Chapter 312: The Ancient One's Pitch Is Big, and It Smells Good
Strange stood between the Ancient One and Ethan, his expression a mask of pure refusal and exasperation. He let out a long sigh, looking straight at the Ancient One. "Honestly, I really don't want to be Sorcerer Supreme. There's no need for this at all. You're clearly still in great shape, Master — you've got another thousand years in you, easy."
Strange genuinely, wholeheartedly did not want this. To outsiders, the title of Sorcerer Supreme carried enormous prestige — but as far as Strange was concerned, it was a thankless, exhausting job, plain and simple.
Other people might not know exactly what the job entailed. Strange, though? He knew all too well.
And a title without the strength to back it up was just an empty name — this universe, after all, could technically hold two Sorcerer Supremes at once.
The Sorcerer Supreme's job description came down to defending against invasions from countless demon dimensions, and keeping Earth safe around the clock. That kind of responsibility was, frankly, terrifying.
Strange genuinely did not want any part of it.
But neither the Ancient One nor Ethan gave much weight to Strange's actual feelings on the matter — or rather, they didn't feel they needed to.
As far as Ethan and the Ancient One were both concerned, Strange becoming Sorcerer Supreme eventually was inevitable. This was purely a matter of timing.
Ethan, for his part, was privately turning over a different question — why the Ancient One had suddenly decided to hand the title off to Strange this early. Was her health genuinely failing, some kind of preemptive move before her own death? Or was there something else going on?
Maybe she'd glimpsed some alternate future and was acting on it. Ethan honestly wasn't sure either.
Still, moving up Strange's promotion wasn't a bad idea in itself. Once he officially took the mantle, he'd gain access to borrowing magical power from Vishanti and the Octessence, along with far more powerful magical equipment — the Cloak of Levitation, the Book of Vishanti — to strengthen himself further.
In the films, after all, Strange's real power spike came only after he became Sorcerer Supreme. As for the fact that, in Ethan's original world, it was Wong who ended up holding the title instead of Strange — Ethan knew perfectly well Wong had only ever been a nominal Sorcerer Supreme, mostly stuck handling administrative busywork.
The current version of Strange, honestly, wasn't much use to Ethan yet — he genuinely needed to strengthen himself. Other-universe versions of Strange had, variously, traded blows evenly with Thanos, or straight-up used the Darkhold to destroy an entire universe.
Across the whole of the Marvel multiverse, Strange had a bit of a reputation as a liability — brilliant, but extreme, with a nasty habit of casually deciding to end the world whenever things got bad enough. It was a genuine character flaw. Even this universe's own Strange had already shown signs of leaning a little too far into extremes with his hyper-cautious survivalism.
Of course, someone without that extremity wouldn't be capable of holding the Sorcerer Supreme title in the first place, let alone standing against someone like Dormammu — but that same intensity was exactly what made Strange such a wildcard, and such a recurring source of multiversal headaches.
Which was exactly why Ethan wanted him along for this trip — a chance to hear firsthand what other versions of himself had actually gone through.
And practically speaking, once Strange became Sorcerer Supreme, there was a decent chance the New York Sanctum itself might end up relocating to Hell's Kitchen — and Ethan had had his eye on recruiting Kamar-Taj's sorcerers for a good while now.
Maybe the Hell's Kitchen Community School could even add a magic class to its curriculum down the line.
For the sake of Hell's Kitchen's kids, and for Strange's own ascension — Ethan felt duty-bound to help.
"No problem, Ancient One. I'll bring Strange along with me," Ethan agreed at once.
He clapped Strange on the shoulder, eyes full of encouragement and expectation.
The look practically said: Buddy, I'm heading off to fight Thanos, and it's all for you. Least you could do is show a little gratitude for your big brother's sacrifice.
Strange stared back at him, utterly unimpressed. He knew exactly what Ethan was actually angling for.
Obviously it's Kamar-Taj's whole roster of sorcerers he's after.
Some of Strange's own hyper-caution these days, he privately admitted, actually traced back to Ethan's influence — the two of them weren't all that different, honestly. Strange worried he wasn't strong enough personally; Ethan worried about his people, his whole neighborhood. Different scale, same underlying anxiety.
Bottom line, both of them suffered from the same condition: never feeling like they had enough firepower.
Not that Strange had much choice in the matter anyway. He couldn't beat either of the two people currently staring him down, and running wasn't an option either — even if he fled all the way to the North Pole, these two would track him down eventually.
Fine. Worst case, once I actually take the title, I'll just delegate everything to my subordinates and go back to being a doctor. Nobody gets to boss around the Sorcerer Supreme, after all.
I genuinely need to get stronger, though. Ethan's clearly just leaning on his own strength to strong-arm me into this.
I'll get stronger, fast — and then I'm getting my revenge on this guy.
With that resolved in his mind, Strange let out a resigned sigh, forced a smile onto his face, and pulled Ethan into a tight hug.
Right against his ear, teeth gritted, he muttered, "Thanks so much for this." What he actually wanted, in that exact moment, was to blast Ethan point-blank with the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak.
This backstabbing friend of his hadn't just dragged him into the whole mess of Kamar-Taj in the first place — now he was saddling him with the entire responsibility of protecting Earth too.
"No trouble at all. We're practically brothers, after all."
Across from them, future-Banner watched this whole warm display of brotherly affection with his jaw hanging open. So these two are actually this close, huh. In his own universe, Strange never had anything close to a real friend — or maybe it was just that his universe's Strange was arrogant down to the bone. At best, they'd been comrades-in-arms, nothing more.
Future-Banner, though, didn't have time to sit through their whole reunion. Ethan had already agreed — all he wanted now was to grab the Stones and get back to his own world as fast as possible.
He just wanted to save the people who'd died back home. And he still had no idea how exactly these two intended to get him there.
Honestly, Banner would have preferred to just carry the Stones back himself. He wasn't fully convinced these two could actually pull off the crossing at all.
He was genuinely worried this whole exchange had just been an elaborate way of stringing him along — these three Infinity Stones meant everything to him.
The Ancient One noticed Banner's visible hesitation and turned to Ethan. "Now that everything's settled, it's time to deal with these aliens quickly and put an end to this whole farce."
"Once that's done, I'll use Mr. Bruce here to pinpoint his home universe the moment he passes back through, and send the two of you along right after. Let's not keep our guest waiting any longer."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you