33 CHAPTER 33

If you want to read up to 30 chapters ahead go to https://www.patreón.com/cornbringer

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1 month later]

It has been thirty days since the day I encountered the Winter Soldiers and killed most of them, save for Bucky, since then I have eliminated eight bases, and yet Hydra has only increased their efforts to capture me, sending more and more agents, forcing Emily and I to be on the move.

This entire dilemma brought me back to when I tortured Mr. Wrodick a month ago, he was very vocal, very open about all things, and he sang the melodies I wanted him to sing, and some I did not want to hear and ignored at the time, on his unrequested symphony he went into great detail how Hydra would never… never stop hunting me for I had proven my value was beyond what they thought possible, that they would forever be in the shadows, waiting for me to lower my guard, that I would forever live looking upon my shoulder fearing the day I slipped up, such a miserable tune, one I wanted no part in.

This made me wonder, would my message actually do something.. Would me destroying their bases one by one actually change a thing? Or would simply encourage them to try harder and harder in the greedy attempt to own me and my powers, so far that seemed to be the case.

I didn't want that, but what else could I do, as it stood, I was around super soldier levels of power, at least their bootleg version, I had no real power to wipe them off, I had no tools to hurt them.

Eliminating Hydra was something well beyond my current capabilities that was something I knew, a disease I was not prepared to fully cure, a demon I was not yet ready to purge, but not all diseases or demons need to be eliminated right away, some… some can be controlled, and managed, into a livable situation.

Eliminating them by normal means was an impossibility, a fruitless endeavor that would never be completed, a quest that went beyond the span of a human life, and in reality, I really had no idea how long it would take to eliminate them, maybe years? Decades? Perhaps even more, It was simply time I did not have, and even if I did, well… who would want to spend an eternity by human standards hunting them? Besides that, I had Emily to take into consideration too, I had no idea if I was ageless or not, perhaps I was, but Emily was not, she was a human, a normal human, and a life of eternal fear was not one I wanted to subject her to.

So, I had to think outside the box. I had to teach Hydra, that I too, was an impossibility to deal with, a threat so big, they would prioritize saving their resources instead of wasting them on me, I had to become the Heracles of their mythos, I had to teach them, I could slay them.

I could always focus my time in trying to decipher the super soldier serum from the samples I got from the winter soldiers, but that would take time, time where nothing was a guarantee, time I could use in something else.

Like hunting another type of power, one easier yet arguably harder to acquire, the power the Ancient One had, what she knew would give me the tools to end Hydra you see, learning to open portals would be very… very beneficial, after all with that skill, all I needed to do was open portals in the hydra locations I had on my map, leave bombs inside the bases and burn Hydra with unavoidable attacks, I mean what were they supposed to do? There is no way to stop an attack like that, with a power like that, I would Amazon prime bomb on their asses, and who knows, Emily might have a knack for the mystic arts, it would certainly help her out in the long run, but that was me just getting ahead of myself.

So here I was, on my way to Karma-Taj, with Emily sleeping, her head resting on my legs.

As for Fury, well… I didn't tell him, I just... left him my number, in case of emergencies.

{We'll be arriving in Nepal in ten minutes} I heard the pilot say through the coms of the plane.

"I suppose this is for the best." I sighed, wondering if the Ancient One would give me a book or two, in the movies she seemed like a nice enough person, but this was not a movie.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once the plane reached the airport in Nepal, I took Emily and walked. If there was a good thing about my map, it was that I knew where most things were, of course, things like Karma-Taj were not exactly on my map.

So, I asked every person I saw. One would eventually lead me there, or have more information than I had.

Or so I thought, because one hour in after arriving at Nepal where I started to ask everyone about Karma-Taj, I encountered a door, a door with a tag floating above it, which was weird, only people had tags, aka their names and levels.

[Door… it's a door]

Funny enough the name was simply door… it's a door, no level, no awesome description, just that. But if I had to take a wild guess, that door had Magic, and considering the only ones with Magic around here are the sorcerers, and me now, but… it's a different kind of Magic, so… that was probably my entrance to Karma-Taj.

"Well here goes nothing," I sighed, walking to the door, Emily sleeping soundly in my arms. Once I was in front of the door, I pushed it open, feeling how said door took some of my mana. Inside I found myself in the same house Dr. Strange had visited after arriving at Nepal, the house where he met the Ancient One. "Well, that was easy." I muttered.

"It's not easy for everybody," someone behind me added, startling the crap out of me.

"Holy fuck," I jumped turning around, to see no other than the Ancient One. "You should really consider having a bell on you."

[The Ancient One - LV 219]

The Ancient One chuckled, her eyes piercing me with an unshakable gaze that made me feel nude, "You… You are very different, I don't think I have met someone like you before."