Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 1723 Hydra

Although there had never been any dealings with the Kree experimental sites, decades of infiltration and investigation had given Elidu a clear understanding of the situation. The Kree treated the Inhumans as slaves, and the Inhumans, in turn, treated humans as slaves—just as the Emperor had warned, even without that particular Inhuman manipulating things, the other Inhumans would spontaneously maintain the distorted order established by the Kree. When the Badari wielding stone axes and spears blocked the expeditionary force, no one was surprised; the Inhumans would certainly enslave the locals in the occupied territories to stop the expeditionary army's advance.

"Take up your spears!" Hammurabi of the Praetorian Guard commanded those behind him.

The expeditionary squad skillfully inserted their rifles into their saddle straps and drew their spears from the other side, resting them on their horses. The well-trained soldiers quickly adjusted their posture, increasing their horse's speed to generate momentum and form a cone shape to penetrate the enemy lines. Hammurabi gently twisted the throttle with one hand, adjusting the speed of his painted motorcycle to keep it at the forefront of the expeditionary squad's charge, while his other hand also gripped a garrison spear.

"Accelerate, charge!"

The Badari, still in the pre-dynastic stage, were no match for the expeditionary cavalry. Perhaps some had the courage to swing stone spears at the expeditionary force, but the Imperial Guard, charging like giant beasts on jet-powered motorcycles, and the expeditionary force with steel spears adorned with the limbs and flesh of those who stood in their way, far exceeded the Badari's expectations.

Hammurabi, wielding his garrison spear, opened fire first. The uniformed figures in the distance immediately took cover behind cover, attempting to avoid the expeditionary force's path. Only one unlucky soul was struck by a bolt, his lower body blasted into a bloody mess. The Badari blocking the expeditionary force fell in droves and scattered. The expeditionary force had no interest in pursuing the locals; their target was the Inhumans behind them.

After several conflicts, the Inhumans also gathered intelligence on the Royal Guard.

They deliberately chose to ambush the expeditionary cavalry in the villages of Badari rather than engage in open battle on the plains, in order to lure them into a narrow area where their cavalry formations could not be deployed, and then use their own abilities to fight against the expeditionary force. This method was very effective, especially against expeditionary squads without the leadership of the Royal Guard, where this tactic often inflicted heavy casualties on the expeditionary force. Every soldier in the expeditionary force was an ordinary person, and even with excellent teamwork and long-trained agility, they could not overcome the gap in individual combat strength between them and the Inhumans.

The Inhumans' unpredictable abilities caused the expeditionary force a great deal of trouble.

As Hammurabi prepared to turn, several soldiers at the forefront of the expeditionary force's charge suddenly exploded. There were no flames, no deafening roars; it was as if they had been instantly crushed by the air, turning into a cloud of bone fragments and blood mist, their internal organs mingling with thick blood as they shattered in the air. This hellish scene did not deter the expeditionary force; they maintained their charge, skillfully navigating the overturned carcasses of their warhorses. Using the spears of the Royal Guard as their target, they continued their assault on the hiding place of the Inhumans, while simultaneously sending a contingent of soldiers on horseback to fire rapidly, suppressing the Inhumans concealed behind cover.

The Royal Guard likened the Inhumans who were driving the locals into battle to armored vehicles accompanying infantry charges, except that the Inhumans lacked the bulletproof capabilities of armored vehicles and were no match for the Royal Guard's strength. Following the established tactics, the expeditionary force automatically split into two groups to surround the village where the Inhumans were located, while the other group followed Royal Guard member Hammurabi to the bunkers to annihilate the Inhumans.

Such skirmishes had occurred more than once, and all the expeditionary soldiers were well aware of what would happen next. Hammurabi did not believe that the Inhumans with different abilities could change the outcome of this skirmish. Only a few Inhumans with teleportation-like abilities could survive the Royal Guard and send the Royal Guard's information back to the Kree or other Inhumans.

The expeditionary force squad that stormed into the village did not confront the Inhumans head-on. They rushed through the bunkers like a hurricane, throwing explosives and smoke grenades inside as Hammurabi ordered. Then they rushed out to join two other expeditionary forces responsible for clearing out the enemies around the village, and began to blockade the target location with fire from another direction.

Hammurabi turned the vehicle around and charged back in. The high-speed jet-powered motorcycle crashed straight into the bunker a hundred meters away. He felt the air around him being compressed inward, like a pair of invisible, gigantic hands slamming into him. The Royal Guard's powered armor withstood the unseen explosion; only the jet-powered motorcycle wobbled a few times from the impact—the wobbling at high speed was extremely deadly, but Hammurabi still managed to control the vehicle. He could hear the Inhumans behind the bunker shouting anxiously in the Kree language, as if they couldn't understand how the Royal Guard could survive such pressure. Even after Hammurabi smashed through the earthen wall and pierced his body with the Guard Spear, the Inhuman still couldn't understand why the Royal Guard had survived, even though the Kree's usual all-encompassing combat suits couldn't withstand such a drastic change in air pressure.

