American comics: Starting with Luke the Maker

Of course, there was another possibility that Master Wong didn't voice.

That was, the alternate Ancient Ones from other universes, besides being important figures at specific points in time, were likely scapegoats, stand-ins taking the fall.

The original magic of Kamar-Taj was a type of borrowing magic. The power of the spells depended entirely on the total amount and characteristics of the dimensional power borrowed. Since it was borrowing magic, there would inevitably be a repayment period.

Dimensional powers leaning towards chaos and darkness would likely want to collect everything, principal and interest, the moment you borrowed it. Dimensional powers leaning towards neutrality and order would generally extend the repayment period to the end of a mage's life. After all, the lifespans of Kamar-Taj's human mages were insignificant in the eyes of those dimensional gods; they had plenty of patience to wait.

But regardless of the dimensional power, the price of repayment was the same for the mages of Kamar-Taj, except for the differing repayment dates. Because whether it was a little or a lot, everything you had would eventually return to the dimensional god from whom you borrowed the power.

However, Ancient One's situation was different. She walked among the various dimensional gods, and besides the Vishanti, the trinity of white magic to whom Kamar-Taj was bound, she had also borrowed power from various ultra-large dimensions.

To put it bluntly, even if Ancient One did nothing, her death alone, with those complex borrowing relationships, would be a messy account that anyone would find a headache. If nothing unexpected happened, unless there was someone who could hold the line, all eligible creditors would join the fray to fight over her soul and knowledge, as well as the value she represented. Most likely, they would be willing to fight each other over it. In the end, even if they couldn't get it themselves, they wouldn't want anyone else to get it.

According to the contract between Kamar-Taj and the Vishanti, the Vishanti would not restrict the mages from borrowing the power of white magic when they needed it. But similarly, as the price for borrowing power, after the death of a mage who had borrowed power, their soul and knowledge, everything, would belong to the Vishanti. Under this contract, the Vishanti would naturally not provide life extension services.

What about Ancient One? As someone who exploited a loophole in the Vishanti's rules, borrowing the power of Dormammu and other dark dimension gods to forcibly extend her life when the Vishanti wouldn't grant her life extension according to the terms, she perfectly achieved an ultra-long standby extension. As long as I'm not dead, my soul and everything is my own. And her long life led to more and more messy debts, and more and more dimensional gods waiting for her to die.

Ancient One knew very well what she had done and what she would encounter after death. So she found herself a new backer, which was also a better path. She gained the approval and protection of a super-god, promising that if she was willing, she could follow him after death. Of course, there was a price for this, but this price was undoubtedly much smaller than other prices.

If Luke hadn't appeared, if a brand new choice, a better option than the selected path, hadn't appeared, Ancient One's greatest possibility would have been to give up everything after becoming world-weary, transfer the responsibility and contract to her successor, and follow that great god to travel the multiverse. But Luke did give her a big surprise, and allowed her to see more, and a better future.

The messy debt problems she had were indeed a super-mess, so messy that it would explode if anyone dared to dig it up. But after her life level was promoted, she had too many ways to settle the accounts.

After all, the troubles that Ancient One found overwhelming and could only suppress and let go of didn't mean that God Ancient One had no means to settle the accounts. From the fact that the two energy bank suckers, Mephisto and Dormammu, never mentioned Ancient One's debt problems, it could be seen that the three parties had a certain tacit understanding.

Anyway, the Ancient One of this universe had transcended, and even affected the Ancient Ones of other multiverses, causing phenomena such as gathering and fusion, and even reality modification.

So strictly speaking, the Ancient Ones of other universes were still Ancient One, but they were no longer the real Ancient One. They were just substitutes who hadn't embarked on the path to godhood, but possessed all the knowledge and experience she had before her death and escape. People within the universe wouldn't notice the difference, but it wasn't the same for dimensional gods with a higher dimensional perspective. They knew very well that the Ancient One that appeared after the multiverse reboot was different from the Ancient One in their memory.

But they wouldn't get to the bottom of it. Because the Ancient One that appeared after the reboot still possessed Ancient One's experiences and knowledge, as well as her debt relationship with them. And God Ancient One had already escaped easily, cleanly ashore, and even the name Ancient One could be discarded. When they collected debts, they could only go to those Ancient Ones who had debt relationships with them, not the current God of Energy Elemental Magic. Even though they knew that this person who had come ashore had also forcibly borrowed their power.

As one of Kamar-Taj's most knowledgeable scholars, Master Wong knew no less secrets than Supreme Master Stephen. He might not be as talented as Stephen, but he could understand many hidden things.

It was like the Kamar-Taj of this universe, saying that it was the most unique Kamar-Taj in the entire multiverse, even the Vishanti couldn't refute it. Because the Kamar-Taj here had already unbound from the Vishanti, and now they were bound to God Ancient One. All their debts and burdens, including the contracts automatically concluded with the gods behind the spells when practicing magic, were all erased and settled. That is to say, even if he died suddenly here at this moment, his soul would not be collected by the Vishanti, but would return to the energy dimension created by God Ancient One. And after going there, he would most likely be thrown out again by Ancient One and assigned to work honestly in the energy bank.

There were instances of this!

Ancient One didn't touch the Vishanti's base of operations in other multiverses, so even though Kamar-Taj had expanded its recruitment many times and had also taken in many foreign mages who had come to join them, the number of mages was still stretched thin. Faced with the mage needs from all sides, Kamar-Taj, which followed the formal mage training rules, could only say that the current number of mages was still a drop in the bucket. Didn't you see that Doctor Strange had to trick some versions of himself from the multiverse into joining the Doctor Strange Corps in order to free himself and reduce his business trips?

This special Strange in front of him had obviously caught the eye of Supreme Master Stephen. Otherwise, with Stephen's personality, he wouldn't waste his rare leisure time on an outsider, and even take the initiative to help him solve his troubles, and even issue a library card, asking him to receive the other party, and take him to visit and explain the Kamar-Taj library.

As Kamar-Taj's steward, Master Wong knew Stephen's every move very well. (End of this chapter)