Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1628 Kamar-Taj: The Seventh Nexus

Modu opened his eyes, panting heavily.

Cold sweat dripped from his forehead, staining his blood a deep red as it fell onto the thin snow.

Master Daniel had already left, his whereabouts unknown. The occultists assigned to him before his departure hadn't participated in the ritual; they immediately rushed to help Mordo, who was suffering from the backlash of psionic energy, to his feet. Mordo squeezed his eyes with his convulsing, snow-dust-covered fingers, blood and tears streaming from his eyelids as if he wanted to crush his eyeballs. Fortunately, one occultist chanted a purification incantation in his ear, while the others controlled his limbs. After a few seconds, his mind gradually stabilized. He couldn't open his eyes for the time being. Although his second vision was severely impaired, the aura he sensed through his second vision still told him an unacceptable truth, to the point that he didn't even want to investigate Master Daniel's current whereabouts.

"How much time has passed?" He gripped the wrist of a sorcerer. "How many cultivators are still alive?"

"They are all still alive, Master Mordo. Their souls are trapped in a trance, unable to escape, no matter how we call out to them."

The sorcerer gasped. Although he couldn't see him for the moment, Mordo could still sense the tense aura emanating from the sorcerer, but at this moment, he couldn't care less about politeness. The sorcerer turned his gaze to the plaza—the sorcerers participating in the ritual were still shrouded in an aura of fear that couldn't be dispelled. They had expended considerable effort to prevent themselves from biting off their fingers in terror or dying of fright. They forced these sorcerers into sleep, using dreams to escape their fear—as for the ascetics, they continued chanting incantations. However, without the guidance of the sorcerers and Mordo, their spiritual power remained intact within their bodies; they were so focused that they didn't even notice what was happening around them.

"You were unconscious for about five minutes. The enemy has reached the Seventh Nexus. We can all see their gunfire." Another arcane mage gently pried Mordo's fingers open, but the expression on his face betrayed his true emotions. "What should we do, Mage Mordo? Why...why did he betray us?"

"I don't know... if any of the remaining people have any usable secret instruments?"

Caveira, a former elite soldier of the Brazilian Special Police Operations Battalion (meaning skull or glans in Portuguese), never imagined she would one day be running wildly across the highlands. As a gift from headquarters after her recruitment, a silent pistol bearing the totem of Luison, the werewolf representing death in Brazilian Indian mythology, was firmly holstered in her thigh. Clutching a laser carbine, she sprinted frantically towards the top of the stairs with the aid of a leg exoskeleton.

Her battlefields were urban slums, cities hiding terrorists, and caves in the deep mountains where enemies hid. Although all-terrain training included high-altitude areas, she never imagined that one day she would actually be conducting high-speed assaults in high-altitude areas, instead of engaging the enemy in corners, doorways, and cramped indoor spaces.

She mentally drew a cross, even though she didn't believe in such things, but she had seen too much witchcraft today.

While it's true that the First Secret Group headquarters has truthfully informed her of the existence of psychic powers and has already initiated anti-psychic warfare plans, hearing about it and seeing it are completely different things. She came from a Brazilian favela, Jesuit territory, with a strong Catholic atmosphere. Even though she didn't believe in Catholicism, years of exposure had subconsciously drawn Caveira towards Catholic doctrines. Moreover, she hadn't long accepted the Emperor's claim that "psychic powers can be explained scientifically," and she had to admit she'd suffered a significant psychological shock. If she were to encounter another alien today, she wouldn't be surprised.

The command came through the headset. The soldier who had been running wildly ahead suddenly turned in another direction and stopped, crouching down and pointing his gun at a half-open gate in the courtyard. Caveira immediately rushed to the gate, carefully pointing her gun firmly behind the door frame, her crosshair locked on the direction she was responsible for in the assault formation, waiting for the other team members to arrive.

A few seconds later, they began their assault.

The combat sisters, Tatiana and her squad, with a recklessness unmatched by conventional indoor combat, forcefully smashed through another unopened wooden door, much to Caveira's astonishment. Immediately, the First Class Regiment soldiers launched their attack. "When will we finally be assigned power armor?" Caveira would complain to her comrades after each battle. "While the all-encompassing suits are pretty good, and the exoskeleton helps conserve energy, power armor is on a completely different level. If I wore power armor, I might even be able to shoot down Tony Stark!"

However, she wasn't thinking about these things at the moment. She was simply in awe of the power and sturdiness of the power armor, watching Tatiana and the other armored girls rampage through the room filled with books and antiques. But neither the combat sisters nor the soldiers of the First Secret Regiment found anyone in this not-so-large room. In the center of the room was only a huge bronze furnace. The exquisitely carved bronze furnace lid had dozens of irregular holes, from which pungent spice smoke billowed, condensing into bizarre and unconventional animals in the air.

Seemingly sensing the intrusion, dozens of smoke-formed monsters pounced on them.

A brief laser beam illuminated the room, followed by the roar of the chainsaw's motor. Caveira fired several shots, but each laser pierced the condensed smoke monster, failing to inflict any damage. Claws and teeth formed from smoke tore through the polymer alloy composite fiber fusion-molded armor plates of the all-environment combat suit. Caveira pulled out a dagger and plunged it into the smoke's body, but only ashes flowed from the wound.

