Loki was sentenced to reset in the Authority's court.
He wanted to resist, but there was no magic power here, or rather, the magic power could not take effect here.
Without magic, Loki's combat power was reduced to almost 90%. If it weren't for the middle-aged man from Mobius speaking up for him, he would have been like the last person to be reset, instantly fading into nothingness.
"Let's talk."
Mobius brought Loki into a house and motioned him to sit down and talk.
"What do you want to talk about?" Loki scratched the time chain around his neck and sat down in front of Mobius.
"Perhaps before we talk, you should know some information." Mobius smiled, raised his hand and used the controller to wake up the light and shadow screen that occupied an entire wall.
The screen seemed to fast forward, showing every detail of Loki's life from childhood to the present. It should have been a long and boring movie, but strangely, the time of those scenes seemed to be compressed, and Loki browsed through them all.
Yet only a brief moment passed nearby.
The speed and slowness of time were confused here. In other words, the time on that screen and in this place was not normal.
Seeing what the self on the screen did, Loki's face gradually became gloomy and ugly. When he saw that the self on the screen had guided the invading dark elves in a direction, which led to the death of his mother Frigga, this gloom and ugliness reached its peak.
For Loki, the only people he cares about are his mother and that stupid brother, and his father Odin can only come after them.
He couldn't accept himself on the screen.
Of course, he has now realized that everything he experienced on the screen should be what his own self in another universe has experienced.
His mother is still alive and well!
Then he saw his sister Hela again, the destruction of Asgard, the coming of Ragnarok, and the arrival of Thanos!
He saw himself on the screen die at the hands of Thanos, and also saw his brother's grief.
For a moment, even though he knew that it was happening to another version of himself, Loki couldn't help but feel some empathy.
Compared to another self, your current life seems pretty good?
At least his parents were still alive, and that stupid brother hadn't become one-eyed. As for Thanos, the one who killed him, he was now being processed into a genetic sample in Luke's laboratory.
With Luke's help, the God King Odin no longer falls into Odin's sleep frequently, and even his strength has been greatly improved. As part of the energy bank, Asgard's strength and influence have long surpassed the Asgard shown on the screen.
Loki, always quick-witted, immediately thought: why would the other party show him such a video? Was it to show him how miserable he was in the other world? Or did he mistake himself for the Loki on the screen?
Did they make a mistake?
Or is there another force intervening and influencing them, causing their confusion?
Who is it?
Loki felt that he seemed to have forgotten some very important memories, and these memories happened not long ago!
The other party is very good at using time, so who is the one in his memory who is good at manipulating time?
Supreme Mage!
Luke!
Three people instantly popped up in Loki's mind. The Ancient One and the Sorcerer Supreme named Strange, both skilled at observing and manipulating time. With their unreserved openness, Luke, who was practically on the same page with that group of mages, became even more proficient in the Sorcerer Supreme's specialties.
It's Luke!
Loki decided on the candidate almost instantly. Only Luke would do such a thing. He was somehow grafting his own experiences from another universe onto him. What was his purpose?
"How strange."
Mobius looked at Loki, who was still sitting in his seat with a gloomy expression and deep in thought, with some surprise, and frowned slightly.
"What?" Loki, whose thoughts were interrupted by Mobius, raised his head and looked at Mobius who stood up opposite him and asked.
"According to our assessment of you, you shouldn't be so calm. Is there something else we haven't observed in time?" Mobius looked at the stopped screen, then looked at Loki, who had a grim expression on his face, and vaguely felt that something was wrong.
"Then how should I react? Make a scene? Or hold you hostage and have a fight here?" Although Loki didn't know why Luke did this, he instinctively disguised and acted. He looked at Mobius mockingly and said sarcastically.
"The anger is real." Mobius ignored Loki's sarcasm. Seeing Loki's suppressed anger, he felt a little relieved. He continued, "I advise you not to do anything here that might cause misunderstandings, such as holding me or others hostage. It's meaningless.
