25 Chapter 25 As You Wish
It didn't take long for Pietro, only five or six minutes. With a "click", the castle gate slowly opened, opening the entrance to the two.
Pietro waved his hand excitedly, then looked at Austin behind him, waiting for praise.
"Well done. Now let's get out of here. It probably won't be long before the flames of war spread to our side." Austin nodded slightly to indicate his approval of Pietro, then raised his footsteps and walked straight in.
The internal structure of this old castle was almost the same as what Austin had guessed, except for the details which were slightly different.
The rest of it did not differ much from the old castles in the movies and films in his previous life. Basically, all foreign castles have a similar décor.
However, if it comes to the differences in interior design styles and the specific cultural styles of castles in different countries, Austin was not very knowledgeable about them. He had not studied such knowledge, so he could only utter a soft exclamation at the exceptionally luxurious interior structure - awesome!
The old castle had probably been left unattended for too long, and everywhere inside was filled with dirt. The counters with long withered plants were covered in dust, and the ancient paintings on the walls were hung with spiderwebs. It seems that even President X had not come back here for a long time.
"Where are the hidden items?" Austin looked around at the surroundings. Huge vases, or rather vase-shaped ornaments nearly a person tall, were placed on both sides of the aisles. Judging from the style of the vases, they looked a bit like domestic ones, with standard landscape patterns on them.
"At the very bottom of the entire castle, there used to be a wine cellar, but it was transformed into a large collection room by President X. The good news is that there is almost no obstruction there. I don't know if it's because President X was too confident that he did not set up defenses at the collection site. Of course, that was my experience back then, and now I'm not sure what it's like."
"We'll find out when we get there."
Austin and Pietro moved fast. They did not stop halfway, but quickly passed through the aisles under Pietro's leadership.
At this moment, Austin's heart was excited with an indescribable feeling. He was excited that he was about to leave this damned world, while also a little worried that the time controller(TemPad*) might not work or might be broken. In that case, he would really be trapped here for a lifetime.
With this kind of mood, Austin didn't even have the mood to view the interior of the old castle. If it was the old him, he would definitely visit this old castle and take a few valuable things from it.
Walking along the dark and cold passageway, the two of them soon came to an elevator built inside the old castle. Pietro lightly pressed the switch, and the door of the elevator slowly opened.
"I hope there are no traps down there," Austin spoke indifferently, while also taking a stance to be fully prepared. Since the Iron Battle Suit was pinched into pieces by President X, Austin could only take out the only weapon he had left, the pistol in his arms.
"It shouldn't be so bad, but if there really is a trap, I'll protect you even if I have to fight for my life." Pietro gave Austin a thumbs up, although his somewhat disabled state at the moment made it difficult for Austin to expect anything from him.
The elevator operated, and when the two arrived at the bottom level in a tense state,
Ding!
The signal light of the elevator turned green, and immediately, the automatic door pulled open. The trap that Austin was worried about did not appear. Instead, a long passageway appeared in front of Austin and Pietro.
As the two of them stepped out of the elevator, the originally dim passageway immediately lit up section by section, from near to far, and eventually, the entire passageway was lit up.
Austin and Pietro glanced at each other, neither of them saying anything. Then the two of them still didn't dare to relax, ready to face all kinds of situations at any time as they lifted their feet and walked towards the front.
This passageway was made up of smooth metal, and Austin didn't know what kind of material it was. In short, it did not look like a product of this era, it kind of looked like a bank vault.
"It's very spectacular, isn't it? I was also shocked the first time I came in. I thought I had come to an alien spaceship!" As Pietro controlled the wheelchair to move forward, he said.
"Not bad." Austin perfunctorily responded. Having seen many movies, he was not too surprised by this. It was just that the environment here reminded him of the mutant base in the X-Men movies. It seemed to look like this.
Turning a corner along the passageway, soon, a metal door similar to a bank vault door entered Austin's field of vision. There was a huge "X" symbol on the door.
"This is it." Pietro drove towards the door and saw an intelligent password lock next to it. In addition to unlocking with a password, it could also be unlocked with a palm or iris.
This time Pietro took even less time, and after only ten seconds the metal door made a harsh friction sound as it moved to both sides.
Sure enough, this was really the location of the X-Men base. But in this world, it had been transformed by the mad President X into his own private chamber for storing all kinds of trophies. Every item taken out was valuable enough to sell for a lot of money on the black market.
In addition to the completely useless Darkhold and the Book of Vishanti which were of no use at all, Austin also saw Captain America's shield with a hexagram pattern, Iron Man's helmet mask, Hawkeye's bows and arrows, Hank Pym's unfinished Ant-Man suit, and even a Thor's hammer!
In this world there are actually two guys who 'claim' to be the God of Thunder, one is the God of Thunder who joined the Avengers. He holds an indestructible hammer claiming to be the real Thor of Thunder, except that this 'god' died in a bombardment of Patriot missiles.
