Chapter 291: This Strange Is Way Too Paranoid!
The moment Ethan stepped into Kamar-Taj, it felt like slipping through time itself. This ancient academy, tucked away deep in the mountains, still carried the same unmistakable air of mystery and stillness it always had.
Towering spires, weathered stone walkways, lush green foliage swaying gently in the breeze — the whole place radiated something otherworldly, untouched by the rest of the world.
Kamar-Taj hadn't changed a bit. Alien invasion or demon incursion, it was all just business as usual for these people — hunting demons, for them, was about as routine as a hunter heading out for the day.
Sorcerers drifted past in every direction — some clustered together debating the latest magical theory, others locked away alone in private chambers, deep in solitary training, chasing some higher plane of magical mastery.
The place always left Ethan with a strange sense of calm, of detachment from the world — and honestly, he never much cared for it. Too comfortable. Too removed.
Ethan liked quiet well enough, but not Kamar-Taj's particular flavor of it. There was always something faintly otherworldly about the place, like it had checked out of ordinary human concerns entirely.
That wasn't Ethan's speed. He preferred finding his stillness in the middle of the noise, not apart from it.
"Wong, you should really stop by my place for tea sometime. What do you keep going to Hong Kong for anyway?"
"Mordo, huh — 'more dour' really does suit you. Man, you look about as fun as a compliance audit."
"Well hey there, old Chen — your magic's really come along since last time, huh."
"Oh, Sen — you're looking a little worse for wear these days. Better get some rest, married life catching up with you?"
"Cai! You put in your two and a half years yet, or what? Still haven't leveled up? C'mon, man — are you spending more time on your rap practice than your spellwork?"
The sorcerers, watching Ethan breeze through greeting everyone like old friends, quietly steered clear of him one by one. Sure, they'd all crossed paths with him a handful of times before, but "acquainted" was a stretch.
Watching them scatter, Ethan burst out laughing. Most of the sorcerers here were classic introverts, and honestly, teasing them a little never got old.
"Right, right — I'm actually here looking for the Ancient One. And to check in on how Strange has been settling in," Ethan said, finally getting down to business.
Wong answered slowly. "The Ancient One has already left."
"What do you mean, gone? Why isn't she here?" Ethan frowned.
In canon, even if she's not at Kamar-Taj, she should be turning up in the Big Apple in a few days at the latest. So where could she possibly have gone in the meantime?
"Where'd she go?" he pressed.
"No idea," Wong said with a shrug, then added, "She seemed to know you'd be coming, though. Left me a message to pass along before she took off."
Don't tell me she dodged me on purpose, Ethan thought. Or is she already staked out somewhere in the Big Apple? Please tell me she's not out there stalking some big green guy. He winced internally. Please, no.
"Alright, let's hear it. What'd she want me to know?" Ethan already had a pretty good guess, but asked anyway.
Wong seemed to search his memory for a moment, then did his best impression of the Ancient One's voice. "'The rest is up to you now. Take Strange with you when you leave — I trust you and Hell's Kitchen can handle this one just fine. We'll cross paths again soon enough.'"
Ethan's expression went completely flat. She clearly knew I was coming to recruit people, and skipped town ahead of time. And all she's leaving me with is Strange? What good is he going to do?
As for "we'll cross paths soon enough" — Ethan didn't put much stock in that. By the time this whole war wrapped up, he had zero interest in seeing the Ancient One again anyway.
"Where's Strange?" Ethan asked, his expression darkening. If he was down one recruit, he'd just have to squeeze the one he had left — whatever the Ancient One had been putting Strange through, Ethan figured he'd just pick up right where she left off.
"Um... honestly, I don't know where he is either," Wong said, hedging.
Ethan paused at that, staring at Wong. There's no way Wong genuinely doesn't know where Strange is.
Does he take me for an idiot?
Seeing Ethan's expression sour, Wong hurried to clarify. "I mean it, I really don't know where he is exactly — or, well, I know where 'he' is. I'm just not sure that one's actually him."
Ethan couldn't quite make sense of what Wong was getting at. He closed his eyes and used Observation Haki, searching for Strange's presence.
A moment later, his eyes snapped back open — his expression twisted into something strange.
How to put it... this Strange had changed. Changed into something Ethan barely recognized.
His Observation Haki had located Strange, all right — several of him, in fact.
Every single one carried Strange's own distinctive life-signature, just... slightly fainter than it should be.
Ethan could sense one Strange sitting in the library, reading. Another Strange out training physically with a group of sorcerers. Another sparring in a magic duel. Yet another sitting cross-legged in meditation.
Ethan understood immediately — these were all clones, decoys. Their presences were all noticeably weak, diluted. After searching for a good while longer, he finally found the real Strange, tucked away in a hidden corner somewhere.
Ethan hadn't expected Strange to have actually mastered a cloning spell — and clearly mastered it to a genuinely impressive degree.
Observing the real Strange through Observation Haki, all Ethan could manage was: This guy is seriously, seriously paranoid.
Strange had gone so far as to leave a decoy sitting in a room pretending to meditate, while the man himself was tucked away in a hidden chamber behind it, quietly researching how to merge magic with medicine.
Ethan could even tell the whole room had been layered with an illusion spell — completely invisible to the naked eye.
This wasn't the Strange he remembered at all. Ethan found himself genuinely curious what exactly the man had been through to end up like this.
He shot Wong a bewildered look, clearly hoping for answers.
Ethan had met plenty of versions of Strange across his travels, but never one this paranoid. And this was Kamar-Taj, of all places.
Arguably the single safest location on the entire planet. If a man wasn't safe here, then nowhere on Earth was safe for anyone.
What exactly is Strange doing? He's acting like someone's actively trying to kill him.
Wong sighed, looking genuinely helpless. "The first time Strange came to the library after he got here, he asked me if I had any spells for cloning yourself, or masking your own presence. I recommended him a book on cloning magic — honestly, I never for a second expected him to actually be able to learn it.
That particular cloning spell was created by a sorcerer over a thousand years ago. Nobody's ever managed to master it since — not even the Ancient One herself.
I never imagined Strange would pull it off, let alone improve on it. Ever since he learned it, I genuinely haven't seen the real him in person once.
Even I can't reliably tell which one's actually him. Every single time we've fought alongside him, we assumed we were fighting next to the real thing — only to find out afterward it was a decoy. Aside from the Ancient One, nobody's ever managed to actually track down where he really is. As for why he even wanted to learn this spell in the first place — I honestly couldn't tell you."
"Alright then. Let's go find out for ourselves exactly why Strange has turned into such a paranoid wreck."
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