"Stephen Strange!" The voice instantly silenced the apprentices whispering in the library. Everyone turned toward the desk by the window and glanced at the man with his head buried behind a book. "Stephen Strange, report to me." The librarian kept calling, until the man's dark curls finally twitched. The librarian finally noticed the slouching man and strode over. Strange also noticed that beside him stood a chubby, anxious-looking Asian man. "Don't waste time!"
"What is it?" the former doctor asked.
"You don't need to know right now," Master Wong cut in. He looked Stephen Strange up and down. Such a forceful manner was uncommon in Kamar-Taj, and Wong certainly was not usually like this; it did not fit his philosophy of enjoying life. Yet he now acted as though something dreadful had happened, unwilling to remain in the quiet library for even another minute, as if the floor beneath his feet were burning hot. "Come with me." He turned and left. "Have more confidence. You need to learn a great deal in a very short time."
"I am learning." Though Stephen Strange said so, he still followed. "Your friend, that future big shot, told me to study properly," he said. "And now you're dragging me out of the library... I was studying works on rune symbols, using folklore papers from Google Scholar as reference material."
Master Wong did not respond to Stephen Strange's sense of humor. Instead, he led him into a training ground that had once been abandoned but had now been renovated. A Praetorian Guard wearing black pauldrons came forward and pointed at a fighter-jet-sized aircraft parked on the helipad in the middle of the grounds. A Fortress-type Automated Combat Robot stood nearby, the enormous cannons on its shoulders and arms raised, its sensor array constantly monitoring and