MARVEL: GAMER PATH

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[The Ancient One POV]

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. A very wise saying indeed; after all, failing to prepare was preparing to fail.

I intended to prepare.

Not only for Knull.

But for what came after.

I had no doubts Alex would win this war. I had faith in him; I knew what he was capable of.

But, I also knew that letting him carry this impossibly large weight alone would only hurt him in the end.

Alex was a diamond.

But even the hardest diamond was brittle under enough pressure.

I would take some of that pressure. That was my resolution.

"The years must be getting to me," I chuckled, wondering when exactly I had to started to change. I don't quite remember when, but just that one day, my priorities had shifted ever so slightly. "I suppose that's beyond the point now. No need to waste time thinking about it; after all, I have a book to retrieve."

The Book of the Vishanti, the yang to the Darkhold's yin.

A magic relic of old that contains the most powerful white/order magic spells known in the universe, it is said that many of them are unimaginably powerful counterspells to other magic disciplines, such as the dark arts or chaos magic. Tales depict the book as seemingly having an endless number of pages that materialize from nothing as the holder reads the book.

I had lost deemed this powerful book as a lost relic.

However, Alex had unknowingly given me the clues I required to find it. All thanks to the books he had copied during his time in Cagliostro's library. In one of those books, one in particular dedicated to talking about the book of Vishanti, I found the pieces of the puzzle I was missing.

With said pieces, the rest was merely a matter of simple deduction.

The Book of the Vishanti wasn't in this universe, yet it was.

The book was between existence, not here, not there, not anywhere.

It almost pained me that I hadn't considered such a probability before, especially taking into account how obvious the entire thing was now. But nevertheless, this was not the time to focus on such things.

The important thing was that I had found the book's location; now, it was purely a matter of using a few basic spells to distort the space-time continuum so that I can summon the book to me.

"Time to bring a new book to my collection," I smiled, starting the summoning process by making the required magic circles around the room with my hands. It would take a few hours to get the book, but it would be worth it.

Once I had the book in my possession, it would be time to start step two.

Repairing a broken staff.

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[Five hours later.]

After five hours of hard, laborious work, I had finally succeeded. The Book of the Vishanti was at last in my possession. Now, it was time to continue with my master plan.

"My, I almost sound like a villain with those thoughts," I chuckled, putting the book on my desk. I truly needed to look at how I worded my thoughts out; I had an image to maintain, after all.

I chuckled once again at my own inner joke before summoning the staff I aimed to fix from my personal storage with a simple wave of my wand, the sword to my shield, so to speak.

As The Book of the Vishanti didn't allow the users to use its power for the offense, only granting the user spells in the arts of defense and healing. Thus, it was a shield, my shield for that matter.

While the staff I aimed to fix would be my blade.

That staff was no other than the Staff of One, or what remained of it for that matter.

A magical item so powerful it even made the likes of Dormammu tremble in fear. A sight I would be delighted to see, I'll admit.

The staff used to be in the possession of a group of… I'm not sure what to call them, but they called themselves the sorcerers of the future, a title they were not worthy of at all. They lacked even the most basic understanding of magic. It was very concerning the fact they had had the Staff for so long.

After defeating them, which roughly took me a minute, mostly because I had tried to talk them out of a fight first, I recovered the staff, a feat that had happened quite a bit ago, a few years in fact.

Had it not been for Morgana's appearance back then, trying to seduce Alex, followed by Alice's introduction, I would've never imagined the staff being under the care of such inadequate hands.

Since then, I have kept the Staff hidden, fixing what I could, one day at a time.

When I found it, the staff in question was still somewhat functional. But, what it could accomplish in that deplorable state was an insult to the staff's real power.

The… sorcerers of the future had, quote on quote, fixed, the staff, and by that, I mean they had done the magical equivalent of fixing a car with duct tape. Sure, it would work, for a bit, but eventually, it would stop working, or worse, explode.

Thankfully, it hadn't exploded. Which is usually the way to with magic items when something it's not quite right.

In any case, I had acquired the staff over a year ago, in acceptable conditions, especially bearing in mind those who were handling it before me. And since then, I had progressively worked on fixing the staff and improving it.

Using other magical items to not only repair the broken staff but increase its already immense power.

I had so far used.

The Wands Of Watoomb, using two as materials while working on the staff.

A bit of Uru, Alex had provided me for research.

And a few magical items Thor had given me from Asgard's vaults.

All and all, I was almost ready, and, I'll be completely honest, I was quite thrilled to see how my work would turn out once I was done.