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With the sharp sound of high heels, Ophelia—wearing her usual green leather outfit—walked into Josh's office in Attilan.
This place had once been a royal palace, but now it served as the home and office of Josh's family on the moon. Though he hadn't taken the old Inhuman royal title, Josh was now essentially the ruler of Attilan.
"How many promising ones have you found?" Josh asked without looking up when Ophelia came in.
"Not many. Only 15 mage apprentices, and a few more rangers—about 30. But according to Vereesa, even when these people finish their training, they can only be called elite archers at best, not true rangers. Humans just don't have the basic qualities to become rangers. As for the priests... they've actually absorbed a lot of people from the Christian Church. No, not just the Church, they've attracted many small religious groups as well. The growth is beyond what we expected," Ophelia said as she sat across from Josh. Since she was his closest subordinate, they didn't bother with formalities when they were alone.
"As expected... Elven magicians are completely different from the ones we have on Earth. Having 15 suitable apprentices in such a short time is already impressive. But their value isn't in how many there are, it's in their different kind of magic. I'll visit that archmage soon—I'm sure the number of mages in our organization will grow a lot… and we'll have two completely different types of magic," Josh said as he put down his book after hearing her report.
It had been a few months since the six high elves had awakened.
And in those months, the benefits Josh reaped from their loyalty had far exceeded his expectations.
After trading for a few elves from Abbendis, Josh immediately took them out of the system inventory, put them under deep anesthesia, and had Ophelia—who had telepathic powers—verify their identities right away.
It turned out that one of the female high elves was indeed, as Abbendis had suspected, the youngest of the Windrunner sisters—Vereesa—who hadn't officially joined the Ranger Corps.
But even though she wasn't officially a Ranger yet, Vereesa was already an adult. Like her two older sisters, who had already become part of Quel'Thalas, she was incredibly talented and had completed all of the ranger training.
It was only because of her sisters' protection and her lack of seniority that she hadn't yet been officially assigned to a unit—as in many nations, the number of troops in each unit was fixed during peacetime, and you couldn't just add people all the time.
In fact, aside from actual combat experience, Vereesa's Ranger skills weren't much weaker than her sisters' at this point.
The reason she was captured was purely due to carelessness. While hunting, Vereesa was surrounded by dozens of trolls—many of them spellcasters—and that's how she was captured.
When Vereesa agreed to serve Josh, the Ouroboros naturally gained a high-level ranger trainer.
But just like Vereesa said, because of natural limitations, it's nearly impossible for humans to truly become rangers. Rangers aren't just physical fighters—the profession is a mix of physical combat and magic, thanks to elven talents.
Anyone who thinks that an elven ranger is just a simple "archer" is truly mistaken.
So it's no surprise that even in the universe of Azeroth, which has a long history of rangers, only one human has ever become one—Nathanos Blightcaller, the legendary simpleton of Azeroth who gave up everything to follow his crush.
Still, Josh didn't mind. Even if his trainees could only become elite snipers at Hawkeye level, he'd be more than happy.
Over thirty Hawkeye level archers? That sounded amazing.
Besides Vereesa, the remaining five high elves included two archmages, a priest, an arcane engineer, and only one commoner. But even this so-called "commoner" had decent spellcasting skills—he could easily cast dozens of Frostbolts or Arcane Missiles.
There was no helping it. No matter what branch, the elves of Azeroth were gifted by nature.
But since this was a completely different world, very few people in the Marvel Universe's Ouroboros could actually learn magic. Out of the tens of thousands in the organization worldwide (A/N: 80% of whom were war orphans), they found only 15 who could become apprentices...
As for this world's lack of arcane energy and the problem of magical addiction, Josh had already solved that. His solution? The Tesseract.
He didn't even need the cube itself—just fragments of its energy crystals were enough to completely solve the elves' addiction and magic energy problems.
