Marvel Anime Extraction - Chapter 118
Chapter 118 Red Skull – Are You Here to Replace Me?
When Fanny regained his sight, he found himself in a wasteland.
The stars were visible behind the vast orange-red sky, and a strange glowing orb in constant eclipse replaced the sun. He was obviously no longer on Earth.
Most importantly, Earth wouldn’t have a reaper-like red skeleton in a loose black cloak floating in the air.
Red Skull was absolutely elated when he saw Fanny’s sudden appearance.
Seventy years… after working as guardian for seventy long years, would this be the day that I could finally retire?!
“Are you here to replace me?” Red Skull floated in front of Fanny, his skinless face brimming with anticipation.
“Replace my ass! Get lost!”
Fanny was livid. He immediately realized where he was when he saw Red Skull. It was a place he thought he would visit someday, but he didn’t expect that day to come so early.
Fanny could swear that he had never even touched the Tesseract. The closest he had approached was more than ten centimeters, and he was wearing armor too. Touching the artifact shouldn’t be a problem.
Fanny considered if Nick Fury had tried to trick him, but he didn’t think that was very plausible. First of all, sending him here wouldn’t benefit Nick Fury in any way. Second, he didn’t think SHIELD had mastered the control over Space Stone to this extent.
Another possibility that Fanny had considered was Loki, the fallen Asgardian prince that had been missing since being exiled. Loki should’ve been familiar with the Tesseract, but Fanny didn’t think that the god of mischief could control the Tesseract remotely like this, either.
Before Fanny was teleported, he could vaguely hear a surprised voice—rather than a voice, it was more like a projected emotion inside his head.
It didn’t come from the people around or behind him at the time. It must have come from within the Tesseract itself. Considering where he had been sent to, Fanny was 90% sure the Space Stone had brought him here.
Red Skull flinched at Fanny’s reaction. If this person had been brought to replace him, Soul Stone should have explained the situation.
But the situation was not as he thought. Red Skull was disheartened, but he still had to fulfill his duty. He peered into Fanny’s soul with the ability granted by the Infinity Stone and floated a little higher.
“Fanny, the son of Elias!”
“Shut up!” Fanny glared at the Red Skull, annoyed that his thought was interrupted. The jeweled eyes of ‘Demon Armor Incursio’ flashed red with anger, startling Red Skull.
It had been seventy years. Red Skull thought nothing could surprise him anymore, but Fanny was an irregular existence. The armored mage had arrived through an abnormal method and displayed neither surprise nor confusion at his appearance—Fanny had been furious instead.
Fanny took deep breaths to calm himself down, ignoring the curious and perplexed Red Skull. He checked his sling ring, trying to open a portal back to Earth.
But Fanny still hadn’t mastered the portal spell to the point of freely traveling throughout Earth yet. Opening a portal from Vormir, countless light-years away from Earth, was out of the question.
“Gah!” Fanny stomped his feet angrily and stopped trying to open the portal. He knew it would be impossible to go back to Earth with his ability alone.
Fanny didn’t feel entirely hopeless, though. With the ‘Sumire Karaage Rolls’ skill, he would never have to worry about going hungry. This planet also had water—even if it didn’t have any water, he could use ‘Ars Magna’ to gather the moisture in the air. He would have no worry about survival, at least.
And he had told Skye that he would be occupied for the next week. If he didn’t return after the week passed, Skye would definitely notify Ancient One in Kamar-Taj. Ancient One must have some way to find out about his situation: who else other than Ancient One could open a portal to this place?!
Thus, Fanny was quite at ease. He would only have to endure for a week. It shouldn’t be that hard.
Fanny swore to find out why that stupid Stone would glitch out and send him to this accursed place, even if he had to burn his bridge with Nick Fury.
Fanny snapped out of his thought back to the planet Vormir and turned to look at the unusually quiet Red Skull.
“You’re the guardian of the Soul Stone, right? Red Skull from Hydra? Where is the damned Soul Stone? Take me to it. Don’t worry, I know the rules, offering true love and everything.”
Red Skull was stunned a little when Fanny suddenly broke the silence with a barrage of earth-shattering statements. He stared at Fanny with suspicion.
Was this guy really not my replacement?!
Red Skull obediently brought Fanny to the top of the mountain, to the altar framed by two massive stone monuments somewhat reminiscent of an electrical plug.
“Who are you?” Red Skull couldn’t hold his curiosity. The power of the Soul Stone could reveal Fanny’s name, but he could not peer into Fanny’s past.
“Who am I?!” Fanny sighed, “A college student from Earth, the owner of Kamar-Taj, Sorcerer Supreme’s disciple. My nicknames are the Silver Knight, Knight of Divine Punishment, Silver Mage, and so on and so on…”
Fanny added, “But for now, I’m just an Avenger with a score to settle against a stone. Oh, right, it was against the same Stone that made you like this.”
Fanny felt a tinge of sympathy when he recalled Red Skull’s past. He softened his attitude.
“So the Tesseract did send you!” Red Skull recognized the method of Fanny’s arrival, which made him mistakenly suspect that Fanny had come to replace him. He stopped holding back his excitement and curiosity after Fanny admitted to it, “But, then, how are you unharmed?”
“Do I look like I’m alright?” Fanny snapped at Red Skull, “My fate is much worse than yours. At least you got sent here after grabbing the damned Stone, your body destroyed by its power. I’ll have you know, I was more than ten centimeters away from it. I didn’t even touch it, but I still got dumped to this place!”
Fanny felt so angry and wronged. He did hold the impure desire to feed Space Stone’s energy to Blue-Eyes White Dragon, but the Stone attacked him before he could even formulate his next move.
You’re the Space Stone, not Mind or Time. You can’t even read my mind or see my future, so how were you preempting my crime?!
Red Skull had no idea what to feel. He felt a strange and inexplicable emotion, almost as if meeting an old friend in a faraway land.
“If you wish to obtain the Soul Stone, you must lose that which you love. This is an eternal sacrifice. A soul for a soul.”
Red Skull decided to ignore Fanny’s predicament for the time being and resumed his duty. After seventy years, despite his initial reluctance, he had gradually gotten used to it.
“Bah, what soul for a soul?! If anything, it owes me a debt!” Fanny replied in disdain as he walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down, still clad in ‘Demon Armor Incursio.’
After calming himself down and thinking carefully, he realized that the Space Stone would not just send him to this place without any reason.
Among the Infinity Stones, Fanny held the least interest in Soul Stone. It’s not like this lack of interest would change just by coming here.
But he had discovered that the Space Stone held consciousness within it. Would it make sense if this Soul Stone, with its ritual and guardian, doesn’t have one?!
Fanny began to devise a scheme to force the Soul Stone to explain what was going on and compensate him for the hassle he was subjected to. It wouldn’t exactly be correct to say that it inherited the debt from its ‘parent,’ but the stones could be likened to siblings, so it was close enough.
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