The last remaining Inhuman completely lost his composure.

She was terrified, frantically unleashing surging currents of electricity at the Royal Guard without any rational thought, but accomplished nothing more than scorching the edges of Hammurabi's crimson battle robes. Hammurabi didn't even turn to look at her; he simply turned the vehicle sideways, extended the Guard Spear, and pulled the trigger. Compared to the Inhumans at the Attila base on the moon, the Inhumans here were far less adept at using their abilities. Hammurabi didn't even want to call them enemies, because to consider such enemies a disgrace to the Royal Guard.

The jet motorcycle turned around again and finally came to a slow stop in front of the Inhuman's corpse.

'

Hammurabi transcribed the outcome of the conflict into a short audio report, which was then sent to command. His next task was to determine if the Inhumans' brains were infested with Hydra parasites. He used his Guardian Spear to cut open the Inhumans' skulls to ensure there were no parasite follicles, then summoned the soldiers in the expeditionary force responsible for handling bio-infections to pour fuel over the Inhuman corpses to prevent the small number of Hydra parasites, invisible to the naked eye, from multiplying and spreading.

The locals used to block the expeditionary force were likely strong men forcibly conscripted from this village. They might return, and Hammurabi didn't want to hear news of a parasitic outbreak after the war, meaning they would have to return and destroy every living thing on this land. Even before the Guardian Order was created, the Emperor had faced the Hydra; even after destroying it with hydrogen bombs on another planet, it still underwent thorough disinfection upon returning to Earth.

There are no sterilization facilities available now, so we can only use fuel produced by the temple.

"Three casualties and one wounded in combat. Did you hear that, Captain Miller?"

"I heard you. Continue along the planned route, ensuring there are no survivors." Captain Miller's voice paused in the headset. "Are the locals interfering with the mission?"

"A tiny, insignificant obstacle."

"You know what I want to ask, Hammurabi," Captain Miller sighed, "How many locals died?"

"About a dozen or so, all young and strong. This village must either merge with the other villages in this nome, or wait until after the war to form a larger administrative unit." The guard made his judgment without hesitation. "I believe it was this war that led to the fusion of Badari cultures, allowing them to pass through the pre-dynastic period."

"I mean, did you see any women and children?"

"No, at least not alive." Hammurabi glanced at the blood-streaked skull in the corner. It was the skull of a young human, the missing teeth a mixture of baby teeth and violence. "They're all dead. Some creature devoured their flesh. No teeth marks, not wild animals. The blood is fresh, no maggots, they couldn't have been dead for long."

"In other words, the target was here." Captain Miller tapped his tablet. "This is not good news."

The Hydra, a unique inhuman race, can release nanoscale parasites. These parasites not only penetrate the blood-brain barrier to enter the brain, altering neurotransmitters and electrical signals, but also feed on flesh and blood. The archives describe the Hydra as having an extreme preference for cannibalistic food rather than human food to replenish their energy; every empty village encountered by the expeditionary force contained only blood-stained skeletons.

Large numbers of enslaved Egyptians wept before the expeditionary force, recounting how they had witnessed their families being devoured by horrific "demons." Captain Miller felt nauseous just listening to the survivors' accounts; he couldn't fathom the horror of a person being eaten from the inside in mere seconds, nor could he fathom the despair of those survivors. He had witnessed the barbaric blood sacrifices of this era, but he believed that those eaten by the Hydra were far more desperate than the sacrifices themselves, and he still thought the Emperor's sentence of destroying the Hydra with hydrogen bombs was far too lenient.

"The intelligence was correct; Hydra was here." Hammurabi roughly recalled his forensic coursework. "The time of death could not have been more than twelve hours ago."

Captain Miller marked Hammurabi's current coordinates on the map, added a note to the list, and then sent it to the General Staff. The files indicated that the Hydra was a parasite controlled by a swarm of consciousness, capable of inhabiting different Inhuman bodies, meaning it could appear in multiple locations simultaneously—another Royal Guard reported the same situation, with similar types of skeletons—the expeditionary force couldn't determine which Inhuman's dominant consciousness resided within the Hydra, and decapitation strikes were pointless until the Hydra coalesced into a single entity.

To ensure that all expeditionary assault teams could provide support as quickly as possible when the Hydra appeared, the General Staff used a very complex mathematical algorithm. Captain Miller felt a headache coming on just thinking about the numbers the General Staff had given him. He had excelled in mathematics during his school years, but that didn't mean he understood the profound mathematical principles. He only remembered that the Emperor, who had participated in the calculations, had mentioned something about "topologically colored maps" and claimed that even the Inhumans could not escape mathematical laws.

