As I took my second chance, various thoughts began to run through my head. The truth was that of all the different worlds I could inhabit, the Marvel universe was undoubtedly one of the most dangerous.
DrDoom creating Tsunamis to completely sweep away New York City, Thanos snapping his fingers and eliminating half the life on the planet, Zombie Apocalypses and various robot apocalypses. No matter which timeline I looked at, the future in that world was extremely dangerous.
To make matters worse, I still had no idea what the world I was in was like. In the comics, the Ancient One was a man; here, he's a nice Caucasian woman with no hair on her head.
Since the Ancient One is a woman, everything indicates that I'm in the MCU. Although there are some things that prove me wrong, for example, one of my roommates is a mutant.
"Dante? Have you finished sweeping?" One of my superiors asked, and I nodded. Still a little distracted by my thoughts.
Then I ran along with the rest of the group to put the brooms away. The cleaning schedule was over, now it was time to prepare for the physical training. The people who lived in the monastery were of very different ages, some looked hundreds of years old while in other cases it was simply impossible to decipher a person's age.
"Did you manage to cast that spell in training?" I said, approaching Kyllian.
Kyllian was blond, had slightly messy hair and wore a strange mullet. Although he was a bit stressed by the sanctuary's tight schedule, he was a nice guy who was interested in sports. More importantly, he was from New York, a city that was too important for Marvel events.
Crossing a portal, we walked towards a large open courtyard in the middle of the snow. Thanks to Kamar-Taj's protection system, the temperature wasn't too uncomfortable for outdoor classes. As the students approached, a portal appeared revealing a new teacher for our class.
Through the golden sparks, a black man of about 5'10" with several skeletal marks around his body approached us. He had two skulls around his waist and a rather imposing wooden staff.
When the whole class approached the mats, we waited for the lesson to begin. As I watched that man attentively, a strange doubt began to creep into my mind: the truth was that I didn't know much about Dr. Strange. I hadn't read much about the Marvel magical universe, so recognizing secondary characters was quite difficult.
As I scratched my head and squinted to try to recognize that man, a message appeared in front of my eyes.
[Doctor Voodoo / Jericho Drumm ]
| Human Houngan, powerful practitioner of Voodoo
That message appeared in front of my eyes, then I looked up the word Voodoo. Just showing a little doubt was enough to reveal more about that information.
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[Glossary - Voodoo ]
| A religion worshiping deities called the Loa|
[Glossary - Vodū / Loa ]
| The Vodū are an extradimensional humanoid species originating from Orun, a compact dimension neighboring Earth. A portal connecting Orun to Earth exists in Africa. Known as the West African Gods, the Vodū have been venerated by humans in Africa for millennia, with their worship dating back as early as 10,000 BC or 2900 BC.
That was both surprising and liberating, knowing that I possessed some form of Cheat made me feel a little more reassured about my future. 'These messages look like LitRPG systems... As far as I know, only Gwen Pool possessed this kind of ability in the Marvel universe'
...
The lesson with Jericho Drumm was much better than I could have imagined. His explanations of how the magic of the Voodoos was related to the energy of spirits made me understand the different forms of magic a little better. While the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj used conjuration, other sorcerers drew energy from hatred and even from contact with spirits and gods.
When the lesson was over, a message popped up in front of my eyes.
[Your intellect has increased by two levels.]
|Status:
| INT +2
|MAGIC +3
|MANA +322 |
Among my attributes, the only one that seemed different was one called mana, in the world of Marvel, the use of magic was divided into a few types.Personal energies, Universal energies and Dimensional energies.
'My mana probably fits in with the connection with the world of the dead....' I thought, still a little confused as to what the three hundred and twenty-two mana points meant.
Once again, I was walking through Kamar-Taj with Kyllian. When we reached the room where the next lesson was to be held, I was startled by what I could see on the other side of one of the wooden bars that adorned the walls. Shielding my face, I put my eyes between the holes and was faced with a frightening sight.
"Strange..."
A man with curly hair and an extremely messy beard had just pointed his finger at the Ancient One. She then struck him with the same attack she had used on me. The energy of that blow was so intense that even I felt his soul flowing out of his body.
Taking a step back, I felt a small shiver. It was as if I could understand the pain he was feeling, like when a man gets kicked in the sack and you feel a chill. "Well... this is a canonical event," I said to myself, as I made my way along with the other students.
'It's not good to get too close to these events... I'd love to ally myself with Dr. Strange, but for now I just want to accomplish my goal'
One of the things I learned from having terminal cancer, apart from the whole memento mori thing and being prepared for tomorrow, was that humans need constant goals in order to move forward.
As Seneca said, "For a ship without a course, no wind is favorable."
For the time being, there was only one thing that I wanted more than anything else, a desire that I waited more than three years to realize. Now that I no longer eat through a tube stuck down my throat, all I want to do is munch on a pizza.