Marvel Magic Case Files

Chapter 870 Showdown (Second Update)

"Won't we have high-tech equipment in the future too?" a soldier with a London accent asked.

He glanced down at the rifle in his hand, then at the sorority's explosive rifle, and felt a surge of envy. Compared to the other SAS members still grappling with worry, Davis seemed much more relaxed. The Immortal City had already thoroughly investigated his background: he liked rock music, beer, and football, and was an old acquaintance of Hunter from S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Coulson team. He was the only soldier betrayed by Mycroft without family, and also the youngest and most impetuous member, fond of loud, banging guns. The sorority's explosive rifle was clearly very appealing to him. After witnessing the explosive rifle shatter concrete and the human anatomy of vampires, he had been looking for an opportunity to get his hands on it.

For a soldier, nothing is more precious than a reliable weapon capable of crushing the enemy on the battlefield. Even though he was a special operations operative, the British government didn't place much importance on the SAS's weaponry. Perhaps due to the special nature of this operation, the weapons issued to this team by the army were not very good. The L85A1 rifle in his hand was far inferior to other rifles of the same era, let alone the more advanced, violent, and savage explosive rifles. After all, explosive rifles were designed to shatter the defenses of aliens, dark magic creatures, or even extradimensional beings. Using them on humans would be pure overkill. This was also true for vampires whose bloodlines were diluted and severely degenerated, almost turning them into ghouls. Their bones were completely unable to withstand such terrifying damage and were easily blown in two.

From the moment they received their weapons and equipment, they knew they had been abandoned and were being sent to their deaths.

The Immortal City doesn't have time to process the vampire's biomass; they can only roughly burn it using flamethrowers.

The sorority had no time to rest; they needed to cooperate with the Kamar-Taj sorcerers to hunt down the monsters roaming the city. According to some idle Kamar-Taj sorcerers, it was highly likely that some fanged, vampire-like fish would emerge in the Thames River in the future, actively attacking humans. Just as Salomon carefully handled alchemical waste, magical substances could inadvertently cause unnatural mutations in some sewer creatures. Perhaps those mutated substances would perish, but a worse possibility was that they would enter the ecosystem, causing mutations in some humans—however, this wasn't necessarily bad news. The mutated genomes carrying dark magic would gradually fade, and as long as the mutated substances didn't accumulate excessively during this process, the emergence of exceptionally beautiful, physically strong, long-lived humans with magical talents wouldn't be a bad thing.

The quest for Kamar-Taj and the Immortal City only came to an end when the pale pink sunlight rose from behind the city's shadows.

Mycroft Holmes washed up and prepared for work. He had spent the entire night in his study, sitting on the soft chair, making phone calls and gathering information from his subordinates, only finally relaxing when he received a call from Salomon at dawn. Despite not having slept all night, his face showed no signs of fatigue—as agreed, he had to use his influence to get the proposal to repair London's sewers approved. But the Cabinet Secretary was merely a lowly public instrument, a vessel for the Prime Minister's thoughts; this momentous proposal had to be put forward by the Prime Minister himself.

Sherlock Holmes was awakened by a series of urgent knocks at the door. His roommate, John Watson, quickly got up to open it, but the person knocking was not the one Watson expected. They had been waiting all night for Mycroft's call. Sherlock Holmes knew what had happened in London the previous night, but as a mere criminal investigator, he wasn't qualified to get involved—he had been forced to seek Mycroft's help to solve the mystery, but the situation had taken a dramatic turn, and he and Watson had experienced a thrilling sewer adventure. As far as he knew, a Special Agent Unit team had also been deployed the previous night.

"I knew you'd come." Sherlock Holmes was already waiting when Salomon, clad in power armor covered in mud and blood, stepped into the small but cozy drawing room. The sorcerer carried a bomb rifle in one hand and a longsword in the other, the pungent smell of blood almost masking the scent of air freshener and piles of books in the room.

"Tell me, what exactly are those creatures?"

“It’s another world.” Salomon shoved the still-muddy explosive rifle into John Watson’s arms. The retired medic looked at him with disbelief, as if he were holding something extremely heavy. “According to the original plan, you shouldn’t have gone deep inside, but rather lingered on the periphery. That was already extremely dangerous for you. The prize I prepared for you is safer.” He ignored his filth and plopped down in the soft chair, the heavy power armor and his weight causing the chair to creak under his weight. “But Mycroft messed everything up, so your test is canceled.”

"You still haven't answered my question, Mr. Damonette. I've known all along that the victim wasn't actually your relative. Why did you come to me?"

“What you see are real things, the very things my organization and I have hunted for years. There are many creatures similar to those monsters. Eleanor's murder is just one of the cases my organization has handled over the past thousand years. When I was a teenager, I personally hunted down every monster roaming a small town, but the number of monsters in the London sewers is simply too much.” Salomon watched as John Watson carefully placed the heavy explosive rifle off the carpet. “We originally had time to clean them up slowly, but the prize I prepared for you and the information Mycroft released completely enraged them. They probably never expected that humans could be more ferocious than vampires, so—”

"Vampires? So Count Dracula is real too?" Watson raised an eyebrow. "So you're Van Helsing?"

"This is not the time to discuss this, Watson. Could you please get us a cup of tea? Please continue, Mr. Damonette."

"—So… in short, there's another world beneath the surface of this world, Sherlock Holmes. I'm trying to give you access to that world, so that your wisdom can be applied to a wider world," Salomon said. "I believe you'll be interested, after all, there are so many unsolved mysteries in that other world."

"Why me?"

"Because you have talent."

"That's not enough," Sherlock Holmes shook his head. "That's not sufficient to constitute your motive."

“Because you’re a good fit,” Salomon said. “I need you to compete for a position, and there’s another candidate for that position. I can’t tell you more about the selection process, but just think of it as some kind of exam. You’re one of the candidates, and before you take the exam, I need you to understand the rules of the other world so that you don’t kill more people after you get the position. The other candidate is arrogant and conceited, and while you have that flaw too, you have a sense of social responsibility… I know some people will say you have antisocial personality disorder, but that’s not much of a problem. Your problem is an uncontrollable curiosity, and the case of Eleanor was prepared to correct your curiosity, Sherlock Holmes.”

Please vote for me!

(End of this chapter)