Although Harry was a kind child—his harsh upbringing had never twisted that kindness—watching the good-hearted Ben be gunned down still stirred up a deep, overwhelming urge to kill. He wanted to kill that thug.
He couldn't accept that a man as kind as Ben had been murdered. He couldn't accept that the rare warmth he'd finally found had been snuffed out. Even more, he couldn't accept that it was all because of him that a genuinely good person had died.
And so the magic in his body went berserk. Under the influence of that rampaging magic, a murderous intent he could no longer suppress was born.
Because he was still so young, that killing intent was pure—so pure that Harry didn't hesitate in the slightest to kill the man in front of him.
The black, liquid-like substance swallowed the thug in an instant. The magic that had followed Harry into this world seemed to undergo an unbelievable mutation; even as raw magic, without any magic circles or spells to shape it, it could unleash astonishing power.
Right now, what Harry wanted most was for the thug in front of him to disappear—and so he did.
The man's body turned rigid, like stone, then began to crumble bit by bit. In the end he simply turned to ash and scattered, not even leaving a scrap behind.
After the thug died, the darkness inside Harry's heart faded quite a bit. Something seemed to click in his mind, and he rushed back toward Ben, who was lying on the ground behind him.
The beautiful woman was still kneeling there, staring blankly, holding Ben in her arms.
By instinct, Harry tried to manipulate the black substance, wanting to somehow use it to heal Ben's wounds. But just as the black substance started to well up again, a single maple leaf drifted into view in front of his eyes—and stopped.
Time suddenly stopped.
Harry stared in shock at everything around him. The tear drops hanging in the woman's eyes, the little swirl of dust the wind had kicked up, the flapping edge of a fleeing passerby's coat, the bright red blood dripping from Ben's stomach—everything, every tiny detail, was frozen in place, like flies trapped in amber.
In this moment, it was as if the whole world had been forgotten by time itself—except him. Only Harry could still move.
Suddenly, he heard the crackling sound of sparks behind him.
He turned and saw a portal made of golden sparks bloom into being, and from it stepped a bald, robed figure in yellow monk's garments—a kindly "old man."
Yes, an old man.
Even though the "old man" in front of him looked only about thirty, what Harry saw when he looked at her was like staring straight into the blazing sun.
She dazzled. She was warm and bright, and just standing there, she made people feel at ease—yet the light she carried also felt like it was already at sunset.
The "old man" looked at Harry with a gentle expression, her gaze soft and kind.
"You can't do that," she said. "The magic inside you has only just awakened. It's too powerful and too chaotic. Instead of healing his wounds, it would only hurt him."
Watching this impossible scene unfold, Harry knew at once that he must be looking at what he'd always dreamed of seeing—a real wizard.
But in this moment, he had no thought at all of learning spells so he could teach Dudley a lesson. There was only sheer, suffocating panic.
"Are you a wizard?" he blurted. "Please, I'm begging you, save Mr. Ben. He's a good man. He shouldn't die like this.
"Please save him. Please!"
The Ancient One looked down at the boy of about ten in front of her and let out a long, quiet breath of relief.
She had sensed his arrival in this universe the instant he appeared.
At first, she had assumed the boy was just an ordinary person and hadn't given it much thought.
But once the magic inside him erupted, even she—who had lived for nearly a thousand years—was shaken by the power she sensed in him.
That evil, overwhelming magic, though subtly different, was in essence chaos magic.
Chaos magic could rewrite reality itself. It was an exceptionally dangerous and powerful kind of magic, and what shocked the Ancient One the most was that the boy's magic was not borrowed from anything.
It belonged to him. It was his own power—and it was still growing stronger with every passing moment.
That meant he could cast magic without paying a price.
It meant he had the potential to forge his own dimension, to become a dimensional demon god.
At first, she had imagined that anyone with such a sinister power must be ruthless and cruel. But when she saw the boy with her own eyes, she realised she'd been wrong.
The evil aura she'd felt just now was more like the result of his magic slipping out of control than its true nature.
If she was right, then that magic had originally been pure, attribute-less chaos, changing with his emotions, taking shape according to whatever he felt.
Seeing just how anxious the boy was, the Ancient One reached out and laid her hand on his head, gently stroking his hair to calm him.
Then she smiled kindly. "Don't worry. Right now, you have all the time you need to save this man. And you don't need my help to do it—you already have the power yourself."
The moment the mysterious sorcerer's hand touched his head, Harry felt the black liquid swirling around him begin to change.
The thick, tar-like darkness faded rapidly, until all that was left was a delicate, silvery-grey mist.
At the same time, he felt his control over the power increase dramatically. He could feel that it was capable of far more than just destruction.
He instinctively looked over at Mr. Ben and, in his heart, repeated over and over again:
"Mr. Ben, please get better. Mr. Ben, please get better."
The miraculous chaos magic answered his command.
Billows of grey mist poured into Ben's wound. The jagged, terrifying gunshot hole closed up at a visible speed, and the shards of bullet still lodged inside him were crushed and erased by the chaos magic.
