"So, you're hoping that the mages can open a portal to send you back to the Andromeda Galaxy?"
"Yes." The voice of the Blue Spirit was filled with worry. "Our home planet is now surrounded by Chaos Power. We don't know what the Demon God named Xeseon intends to do..."
"If, as you mages say, his power source is the same as Nal's, they could potentially be accomplices. His appearance on the Klinter Star could mean he wants to release Nal. We absolutely can't allow this to happen."
"All beings that spread chaos in the cosmos will bring about its destruction. We must stop all of this."
Strange shook his head, telling the Blue Spirit: "I can understand your feelings, but an interstellar portal is a very special thing. It poses a certain risk to human civilization and could make us vulnerable to invasion."
"Therefore, all mages must gain the consent of the Supreme Magician before opening an interstellar portal."
Without waiting for the Blue Spirit to ask, Strange replied: "I am not the Supreme Magician, but his student. I manage Kamar-Taj and the Holy Sanctuary on the orders of the Supreme Magician. As for the Supreme Magician himself, he is currently wandering the cosmos. Only after we get in touch with him can we send you back..."
"And what about Asgard..."
Strange shook his head again: "We already owe Asgard a favor for helping us send back a few members of the merged civilizations. Besides, Asgard's master, the Father of All Gods Odin, is away. Starting the Rainbow Bridge would require his consent as well."
The Blue Spirit sighed, "Okay, I already knew interstellar teleportation technology is very crucial in any civilization. It is unlikely we can take it lightly without the approval of that civilization's leader."
"But I really hope you can help us. The collaboration between the Symbionts and humans has been very pleasant, our level of synergy is rarely seen. If you can help us out, the God Tali Race will certainly remember this friendship."
"Yes, I understand." Strange also showed a regretful expression, "In these few days interacting with you, I discovered that you are indeed an intelligent and kind species. This is rare in the universe. Humans would love to make friends with such a race, but we are after all an earthly civilization..."
Strange displayed a distressed expression, and seeing this, the Blue Spirit did not want to say more. He understood that asking humans to take them back was a bit of an overreach.
Humans have not yet voyaged beyond the solar system. Sending them off to the far-off Andromeda Galaxy to help the Symbionts is utterly fanciful.
"Personally, I'm very willing to assist you, so I will try to get in touch with the Supreme Magician in the coming days. If I have any news, I'll notify you immediately."
Seeing Strange's sincere demeanor, the Blue Spirit felt somewhat touched. After all, they were dealing with an undeveloped planet civilization, not an advanced interstellar one. This was like comparing the sentiment felt when a billionaire gives you a hundred dollars in your hour of need to when a destitute person gives you a hundred despite being unable to feed themselves; the feelings are different.
While the Symbionts did not say it, the information in their genetic database told them everything: humans, whether in terms of development or physical condition, ranked low among the species they had recorded. Their potential might be considerable, but it still wasn't fully unleashed yet.
There are plenty of potential civilizations in the cosmos, but the vast majority die prematurely. The Blue Spirit couldn't impose further on Strange. He turned and left. However, after he left, Strange indeed began trying to get in touch with the Ancient One.
The Ancient One had been missing for a long time, and now they had no idea where he'd wandered off to.
Although the mages at at Kamar-Taj and Strange weren't worried about the Ancient One's safety, they felt that the Ancient One was also not worried about the safety of Kamar-Taj, wasn't he a bit too carefree?
So, what was the Ancient One, who had left Earth early to drift across the cosmos, doing now?
He was collecting corpses.
The Ancient One was happily collecting corpses.
This all started when Hela and Baldur stood off, Mephisto got involved, and all the demon gods ended up fighting in a muddled mess.
After the Ancient One took Odin away, they had an intense conversation and tentatively reached an agreement. When the Ancient One and Odin joined the fight, the scale of the battle began to snowball.
The cosmos is vast, and even though there were many demon gods, their residences weren't closely packed. But they chose crowded places to fight, hence more and more demon gods were roped into the fray.
Demon gods born from cosmic energy had different personalities, but they had one thing in common: they tended towards chaos. In simple terms, they had bad tempers.
The demon gods didn't have considerations of courtesy or patience. If you bring the fight to my home, shouldn't I be permitted to fight back?
Thus, most demons who got involved angrily joined the fight.
The fight grew larger and swept through the universe like a plague. The most noticeable effect was the culling of the demon god's forces. In essence, the weaker ones kept dying, and those who survived were the strong ones. Their numbers only increased, and more weak ones continued to die.
Demon Gods don't have allies, and even if they did, they wouldn't care about their comrades' life or death. They fight carelessly, and the innocent fish from the same pond would hurt in the process too. In the cosmos, whoever has the strongest fist reigns as the boss, dying out of weakness is least to be pitied.
However, this kind of situation benefits one person the most: The Ancient One. If we are to talk about the most professional person in the world in killing Demon Gods and scavenging their bodies, it would be The Ancient One. If The Ancient One is the second, no one would dare to claim the first.