Although he didn't understand the mathematical algorithm, Captain Miller knew about the process of elimination.

The expeditionary force could only continuously shrink the Inhumans' sphere of influence until it forced the Hydra to voluntarily retract its power and aggregate all its nanites. The more Inhumans killed, the smaller the Hydra's sphere of influence would become. The Emperor was quite certain that the Hydra would not proactively engage an opponent whose strength it could not assess. As the only Inhuman currently possessing free will, the Hydra cherished its life immensely.

Under Kree coercion, the Hydra will undoubtedly shrink its scattered parasites to accumulate strength and gather intelligence. But to the Kree, the Hydra and other Inhumans are merely products of their slave soldier program, cannon fodder to be used in the Skrull Wars; using the Inhumans to fight against the humans who resist the Kree is perfectly appropriate.

"According to the established tactics, when the General Staff provides the location, the nearest squad within 120 kilometers will launch a decapitation strike. Before that, all squads must minimize non-combat casualties and ensure sufficient manpower to wait for support from other squads," Captain Miller reminded.

He possessed battle reports from all seven expeditionary assault teams led by the Royal Guard, which, while clearing out strongholds around the Kree research center, were also conducting large-scale eliminations of combat-capable Inhumans. He was deeply concerned that the expeditionary forces had suffered heavy casualties in this operation, leaving them without enough soldiers and ammunition to encircle and annihilate the Hydra.

"I don't need any reminders." Hammurabi hung up the communication and waved to the expeditionary force. "Continue along the route on the map."

Three hours later, thirty kilometers away from Hammurabi, Captain Miller dismounted from the caravan serving as the general staff and mounted his warhorse. He urged the horse to trot along until they reached the command post in the middle of the march. Anyone who saw the winged white horse would know that this was the expeditionary force's headquarters, for wherever the white horse was, there the emperor was.

"I have the latest update. The Hydra's location has been pinpointed to these four villages. The Guardians will conduct reconnaissance fire over those villages; one assault team will definitely encounter the Hydra, and the other three teams will arrive in thirty-seven minutes." Captain Miller held up a piece of parchment covered in numbers and symbols. "Probability, the General Staff's trick. I must admit, the General Staff's method is effective; at least we don't have to search every single village."

"The marching speed is too slow. We need another thirty-five minutes to reach the designated support position. If the Hydra is in the village furthest from us, it will take another thirty-five minutes for this thousand-strong fighting force to be effective," the Emperor said bluntly. "Either we send four expeditionary assault teams, totaling four hundred men, and four Royal Guards, to fight all the Inhumans created by the Kree without our support, or we postpone the reconnaissance and abandon the expeditionary force's encampment, engaging the Inhumans in a decisive battle at dusk."

"This is due to time redundancy on the schedule."

"It has now been proven that this extra time is simply not enough," the Emperor said. "Now there are only two choices, Captain Miller. Do we let the expeditionary assault team hold out for seventy minutes, and then we lead a thousand exhausted soldiers who have been marching for more than six hours to launch an attack, or do we risk a night battle with the Inhumans?"

"Night battle." Captain Miller thought for a few seconds. "Our soldiers don't have night blindness, and we have plenty of flares. We can create favorable combat conditions for us. More importantly, we'll have time to recover our strength."

"You decide." The Emperor nodded. "The Royal Guard can handle the Hydra. I need to join forces with the other Royal Guards to attack the Kree research base."

When Hammurabi received the message, he had already arrived at a location two kilometers from the village where the Hydra might appear. It was situated in a valley adjacent to a riverbank, and the village lay right there on the river. Villages in occupied territories were almost all alike; no locals would roam outside them, and all the farmland was practically abandoned. The only certainty was that wild animals dared not approach this place, indicating that several Inhumans were stationed in the village.

He waved his hand behind him, signaling the soldiers to lay the horses down and keep quiet.

"We need to wait seventy minutes. During this time, let the horses recover their strength. Check the ammunition reserves, feed and water them. Patrol the 500-meter area in shifts to ensure no enemy approaches."

With a series of commands issued, the entire troop fell into complete silence, save for the breathing of the horses and the sounds of soldiers drinking and eating. These highly skilled soldiers executed every order given by Hammurabi flawlessly, even watering the horses with utmost care, making almost no noise. Even if the enemy in the village heard them, they would only assume it was the sound of hungry animals roaming the outskirts of the village. Only when the last rays of the setting sun disappeared behind the other side of the valley did Hammurabi open his data panel, mentally calculating the arrival time of the reinforcements, before gesturing for the end of the rest period.

