22 Chapter 18: Three paths

It's been 2 weeks since I joined the "order" if you will.

Many members were against making me an apprentice as I was just a "regular" 14 year old kid.

Mordo or as I affectionately named him "Stickler" was especially against it.

So I challenged him to a fight and Mordo in his ignorance said that he would hold back and grant me 3 strikes.

I still playing the part of a naive 14 year old accepted.

The ancient one just looked on with amusement and pity for mordo, when she saw a mischievous grin that would have made Loki proud plastered on my face.

The ancient one was the judge with the audience looking on with boredom as they all thought that I was gonna get knocked out.

"Alright, Mr. Hunt and Master Mordo; I want a clean fight, so no attacks with the potential to be fatal. Winner is by submission or knockout. Is that clear?" The ancient one stated the rules of the fight

We both gave her the green light and she started the fight.

Mordo got into a fighting stance with his arms loose and his legs wide and firm.

I stood there with a lazy stance and I swear, I heard a few snickers from behind me.

The ancient one counted down the fight and she started it.

I was thinking that I might as well show off a little.

The very second the fight started, I sprinted towards to Mordo; well sprinting for me because I was moving 1.8x the speed of sound.

We standing in the mirror dimension with a distance of 62 meters between us. So it's not an exaggeration when I say that I arrived in front of Mordo in 0.1 seconds.

I turned my head towards the ancient to observe whether if she could react to my speed and I saw her eyes were trailing behind me.

They were moving slowly, but the fact that she was even able to move was amazing considering that everyone else was frozen.

Now that proves my theory that I completely beat her in physical aspects, but what I don't understand is how she is even able to react to speeds. Maybe she is enhancing herself with dimensional energy or it's a plus point from the dark dimension.

About 0.3 seconds have passed and the ancient one eyes were just about to land on me before I blurred into action.

I of course won't hit Mordo as I don't want to show anyone that I am so powerful physically.

I punched at him with all of my power at once but stopped my fist exactly an inch before hitting his his stomach

The gale force from my punch breaking the sound barrier being broken approximately 2 times was released.

The following was an explosion of air that would have made Mordo lose 1/4 of his lower chest and stomach, if I didn't strike at a certain angle where the air passed around Mordo.

It was still going to make him go flying at least 50 meters.

I ran back to my original position, but this time I had both of my hands stretched out.

Now as Dio would say "Time now resumes"

Mordo goes flying with the speed of a car with him hitting a magical barrier that appeared out of nowhere and I fall down to my butt and start to fake pant.

I needed to make sure that everyone that whatever I did took a lot out of me, well almost everyone.

I glanced towards the ancient one and she was at Mordo's side most likely running diagnostic spells.

She is experienced enough to know that I am faking it and she looks at me meaningfully, I shrugged at her.

After she made sure that Mordo was fine, just unconscious. She called it my victory with the audience completely stunned before they started to clap.

There were at least one hundred apprentices and a few masters clapping for me and I got up and jokingly did a bow towards the audience.

The ancient one gestured for me to follow her and I did, but I also was planning ahead.

I didn't just show off for no reason. As everyone was clapping I observed their expressions. Happiness and Shock were the primary emotions present on the faces of most people.

There were however some faces that were not so happy and *ding ding* one of them was kaecilius.

I wanted to separate the people who were working with me and the people who were against me.

The movie didn't specify all of Kaecilius's followers and so I wasn't sure who was who.

But now that I know, it's gonna be much easier to know who to stay wary around. Also to show that I am not someone to be messed with was not a bad addition.

The ancient one and me reached our destination which was a room that had inside a small bed, a book case, bathroom all in 1 and half rooms.

She told me that this was going to be my living quarters for my stay here.

She made a portal by just making a circular movement with her hands and grabbed a large stack of books through the portal.

"I have seen what your are capable of physically, now it is time to see what you are able to accomplish mentally. You have 2 months to have a intermediate comprehension on the languages. The rest of the books are present in case you finish earlier than expected."

After saying that, she enlarged the portal and left my room.

I was just standing there thinking in my head that I had to learn how to do that.

I sighed and took a deep breath in and looked at the books.

I sat down on the table and opened the first book.

After an hour of reading each of the books, 22 hours had passed.

I leaned back and stretched into my chair popping my joints and I heard the weirdly satisfying cracks from my body, until an unpleasant smell attacked my nose.

I frowned for a second until I realized that it was coming from my body.

I smelled my armpits and I almost wanted to barf.

I smelled like a bonafide hobo and I hadn't taken a shower for the past 3 days, so I had to take one quick.

