"I am Iron Man."
The line echoed through the crowd, delivered with that sa smug, iconic confidence.
Drex Valen slipped through the busy streets with Esdeath and the others, blending into the flow of people around them.
"So this really is the cinematic universe," he muttered.
That ant one thing for sure.
Whether the Ancient One had any spare dinsional fragnts to give him remained to be seen.
At Drex's current level, finding Kamar-Taj was not difficult at all.
In fact, the Ancient One had already extended an invitation, likely out of curiosity about visitors from another universe.
Drex accepted.
Tifa and the others stayed behind to settle in, buying a house and making themselves at ho.
"Welco, traveler from another universe."
As soon as Drex stepped through the mystic portal, he found the Ancient One seated at the center of a large chamber, calmly brewing tea.
The hall was old, elegant, and steeped in an atmosphere of quiet refinent.
A thread of sandalwood incense curled upward through the air before dispersing into nothing.
Around the room, sorcerers in robes of many colors sat discussing arcane theory, reading, or lost in thought.
There were people of every background here, though Asian sorcerers were clearly the majority.
And yet, despite the many voices, the room felt almost eerily still.
Even when argunts grew heated, the surrounding silence remained undisturbed.
It was as if the entire hall had been suspended in a state of perfect calm.
The Ancient One sat cross-legged before a low tea table, unhurried and composed.
She poured, she slled, she sipped.
Each motion was simple, but carried a strange depth, as if she were doing more than drinking tea.
There was discipline in it.
Balance.
A sense of unity between mind and body that went beyond the physical.
Drex, who never turned down a drink of any kind, sat down opposite her.
"Try it," the Ancient One said, sliding a cup toward him with a faint smile. "Tea is a manifestation of the Way. To appreciate its fragrance is to cultivate stillness. It calms the spirit and clears the mind."
Drex thanked her, lifted the cup, and inhaled.
The aroma was enough to lift his mood imdiately.
His eyes brightened.
The tea really did have sothing special to it.
The Ancient One's smile suggested she knew exactly what effect it would have.
Drex steadied himself and took a slow sip.
The taste was layered.
Bitter at first, then sweet.
Smooth going down, with a lingering fragrance that stayed on the tongue long after the swallow.
A taste like life itself.
"Hello, Ancient One," Drex said easily.
"You know ?"
She smiled politely.
Since he was here as a guest and needed sothing from her, Drex decided to show a little courtesy.
He gave a slight bow.
Sorcerers in Kamar-Taj greeted one another like this.
With his Kryptonian learning ability, he had picked it up quickly from the few tis he had visited the place before.
The Ancient One blinked, clearly about to ask a question, when she heard Drex speak a string of incantations.
Not a combat spell.
Not a shield.
A practical one.
A spell used in daily life to turn plain water into wine, tea, or sothing stronger if desired.
Drex had clearly learned that one from her.
The Ancient One relaxed, amused.
"Young sorcerer," she said, "in another universe, what is our relationship?"
Drex shook his head.
"I'm not a sorcerer. But we'd be friends."
Her expression remained pleasant, though she certainly did not take his answer at face value.
Still, she let the matter go.
"Then tell why you've co."
Drex's expression turned serious.
"I want an ownerless dinsion, Ancient One."
She studied him for a mont.
"...Give a reason I can accept. Since we know one another, you should understand how important an ownerless dinsion is. I won't hand one over lightly."
Drex's eyes lit up a little.
So she really did have one.
That was promising.
"Two reasons," he said.
"And?" she asked, giving him her full attention.
"The first is that I'm too powerful for my own universe. Powerful enough to affect it just by existing. In my universe, the Ancient One and the Vishanti recomnded that I beco a dinsional lord."
Drex loosened the restraint on his biofield just enough to prove the point.
The Ancient One's eyes narrowed.
Then widened.
Her expression changed as she realized exactly what she was seeing.
"Impossible..."
She stared at him in stunned silence.
"...A lifeform whose own mass is equivalent to ten to the seventy-nine thousand eight hundred forty-eighth power tis the total mass of an entire universe, and yet it can still exist safely inside a single universe?"
As she looked, Drex's effective mass continued to increase in her perception, slowly but constantly, at a fixed rate.
That made it even worse.
The stability of his biofield was the only reason he wasn't tearing apart every universe he passed through.
Without it, he would have shattered every single one of them by rely showing up.
"What's the second reason?" she asked at last.
"My universe was destroyed," Drex said. "And the Ancient One there died. Everything happened too fast."
The Ancient One said nothing for a mont.
She was clearly thinking the sa thing.
If that was true, then why hadn't that universe's Ancient One simply handed him an ownerless dinsion?
It sounded impossible.
"No," she said slowly. "That can't be."
Her skepticism was imdiate.
Who could possibly kill a super-being of Drex's caliber inside a single universe?
Even a great demon lord like Cyttorak, if forced out of his own domain, would only be able to fight Drex to a standstill.
And the full strength of the Celestial host would only result in their extermination.
Drex answered the question hanging in the air with a single word.
"Abraxas."
The Ancient One fell silent.
Even this cinematic-universe version of her knew what that na ant.
Kamar-Taj kept records.
She let out a quiet breath.
"So he has been born."
"And he has already destroyed more than a thousand universes," Drex said. "For my own survival, I need to beco a dinsional lord."
The Ancient One nodded.
"I understand."
Then she showed him her collection.
Not just her own.
So of it had been gathered by Agamotto during his ti as Sorcerer Supre.
So of it even older than that.
A trove of ownerless dinsional fragnts sat before him.
If any dinsional lord learned of this stash, they would go mad with greed.
After all, the easiest way for a dinsional lord to grow stronger was to have their own dinsion devour another.
An ownerless dinsion was ideal.
No fight required.
Otherwise, one had to force an invasion into a reality dinsion, and that was far more troubleso.
The only problem was that stepping from that point into multiversal-tier existence was still a distant dream.
Drex sifted through the fragnts carefully.
Many of them ca from Hell dinsions.
He suspected the Ancient One had stolen those from phisto.
There were also pieces of the Dark Dinsion, which would have been a feast for Dormammu if he could get them.
Unfortunately for him, he couldn't.
"These ownerless dinsions are still influenced by their forr lords," the Ancient One explained when she saw he was still inspecting them. "At least, if those lords are stronger than them, or equal to them."
Drex's gaze flicked over the fragnts again.
He was still not entirely satisfied.
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