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Thwack!
Another muffled thud.
This time, the Ancient One put some real muscle into it.
Luca, having taken a second blow to the back of the head, flopped forward, planting his face directly into the carpet.
"What exactly is going through your head? Do you think I'm some evil villain out to destroy the Earth? or some true god who holds the power of omniscience?"
Even after saying that, the Ancient One didn't seem to have vented enough frustration.
Before Luca could even scramble up from the floor—Bam! Bam!—she hammered him back down.
This time, Luca finally got a good look at how the Ancient One was hitting him.
The old mage had actually conjured a baseball bat made of golden energy strands out of thin air and was waving it around.
Seeing that she looked ready to take another swing, Luca frantically threw his hands up in surrender.
"Time out! Time out! I shut up, okay? You're the bigger person here! Please, just explain what's going on to this magic-illiterate dummy!"
Seeing that Luca had thoroughly given up, the Ancient One waved her hand to dismiss the bat and sat down cross-legged to explain.
"While the Eye of Agamotto helps me utilize the Time Stone more effectively, it simply allows me to see the possibilities that the future holds. And within those possibilities, you are the biggest variable..."
Listening to the Ancient One seriously explain her abilities for the first time, Luca finally grasped the mechanics of the Time Stone and her so-called precognition.
According to her, with the Eye of Agamotto, she could indeed observe the trajectory of the world.
Even though the Time Stone's power was limited to this universe, outsiders like Gwen and the Spot were still considered part of the countless time branches observed by the Stone once they entered this universe.
For someone like the Ancient One, who had plenty of time to observe every variation and potential timeline, claiming to know the "entire future" wasn't exactly a lie.
However, Luca's existence was the exception to these countless variations.
It wasn't that she couldn't see Luca's "future" through the Time Stone.
But because Luca's abilities didn't originate from the known Marvel Universe, every time he obtained a new item or ability, the future timeline the Ancient One observed would spawn a massive number of brand-new changes.
As Luca's power and influence grew, these new variations increased geometrically.
The current Ancient One couldn't possibly monitor every new change Luca brought about 24/7, nor could she predict what new item he might get next.
In layman's terms: If Luca acquired a new item and the Ancient One bothered to check all the future timelines right then, she could still "predict the future." But the accuracy of that prediction would only last until Luca got his next item.
So, unless Luca stopped using his cheat ability to synthesize new items forever, "predicting the future" was no longer a reality for the Ancient One.
Her current foresight was, at best, a limited deduction based on existing conditions combined with the timelines she could see.
"Am I really that big of a deal? I thought..."
"Thought what? That I have nothing better to do than watch you eat, sleep, and take a dump all day?"
Seeing the undisguised disgust in the Ancient One's eyes, Luca didn't know what to say.
He wasn't sure if he should be happy that his future couldn't be predicted, or worried that his biggest safety net—the Ancient One—had lost her omniscience.
Relying on her centuries of experience, the Ancient One guessed what Luca was conflicted about. But she didn't dwell on things that couldn't be changed. Instead, she moved on to explain Earth's current situation.
"Right now, I have one piece of good news and two pieces of bad news. Which one do you want to hear first?"
"Come on, Boss, don't play games with me..."
Luca slumped into a posture of defeat. The Ancient One pursed her lips in slight annoyance but continued anyway.
"The good news is, for the time being, you don't need to worry about the Hell Dimension invading Earth through other weak points in space."
At that very moment, outside Earth's dimension.
The Ancient One's main body sat in the void. In one hand, she held a golden chain; in the other, a blue one.
These two chains, symbols of binding, were firmly suppressing the true forms of Mephisto and Dormammu.
Although the chains—and the Ancient One herself—were trembling under the frantic struggles of the two Demon Gods, the constant layering of new magic arrays made it seem like this imprisonment could last until the end of time.
Centered around this battlefield, energies of black, red, gold, and blue clashed and exploded, turning the space around Earth into a chaotic turbulent mess.
"That's roughly the situation."
The Ancient One retracted the projection she had shown him. Luca gulped nervously.
"Boss, you've got them on leashes like dogs... that's what you meant by 'stalling'?!"
Ignoring Luca's shock, the Ancient One casually explained the implications. Because of the continuous energy explosions outside Earth, the spatial fluctuations of the planet itself had become even more chaotic.
Techniques like Tony's—which relied on finding weak spatial points and using energy collisions to pry them open—would no longer work. In fact, for the time being, no one could enter or leave Earth through that layer of external turbulence.
"The bad news is, this method isn't sustainable."
Once the energy outbursts stopped, Earth would return to its previous state—riddled with holes.
Actually, without the New York Sanctum, and with Mephisto's energy tainting Earth's space from such close proximity, invading might become even easier for him later.
Furthermore, this spatial turbulence meant that Luca and the others couldn't proceed with their plan to calculate weak points and build a new defense matrix.
With space in such chaos, data calculated one second would be useless the next.
Luca had wanted to say, 'Why don't you just work a little harder, Boss, and keep walking those two dogs forever?'
But thinking about it, that was impossible. These weren't the only two dimensional entities in the universe. Outside forces, accidents, or the battle itself... anything could interrupt the "stalling" tactic the Ancient One described.
"So, the two pieces of bad news are: this defense won't last, and we can't use calculations to build a new defense matrix?"
"No... that all counts as just one piece of bad news."
"As for the second piece of bad news..."
"Because so many dimensional rifts merged at once, and because I used too much Aurantius Dim—oh, you call it the Hextech Dimension, right? Because I used too much Hextech energy during the battle..."
"Mephisto has set his sights on that dimension."