When it was over, the grey mist dispersed completely. Ben's body was as good as new—stronger even than it had been before he was hurt.
The moment Harry sensed that Ben was fully healed, a bright smile spread across his face—then his body gave out, and he collapsed into the Ancient One's arms.
She caught him and looked down at his sleeping face.
Because of his arrival, the timeline of this parallel universe had been thrown into complete chaos. Now, she could still see the future of this world as it would have been without the boy—but any future that touched him was nothing but a blank void.
Even so, she no longer feared that his arrival would bring the end of the world. In fact, she was delighted—because she had found a successor even more gifted than Strange.
This skinny boy would one day become the strongest Sorcerer Supreme in history.
Before leaving, the Ancient One's eyes fell on the lightning-shaped scar on Harry's forehead. Her brows drew together.
"This won't do," she murmured. "I can't have my successor being influenced by a shard of someone else's soul."
She reached out a finger and brushed it across the lightning scar. A shrill, ghostly scream rang out, and the scar on Harry's forehead shifted from black to the same colour as his skin. If you didn't look closely, you'd hardly notice it was there.
Satisfied, the Ancient One smiled, placed Harry gently into the arms of the woman named May Parker, and stepped back through the portal behind her.
Grow quickly, future mightiest Sorcerer Supreme, she thought. I can't wait to see those dimensional demon gods screaming in despair.
…
New York City. Midtown School of Science and Technology. Twelfth grade.
Harry sat by the window. Without his glasses, he could easily read the words on the blackboard and follow everything the teacher was explaining. All of that was thanks to the chaos magic inside him.
Seven years had passed since his magic awakened when he was eleven. Now, at eighteen, he was just about to step into university life.
After he was taken in by Uncle Ben and Aunt May seven years ago, the chaos magic in his body had only grown stronger as time went by. Even his master, the Sorcerer Supreme, often praised the sheer volume of chaos magic he carried.
Chaos magic wasn't meant to directly enhance the body, but under its constant nourishment, Harry had grown into a sunny, athletic young man, standing a solid one-eighty with a well-defined eight-pack.
Thanks to the magic, he no longer needed glasses. His clear, bright green eyes were fully revealed.
Thanks to the magic, his mind was also far sharper than the average person's. He had been at the top of the twelfth grade rankings for years.
Thanks to the magic, his looks were exceptional as well. He was very popular at Midtown, and compared to the life he'd lived seven years ago, his current life was nothing short of heaven.
As for the Dursleys—he had left them far behind.
While he took in the teacher's lecture, Harry idly spun a pen between his fingers.
The pen whirled rapidly around his thumb. Harry wasn't putting much physical force into it at all, yet the pen had been spinning continuously for over ten minutes.
He was training his control over his magic. According to the Sorcerer Supreme, the magic inside him was vast—so vast it reached an unbelievable level.
But the amount he could actually draw on was relatively small, and even that portion was hard for him to control. It often slipped free of his grip, so the Sorcerer Supreme had instructed him to manipulate small objects in his daily life to train his fine control.
Using magic to keep a pen spinning was one of those exercises.
With constant practice like this, Harry could feel the amount of magic he could safely access steadily increasing.
"It's incredible," a voice beside him said. "No matter how hard I look, I still can't figure out how you do that trick.
"Are you sure this is just magic tricks—and not an actual superpower?"
Harry glanced to his right. The first thing he saw was a beautiful curtain of long blonde hair, and beneath it a delicate face.
It was his deskmate, Gwen, a star student at Midtown and one of the school's most popular figures—she was also the one who usually ranked third in their grade.
Right—second place was currently held by Harry's younger brother, Peter Parker, who had also been taken in by Uncle Ben and Aunt May.
Unlike Harry, though, Peter was Ben's elder brother's son, related to him by blood.
Of course, Uncle Ben never treated him any differently because of that. He wasn't anything like that hateful Uncle Vernon Dursley.
Oh, and just to say it again: Harry had already forgotten all about that damned Dursley family.
As for the kind, beautiful Gwen sitting next to him, Harry couldn't help feeling a certain fondness. He answered with a smile:
"Of course it's a magic trick. What else would it be, an actual superpower?"
Gwen's wide eyes stared unblinking at the spinning pen, as if she might catch some tiny flaw in the act if she just looked hard enough.
When she heard Harry's answer, she gave up on her examination and laughed.
"You never know," she said. "Maybe real superpowers do exist."
Ring ring ring ring…
Just then, the bell signalling the end of class rang. Gwen blinked, then turned to the handsome boy beside her, who was putting away his books.
"Hey, Harry," she said. "Want to grab something to eat with me? I still haven't thanked you for carrying me to the infirmary when I fainted last time."
"Sorry, Gwen. I've got something I have to do again. You know how it is—I'm always working a part-time job." Harry gave her an apologetic look and shrugged.
He really did have something to do, and he really was working a "part-time job."
It just wasn't the kind of part-time job Gwen imagined, like stacking shelves at a supermarket. He had to head to the New York Sanctum and continue his magic training with the Sorcerer Supreme.