Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1597 The Lunar War (109)

Constantine watched as Catherine severed Maximus's head, gripping the beast's recurve and screaming as she lifted the severed head high, the charred neck still dripping thick, foul-smelling black blood. The head alone was almost as heavy as she was, and even disregarding the deformed brow, its size far exceeded her shoulder width, yet she effortlessly lifted it with one hand.

"I offer this head to my Lord. He is the supreme ruler of the human race, the guardian of human civilization, and the savior of humanity's continuation." She placed the head at her feet, then walked aside and severed Blackcard Bertgang's head, repeating her words. "My Lord has accepted the sacrifice." After she finished speaking, the behemoth's body turned to black sand, sliding down the sloping deck into the orange-red molten iron below, only its head retaining flesh and blood. She looked at Constantine, sheathing her longsword, which was burning with white flames. "Our task is not yet complete."

Constantine ignored Catherine's overly ritualistic gestures and words, and looked around warily.

"Why did we come back here?" the Commander of the Royal Guard said. "No matter how long we spend here, it's just a moment in the material universe. But the ethereal beings who controlled Blackcard Burtgan and Maximus have been banished, and we have no reason to stay here any longer."

"Our master possesses many secrets, and words alone cannot fully express His thoughts. But as an android born from the radiance of our master's soul, I can answer your questions, or rather, I am answering your questions on His behalf." Catherine's expression was calm, far less boisterous than before her body was destroyed, as if she had matured somewhat after being immersed in the aether. "That aetheric entity is destined to be present during the heat death of the universe; we cannot completely destroy it at this moment. Only at the very end of the distant arrow of time can we completely destroy it, never destroying the present it."

Why should we do this?

"To change the present," Catherine frowned. "Yes, we must change the future to change the present."

"We're going to kill it." The battle sister emerged from the shadows, her black power armor, adorned with golden lilies and rose emblems, still bearing traces of dried blood and scorch marks from plasma overload. She reflexively pulled the trigger of her chainsaw sword; the monomolecular serrations slowly rotated, gradually heating up, the smell of hot metal almost identical to the molten iron beneath the deck's cracks. "Kill it, until every atom in the universe ceases to move, until gravity loses its effect, until time is no longer distorted by gravity. We're going to the end of time; our Lord will send us there to kill it in the endless, frigid depths of space."

Constantine chewed on the memories he had glimpsed.

He had to agree with Catherine's assessment; everything the Emperor had arranged had its purpose, as if every detail of the Battle of Attilan was part of His calculations. Undoubtedly, it was an incredibly complex undertaking, akin to figuring out the trajectory of every single atom in a star. "I know where it is," the Commander of the Guard forced himself to extract relevant information from his jumbled memories. This time, he didn't discard Maximus's memories, but instead carefully observed the protagonist of this classic tragedy. "I know its true name, but that name cannot be uttered with human vocal cords."

"My lord has already arranged the threads of destiny." Catherine stepped forward, her steel high heels treading over the black sand formed from the behemoth's body. Compared to the homunculus, Catherine, being of human origin, was much shorter, appearing even smaller beside the Royal Guard. "You will guide us on our journey, Constantine."

"He is a human being."

“Yes, but also the greatest human being. That doesn’t stop us from worshipping Him and respecting Him. He is the savior of the human race, without a doubt.” Vera removed her helmet. She had experienced hunger and abuse in the basement of a human smuggler’s den, witnessed the most horrific atrocities humans committed against their own kind, and suffered indelible scars on her body—scars that even the medical system of the Immortal City couldn’t fully heal. But compared to the physical scars, the psychological problems faced by the girls brought to the Immortal City at that time were far greater. “If I hadn’t stood by His side, I would have been disappointed in humanity, because I had experienced the malice of the human race. If His mercy had come a moment later, I would have been violated by those scoundrels, then skinned and gutted. I should have been disappointed in humanity, I should have been hostile towards everything around me.”

The fear on her face had long since been replaced by determination and courage. Vera's eyes widened in fervor, and Constantine saw the Emperor's power emanating from them. He didn't know if he was speaking to Vera or to another side of the Emperor. "I understand that He fights for the survival of the human race, a truly magnificent cause. No justice in this world can surpass His ideals, no sacrifice can be greater than His devotion. I called His name in the basement, and so He sent an angel to save me; He showed me the future."

The Commander of the Royal Guard had no doubt about the Emperor's power; his only question was the Emperor's choice of Catherine and Vera. In his view, no one was more suitable to carry out this mission than the Royal Guard. The Royal Guard would always remain focused, but in the Sisterhood's convent, the human girls, and even the androids, performed far worse than the Royal Guard and the genetically modified warriors—Catherine and Vera did not possess complete physical forms. They were merely ghosts, warrior souls salvaged by the Emperor from outer dimensions, living entirely on the Emperor's memories of them. If they hadn't come into contact with modified Royal Guard members, those individuals wouldn't have retained any of those memories. To be precise, even Constantine himself wasn't confident that he would still remember the names of his comrades-in-arms after leaving the dream world.

Vera's seemingly calm fervor was somewhat hard for Constantine to accept.

