Erskine, as always, sat in his office with a mug filled with coffee.
He seemed to be looking at the holographic screen across from him, engrossed in the map of the Milky Way.
He sighed and muttered.
"Perhaps someday"
But a knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.
But before he could say anything, Eldrin emerged from his coffee mug like a cartoon character.
Erskine looked at the dead calm and serious Eldrin with twitching eyes.
"There is a door right there, Eldrin"
Said Erskine while pointing at the door.
Eldrin looked at Erskine, confused, and proceeded to do something that made Erskine almost spit his coffee.
He put his hand inside the mug filled with coffee and somehow pulled a whole damn human-sized door out of it.
Erskine looked inside his mug, completely discombobulated at what he just witnessed.
Erskine wanted to speak but could only let out confused, unintelligible sounds.
Eldrin's expression did not change whatsoever, remaining absolutely serious with no trace of tomfoolery, or so Erskine thought.
But in reality, Eldrin was wheezing in his mind.
Sebastian and Michael, who could connect with Eldrin's senses, including vision, wheezed uncontrollably outside the door.
The sight of Erskine the old fool, looking at the mug like it was some legendary artifact beyond his comprehension, when in reality it was an ordinary mug, was simply too much to bear.
Erskine finally managed to form words.
"Does that mean that my house is filled with those artifacts"
He grinned with greed when he thought about that.
He carefully took his mug and put it in a special suitcase, wanting to examine how it functioned.
It didn't seem to be powered by the Tesseract or the Tesseract's energy.
"Fascinating"
Erskine muttered as he adjusted his nonexistent glasses.
After a while, he coughed and looked at Eldrin and those two behind the door.
With a casual gesture, he opened the door via telekinesis.
But when Eldrin finally saw the little one standing beside Sebastian, he almost screamed.
"A child!"
He scanned his appearance and took note of the child's similarities with Eldrin and realised.
"Eldrin's child!?"
Erskine looked at Eldrin with squinted eyes.
"Who's the unlucky woman?"
But Eldrin tilted his head with visible confusion.
"What woman?"
Erskine looked at Eldrin as if he was talking to a fool, but then realised
Eldrin had told him before about the details of his species...wait
Erskine got up to Eldrin and scrutinised his appearance.
"You are not a woman, are you?"
He asked with confusion.
"Of course not"
Replied Eldrin, genuinely taken aback by the question.
But that made Erskine even more confused.
Eldrin noticed and explained.
"Technically speaking, I cannot give birth, but with my powers, creating life is not exactly difficult"
Erskine nodded with understanding and asked.
"So did you come here to introd-
"We will need to open a portal to a different world to solve a minor inconvenience"
Interrupted Eldrin.
And before Erskine could ask about that minor inconvenience, Eldrin explained.
"I'm apparently dying from some kind of curse that is exclusive to my species; it's called karmic debt"
Erskine almost had a heart attack when he heard that; to him, Eldrin dying was the worst-case scenario.
It was even worse than losing billions of humans to war, and that was not because of Eldrin's power.
Hell, the human empire definitely had much more power than Eldrin; they had almost all the infinity stones, weapons that could theoretically destroy planets, super soldiers of all kinds that numbered into millions, and they even had a whole planet full of gods and mages that was rapidly reaching similar strength to that of the human empire.
They quite literally have possibly enough strength to take on multiple Eldrins and come out victorious.
However, Eldrin was not valued for his strength but for his contributions, for what he did for humanity.
He was the reason why they even reached such a level of power; sure, the scientists actually created all these marvelous creations, but in the end, if Eldrin did not save Erskine from death, the human empire wouldn't even be a thing.
And it's not just that; the number of times Eldrin put his life on the line to protect the empire was also the reason he was valued.
He was a symbol, him being alive is already enough to raise the morale of the entire empire.
If there was an enemy with the intention to attack the human empire, Eldrin would be the first to charge, not Erskine or the ancient one, nor the allied civilisations.
And let's not talk about the fact that Eldrin is single-handedly buying all of us time by fighting an Endless army as we speak.
If he were to die, everything that could go wrong would go wrong.
Erskine looked at Eldrin with visible concern and asked.
"Please tell me you have already found a solution"
But Eldrin's answer almost made him curse.
"Hopes, dreams, and prayers might find us a solution"
But Sebastian was too tired of Eldrin's bullshit and got to the point.
"We need to open a portal to a new world and if we are lucky enough, Eldrin will manage to obtain strength sufficient enough to deal with the curse"
Erskine nodded and gave the order to prepare the portal.
Honestly, the plan sounded way too simple, relying on pure luck, which concerned Erskine.