Seeing the determination in his favorite student, Master Olifan found himself wavering.
The situation had become far more complicated than he cared to admit.
Originally, he had fully supported Clea’s request to leave the Sanctum for field training.
In fact, he had been looking forward to it.
For years, he had quietly groomed her as his successor.
The plan was simple.
Over the coming years, he would gradually involve her in the Sanctum’s leadership, allowing her to gain experience until the day came when he retired... or fell in battle against forces from beyond this world.
When that day arrived, he intended for Clea to become the next master of the New York Sanctum.
For now, that remained only his personal intention.
But he doubted anyone would object.
Clea had grown up within the Sanctum.
Every master had watched her mature.
She possessed extraordinary talent, remarkable discipline, and one of the sharpest minds of her generation. Under the guidance of Olifan and the other senior sorcerers, she had already surpassed nearly every mage her own age.
On merit alone...
She was qualified.
Only one requirement remained.
Field training.
The Ancient One herself had established it as an unbreakable tradition when founding the order.
Some modern sorcerers believed living among ordinary people was beneath them.
The ritual persisted anyway.
Not because it was difficult.
Because it mattered.
Experience became credibility.
A future leader who had never walked among ordinary people would always carry a stain on their record.
That was why Olifan had enthusiastically approved Clea’s request.
It would strengthen her credentials.
It would also expose her to the real world.
She had spent nearly her entire life inside the Sanctum.
Kindness came naturally to her.
Perhaps too naturally.
Compassion made an excellent sorcerer.
It did not automatically make an effective leader.
Leadership demanded difficult choices.
Sometimes mercy.
Sometimes ruthlessness.
Reality had a way of teaching lessons no classroom ever could.
Then everything changed.
Just as the preparations were complete...
Clark and Jonas vanished.
Two capable sorcerers disappearing without explanation was impossible to ignore.
Olifan personally led the investigation to the site where they had last been detected.
The same location where Evenson had previously summoned the Eredar Twins.
He found...
Nothing.
No bodies.
No signs of battle.
No traces of dark magic.
Everything appeared perfectly ordinary.
Which was precisely what made it so disturbing.
According to the Sanctum’s monitoring spells, Clark and Jonas had investigated a brief burst of anomalous magical energy.
Yet by the time Olifan arrived...
Even that lingering disturbance had vanished.
Not merely the unusual magic.
Every trace of magic.
That was impossible.
Even if the original disturbance had naturally dissipated, Clark and Jonas had arrived via portal.
Dimensional transit always left residual magical signatures.
Those traces couldn’t disappear so completely on their own.
Someone had erased them.
Could Clark and Jonas have done it?
Impossible.
Neither possessed the skill necessary to remove magical residue so thoroughly that even Olifan himself could detect nothing.
That left only one conclusion.
The mysterious Black Mage.
The same unknown spellcaster who had appeared during the battle against the monsters in New York.
The one who had cast spells unlike anything Olifan recognized.
The one who had somehow evaded the Sanctum’s magical surveillance until long after the battle had begun.
Someone capable of concealing magic that effectively...
Could certainly erase a battlefield.
The sequence became easy to imagine.
Clark and Jonas arrived.
The Black Mage was already waiting.
Before either sorcerer could escape...
They were killed.
Their souls consumed.
Their bodies disposed of.
The battlefield cleansed.
In truth...
Olifan’s reconstruction wasn’t far from reality.
Clark and Jonas had indeed been ambushed almost immediately after arriving.
Only the attacker hadn’t been Evenson.
It had been Taylor and the others guarding the ritual site.
With Habus present, escape had never been possible.
The felhound devoured every spell they cast along with the surrounding magical energy.
As for their souls...
A warlock’s ritual site, one that had recently consumed hundreds of souls, was among the last places anyone should die.
The lingering fel magic had swallowed what remained of them.
Olifan, of course, knew none of that.
He forced himself to stop dwelling on the deaths of two subordinates he had served beside for years.
Grief could wait.
Responsibility could not.
Instead, he focused on the question that mattered.
Why had the magical disturbance occurred in the first place?
Had the Black Mage accidentally leaked magical energy?
Or...
Had it been deliberate?
The distinction changed everything.
If the disturbance had been accidental, then Clark and Jonas had simply encountered terrible luck.
A tragedy.
If it had been intentional...
Then the pulse had been bait.
Someone had deliberately lured Sanctum sorcerers into an ambush.
That possibility was far more frightening.
Was the Black Mage hunting them?
Collecting the souls of sorcerers?
Whatever the answer...
Olifan refused to underestimate the threat.
Immediately after the incident, he raised the Sanctum’s security level.
No sorcerer was permitted to operate alone.
Every mission required a team.
Whether the enemy had planned the attack or merely exploited an opportunity no longer mattered.
The Sanctum had to prepare for the worst.
He had even resolved that if another similar incident occurred...
He would personally request the Ancient One’s intervention.
An enemy capable of eliminating two trained sorcerers before either could escape was far too dangerous to ignore.
And that was precisely why sending Clea into the outside world now felt reckless.
She was supposed to return with valuable experience.
Not disappear forever.
That had been the reason for postponing her field training indefinitely.
Yet...
Listening to her argument now...
He found himself reconsidering.
During field training, a sorcerer’s magic was temporarily sealed.
Without mystical abilities, Clea would appear to be nothing more than an ordinary young woman.
Unless she revealed her identity herself...
No one would ever know she belonged to the Sanctum.
And surviving field training during such dangerous times...
Would become an extraordinary achievement on her record.
Perhaps...
It wasn’t quite as reckless as he’d feared.
Olifan exhaled slowly.
"I’ll think about it."
"I’ll give you my answer in two days."
Clea smiled with obvious relief and bowed respectfully.
"Thank you, Master."
She watched him leave before quietly returning to her quarters.
Meanwhile...
Tony Stark stood inside his workshop, elbow-deep in what looked suspiciously like plumbing.
Technically...
He was rebuilding the energy conduits for his laboratory.
The resemblance was unfortunate.
After meeting with Evenson, Nick Fury had wasted no time.
He gathered everything Howard Stark had left behind, delivered it to Tony together with the lithium dioxide sample, explained the proposed treatment, and left Agent Coulson behind with very explicit instructions.
Keep Tony focused.
No distractions.
No reckless side projects.
No disappearing halfway through because something shiny caught his attention.
Tony had spent a long time silently reviewing his father’s research.
The new element itself didn’t shock him.
Howard Stark had been a genius.
Discovering something decades ahead of its time seemed entirely believable.
What truly affected him...
Was something else.
Tony’s feelings toward his father had always been complicated.
Respect.
Admiration.
Resentment.
Love had rarely found room among them.
Howard had never been good at expressing affection.
Tony often joked that the happiest day of his father’s life had been the day he left for boarding school.
Then he watched the old recording.
Howard spoke directly to him.
Acknowledging his brilliance.
Calling him the one person capable of changing the world.
For the first time...
Tony felt the love that had always remained hidden beneath impossible expectations.
Perhaps fathers simply struggled to say those words while they were alive.
The realization came far too late.
He still remembered the last conversation they had shared.
It had ended badly.
They had parted angry.
And there was one sentence...
One impossibly simple sentence...
He had never spoken.
It might remain the greatest regret of his life.
After sitting with that grief for a long time...
Tony returned to work.
His movements became faster.
More focused.
He wasn’t doing this only to save himself anymore.
You brought me into this world.
Now I’ll bring your greatest creation into it.
It’s the only thing I can still do for you.
If time could somehow be turned back...
If he were granted one more conversation...
There was only one thing he wanted to say.
I love you, Dad.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter