Abel carefully positioned the processed Pegasus feather inside the wand body. The feather seemed to stretch out slightly, its fibers connecting perfectly with the ancient magical runes carved into the core channel.
Once the feather was completely seated, the circuits between the wand core and the wand body connected completely. He sealed everything with the final stopper, locking the entire wand body shut.
Abel took a deep breath, picked up the dark brown wand, and waved it gently.
In that instant, he felt his magic power flow into the wand like an extension of his own arm. No resistance, no stuttering, no problems.
It worked.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
His wrist moved, the wand trembled at high speed, and suddenly everything in the room was flying. Books, papers, his pencils—all of it rotating around him as he directed the wand, completely under control.
But the moment the spell took hold, his expression shifted from excited to... disappointed.
He waved the wand slightly and brought everything back down to their original positions, one by one.
Abel stared at the wand in his hand, caught between excitement and frustration.
The wand worked. That was huge. He finally had actual magical amplification, actual defensive capability. Not just weak wandless magic anymore. That was genuinely important.
But it also wasn't... right.
Back in his previous life, his wand had been thirteen and a half inches of century-old oak. The core was dragon heartstring. That wand had been perfect for him—it embodied durability, power, victory, authority. It worked for any kind of magic, white or black, and it was meant for combat. It fit him like his own hand.
This wand was the same length, but the body was pine from maybe a century back, and the core was Pegasus feather. The whole thing screamed "white magic"—it was all about life, vitality, recovery, healing. It worked, sure, but it actively reduced its effectiveness with darker magic. And the materials themselves? Barely qualified. Not great for the wood at least.
In simple terms: functional, but completely unsuitable for him.
Though honestly? Wandless magic was so much weaker that even a mediocre wand was a massive upgrade.
He exhaled and leaned back in his chair.
Okay. This was a good start. He could keep looking for better materials—make another wand eventually. The thing was, most of the materials from his previous life didn't exist here. But this world had stuff that would have been completely impossible before. Asgardian golden apples. Odin's ravens and eight-legged horses. Interdimensional artifacts. If he could get his hands on materials like that, the wands he could make would blow his old oak wand out of the water.
Which meant he needed to make deals. Build connections. Nothing was free, and if he wanted better materials, he'd have to trade for them.
And that was the thing that stuck with him. He'd thought maybe in this life he could just... do what he wanted. No more struggling. But nope—turns out deals and transactions were still necessary. Because without real power, without real capability, what happened if something went wrong? What if the person who supposedly erased him tried again?
Movies made everything look simple. But he'd already learned that movies were just movies. Real life was messier, harder, more complicated. He couldn't just rely on what he'd seen in films to make decisions. That was a good way to get killed.
After the excitement and frustration wore off, Abel packed up all his tools and materials, then sat down at his desk.
He had to write out the introduction to his entire magical system.
It wasn't until the next morning that he'd finished even a rough draft. And honestly, he'd barely scratched the surface. The magic system he'd learned in his previous life was huge—it had developed over centuries. There was no way to compress that into something simple.
And that was just the basic framework. When you got into specifics, things got complicated fast.
Take potions, for example. All the potions he'd learned in his previous life basically required materials that didn't exist in the MCU world. Sure, there were potion-making materials here, but they were mostly completely different things. So he'd have to figure out substitutes, change the formulas, basically reinvent everything.
Over six years, he'd managed to successfully create exactly two potions that actually worked in this world: a trauma healing potion and a blood restoration potion. And even those weren't great—they were way weaker than the original versions, barely usable.
To actually develop a proper potion system for this world? That would take enormous amounts of time, energy, and money. He'd need to run experiments constantly, try different combinations, test everything. It would be expensive.
Actually, now that he thought about it... maybe he could open some kind of research facility. Get investors to fund the research, and then sell the successful potions as products. That could work. It was just a rough idea, but the basic plan was solid.
So now he had two major problems on his plate:
Get a better, more suitable wand.
Develop a potion system that actually worked in this world.
Both of those things were going to take serious work.
The next morning was late. After his usual run, Abel showered quickly, ate breakfast, and headed out with his schoolbag.
He'd told Theresa last night that his bicycle had been stolen (which was technically true, in a way). So this morning he took the bus to school, which actually got him there earlier than usual.
"Abel, morning! You hear the news?" Sean was practically vibrating with excitement when Abel found him. "Tony Stark—you know, from Stark Industries?—he's disappeared. People on the internet are saying he might've been captured by terrorists or something. Can you imagine? Like, even billionaires aren't safe? That's insane."
Abel felt something click in his memory. He'd heard about Tony Stark twice before, but hadn't really thought much about it. But now...
Oh.
Tony Stark disappearing meant he was being kidnapped. Tony Stark getting kidnapped meant Afghanistan. Afghanistan meant the Mark I armor. Mark I armor meant Iron Man was coming to the MCU.
Huh.
"Yeah, that's pretty wild," Abel said, because what else could he say?
But his mind was already spinning through the implications.
If Iron Man was coming, that meant the whole superhero situation was accelerating. The Avengers Initiative stuff would start moving. S.H.I.E.L.D would be getting more active. Everything was about to get a lot more complicated.
New York was going to become increasingly dangerous.
And according to his vague knowledge of the timeline, the real crisis—the big one, the thing that actually mattered—would come in roughly ten years. Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. Which meant he had maybe a decade to prepare.
One decade to become powerful enough to actually handle a major crisis. Not just survive it, but potentially stop it. To prevent everything from going completely wrong.
Which was... a lot of pressure.
The key was power. He needed real magical strength, real capability, enough resources to actually make a difference. Otherwise, when that crisis came, he'd just be another person swept up in the chaos.
That was the thought that kept him focused as the school day dragged on. He had work to do.
END CHAPTER 12