Marvel: Little Genius - Chapter: 400 (Patreon)

"Listen, right now our goal is to take down Thanos, so we should cooperate wholeheartedly and maximize our strength. Our advantage is that we've already infiltrated Thanos's lair and captured one of his trusted associates.

So, here's the plan: we'll use this captive to divert Thanos's attention and lead him into our prepared ambush. Once Thanos is in position, we'll all converge on him, subdue him, and, most importantly, take the Infinity Gauntlet and Infinity Stones from him. Only then will we have a chance to deal with him.

Each of you, please introduce yourselves and your abilities. I need to assign your combat tasks... Hey! Wait a minute, you, the big guy without a shirt over there, were you even listening to me? Yawning at such a crucial moment!"

Tony was in the process of explaining the battle plan to Star-Lord and his companions when he noticed Drax yawning. Tony couldn't help but express his frustration.

"Ah, um, sorry, I haven't been paying attention since you started explaining your plan."

Upon hearing Drax's response, Tony rolled his eyes in exasperation, clearly frustrated. It seemed like he had a less-than-ideal teammate. "Never mind, let him live in his own world..."

"I don't want to discourage you, but my team members are like this. They're not good at following plans, and it's something that gives me a headache," Star-Lord said, understanding Tony's frustration.

"What are you guys good at then?"

"Killing and surviving."

"...," Tony didn't know how to comment on Star-Lord's group of misfits anymore. After all, when dealing with a bunch of fools, you had to lower yourself to their level. Tony decided to give up.

"All right, Lord, should I call you that?"

"It's Star-Lord! You may not be familiar with interstellar travel, but I'm a famous figure in the universe!"

"Okay, Star-Lord, can you gather your people together and make them focus? We need to unite now. If you guys go off on your own, it will not only disrupt our plans but also put both you and us in a dangerous situation."

"Hey! Are you even listening to me? Can't you take this war meeting seriously?"

Tony angrily shouted, but this time, his target was not Drax but the mantis woman standing next to him.

"I'm really sorry, but your friend seems off? Is he usually like this?" Mantis pointed towards Doctor Strange, not far from Tony, and asked.

Tony turned to look and saw Doctor Strange sitting cross-legged, floating in mid-air, and his entire body was shaking uncontrollably as if having a seizure.

"Mark, what's going on with Doctor Strange? He looks like there's something wrong with his body or mind..."

Seeing Doctor Strange in this state, other superheroes gathered around, concerned about Doctor Strange's well-being.

"Strange is using the Eye of Agamotto, one of the six Infinity Stones, specifically the Time Stone, to travel through time. What you see is him constantly twitching, as if having a seizure. He's continually traversing between the future and the present, trying to foresee the outcome of our battle against Thanos. Through these experiments conducted in different timelines, Strange can find a path that guides us to a successful outcome.

The time is almost up, and Strange should wake up soon. Then we'll know the answer."

As Mark finished explaining, Doctor Strange had already released the time spell and awakened from the convergence of multiple timelines. However, judging by his pale face and profuse sweating, it was evident that this spell had not been easy.

In fact, what Mark didn't explain to the other members was that using magic like Doctor Strange's, which involves using the Time Stone to traverse time and foresee the future, is incredibly dangerous and torturous.

In each failed timeline that Doctor Strange traverses, all the pain and death must be endured by him personally. Even if time can be reversed, the memories of this excruciating pain persist in his mind as he returns to the present and do not disappear.

Experiencing such repeated deaths thousands of times demands not only immense magical power but also an incredibly resilient mental will.

In this sense, compared to Loki, who is often presumed dead but returns, Doctor Strange must have experienced death more times than anyone else.

As Doctor Strange caught his breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead, he finally noticed that a group of superheroes had gathered around him and felt a bit overwhelmed.

"Are you back to your senses? How do you feel?" Captain, as the leader of the Avengers, was the first to ask with concern.

"I feel awful. I just traversed time and saw all possible outcomes of our battle against Thanos."

"How many outcomes did you see?" Star-Lord, who had never witnessed magic like this, asked with curiosity.

"14,000,606."

"How many times did we win among those?" Tony asked the question that concerned him the most.

"Only one..."

When Doctor Strange gave his answer, all the surrounding superheroes fell silent, and Mark and Doctor Strange exchanged a glance.

Doctor Strange's gaze spoke volumes; the key to the only successful possibility lay with Mark. Mark also guessed the implication, as the number of possible outcomes Doctor Strange saw was one more than the figure from his previous life's memory. This extra possibility represented the variable that didn't originally exist in those timelines.

After receiving this information from Doctor Strange's eyes, Mark could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Since the timeline where he existed was the only one with an additional outcome, it meant that their chances of defeating Thanos were not the 1 in 14,000,606 as Tony and the others had thought, but a hundred percent!

However, Mark was so absorbed in this newfound one hundred percent chance that he didn't notice the deep sense of regret and pain in Doctor Strange's eyes.

No one knew what Doctor Strange had seen in the future timelines through the Time Stone, causing such complex emotions to fill his gaze. And until the moment of the final outcome arrived, to maintain the continuity of time, Doctor Strange couldn't reveal any specific information about what he had witnessed to anyone.

Whether it was comedy or tragedy, the unknown brought not only hope but also a despairing fear and pain...