Chapter 359: 359 When All Things Stand Still
"Za Warudo!"
After spending over a year inside the Mirror Dimension.
Kagura Hitomi and Stephen Strange finally initiated the plan they had painstakingly developed with the help of the Time Stone and every other resource at their disposal—Operation Time Distortion had begun!
Za Warudo.
That was the battle cry Kagura had come up with.
To Stephen Strange and everyone else in this world, it was nothing more than a bizarre bit of pseudo-English—something odd and distinctly Japanese.
But since it came from Kagura, it obviously carried meaning for her.
The phrase itself meant "The World," but to anyone familiar with pop culture involving time-stop abilities, it immediately evoked a certain iconic feeling.
Yeah.
Like something hardwired into your soul. Just thinking about it makes you feel unstoppable.
'Vmmm——!'
A brilliant green glow surged outward—the manifestation of one of the universe's most supreme powers.
At that moment, time itself was seized by the wielder of the Time Stone.
Everything around them froze as the artifact's power activated.
Time stopped. Complete silence.
Unlike speedsters like Quicksilver, who create the illusion of time slowing down, the Time Stone achieved true stasis.
It didn't just manipulate perception—it halted reality itself.
Across the battlefield of the Masters, the chaos was caught mid-frame.
Orange sparks from spells hung in the air like suspended fireworks, shattered debris and droplets of blood halted mid-arc, motionless.
Kaecilius stood frozen, arms raised, a surge of green lightning suspended mid-discharge as if even light had been halted in its path.
The Time Stone allowed for absolute dominion over time.
After over a year of training, Kagura and Strange had learned to selectively control what the Time Stone affected.
They could now choose exactly what objects or individuals were affected by the time stop, letting certain people move freely inside this frozen pocket of time.
So within this crystallized moment in the stream of time, Kagura and Stephen moved without restraint.
Originally, Kagura had considered releasing Wong and Mordo from the time lock as well to gain more combat power.
But after careful thought, she decided against it.
You can defy the rules when driven by purpose—like the Ancient One once did for the sake of protecting the world.
But it's unwise to parade your rule-breaking in front of those who strictly uphold them.
Dragging others into your violations, without consent or understanding, only breeds conflict.
Sometimes, new enemies are made exactly that way.
Like giving someone's holographic tech a mocking nickname like "second-rate construct," and then launching into a public critique...
Or humiliating a certain physicist in front of an audience by saying, "Your inventions are worse than the junk Tony Stark makes out of trash."
Kagura didn't know if Kaecilius had once been pushed away like that—if perhaps the Ancient One had inadvertently created her own adversary.
But now that she had struck a deal with the Ancient One, defeating Kaecilius was a burden she had accepted.
"So this is the world after time has stopped… Not as surreal as I imagined," Strange remarked as he and Kagura walked slowly toward Kaecilius.
"I thought stopping light would mean our retinas wouldn't receive any signals and we'd be stuck in pitch black or something…"
"Probably a side effect of the principle of light-speed constancy," Kagura replied. "Even in a world where time stands still, light still travels at 300,000 kilometers per second."
"Really?" Strange mused. "But according to relativity, objects with mass can't reach the speed of light. So that principle should only apply when you're approaching the speed of light, right?"
"Well, I'll leave that kind of theorizing to actual physicists." Kagura waved the thought off. "What matters to us isn't what laws govern this frozen world but how we're going to take Kaecilius down for good."
"Agreed." Strange nodded. "First priority: neutralize him before he can do any more damage to Kamar-Taj."
"Exactly." Kagura smiled, activating her White Moon battle suit to materialize a pair of mechanical gauntlets around her fists. She took up a fighting stance.
"So what's next…" Strange conjured dimensional sigils around his hands, forming mystical gauntlets of his own.
"I get it. This next move is what you call... 'ORA ORA Operation,' right? Why are all your names so weird?"
"Come on, don't sweat the details!" Kagura said with a playful wink. "Names don't matter. Having fun is what counts. So make sure you shout it out loud!"
As soon as she said that, both she and Stephen Strange lunged forward—fists flying in a furious flurry—targeting the immobilized Kaecilius with a relentless storm of punches, a barrage of pure, unrelenting force.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA x100!"
"MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA x100!"
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And then— Time resumed.
"Ugh—!"
In the blink of an eye, before he could even react, Kaecilius was bombarded with a relentless flurry of blows from Kagura and Stephen Strange.
The sheer force of the onslaught overwhelmed him instantly.
The once-dominant Kaecilius, who had been hovering above everyone like an untouchable menace just moments ago, now crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut.
'Thud.' He hit the ground face-first, completely unconscious—no resistance, no second wind, nothing.
With Kaecilius knocked out cold, the dark hounds he had summoned from the Dark Dimension suddenly fell into disarray.
The Secret Sect sorcerers, who had been struggling to maintain their defensive lines, finally saw an opportunity.
With renewed morale, they launched a counterattack against the hounds of Dormammu, determined to defend their homeland—Earth.
If these otherworldly creatures had once posed a serious threat thanks to their coordination under Kaecilius's command, they were now nothing more than a chaotic pack of beasts without purpose.
After all, no matter how elite these "Hellhounds from the Dark Dimension" might be, at their core... they're still just dogs.
And without their master's F2-level neural link and command override system, these mindless, soulless killing puppets were reduced to nothing more than rabid animals flailing in every direction.
"You two… what the hell did you just do? Was that... teleportation?" Mordo was the first to speak, still stunned as he looked at Kagura and Doctor Strange.
"How did Kaecilius fall like that? Don't tell me—you actually used the Eye of Agamotto?!"
"This—" Kagura said with a faint smile, "—is the power of understanding and using the rules."
"At this point, if we were still shackled by outdated dogma… the world would've already ended, don't you think?"
"…" Mordo fell silent, deep in thought.
As expected from someone so loyal to the rules, it wasn't easy for Mordo to accept this kind of action.
The conflict between breaking taboos and saving lives was not one he was ready to resolve.
But… so what?
People grow by making hard choices and embracing change.
Besides, knocking Kaecilius out cold didn't mean they'd won.
To stop him from coming back over and over again, they'd have to wipe him out completely.
And so…
Operation: Scramble Time continues.
Now begins the final phase.
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