Chapter 1866: The Journey of the Madman (42)_1

Helen sat on the ground, cross-legged, cradling a book bigger than her head. Strange stood before the bookshelf, continuously tossing books down. Harley was standing below, catching them and passing them to Helen.

As Helen read, she shook her head and sighed. After hearing her sigh for the twelfth time, Strange couldn't help but turn around to look at her. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Is there something wrong with this approach?"

"'Is there something wrong?' Can you tell me what's not wrong?" Helen raised her head from the book, glared at Strange, and gently shook her head, "This breaks my usual impression of how astute Dr. Stephen Strange is. How could you be fooled by this thing?"

Strange stood there, looking somberly at her. Helen "slap" closed the book, threw it aside and said, "Didn't you attend any magical theory classes at all? What's the most important thing about a magical theory?"

"Origin and historical evolution," Barry replies without lifting his head from another book. "If a magical theory can't trace its origins and evolution process, it will likely be a trap set by evil gods to confuse humanity."

"The greatest characteristic of human magical knowledge inheritance is its evolutionary process of gradual perfection. Misapplication and loanwords are indispensable parts of the inheritance of theories. Any theory that emerges finished is bound to have either natural flaws and gaping loopholes or is definitely a trap."

Barry recited smoothly from the textbook, then added, "The Supreme Magician notes that the more powerful and perfect the theory is, the less likely it is to appear out of the blue in human hands. Without a process of discovery, it's not knowledge humans could have developed."

Strange caressed the cover of a book for a while before speaking, "It seems that the magical education in your world is quite advanced."

"Or rather, you're far behind. I guess you never seriously studied at all? It's lucky you didn't die in the Stephen Strange serial murder case."

Helen made this comment offhand, but suddenly she froze, lowered her head to look at the book she had cast aside, and then looked back up at Strange, asking, "Where did you get this book?"

"This is a secret realm, and the ​​building we're in now is called the Kallistro Library. This is one of its collections."

Upon hearing this, Harley immediately furrowed her brow, squinting her eyes and shaking her head, "The whole thing seems suspicious, how did you come here?"

Strange hesitated for a bit, but then laid out his previous experiences.

Simply put, Strange encountered a car accident on his way to a date with his girlfriend Christine, however, this time he didn't lose his hand, instead, his beloved girlfriend Christine died in the accident.

For this reason, Strange embarked on a magical path, becoming the if Strange, hoping to use the Eye of Agamoto to reverse time and save his girlfriend, but he failed.

No matter how he changed the conditions at that time, Christine was doomed to die. Only later did he learn from The Ancient One that Christine's death was an absolute point in time, because only if Christine died could Strange become the Supreme Magician.

Strange tried repeatedly and countless times, but still didn't want to give up. The Ancient One could only cut his timeline, causing him to split during a singular choice.

The Strange who chose to lose his way and revert back to the right path stayed in the cosmos, while the Strange who chose to stay fixated mistakenly entered a secret realm and under the guidance of Orban, the realm keeper, came to the lost library of Kallistro.

Here, Strange found a way to break the absolute point in time. Nothing magical about the method: it was about using a summoning array to summon various powerful creatures and consume their power. As long as the power was strong enough, naturally, the inevitable death curse could be broken.

After listening to all this, Harley shook her head, "Maybe your caution is lacking, or you might be blinded by urgent desire. But, are things really so coincidental in this world?"

"You desperately need a solution to your predicament, then by a coincidence, you happen to come to a secret realm which lacks any danger,

and in this realm, there's conveniently a library full of all kinds of knowledge. And among this knowledge, you happen to find just the one you need. Did you not suspect anything wrong with all this?"

Just as Strange was about to speak, Harley interrupted him, "You want to say you're lucky, but if you were truly lucky, Christine wouldn't have died."

Strange was left speechless.

After a while, he tentatively asked, "Do you think this method is wrong?"

"I can assure you very positively that this method is incorrect." Helen stood up, walked up to Strange,

looked him in the eye and said, "The biggest trap here is, it told you how to depict the summoning array, but didn't tell you the principle behind it."

Helen raised her hand, and the book flew into her hands. She pointed at one part of the magic array and said, "See this rune? This is the redirecting entry for the directed summoning, which means 'of this cosmos', 'of this place', or 'not far from here'. In other words, this summoning array summons life forms from this cosmos."

"And this one, this entry stands for 'limitless energy level', and this adjacent entry stands for 'limitless rule category.' Do you know what this would lead to?"

Strange shook his head. After becoming a disciple of The Ancient One, his whole mind was set on saving his girlfriend. The spells he practiced were all related to time. Knowledge of magic arrays and magic runes is immense and complex, requiring a lengthy time to grasp. Strange wanted a quick solution, so he never gave these in-depth readings a proper look.