And his hammer was not as magical as the legend says. At least the fact that his hammer could be kept here as a trophy was enough to show that this hammer was a fake that anyone could pick up.
The other self-proclaimed God of Thunder was the old man who created the Thor religion. It was just that he was dragged onto the street by security forces to crack down on cults.
In short, in this world, guys who claimed to be able to use 'magic', 'sorcery', or 'divine power' basically did not have good endings.
"Here it is, Austin, what you're looking for is here."
While Austin was immersed in observing these magical items, Pietro stopped by a counter not far away and shouted to Austin.
Hearing this, Austin immediately stopped thinking about these things and came to Pietro's side. Following Pietro's direction, Austin saw the tablet-sized device with an orange clock engraved on the back, exactly the same as the Miss Minutes* in his memory.
"This is it!" Austin's eyes flashed a hint of light. He grabbed the TemPad and kept tapping it with his fingers.
As his fingers touched it, the TemPad lit up instantly, and a picture appeared on the screen. It was the real Miss Minutes, a two-dimensional animation character.
However, this Miss Minutes was not like the one in the Marvel's Series Loki that Austin remembered. She slowly opened her eyes, her pupils creepily turned towards Austin's position, her cold gaze making one a little scared. Even Austin felt a chill when stared at by such a gaze.
"&....Failure..%&*wrong((&*(error%#..."
Like the hoarse radio waves emitted by an old radio, Miss Minutes's mouth opened and closed, making all kinds of noisy, inaudible strange sounds, as if it was the language of another planet or the reverse playback of a sentence.
"Miss Minutes, take us out of here." Austin couldn't help but say as his heart tightened.
If this broken thing was really broken, then all his previous efforts would have been in vain!
As the voice fell, the messy weird sound from Miss Minutes stopped abruptly. Then, there seemed to be a trace of humanized emotion in her eyes. God knows how Austin and Pietro saw the emotional fluctuations from the eyes of an animation character.
"... You. Know me?" Miss Minutes finally uttered the first words that could be understood.
It was not the language of any country, but a kind of bioelectric sound that could allow any intelligent creature to understand the meaning she wanted to express.
"Yes, I know you, take me away from here." Austin held the TemPad and said seriously.
Miss Minutes stared blankly at Austin, as if she was learning and understanding the meaning of what Austin had just said, or the machine was reacting too slowly to process too much information.
Seeing this, Austin urged again:
"I know you can open a time portal. Quick, take us away from this world!"
Austin's brows were deeply furrowed. He had never encountered this situation before. Pietro on the side also remained silent and did not dare to disturb Austin and the Miss Minutes's conversation at all, although he really wanted to speak up.
After an unknown amount of time, Miss Minutes reacted, and she stiffly pulled out a large smile, let's call it a laugh.
A flash of the purple barrier then rapidly expanded from under Austin and Pietro's feet.
"As you wish."
(End Of The Chapter)...To be continued.
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( T/N:
TemPad: TemPads are devices used by the Time Variance Authority to do their missions. It is mainly used as a way to travel through different points in time and space in any timeline, by generating a Timedoor for its users as well as used for communication. Hunter B-15 was able to use hers to locate Variants. It is also used to call Miss Minutes in order to access records and files stored in the TVA's library. These TemPads have the ability to be rigged as well as Hunter X-05 did to his.
As the founder of the Time Variance Authority, He Who Remains had his own TemPad which was more powerful than other versions. It was a circle with orange lines in it. This could be used as a Time Twister. Rather than being used to get to other universes, the TemPad was also able to travel through different points in time in the Time Variance Authority Office, which happened to Loki, causing him to start Time Slipping. He Who Remains also used it to display a scene showing Loki and Sylvie Laufeydottir what happened in the Multiversal War.
Miss Minutes: Miss Minutes was created by He Who Remains as a simple artificial intelligence to serve as a chess machine. Over time, He Who Remains realized that she could be more, so he gave her a conscience and the ability to write her own programming. She found herself able to want and develop a personality, continuing to play chess with He Who Remains each night and talking. She served He Who Remains throughout the Multiversal War for eons. Despite this, she also wished for an actual body to inhabit, though He Who Remains never fulfilled that desire.
He Who Remains and Ravonna Renslayer built the Time Variance Authority together, and He Who Remains began to work at the Citadel at the End of Time. He Who Remains activated Miss Minutes, who appeared next to him and offered to play chess. However, He Who Remains ordered Miss Minutes to erase the memories of everyone in the TVA. Miss Minutes hesitantly agreed and disappeared, filling out her orders. She was tasked with serving as the mascot and providing a false narrative on how the Time-Keepers were the creators of the TVA. Miss Minutes did most of the work on the Temporal Loom, only requiring assistance from Ouroboros to run diagnostics every few hundred years. )
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