"You are closer to Him than I am, and His radiance shines upon you... Just as a three-dimensional model is projected onto a two-dimensional plane, you are merely a projection of your long life onto this moment... No one in this universe can transcend this narrow perspective except Him. The destiny I am telling you is in the far future, and He has already arranged your destiny, Constantine."

"Yes, I know," the commander of the Royal Guard responded calmly, seemingly unaffected by Vera's fervent tone. "I know my mission; that's why He created me. He is not omniscient or omnipotent; this is merely a computational model of a chaotic system, not some prophetic means."

“In any case, this doesn’t affect our duty,” Catherine said. “Let’s begin now; we still have enemies to kill.” Constantine opened his eyes, his expression unusually puzzled. “Why send my thoughts to that future, my lord?” He frowned, trying to recall what he had seen. However, he couldn’t remember anything; even the Royal Guard’s unforgettable minds couldn’t dredge up any useful information from his dried-up memories. “Why can’t I remember?” Constantine’s brow furrowed even deeper. “I only remember standing in the center of a battlefield, and you standing beside me. I remember there were many troops behind you…”

The deeper the Commander of the Guards dug into his memories, the more he saw. Every detail of that apocalyptic battlefield was in his memory, even though he hadn't actually seen anything. He recalled seeing swarms of war engines, hundreds of meters tall, marching in the sunset. Genetically modified warriors, clad in power armor clearly of Earth technology but unlike anything he'd ever seen before, wielded various standard weapons, battling indistinct ethereal beings on the raging battlefield. The ground was soaked with the blood of humans and alien creatures, the bloody mud reaching above their ankles. On the other side of the battlefield, there stood the ethereal entity whose true name he knew.

Even though it was disguised as a human, Constantine recognized it at a glance, just like a hunter.

The future—that's one of the possibilities.

The emperor turned to look at the commander of the imperial guards.

This universe may or may not fall into heat death; the etheric entity may or may not be present; the future you've stepped into is merely one of infinite possibilities, but one thing remains constant: you possess its true name… A true name is a concept used to express the essence of something; any existence whose true name is possessed is essentially powerless. Compared to the forbidden knowledge possessed by the etheric entity itself, the battlefield of that future is far too vast, its possibilities far too complex. It is the battlefield of the universe's end, and all our efforts are aimed at winning that war. Because you've received too much information, your brain has activated its self-protective mechanism. If you wish, you can slowly recall all the details in the future. However…

Constantine waited for the Emperor to continue, but instead saw the Emperor reach out and make a turning motion as if turning a key. Then, He pulled out a hand encased in black armor; Constantine recognized the hand's owner solely by the golden lilies on the armor. With a forceful tug, the ever-smiling android appeared out of thin air, his power armor clean and tidy, carrying the scent of burning charcoal.

"My lord," Catherine kissed the emperor's hand as soon as she appeared, "I swear to cut off the enemy's head."

"Do you remember when we fought side by side?" Constantine asked.

"I remember, but for me it's the future, not the past." Catherine clenched her fists, her other hand gripping the hilt of her sword. Constantine noticed that the Catherine he saw was completely different from the one he encountered in his dream, which piqued his curiosity. "For me, the memory of that battle is like watching a movie. I did experience it firsthand, but the me who fought alongside you isn't the me I am now."

The Catherine projected into the material universe now is an image of the Catherine from the dream world reflected in the lower-dimensional material universe. The Catherine seen by beings in the material universe is a shadow of the Catherine from the dream world, a facet of her essence. As an android, Catherine was very lively and active, often playing delightful pranks and frequently receiving the Emperor's favor. However, the Catherine Constantine sees now has been stripped of her humor and appears impatient. Constantine can understand Catherine's words, but the knowledge he gained from the Emperor's study provides a deeper explanation for this phenomenon. However, those books do not explain the psychic magic used by the Emperor to summon Catherine from thin air. From the expression of the mage Hamil beside him, it is not difficult to see that this behavior has exceeded the bounds of common sense.

The monk Hamil knew Catherine.

In the early days of the Immortal City, Kamar-Taj provided much of the necessary resources and manpower. As the Emperor's initial armed force, the Kamar-Taj sorcerers had frequent interactions with the Sisterhood. Catherine, as the commander of the assault squad and the leader of the Sisterhood's infantry, also took on some of Kamar-Taj's original duties after the Emperor came to power, such as hunting down escaped laboratory animals and eliminating magical experimental subjects. While she couldn't teach the Sisterhood arcane magic, Kamar-Taj did teach them physical combat skills. Even though the Emperor instilled many melee techniques in the androids, they couldn't compare to the years of experience and practical skills accumulated by Kamar-Taj.

When Catherine perished in the Battle of Fimbul, almost all the Kamar-Taj sorcerers who had communicated with the homunculus knew the news, as it marked the Emperor's first independent resolution of an extradimensional crisis. However, the sorcerer Hamil was unaware of the nature of the homunculus appearing before him—when he touched Catherine's shoulder armor in surprise, only to find it was not an illusion—the Emperor had created a physical body from a memory of Catherine. This was arguably the pinnacle of alchemy; anyone attempting to imitate even a fraction of this arcane art would need extremely complex incantations and rituals, unlike the Emperor's effortless mastery. This further shattered Hamil's understanding of the Emperor's capabilities, for such an act required not only a massive amount of etheric energy but also incredibly profound knowledge.

(End of this chapter)