While the Demon Gods fought ahead, The Ancient One collected spoil in the back. Her recent mood couldn't be described as happy anymore, she only had two moods: happy and very happy.
As the strongest scavenger monster in the universe, The Ancient One was very professional about her job. The stronger you are, the better a scavenger I am.
Earth is safe for now with Strange looking after Kamar-Taj. She couldn't miss such a great scavenging opportunity, missing it once might mean waiting ten thousand years.
However, scavenging also has necessary prerequisites. Initially, The Ancient One absorbed the most pure energy residues after the Demon Gods were killed into her body, serving as reservoir energy for casting magic.
However, as time passed, she realized that a human body has an upper limit. Regardless of how much she tried to compress the energy, she couldn't store it anymore. To put it simply, she had too many large items, and not enough slots in the backpack.
The Ancient One had no time to sort out this energy and take it back to Kamar-Taj because there were still more spoils to scavenge ahead.
So, she sought help from her boss, Eternity. But Eternity was busy every day. He had to clean up the mess caused by the lack of cosmic Chaos Power. Eternity brushed her off and deferred her request to Emperor Mount Wey.
Although Emperor Mount Wey didn't know what The Ancient One planned to do, he fulfilled her wish, transforming her body into a Star Spirit-like existence. While she still had a physical form, she was no longer a carbon-based life form, nor was she subject to any lifespan restrictions.
With this transformation, The Ancient One's backpack got a lot bigger, allowing her to return to the battlefield and scavenge happily again.
However, this brought another problem. Although the energy was metaphorized into a backpack grid, in fact, all these energies were mixed together in The Ancient One's body.
As mentioned before, the energy of the cosmic origin has many different properties, many of which conflict with each other, such as the Power of Light and Darkness, the Power of Rebirth and Destruction, etc. All these powers were stored by The Ancient One in her body where they always quarreled with each other.
Somtimes, an explosion happened due to the conflict between the power of light and darkness; at other times, the Power of Chaos was incompatible with the Order of Power, leading to explosions every now and then. These explosions left The Ancient One's Star Spirit body scarred and full of holes.
When she went to Emperor Mount Wey to request an upgrade, they were shocked. They couldn't understand how could a human Mage like The Ancient One ravage a high-level Star Spirit body like this.
The Trinity Emperor Mount Wey, who are ancient beings in the cosmos, were made up of three Demon Gods two of whom came from Earth. They paid attention to the recent state of Earth and knew that modern humans had created several big bombs that could turn Earth into ruins. Originally, they thought The Ancient One was stable, but she turned out to be the same, proving that humans are indeed explosion maniacs.
However, no matter how much they teased, they still had to figure out a way to make The Ancient One's body more robust. After all, she was the agent of White Magic and the embodiment of Eternity's Will. They had discussed matters for retirement with The Ancient One previously. Even if they didn't remodel her, Eternity would definitely remodel The Ancient One into a Saint Spirit Body.
In the end, Emperor Mount Wey directly transformed The Ancient One's body into a Saint Spirit Body. It was a body made by Eternity from the origin powers of the cosmos, closely resembling immortality.
Emperor Mount Wey thought this should satisfy The Ancient One. This was truly the limit that a human Mage like The Ancient One could reach, considering that her foundation was only a human body and not that of a cosmic Demon God. The Eternity Body constructed from the origin power was the upper limit that any carbon-based life form could reach.
But not long after, The Ancient One made a new request. While the Saint Spirit Body was indeed robust and could accommodate a variety of conflicting powers, the problem was that the transformation rate of power consumption was too low.
Simply put, the bandwidth was not enough. Whether it was extracting power from the bodies of the Demon Gods or turning the stored power into magic, the efficiency was not high enough, severely affecting her scavenging speed.
This problem left Emperor Mount Wey stumped. In theory, the output of the Eternity Body should be infinite, but The Ancient One was not a cosmic Demon God. The bandwidth of a human soul is limited. It can't absorb and control limitless power. Once the bandwidth limit is exceeded, the power would surely spiral out of control.
In the end, with her rich scavenging experience and strong scavenging desire, The Ancient One forced Emperor Mount Wey to upgrade her Magic Tech, inventing a method to forcibly increase the bandwidth of the human soul.
Once the method was established, Emperor Mount Wey wanted to test it on The Ancient One. Because if it works, future human believers could use more White Magic, which would benefit them as well.
Additionally, they were also curious about what The Ancient One was doing. What could she possibly be doing to make her body explode so many times?
As a result, Emperor Mount Wey himself came to the area where The Ancient One was located.
The Ancient One, who just hung up on Strange, was enveloped dazzlingly in infinite magic brilliance.
In the center of the Demon God battlefield, amidst a storm of chaos and destruction, a portal suddenly opened and The Ancient One stepped out. In an instant, silence fell, and her voice echoed through the cosmos:
"...Everything has an end, but I am Eternal."