The expeditionary assault team spent another five minutes surrounding the village, setting up fire support and defense groups at each exit before the Imperial Guards issued the order to attack. At the same time, several bright, smoky, blinding lights rose into the sky not far away, illuminating the exit on the other side of the valley. These were the fire support troops dispatched by the Emperor's expeditionary force, specifically to provide indirect fire and illumination for the expeditionary assault team.

"Initiate reconnaissance fire," Hammurabi ordered simultaneously to his assault team and fire support units. Improvised mortars immediately began firing at the village. These mortars were somewhat cumbersome due to manufacturing limitations, but when paired with temple-made shells containing fuses and high explosives, a single bombardment reduced the mud-brick and wooden houses to rubble. The expeditionary assault team began tightening the encirclement, and Hammurabi, as before, led another squad into the encirclement.

The fire support troops saw red flares rise over the village. Together with the expeditionary commando units responsible for surrounding the village, they placed fuel-saturated bonfires at every exit as artillery signals. "No one is to enter until other commandos arrive." This was one part of the meaning conveyed by the red flares. Another part meant, "Target encountered: Hydra."

The other three assault teams, fire support units, and part of the main expeditionary force had received Hammurabi's message and were marching rapidly in this direction. The expeditionary assault squads responsible for surrounding the village could only hear the continuous gunfire erupting from within. The already dilapidated earthen walls of the village seemed to be smashed by an unseen, frenzied beast. Expeditionary soldiers and warhorses were thrown into the air by a strange force and then slammed heavily to the ground. Within seconds, the soldiers and warhorses, still howling in pain, were devoured by hundreds of millions of tiny, invisible teeth—the average human body contains 5 liters of blood, but it was later discovered that less than 300 milliliters of blood remained on the corpses devoured by the Hydra. The soldiers abandoned their horses, trying to avoid the unseen beast's sight, while simultaneously seizing opportunities to throw small ceramic flasks filled with fuel and tinder at any swarms of Hydra insects.

At that very moment, the Imperial Guards, clad in golden armor, were also hunting down the inhumans who had been parasitized.

Hammurabi knew that the expeditionary assault force couldn't hold off the Hydra for long, so he had to find the Hydra's host as soon as possible. The flames, electricity, and air manipulated by these Inhumans couldn't penetrate the protection of the Royal Guard's armor, their telepathic abilities couldn't penetrate the bio-psychologically modified consciousness barrier, their bizarre physical mutations couldn't resist the sharp blades of the Guard Spears filled with a disintegrating force field, and even the Inhumans' most prized physical strength couldn't compare to the Royal Guard.

Five minutes into the battle, the expeditionary assault team still had 65 men in its fighting force.

The winged beings (also appearing in Attila) were the first to be killed. Hammurabi immediately locked onto the Inhuman hovering at low altitude and emptied his magazine at it—if the Hydras tried to escape, the Inhumans with the ability to fly would be the best host—followed by a bizarre mutant with no eyes in their sockets and the rest of its head crammed with eyeballs. This was probably an Inhuman with mind manipulation abilities, which would inflict heavy losses on the expeditionary force. Next came a beast nearly the height of a Praetorian Guard, clad in specially made armor. It tried to pounce on Hammurabi, but the Praetorian Guard, familiar with various combat techniques, easily distanced himself and pierced its neck with his Guard Spear.

Hammurabi stretched out his hand toward the air, then suddenly clenched it.

A slender Inhuman suddenly appeared out of thin air, his dagger scraping haphazardly against the Imperial Guard's armor. Hammurabi's hand gripped its neck like a vise, then without hesitation, he flung it aside, snapping the Inhuman's neck. This Inhuman, with its incredible speed, had always tried to steal magazines from the Imperial Guard's belts, but it had overestimated its speed and underestimated the Imperial Guard's reaction time.

Seventeen minutes into the battle, the expeditionary assault team still had 42 men in its fighting force.

Even after parts of its body were burned and evaporated by the disintegrating force field of the Guardian Spear, the alien creature was still able to reassemble its body. It wasn't until the alien was lured away from water that the other commando soldiers picked up a dozen Molotov cocktails left behind by their fallen comrades and lit them simultaneously, burning this strange creature, which had no relation to organic life, to death.

The expeditionary force began to seize everything in the village that could be used as cover, opening fire on the Inhumans who had gathered under the Praetorian Guard's offensive. They knew their mission was to delay these "demons" until the rest of the expeditionary force arrived, and even if they were destined to die, they would charge in with the Praetorian Guard.

At the 25th minute of the battle, the expeditionary assault team still had 27 men in its fighting order.

I've written too much already, I'll post the rest tomorrow or the day after.