Helen closed the book and sighed, then she said, "There are not only powerless energy demons in this world, but there are also many rule-class gods. They are the embodiment of certain rules of the cosmos."

"You may think you've destroyed the Demon God Dormammu, but as long as the darkness of the cosmos exists, Dormammu is immortal. It's not some kind of cheat rule, it's because the cosmos needs him, he's a part of the cosmic structure."

"If you don't limit these two entries, the things you summon may include beings that are vital to the key rules. When you consume all their energy and can't uphold the power of the rules yourself, it's like knocking out a load-bearing pillar in a building."

"You consume a large amount of rule-bound life in a short period, causing significant damage to the cosmic structure. The self-healing speed of the cosmos is measured in millions of years, totally unable to keep up with your rate of destruction. The only result of this path is the collapse of the cosmos."

Helen picked up the book again and said after flipping through it: "The most important problem is that the method it teaches you to transform the consumed energy into your own power is overly simplistic. In other words, if you consume 100% of the power, probably only 10% is retained. The majority of the unrefined power doesn't even stay."

"It's as if it only gave you the suction mouth of a vacuum cleaner, but didn't provide the corresponding pipes and storage units. It provided you with the highest-powered motor, allowing you to suck with all your might but retain little, with the power you drew dissipating into the cosmos."

"So you've become a mincing machine, just endlessly damaging the cosmic rules, producing meaningless trash energy."

"And because there's no correct storage method, even if you drain all the life you can summon in this cosmos, the remaining power will definitely not be enough to break the absolute time point."

The certainty in Helen's attitude made Strange a little hesitant because she looked so experienced and was talking very convincingly.

Helen snapped her fingers and looked at Strange's face, saying: "I can teach you how to shear wool properly. Not only will it not cause the cosmos to collapse, but it might even prolong its lifespan. And you can retain at least 80% of the power. After shearing a few times, you might be able to break the loop."

Strange squinted his eyes and asked, "What's the price?"

"I've said before, we're now pursuing killers. Your situation may be a part of the black-handed plan behind the scenes. If I help you, you have to help us find clues about the killer."

"Is it that simple?"

"This is not a difficult task for me." Helen shook her head: "As you probably have already felt, neither I am human, nor am I from the Aesir. You can't see what I am."

"And if you must compare, I am probably the world's largest, most powerful, and smartest vacuum cleaner."

Twenty minutes later, Helen stood beside the freshly drawn Magic Array, pointing at the Magic Array she just drew with Harley and Barry. She said: "See that rune? That's the rune that limits the energy levels and rule categories so we won't summon rule-bound creatures that are important to the cosmos."

"And that rune, it means 'edge', 'distant', and the rune next to it means 'broken'. We'll start by picking up the broken trash at the edge of this cosmos."

"Don't look at me like that. What is trash for me is extremely precious energy for humans. It's enough for several lifetimes of use. This is the safest method to obtain energy that the students of Kamar-Taj have summarized after countless lessons."

Strange, half-doubting, activated the Array. In the next second, countless limb fragments emerged from the Teleportation Array. Some were like tentacles, some like claws and stomachs, and many like fragments of energy similar to broken buildings.

Before Strange could absorb these energies, they directly surged into his body. He cried out in pain, fell to the ground, and blacked out.

When he woke up, the three children had already drawn a new Magic Array. Helen rubbed her hands, turned her head to look at him and said: "The trash in this cosmos is a bit scarce, but no matter, next we start shearing the energy of those more energetic Demon Gods."

Strange struggled to get up from the ground, feeling the powerful force surging within him. He looked at his body in surprise, then at Helen and said: "This is incredible, so next we can consume the powerful Demon Gods?"

"Forget about it, even if you pick up trash ten thousand times, you'll never be able to consume the masters of dimensions like Mephisto and Setorak. Their energy is infinite."

"However, that's okay since we don't need to rob them directly. We can simply summon them for a conversation. What can't we talk about? We can talk with Dormammu, as long as the conditions are generous enough, the energy will be sufficient."

Helen was flipping through her fingers and said: "And it's not just one cosmos. When we've sheared off the wool of this cosmos, we'll go to the next to shear some more. Even if we shear a little in each cosmos, we won't run out of wool."

"When you've sheared enough energy, you feed it to those rule-bound beings, let them reinforce the cosmic structure so that it provides you with more space to exert."

Helen showed a big smile, then said: "The Ancient One was opposing you simply because the constant resetting of time might destabilize the cosmic structure, leading to destruction."

"When you have enough power, and the invincible cosmic structure is reinforced by you, then you can try as many times as you want. I don't believe that thousands of cosmic powers combined can't resurrect an ordinary human woman."

"What 'absolute time point'? As Doctor Schiller said, 'absolutely not' means your vision is not good enough, 'absolutely wrong' means the quantity is not right."

"Open your eyes, have enough quantity, and there's no wall in the world that can't be knocked down!"