That's because the energy of the Tesseract—or the power of the Space Stone—is one of the purest forms of cosmic energy in the Marvel Universe. Although it's not arcane magic, its nature is nearly identical.
Thus, like Fel energy in the Azeroth universe, it can be used as a complete replacement for arcane magic.
The only problem is that this pure cosmic energy is very difficult to collect through normal means.
But that wasn't a problem for Josh. Whether it was fragments of Tesseract energy, power from the Celestials given to the Eternals, or even energy from Tiamat—it was all the same kind of cosmic energy.
And Josh just happened to have access to both kinds of power.
The biggest surprise, though, was the priest.
High elf priests were extremely rare. That's because high elves prized arcane power, which was in direct opposition to the beliefs of the Light. The few high elf priests that existed were all influenced by human faith in the Light.
Josh never expected to get one by chance.
You can imagine the impact of a beautiful elf who could wield the power of the Holy Light suddenly appearing before Christian believers. No wonder she was able to quickly gather a few small religious groups and build a whole new belief system. Josh wasn't surprised.
But just like arcane magic, the Marvel Universe didn't have a natural "Holy Light" power. So after this priest came here, she was just like Tirion Fordring during his exile—unable to use even the tiniest bit of the Light.
Fortunately, with Josh's help, she quickly regained the Light.
But this light didn't come from the Naaru. Instead, it came from the Celestial, Tiamat.
As one of the Celestials who controlled great cosmic energy in the Marvel Universe, Tiamat easily used her cosmic energy to recreate a force identical in nature to the Holy Light. As other Celestials empowered the Eternals, she granted this version of the Light to the Elven priest.
This elf girl, named Berestrella, found a new faith in the Marvel Universe and became the first archbishop of her new Church of the Holy Light.
Her unique way of using the Light as a priest would greatly influence the growth and development of the entire church.
Even better, with Tiamat as the source of the faith, Josh didn't have to worry about Berestrella turning into someone like the human archbishop of Azeroth, Benedictus, who later went completely rogue.
Finally, the Arcane Engineer was another unexpected bonus for Josh.
It was a very unique profession. Most arcane mages focused on how to cast more powerful spells, but arcane engineers were different. They were all about turning magic into technology.
All kinds of magical puppets, detection devices, flying brooms, and other enchanted tools were carefully crafted by arcane engineers like him.
What surprised Josh even more was this arcane engineer's name—Thalorien !
In the original timeline, after the high elves had renamed themselves blood elves, Thalorien was a loyal follower of Prince Kael'thas and the chief engineer who controlled all the technology in Tempest Keep.
Of course, due to the current point in the timeline, this Thalorien was just an ordinary engineer for now.
But based on his future, he was clearly destined to be a top-tier tech genius.
Josh looked forward to the sparks that would fly when this man's arcane engineering knowledge met the technology of other worlds.
In short, the addition of these high elves brought new energy to Ouroboros, a group that was already almost fully formed. They also greatly expanded Josh's supernatural forces.
"Anything else?" After finishing the discussion about the elves' influence, Josh noticed that Ophelia was still sitting there, not moving at all, and asked.
"Yes. That troll leader—he wants to meet you." Ophelia shrugged.
"The troll leader? You mean the troll priest? What was his name again?" Josh tapped the table lightly.
Like most humans, Josh had a tendency to judge by appearance. So, while the beautiful elf girls got the best treatment, the trolls that had also been captured ended up in far worse conditions. They were used directly as test subjects.
Because of their natural healing abilities, they were considered the perfect "lab rats" by many of Ouroboros' research branches.
Of course, not all trolls were treated this way. The troll priest Josh and Ophelia were talking about was different. He was the leader of the troll tribe that had once captured Abbendis and Vereesa.
Because they were wizards and highly dangerous, these trolls were kept in very tight, isolated confinement. Only robots were allowed to interact with them directly. They were only occasionally sampled for blood or flesh, unlike the others, who were full-fledged test subjects.
"His name is Malacrass," Ophelia replied.
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