But if you can do us a favor, we might let you go free afterward. Want to hear about it?"
"Don't you control time and are omnipotent?" Loki laughed sarcastically.
"If we were truly omnipotent, we would be gods. Unfortunately, we are just ordinary people." Mobius didn't care about Loki's ridicule. He looked at Loki expectantly.
"Tell me, what kind of help would require the God of Trickery to help you solve?" Loki gestured for Mobius to continue.
"A time fugitive. He has killed many of our time guards. We need you to help us catch him." Mobius said concisely.
"Although I think nothing can stump me, there are so many smart people, why me?" Loki frowned.
"Because the one who committed the crime was you. Another you!" Mobius gave the answer softly in the face of Loki's surprised expression.
"Only Loki knows Loki best. So, are you willing to help us?"
"I can try it, fighting against myself, it's very interesting." Loki thought to himself and said.
"Very good. If you can help us hunt down the murderer who killed our members, then I will ask the judge to grant you a certain degree of freedom." Mobius smiled.
Inside the hall.
Loki put on a jacket and looked at the Time Guardians who had brought him here. He glanced sideways at Mobius and asked, "Where are we going?"
"To get to the crime scene, we need to locate a timeline and then travel through time." Mobius raised his hand and used the time controller in his hand to summon a light gate.
Loki glanced at the controller in his hand and secretly took note of it.
"Did you see anything?"
Standing at the scene of the latest murder, Mobius looked at Loki expectantly.
"What did you see?" Loki raised his head and looked at Mobius in confusion.
"My mistake. I meant, do you have any suggestions? Based on your understanding of yourself." Mobius changed his words and asked again.
"No, I don't have any opinion. I don't know what the other me wants to do. How can I give you advice if I don't know what he wants to do?" Loki shook his head.
"Well, it seems we have come back empty-handed again." Mobius was a little disappointed when he heard this.
"You can control time, so why don't you go back to the moment it happened? I mean, back to the moment the murderer was committing the crime?" Loki was puzzled. With such powerful abilities, why do you still need help solving the case? Shouldn't you just observe the timeline directly, and then, like watching a movie, have every detail unfold before you?
Can't do it?
It's obvious that the mage is very good at this.
"I need to correct you. We don't control time. We only maintain and correct time so that it moves forward according to its proper timeline.
As for why we can't just go back and wait, the interconnected events will destabilize the timeline, exacerbating the constant changes in this branch. Any unexpected factor will lead to completely uncontrollable unexpected situations. If we don't want to cause greater damage and a worse situation, we can only deal with it after the event has occurred, when the timeline has stabilized.
Mobius gave a frank answer to Loki's question.
"Then you don't have any intelligence information about him? Can't you observe his whereabouts throughout the timeline?" Loki was still a little confused.
"We can't find him. Do you understand? We can't find him! I asked you to help me find him. He is very cunning. I don't know how he avoided the observation of time." Mobius was a little angry.
"Then it seems you're not as powerful as I thought. So lame." Loki curled his lips. This wasn't even as strong as Heimdall right now. At least with Odin's support and Luke's armament, he could not only see everything and everyone in the universe, but he could also travel back in time, observing past events that had already occurred, even those the universe still remembered.
"We have never been strong. The strong ones are the Time Guardians. They are the masters of the Time Administration." Mobius was not angry at Loki's complaints. While ordering the abnormal time here to be cut off with a resetter, he smiled and stepped into the opened time gate.
The Time Resetter is a device used by the Time Administration to control time variables and cut out affected areas on branch timelines. It can allow time to heal itself and proceed according to the original script of the sacred timeline.
"I want to look up some information. Only when I know more can I help you more." Loki also stepped in and chased Mobius back to the lobby of the Time Management Bureau. He trotted a few steps and walked side by side with him, asking.
"I can give you this authority, but you have to understand that if you can't prove your worth, then you will have to be reset.