I went inside the bathroom and saw a bath tub, I filled it with warm water.

I soaked in it and let out a deep breath which relaxed my mind.

Even my mind needs its rest sometimes, especially after absorbing so much info.

Apparently Magic in the Marvel Universe is very different from magic in other multiverses like Harry Potter than it seems.

Magical power in the Marvel Universe is divided into 3 different types: personal energies, universal energies and dimensional energies. All magic power is basically reshaping existing power found in either yourself, your universe, or summoned from other dimensions, to form that effect that you desire.

Now the part I am interested in is that the books say that the Sun is actually a massive energy generator. The sun is actually used in many spells and is even revered as the ultimate power of good. All spells that are used with Sun as a generator allows the power of the spell to increase by 40 percent with some rules.

The rules weren't mentioned so I am worried about that, but I will just ask the ancient one about it later.

The next book was about the different energies and their uses.

There are a number of different schools of magic surprisingly as in the movies only Kamar-Taj is shown.

Each school is dedicated to the three different paths you can take to study magic.

Personal Energies are those derived from the life force of the User. Continual use of such energy would rapidly deplete a normal being, consuming his life energy and thus leaving him dead; unless you have the life force of a long living creature like a dragon.

*cough cough The Iron Fist cough cough...*

The users learn, through meditation techniques and trained willpower, how to activate these latent human abilities and use them for their own needs without seriously depleting their life forces.

Personal Energies can only be mainly used to power abilities developed through mental and physical training, so they are limited to only enhance the physical body and mind like reinforcing body parts to superhuman levels. A hidden ability is also enhancing the mind to the point of granting telepathy,possession abilities and even minor telekinesis.

However 500 years ago a hidden ability was found that you could transfer personal energies to others to heal them since it's pure life force. This has caused the schools that study this to affectionately name personal energies into Chi. (If you haven't guessed it already, the schools the book is talking about are schools like Kunlun where the Iron fist got his powers from.)

Now for the second path is drawing on the universe for power. Magic users can tap into the Universal Energies of their home dimension and draw forth magical energy for their spells and apparently this basically suicide for normal humans.

Only mystical entities or gods or other creatures can use this as they have the ability of divinity as they like to call it. They draw on on the energy of faith that people provide to them to do acts that are insanely hard to do for normal magicians. This comes with a major downfall because if people start to lose faith in them, then they will die as they tied the source of their power to the universal aspect of faith.

So to offset this downfall all users of this path put their heads to together and came up with two ways.

First instead of tying themselves to the faith of people they decided to tie themselves to different dimensions. So they absorb the infinite power that dimensions generate and even become the owners of different dimensions. This way allows them to become virtually Omnipotent in their own dimension, but they are very restricted if they leave their dimensions . So unless you were created in the dimension or you are willing to sacrifice your future for power than that's the only reason you should do this. Best examples would be Mephistopheles and Cyttorak, inside their dimensions they are unbeatable; but once they leave their dimensions, people normally much weaker than them can take them down.

The second way is using the energies present in oneself. It sounds like chi, but the users don't use their life force instead there is a special mystical energy that is present in them called divine energy. This energy can be used for virtually anything.

Universal energies are typically used for teleportation, conjurations, dimensional traveling, illusion-casting, energy projection, energy shields and so forth. Basically, any spell cast that requires no special incantation or is unique to a specific person or species is a spell made from universal energies.

Universal Spells usually require gestures and words to be activated. Humans only use it to create artifacts and even then it's extremely hard. The "Eye of Agamotto" is a very good example. Asgard is one of the only places you can learn how to mainpulate such energies.

Finally Dimensional energies, which is studied by Kamar-taj. There is actually not much to be said, which ironic because Kamar-taj has so much information about other schools of magic, but not as much of dimensional;which they are actually studying.

Dimensional Energies are those bestowed upon a sorcerer from an other-dimensional Entity. These Entities can only be contacted by the sorcerer using ritual spells and possibly sacrifices or promises. Once they form a contract with the entity, the Entity then bestows the power to work the spell upon the sorcerer and the spell is completed.

In essence, any spell in which an Entity is called upon to cast it, is a Dimensional Ritual, whether it is a Power, use of Sorcery, or a Ritual. Also, any Power mimicked with the addition of Limitations and Bonuses modifying the Power require it to be Dimensional in nature. For more details on entities and the benefits they provide, please look for Mr. Moore for more advanced books.

I walked into the bedroom and magically an apprentice white uniform was waiting for me here.

It was 6:30 am and it was too late for me to go to sleep. So I changed into the uniform and went outside.

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