Cigarette ash fell onto her shoulder wound, mixing with her blood.

Tina Pereira awoke in the sweltering, humid air. Sweat soaked her back and neck, making the straw mat damp and burning hot, and the hard mattress made her thin back uncomfortable. But she was used to it; she had lived here for many years, and she felt even her own scent had become like the place itself, filled with garbage, sewage, sweat, and violence. The slum was far from peaceful in the darkness. She stared wide-eyed at the moving, dark yellow spots of light on the ceiling, and amidst the weary breathing of her siblings and mother, she strained her ears, wide awake, trying to hear the cacophony of a radio outside the window.

She knew that the high temperature today was 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and the air was so humid it was hard to breathe.

She likes rain, but not because it makes her cooler.

On rainy days, pedestrians in big cities are often in a hurry, with neither the time nor the attention to notice what's happening around them. It wasn't particularly difficult for her to use her nimble fingers to pick up things that were insignificant to the well-dressed people in the city; almost every child in this slum knew how to do it, and her mother always thought she was a good child. This wasn't surprising; there were ten children in the family, and she was the seventh. Her mother couldn't support them on her deceased father's pension, and after a long day's work, she didn't receive much attention from her mother.

She didn't care about this lack of attention; the only thing she needed to be careful about was not getting caught by the police.

If she stole from gang-controlled land, she might be able to join the gang, as long as she gave a cut to some minor boss; if she was caught by the police, they would squeeze every last drop out of her, threatening her with juvenile detention and police batons to steal the meager earnings her mother and siblings had made. Even then, she might not come back alive; there were already enough examples of that. If caught by the police, her only weapon would be a dagger—flattened, welded together, and then sharpened with a water pipe—and she would have to rely on that dagger to escape her predicament.

Sporadic gunshots rang out in the distance.

The São Paulo favela is far from quiet at night. Even when most people are asleep, crime never stops. Whether driven by money, power, or simply bloodlust, the São Paulo favela embodies the city's worst aspects. Tina Pereira stared wide-eyed as she listened to the sporadic gunshots, then realized the gunfire was growing closer and more intense.

"Caveira!" she heard someone shout that name in a loud voice, "Caveira!"

The name terrified her, because the area, comprised of layers of shacks, was controlled by a gang marked with skulls (Brazil is a multi-ethnic country, and Portuguese is the main language). Even more terrifying was the approaching gunfire; the wooden plank walls offered no protection against the scalding, humid air and bullets. Her younger brother, lying beside her, was also awakened. She felt the stench of sweat suddenly intensify in the small, windowless room.

She had a gut feeling that she wanted to open her eyes.

The image of the perpetrator flashed before her eyes. Tatiana suppressed the urge to smash everything and raised her hand, shattering the incense burner with a single shot. A black-robed sorcerer appeared out of thin air, sitting cross-legged on the carpet Tatiana had once trampled in front of the burner. He seemed not to have expected to be discovered. Immediately afterward, a chainsaw sword sliced ​​through the air and crashed down, its high-temperature monomolecular serrations gripping the geometric shield made of sparks, producing sparks and noises as if cutting through steel. Another combat sister fired continuously, but the high-speed explosive projectiles seemed to be trapped in an invisible, extremely dragging ballistic gel, their speed visibly slowing down until they finally came to a stop, tiny lightning bolts spreading across their bodies.

"In the name of the Emperor, renounce the defiled witchcraft! Accept judgment!"

The chainsaw sword pierced Caveira's head, cleaving the smoky beast in two. She watched as the smoky body collapsed inward, finally dissolving into an amorphous cloud of spice smoke. The Battle Sisters' audio grille roared, making Caveira's ears ring and jolting her completely back to reality. She swore she had heard incomprehensible sounds before the sorcerer died, sounds that tickled her ears, making her want to stick her fingers inside and scratch them.

Then she saw the person who had helped her.

It was a combat sister who nodded to Caveira, pointed to the first-aid kit at the latter's waist, and then charged towards the arcane mage who was fighting Tatiana without looking back. Her cool and stylish demeanor was captivating. Caveira later thought that this might be one of the reasons why she wanted to wear power armor, and not just because of its powerful bulletproof and blast-resistant properties.

Caveira was ruthlessly dragged out of the battlefield by her teammates.

The stinging sensation of the disinfectant and synthetic skin sprayed onto Caveira's wound by the accompanying medic brought her attention back to the battlefield. In addition to the standard wound cleaning procedure, the medic injected an antidote next to her wound—special medical supplies allocated to the First Secret Regiment from the warehouse by the Imperial Guard before this operation. "The wound has torn a tendon. Don't worry, our medical technology can easily heal this kind of injury. However, you are not suitable for the upcoming combat." The medic's words were met with a protest, but he assumed she was only concerned about the impact of the injury, so he quickly added, "The intensity will increase significantly from here on out, and we can only participate in second-line combat, so you haven't missed anything."

“I can still lift my arm,” Caveira retorted, but was quickly interrupted by the clicking of the leather-stitching machine. “Okay, I agree.”

(End of this chapter)