As the movie says, if the divine timeline is a movie with a beginning and an end, then eradicating you would be like cutting you out of the movie. You don't exist in time, and naturally, you don't exist in the movie. Aside from us and the Administration's databases, no one in your universe remembers you, and there will be no trace of your existence. Mobius paused, looked at Loki, and spoke carefully.
"I know. Also, remember to return my things. I'm not comfortable wearing this outfit at all." Loki's eyes flickered as he asked tentatively.
"Give him his things." Mobius waved to the Time Guardian beside him and pointed at Loki.
"Thank you very much." Loki bowed gracefully.
"You'd better show your worth, otherwise, I can't help you." Mobius patted Loki's shoulder and said meaningfully.
After getting his belongings back, Loki couldn't wait to rummage through his pockets. He remembered that he had a lot of good things on him.
But all that was returned were his clothes and a windproof iron lighter.
"Where are my other things?" Loki looked at Mobius.
"It's not the right time for you to take some things back. After all, Ravna's trust in you is almost zero. I have done everything I could." Mobius smiled apologetically at Loki, picked up his coffee, touched his sparse hairline, and sat back in his seat.
Loki clenched his fist in anger and punched the air, then walked helplessly to the data room. Of course, he was not as angry as he showed, at least he still had a lighter in his hand, right?
A lighter stolen from Luke's collection.
No matter what its use is, according to the level of Luke's collection room, the equipment stored in it must at least be an artifact-level equipment, right?
Just like Odin's treasure room, only treasures that are worthy of collection will be put in by Odin.
Loki now intends to find out what this lighter is used for. Maybe his escape depends on it.
Of course, unless he had no other choice, he had no intention of using the lighter within the administration without knowing anything about its effectiveness.
…
After browsing the case files in the archives for two days and two nights, Loki seemed to have made a major discovery and found Mobius who was hurriedly carrying out a mission.
"I found that guy." Loki sat down on the chair opposite Mobius's table and looked at him with burning eyes.
After hearing Loki's words, Mobius's originally somewhat annoyed expression immediately became serious. He suddenly stood up from his seat and looked at Loki.
"Did you find it?" he asked in surprise.
"To be precise, I found out how he avoided you. But as long as we know how he avoided you, it won't be difficult to find him." Loki smiled proudly.
"Are you sure?" Mobius asked in disbelief.
"Listen, the reason you can't find her is because she's hiding in the Doomsday timeline. Linked events occur because someone did what they had to do, which triggered a series of uncontrollable chain reactions. If you do a lot of unnecessary, far-reaching things, won't it lead to a new timeline branch?
For example, I, Loki, went back to before the destruction of Asgard and did a bunch of messed up things. Would that affect the original timeline?
No! Because Ragnarok will still arrive as promised, destroying and annihilating everything. Then all the messed-up things I've done, those actions that could have triggered new timeline branches, will be buried with the arrival of Ragnarok. Everything will proceed according to the divine timeline. So, from your perspective, everything is normal!
Because everything that was supposed to happen has indeed happened. There were no surprises. No timeline changes will be caught by you. And after this timeline is erased, no new timeline branches will appear. Do you understand?" Loki struggled to explain to Mobius, trying to make him understand.
"What you said is a possibility, but how can we be sure?" Mobius looked at Loki.
"An experiment, it's very simple for you, isn't it?" Loki smiled at Mobius.
Mobius immediately found the judge and asked her for an experiment. Judge Ravna did not trust Loki and thought he was talking nonsense, but Mobius's plea made her approve the experiment.
Mobius and Loki found a node in the timeline before the doomsday disaster, then used the time gate to travel through it and made a crazy scene at that node.
But when the disaster came, Mobius was surprised to find that everything was just as Loki said. Before the timeline they observed had time to branch and change, the time of the area was erased.
Everything works fine.
…
Mobius quickly organized a team, eliminated all possibilities, locked on a time point based on Loki's movements, and took his men to chase after him.
This time, they were closest to the murderer.
