Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 535 Double Agent (Second Update)

The people Natasha Romanoff saw most often in the Immortal City, besides Stephanie and her team who handled financial and administrative documents, were the androids. Especially the squad commanders, tactical commanders, and instructors of various training courses among the androids—whether it was Catherine or Aura, Agent Romanoff could chat with them for a bit—except for Tita, the tan-skinned android. Her cold expression could freeze the blazing orange-red flames in the fireplace; Agent Romanoff rarely saw her smile. Even beside her creator, Salomon, Tita would try to be fully armed, wearing a helmet, her left hand always resting on the hilt of the ornate golden longsword at her waist, and her right index finger and thumb, encased in a finely crafted, black-lacquered steel glove, would never stray too far from her explosive pistol.

Tita is in charge of the Sorority's military forces, and Salomon must have sent her out on some crucial mission. Otherwise, he would have dispatched Agent Victoria Hand, who would exploit the Hydra agents to the fullest extent, squeezing every last drop of value from their blood—Salomon and Romanov mentioned when reviewing Hand's operational reports that if Hand had magnetic superpowers, she would definitely extract the iron from the Hydra agents' blood to sell for money.

"Are you hiding something from me?"

"Of course," Salomon said matter-of-factly. "I have many secrets you don't know."

"Then can you tell me where Tita went?" Agent Romanov softened his tone.

Salomon refused. "You can't know this," he said. "It's a secret. And the reason a secret is a secret is because no one else knows it."

"Is it related to Nick Fury?"

“Less than one percent,” Salomon said. “What Tita did had very little impact on Nick Fury’s plans, unless he ran right into her. But do you remember Tita’s equipment? She wore the Steel Wings.” Natasha recalled the wing-like appendages on the back of the Sisterhood’s power armor. According to the data she had, those wings had undergone several iterations, eventually forming the now widely distributed Steel Wings. Although she couldn’t obtain the specific parameters, Natasha knew it was a high-tech device, perhaps allowing the user to fly at supersonic speeds. Generally, only androids responsible for close combat were issued the Steel Wings, but now that there weren’t many Sisterhood members, each person could be equipped with a set to increase battlefield mobility.

Her recording equipment was always online, yet she couldn't gather much information at the moment. Salomon also knew Agent Romanoff's purpose, but he pretended not to—after all, she had already built a bridge of communication between him and Nick Fury, and there was no need to demand more from her; she had too many missions to handle. Natasha also knew that Salomon knew about her mission, but never revealed it, which made her feel that Salomon was very understanding—and it was because of this that she was willing to help Salomon contact Nick Fury, acting as a double agent between the two; she didn't want two people with the same goal to end up in a life-or-death situation.

"Alright," Natasha shrugged. "Looks like it's something to do with magic."

"Bingo!" A light suddenly appeared above Salomon's head. "A troublesome person has come to Earth. My teacher only told me today." Salomon opened a drawer, revealing a device that looked similar to a 19th-century seismograph. A silver wire held a specially polished, spindle-shaped ruby, beneath which was a long strip of paper pressed against a brass ruler. "This is a device that can receive telepathic messages on my behalf." He pointed to the string of tiny Latin characters engraved on the ruby. "It can receive some telepathic messages for me—it's very popular in the magical world, and you don't have to pay for phone calls. However, it's extremely expensive. You need to specially select magical gemstones, find craftsmen willing to cut them, and even the wizard himself needs to have some manual dexterity, because the parchment used to record the messages needs to be soaked in a potion."

"Don't you magicians know how to use cell phones?"

“There will always be times when we’re out of service, my dear,” Salomon said. “Mobile phones need carriers, and telepathy requires the etheric plane and outer planes. If the distance is too great, telepathy may not be able to connect, and messages may not be able to be sent. In fact, there are spells specifically invented for long-distance calls, as well as video call spells, but we don’t usually need them.”

"I never imagined magic had developed to this extent," Wanda said, tilting her head. "Could magic be combined with science?"

"Yes. Magic itself is a discipline that mixes reason, emotion, and feeling. Apart from sorcerers who are born with magic or acquire it by accident, they don't need to study it. Most spellcasters possess basic scientific concepts and rational thinking." Salomon used illusions to show Wanda the modern achievements of the magical world—although some of this modernization was still stuck in the Renaissance or Victorian era, full of slow Baroque and steampunk styles, the functions of those magical devices were no less than those of modern technological products.

Among the items he displayed was a device that could replace telepathic communication.

Just as you need a phone number to make a call, a real name is like a person's phone number, an open Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connection—only those with the password or phone number can access it. Today's lesson wasn't serious, so Salomon chatted with Pietro and Wanda during the break, including about astronomy, which Wanda had never encountered before.

"We magicians can't always look down at the ground; astrology is also an important part of magic," Salomon said. "The greatest use of astrology is for prophecy. But the stars and the universe are more than that for magicians. In the development of mysticism, especially in the pre-Enlightenment period, mystics and philosophers viewed the universe in three ways—the first being that the universe is a magnificent, harmonious organism in which all parts are interconnected. But this view has a special feature: the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus believed that the entire universe is in a state of communion, like a living thing. Things that are far apart are actually very close... Similar things are not adjacent to each other, but are separated by different things, yet are affected by the same things because of their similarity; the theoretical basis for this is intrinsic similarity, that even the most remote parts of the universe can be connected to each other through a mysterious communion."

Salomon pointed to Pietro and Wanda, indicating that his example was right before their eyes.

"The second viewpoint is hidden causality. The third viewpoint is more common, which is instrumental causality, or the mechanical model, where one thing influences another through verifiable and predictable material causal chains. As science has developed, this model has become more complex and sophisticated, but the basic assumption remains—that everything can be explained as being caused by matter according to strict natural laws, and that these laws and principles can, in principle, be discovered and understood by the human mind," Salomon said. "Perhaps this sounds too scientific to be related to magic, but in reality, the third viewpoint is extremely relevant to magic. We should learn magic with an positivist mindset; the traditional hidden model only applies to ancient theology. Why do I say this? You haven't learned that part yet, so don't rush to take notes; this is just casual conversation—we can't be like idealistic psychologists, blindly believing in hidden and agnosticism. A magician should be a representative of reason, a spokesperson for wisdom, not a charlatan picking letters from old books to piece together words, or an addict rambling on after taking hallucinogenic drugs."

"We should view ether as an objectively existing energy rather than a hidden mystical concept."

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(End of this chapter)