Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1560 The Lunar War (Seventy-Two)

The traveler's tattered cloak collapsed, releasing billows of pale gray ash.

The ashes collapsed, coalesced, and melted before the fire, forming giant, gray-black wolves. Dense shadows and gray frost lingered around them, as if they themselves were phantoms. The stranger took a step forward, and the ashe wolves immediately bared their teeth, revealing gleaming white fangs, and growled menacingly. He pulled back his cloak, revealing a greatsword hidden beneath tattered, rough cloth. Golden flames billowed from its scabbard, and Maximus saw the air distorted by the heat; the terrifying flames instantly ignited the dense forest shrouded in darkness on either side of the road. At that moment, a brief, intense pain swept through his body, causing Maximus's eyes to widen, but a gentle voice kept reminding him to stay by the campfire and not leave, while keeping away from the golden flames.

The gray ice on the ground melted, evaporated, and vanished in the blink of an eye.

"You have no choice," the gray-haired giant wolf said in its usual relaxed and cunning tone. Maximus was completely unaware that the wolf was speaking Hebrew, not the common language of the Inhumans; he didn't even realize he understood a language he had never learned. "Why resist fate? Why give everything for this weak race? You are destined to carry out the will of the Aether, you are destined to climb the stairs, sit on the throne, and wield your power. Every choice you make will push you to our side, Joshua, this is the predetermined future."

A gray-brown giant wolf surrounded the unfamiliar traveler, and Maximus noticed that the latter was visibly tense.

A throbbing headache blurred his vision, and intense dizziness made it difficult to think. Flames danced in his eyes, surging along his nerves to his brain and licking at his soul. He didn't see what was happening around the campfire; he only heard someone calmly say something, followed by an unprecedented pain that sent him crashing to the ground. Maximus desperately wanted to give himself a quick psychological diagnosis—visual and balance disorders—the only judgment he could make at that moment. He realized he was in a dream, but he had absolutely no recollection of how he had entered it.

He felt his face come into contact with something moist, smooth, sticky, cold, and hard. Before he even opened his eyes, he instinctively pressed his burning forehead against it, greedily craving a bit of coolness. He gasped for breath, sticking out his tongue to lick the liquid in front of him, moistening his dry lips and throat. At that moment, any liquid tasted delicious to him. It seemed like an eternity before Maximus gradually remembered where he was. His brain was barely functioning, like a rusty gear; it even took him a long time to realize that something was wrong with his mind. Maximus struggled to sit up, feeling as if he were moving a shuttle with tremendous effort.

"Why are you blindfolding me?" he asked. "Why can't I see anything?"

"We haven't blindfolded you, sir," the priestess's voice rang in his ear. "Please open your eyes."

"I've already opened my eyes."

"No, you haven't. You don't realize you've closed your eyes," the priestess, Peryl, said softly. "Please open your eyes, my lady."

Maximus took a deep breath to calm his impatience.

He habitually implanted ideas into his mind. As a top-tier mind manipulator and mind reader, he had the ability to control his own neural signals, indirectly enhancing his motor skills. He also possessed the ability to conduct self-psychological analysis, bridging the gap between soul, body, and consciousness. When he opened his eyes, the previously faint candlelight around him became incredibly blinding. The blurred vision and light took his pupils a while to adjust—he saw himself kneeling on the ground, the stone slab beneath his knees submerged in blood—he raised his weak arm, his palm and forearm covered in blood about to congeal. He tasted the blood in his mouth, a foul stench tinged with a hint of sweetness. Surprisingly, he didn't seem to dislike the taste.

He saw the priestess Peryl's head placed before his knees; even in death, she smiled, her silent eyes gazing at him. "I heard her voice; she's not dead." Maximus found himself unexpectedly calm. "How long has the ritual been going on?"

The nearby armed men provided the answer, one that surprised Maximus. "And," the fanaticism in their eyes was even more unbearable, as if the ritual had granted Maximus the status of a supreme spiritual leader, "Lady Peryl sacrificed herself at the very beginning of the ritual, offering herself to you for the truth."

Maximus lowered his head and looked at the head.

"Periel is not dead, she will be resurrected." He cradled the severed head, his fingers pressing against the broken neck. "This is the truth."

"You shouldn't confront them now," Master Hamil said curtly.

No matter what he said, the emperor, who was changing his arm armor, did not respond. A row of deep teeth marks pierced the hard alloy arm armor, penetrating the alloy, electronic muscle bundles, and flexible metal seals, leaving more than a dozen wounds on the emperor's arm, as if it had been brutally torn apart by some ferocious beast. Even more terrifying, within each wound, emanating a cursed black aura, several almost invisible buds of flesh writhed, trying to burrow deeper into his arm. Accompanied by a simple incantation, the screams of those parasitic creatures, audible only in the sea of ​​souls, were burned to smoke by golden flames; in another dimension, several powerful spiritual entities perished.

"They call you Joshua?"

"Yes, this is one of my true names," the Emperor finally spoke. The burning wounds didn't seem to cause him pain; perhaps he felt pain, but he habitually refused to show such a human reaction. Regardless, Constantine, finally back by the Emperor's side after completing his mission, wore a grim expression. He wasn't used to the Emperor fighting without the protection of the Royal Guard, especially in a psionic battle. "The enemy behind the veil has noticed me. The protection of true names created by the Venerable One has a flaw," the Emperor said, looking at Constantine. "Don't blame yourself. This was a battle within a dream, fought in the dream of an Inhuman psionicist. The power that could be transferred between the two sides was extremely limited. Although I lost, the power those spiritual entities bestowed upon that Inhuman psionicist wouldn't have been as strong as they anticipated."

"Why is that, Your Majesty?" Constantine asked. "Do the Inhumans still hold any value for them?"

“Everything is of use to them, Constantine. The mage Hamil understands what I mean; everything we do strengthens their power.” Under Constantine's care, the Emperor donned his arm armor again, while simultaneously repairing the alloy armor plates with incantations. Around the mage Hamil, Constantine, and the Emperor, the air blurred, allowing them to see each other clearly only within a spherical space. “This conversation has been encased in a time bubble and will never exist in the river of time.”

"I can tell you, the enemy behind the veil is happy to use the Inhumans to wear down our strength and weaken our defenses against the Black Order. Regardless of where Thanos's ideology comes from, it will be the greatest blood sacrifice in the universe for those behind the veil, at which point their power will cross the veil and come directly into reality. To avoid this outcome, I must intervene."

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(End of this chapter)