Loki even saw another version of himself, a female version of himself. He wanted to understand Loki's purpose and try to form an alliance with her.
Frankly speaking, the more Loki learned about the Time Administration, the more he wanted to control it. While it couldn't compare to the behemoth that was the Energy Bank, it certainly had its strengths. If all else failed, selling all the equipment and technology there to Luke would be a lucrative profit.
Unfortunately, his attempt to win over the other party was rejected without hesitation. Loki opened a door of time in front of him, said goodbye to him playfully, and jumped in.
At the same time, the time reset device that Loki had placed in the timeline and looted from the time guards she attacked was also activated at the same time, completely shaking the stable sacred timeline.
Countless time branches spread and climbed as time was reset, making the entire time management completely chaotic.
Loki gritted his teeth and jumped in before the light gate disappeared.
After arriving at the Time Management Bureau, Loki, following the memories she had extracted from the Time Guardians, sprinted towards her destination. Loki, who had arrived at the same time as her, saw her running and immediately followed.
The madly running Loki and the other two soon caused a commotion and pursuit. Finally, before reaching their destination, they were stopped by Judge Ravna and her men.
Magic was banned in the Time Administration Bureau. With nowhere else to go, Loki could only restart the time transporter in her hand and disappear from the Time Administration Bureau before being arrested.
"Why are you following me?" Loki, who fell from the ceiling to the ground, yelled at Loki who fell with her.
"You took me hostage. Couldn't you have warned me before you opened the door, or pushed me out?" Loki stood up from the ground with a grin. His eyes caught sight of the time teleporter that had fallen to the ground not far away. Loki's eyes followed his, also falling on the time teleporter.
The two men looked at each other and acted almost simultaneously, grabbing the time teleporter. There was even a brief fistfight in between.
But Loki discovered to his shame that he couldn't defeat the female version of himself, and the time teleporter fell into her hands.
"Goodbye." Loki waved to Loki who was kicked aside by him, holding the teleporter in his hand.
"Wait." Loki subconsciously took out a lighter and held it high.
"A lighter? Have fun with it yourself." Loki spread his hands, shrugged, and activated the time teleporter.
Loki hardened his heart, and with a crisp sound of metal flapping and grinding, he used the lighter in his hand. He didn't know what the lighter was for, he used it out of helplessness and rage in a desperate situation.
Transparent flames shot up, and the magic power in Loki's body rushed madly to the lighter in his hand. This pocket-sized object was like a bottomless black hole, greedily swallowing up his magic power.
A strange force field spread endlessly in all directions with Loki as the center, and in the blink of an eye it had spread thousands of meters away.
Inside the force field, everything came to a standstill: the floating dust, the blowing wind, the creaking sounds, the shaking ground, and Loki standing outside the light gate, about to step in.
The only one who could move on the field was Loki, who was holding a lighter.
However, Loki was not feeling well now. The magic power in his body was decreasing rapidly at an incredible speed. This forced him to hurry up and quickly step forward to snatch the time transmitter from Loki's hand.
There was another crisp metallic clang. The transparent flame and the strange force field vanished as the lighter's windproof cover closed.
The flow of time returned to normal.
Loki heard the sound again, felt the ground shaking, and felt an oncoming fist.
"What did you do? Give it back to me!" Having regained her composure, Loki stumbled and nearly fell flat on her face. She was shocked to find that the time portal before her had vanished, and even the teleporter in her hand had somehow ended up in Loki's hands. She reacted with incredible speed and punched Loki in the face.
Caught off guard, Loki fell backwards, and then he felt a body pressing on him. The fingers holding the teleporter were forcefully pried open, and the teleporter was snatched from his hand.
"This time, we really have to say goodbye." Loki smiled and activated the teleporter again. But the next moment, the smile on her face disappeared. She looked at the teleporter in astonishment, as if it had malfunctioned. She shook the hand holding it violently a few times and restarted it.
Still quiet.
No light gate appeared.
"What did you do?" Loki looked at Loki on the ground angrily!