the spell, not in the form of a projectile this time. The radiance of my [Avatar of Mana] shifted color for a moment. It ceased to be merely light. It became a deep, velvet-purple bordering on black, the color of deep space and absolute peace. I'll call it the 'Stasis Field.' It was a field that worked too well. Davos froze, his burning fist stopping half an inch from my face. His eyes rolled back instantly and his head slumped onto the table, plunging him into a sleep that no external stimulus could interrupt.
First step done. Now for the second. The most important one. The success of this venture would decide... everything. Inhale. Exhale. Concentration.
Spontaneous Creation. Intent: "I Want to Know Everything Davos Knows About CHI!" I immediately refined the request, making it surgically precise: "Not personal memories. Not his childhood traumas. Only structured knowledge: theory, levels, techniques, philosophy, training methods. Copy. Integrate into my mind."
I grabbed him by the collar of his kimono, slung the unconscious body over my shoulder, and returned through the portal to the laboratory. The passage slammed shut behind me. I threw him onto the floor next to the cooling bodies of the Hydra rats. Then I began what was possibly the most complex spell I'd ever attempted.
I pressed my palm to Davos's forehead. My hand flared, not purple like sleep or black like death, but with a sterile, soulless white radiance. Cold and analytical. Fitting for the spell, I supposed. Then, using my [Avatar of Mana] mind as a supercharged arcane search engine, I penetrated his thoughts and initiated the hack.
I ignored his fears, his anger at Danny Rand, his contempt for the Kingpin. I searched for only one thing. My mana, acting like a virus, located all data related to the concept of 'Chi'. From basic meditations for opening the 'gates' to the most complex, forbidden techniques of the Steel Serpent. Decades of practice. The philosophy and secrets of K'un-Lun, which they never entrusted to outsiders.
All of it, filtered through Davos's envious but undeniably brilliant mind, began copying itself into mine.
I lost all sense of time, immersed in a pure stream of data. But when I opened my eyes and lifted my hand... I knew. I knew everything about Chi that he knew. Rubedo reported that approximately three hours had passed.
"Hmm, this took much more time than I planned," I muttered into the void.
I stared down at Davos's unconscious body. He was merely a burden now. Spontaneous Creation. Intent: "Annihilate. Erase. Leave no trace, physical, magical, or astral."
The body of the Grandmaster of Chi flared with dim gray light and crumbled into sterile ash, immediately scattered by magic.
No one could know I was involved here. It would be too... unpleasant. Besides, he was gone. In a world of intrigue and secret wars, these things happened. "Why complain," as they say.
"But the knowledge gained more than pays for the time spent."
Chi. I browsed through the stolen knowledge, and my brain catalogued it with frightening speed. It was the fundamental life force of the universe. Energy flowing through all living things. The Energy of Life itself.
And that was the crucial difference. The magic I currently wielded was an external tool. It warped reality according to the will of the mage. It was a lever with which I broke the world to suit myself. But Chi... Chi was harmonization with reality. It was an internal process. The strengthening of one's own essence to a supernatural level. One was a cheat, temporary. The other was painstaking labor. Now I possessed knowledge. I knew how to become the perfect super-soldier using only Chi.
Faster than Captain America. Stronger. More durable by orders of magnitude. A Peak Master of Chi could heal almost any wound, cleanse the body of poisons, and even halt aging. Many masters in K'un-Lun lived for centuries. This was exactly the kind of personal enhancement I'd been considering. Something that couldn't be turned off. Something that didn't depend on the System, which could betray me at any moment. And then there was Destruction. Concentrated Chi could destroy even adamantium, as a conceptual strike of pure spiritual energy. That meant one more cheater in this world. Not all perks were for Peter.
I won't even mention that Higher Masters could fight on the astral plane, see souls, and communicate with cosmic chthonic beings. They might not be equals to such entities, but they certainly didn't approach them as pathetic weaklings.
Davos was obsessed with this. Becoming a Higher Master, a "Living Avatar," was his goal. Specifically, he wanted to become the champion of Shao-Lao the Dragon. But Danny Rand, an upstart in Davos's eyes, beat him to it. Davos was not happy about this. He'd spent all that time building his strength for one strike. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. His fate was to cross my path.
In general, there were five levels of Chi mastery:
1. Student (Seeker): One just learning to feel Chi and master basic meditations and katas.
2. Adept (Awakened): Learns to direct Chi, enhance strikes, and increase speed.
3. Master (Enlightened): Can project Chi outward, use light healing touches, and create energy shields. Davos had been a Master before receiving the title of Steel Serpent.
4. Grandmaster: The body becomes one with Chi. A unique ability manifests. In Danny's case, it is the Iron Fist, while in Davos's case, it is the Steel Serpent Grip.
5. Higher Master (Living Avatar): Full merger with Chi, access to infinite ancient energy from one of the Higher Entities.
And yes, I had also received knowledge of Davos's technique: the "Steel Serpent Grip." It was a corrupt technique from K'un-Lun that allowed the user to absorb an enemy's Chi, draining their life force to add to their own. Unfortunately, mastering something like this would require a great deal of time.
That was the key problem. Mastering Chi took time. Decades of structured, systematic effort. I had received the knowledge, and it was priceless, but knowing how to play the piano was entirely different from being able to play. My body was empty. I lacked the basic tools required to interact with Chi. I had no developed spiritual body. My meridians were unopened. In essence, I possessed no Chi at all. I was like someone who had downloaded a hundred terabytes of bodybuilding instructions onto a flash drive but possessed neither muscles nor a gym.
However, I still had about nineteen hours remaining in "Avatar of Mana" mode. I could not create Chi from mana. They were different concepts. Magic was Will, whereas Chi was Life. Nevertheless, I could use Archmage-level Spontaneous Creation to accomplish in the remaining hours what took the monks of K'un-Lun decades to achieve.
Not training. But... "Forced Terraforming of the Body." I could use magic to burn meridians into my body. I could force my body to awaken. I could initialize my internal source of Chi, using Mana as... a surgical instrument. It was dangerous. It was insane. And it was my only chance to make the cheat that was Chi permanent.
But before that... I needed to settle my earthly affairs. Show myself to Fury. I couldn't afford to go into a "magic coma" for terraforming while the world outside was turned on its ear.
[Anti-spark] Observation. Fury. SHIELD base office. He is drinking coffee and looks like he hasn't slept in a week. Why am I not surprised?
I opened a portal right into his office. First, I threw the five Hydra bodies inside. They slapped onto the floor in front of his desk. I entered after them.
Time was limited. I had to use it wisely.
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