Marvel's master of cosmic magic-Chapter 808

"You again."

Aurelion turned, and the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed genuine irritation.

Rowan Mercer stood several steps behind him, hands in his coat pockets, posture relaxed.

"Put down what you’re holding," Rowan said mildly, nodding toward the crystalline object in Aurelion’s grasp, "and leave. Or we can revisit that... throwing game."

Aurelion’s jaw tightened.

He remembered.

Being seized by the leg.

Smashed into the ground.

Again.

And again.

And again.

This body was only an avatar. Destroying it would inconvenience him, nothing more.

But losing another high-grade avatar so soon after the last one would weaken his true body even further.

And Rowan was not someone he could defeat in this state.

Silently, Aurelion set the object down.

A small shard that pulsed with distorted temporal light.

Then he turned and walked away without another word.

Cowardice was inefficient.

Retreat was practical.

Rowan watched him disappear, then bent and picked up the shard.

Miles Reed finally exhaled.

"So... what exactly is a throwing game?"

Rowan glanced at him.

"You don’t want to know."

Rowan stepped past Miles and looked at Leonard Mitchell. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

More precisely, at the ancient presence coiled within Leonard’s body.

"Elias Voss," Rowan said. "Let’s talk."

Half an hour later, Rowan returned to his residence in Backlund.

The negotiation had been simple.

Rowan would protect Elias Voss from Aurelion.

Rowan would also help Elias recover a portion of his former strength.

In exchange, Elias handed over the temporal shard Aurelion had just lost.

Elias had no reason to refuse.

If Rowan had not arrived, the shard would already be gone.

And whether Aurelion decided to kill him afterward would have depended entirely on Aurelion’s mood.

Now, at least, Elias would survive.

Two days later, Rowan felt the final internal resistance fade.

Everything inside him settled.

"It’s time."

He swallowed the potion.

Power surged through him like cold starlight.

There was no loss of control.

No distortion.

No collapse.

The transition was smooth, almost quiet.

Rowan opened his eyes.

He had crossed another threshold.

The first thing he did was begin constructing a new inner domain.

A proto-divine realm.

A skeletal framework of authority that would one day become a true god’s kingdom.

Once formed, Rowan drew it inward.

He did not stabilize it separately.

He fed it directly into his personal world.

Reality folded.

Concepts merged.

Rules rewrote themselves.

Half a day passed.

Then Rowan smiled.

His hypothesis had been correct.

The foreign laws dissolved into his world’s structure, and in return, his vast internal energy gained a new property.

It could now convert freely.

Thought to power.

Power to spiritual essence.

Spiritual essence to magic.

Seamless.

Effortless.

He tested it.

A single impulse transformed oceans of raw energy into refined spiritual force.

The quantity was absurd.

Even by ancient standards.

At this stage, Rowan possessed reserves comparable to primordial beings.

And that was before accounting for the strange structure deep within him that served as his anchor.

"Good," Rowan murmured.

He leaned back in his chair.

"Now comes the real problem."

Becoming a true god.

His path demanded a paradox.

A successful deception.

Not of mortals.

But of existence itself.

Time.

History.

Or fate.

One of them had to be tricked.

He recalled an infamous precedent.

An ancient entity who had once fractured destiny by temporarily giving his identity and fate to another being, creating two mutually contradictory truths that existed simultaneously.

It had almost worked.

Almost.

Rowan frowned.

Too elaborate.

Too slow.

He could replicate it.

He could improve it.

But it would take years.

Rowan drummed his fingers once.

"Unnecessary."

There were easier routes.

Adjacent paths.

Paths whose rites were laughably simple by comparison.

One required nothing more than escaping divine confinement.

Another required stealing a throne at the moment it was being forged.

Rowan smiled faintly.

"Let’s borrow someone else’s ceremony."