Chapter 203: When Two Positives Make a Negative

Chapter 203: When Two Positives Make a Negative

Crack!

Klein saw Isengard Stanton’s back visibly cave in, and felt as though his own spine had begun to ache faintly.

Thud. Isengard, who had already been falling forward, collapsed to the floor, seemingly losing consciousness from the pain in an instant.

Kaslana, the one who had thrown that punch, stood where she was, panting with a blank look in her eyes. Her forehead was covered in cold sweat, and she did not follow up with any further attack.

She was like someone who had just awakened from a long nightmare caused by her own emotions. All her strength had been completely exhausted in the outburst earlier.

Huff. Huff. Kaslana’s body swayed, about to go limp.

Klein’s eyes narrowed. In two steps, he rushed forward to Isengard Stanton’s side.

He half crouched and tried to help him up.

Lying there, Isengard cried out in pain,

“Run!

“Don’t worry about me!”

Clearly, he did not believe that a three-person group in which one member had been seriously injured in an instant and another had lost all strength could still hold back an Apostle of Desire. He wanted Klein to flee immediately and join the official Beyonders outside. Otherwise, all three of them would die here.

At the same time, Isengard laboriously raised his right hand, attempting to use some Beyonder ability outward to draw the attention of the official Beyonders farther away.

As for the miniature “telegraph machine” with a horn, it had flown to the wall when Isengard fell.

Hesitation appeared on Klein’s face. Just as he was about to make a decision, he saw viscous black “liquid” flow down from the ceiling and rapidly condense into a pitch-black figure.

That figure seemed completely wrapped in black curtains. Only a pair of cold blue eyes were exposed.

The instant Klein saw him, it was as if he saw the strongest emotions and desires of living beings:

Fear, anger, greed, jealousy, hunger, lust, and more, and more.

The Apostle of Desire did not waste the situation he had painstakingly created. At the first possible moment, he entered the sitting room.

At that moment, among the three detectives, Kaslana was exhausted from the emotional outburst, Isengard Stanton had suffered severe damage to his spine and had basically lost his combat ability, and only Klein remained unharmed.

However, apart from his revolver and Beyonder bullets, all of Klein’s mystical items were above the gray fog. And facing him was a Sequence 5 Apostle of Desire—a powerhouse capable of raising a demon dog!

At that moment, the corners of Klein’s mouth curled slightly.

His right hand, which had been placed at the wound on Isengard’s back, suddenly swept across it. The obvious depression was strangely transferred sideways, moving onto one of Isengard’s ribs!

The Magician’s most wondrous Beyonder ability:

Damage Transfer!

It could shift a wound once on the person’s own body, turning severe injuries into minor ones, though it could not transfer damage to another person or to an object.

The instant Klein had seen Isengard Stanton wounded, he had already thought of what to do next:

First, pretend he had no way to respond and lure the Apostle of Desire into revealing himself. Then, transfer the great detective’s wound so that he was left with only a fractured rib, a relatively minor injury. At that moment, Klein believed Isengard would simultaneously move against the Apostle of Desire. That was a human being’s most instinctive deathbed struggle.

In this way, even if the Apostle of Desire discovered that something was wrong, it would be too late to break contact. Once Klein completed the “treatment” and joined hands with the great detective, they could entangle the target and delay him until the official Beyonders arrived!

Almost at the same time, the surface of the ring Isengard had originally been pointing outward suddenly glimmered with a life-filled green. His body was swiftly enveloped in faint radiance, and his wound rapidly recovered.

His fractured rib healed in an instant.

The great detective’s pain just now had been real, but his helplessness had been fake!

Yet this overlapped with Klein’s assistance.

The Apostle of Desire, who had been about to strike, saw this scene. His eyes suddenly widened, and his body abruptly froze.

Unentangled, he immediately turned and rushed toward the window.

During that process, his body rapidly collapsed, turning into viscous black liquid.

That liquid seeped into the floor and wall, vanishing in an instant.

Klein’s raised right hand only had time to snap his fingers.

The air bullet passed through the open window and shot outside, striking sparks from the surface it hit. Yet the Apostle of Desire had already vanished completely.

He ran so fast, without the slightest hesitation… Are you even still a Demon… This is going to be a lot more trouble… The corner of Klein’s mouth twitched, and he turned to look at Isengard Stanton, who had rolled over and stood up.

The great detective happened to be looking at him as well.

“You can heal?”

“You can heal?”

The two spoke at the same time, asking exactly the same question.

After looking at one another, Isengard shook his head with a bitter smile.

“I didn’t expect that the trap I prepared in advance would end up letting him escape.”

As he spoke, faint light drifted over his ring, while he looked around to confirm that the Apostle of Desire had already gone far away.

Isengard then briefly explained, “This afternoon, I had no chance to imitate a similar healing ability. Later, I realized I could use it to preset a trap, luring the Apostle of Desire into revealing himself because of my serious injury. That was why I deliberately made the bandage look so exaggerated.”

He pointed at the padded-up area near the shoulder of his left arm.

“As expected, it came in useful. But I never imagined that you could also deal with severe injuries. The result…”

The result was that both of them had prioritized “healing” the injury. Neither had gone to entangle the Apostle of Desire, allowing the other party to notice something was wrong and immediately flee far away.

Whether it was me or Stanton, both of us had hidden trump cards or arrangements unknown to the Apostle of Desire. We both wanted to use them to trick him, but who would have thought they’d cancel each other out and let the target go… Is this what they call two positives making a negative? Klein smiled helplessly.

“That’s because we don’t understand each other well enough and our coordination isn’t good enough.”

“No. It was my fault,” Isengard said sincerely. “When I saw that you didn’t flee or put up a guarded defense, but instead came over to help me, I should have inferred that you weren’t panicking, that you had confidence, that you had a method. Unfortunately, while wearing this ring, my mind is constantly under a heavy load, and it’s difficult for me to think too deeply about additional matters.”

So Sealed Artifact 2-081 also has the passive effect of lowering intelligence… Klein smiled and said, “Mr. Stanton, this isn’t the time to discuss who is responsible. The Apostle of Desire has already fled. We need to consider what to do next.”

As Isengard removed the ring, he turned toward the sitting room door.

“The official Beyonders will arrive very soon. I’ll go outside to reassure Stuart and the others, then we’ll discuss a method. Are you coming with me, or do you have something of your own to do first?”

Official Beyonders… Mr. Stanton mentioned the Nighthawks, the Machinery Hivemind, and the military earlier… Please don’t let it be anyone I know… Mm, my spiritual intuition hasn’t warned me, so it probably isn’t… Mr. Stanton is giving me a chance to tidy up and deal with sensitive items so I don’t run into trouble with unfriendly official Beyonders… Countless thoughts flashed through Klein’s mind. After some consideration, he asked, “Mr. Stanton, when you determined the Apostle of Desire’s location earlier, where exactly was he?”

Isengard thought for a moment and said, “In your bedroom, sitting at your desk.”

…How arrogant… Klein pointed outside the room.

“I’ll go there and check whether he left any traces.

“If we can grasp the Apostle of Desire’s true appearance, chasing him will undoubtedly become much simpler.

“I’ll leave the rest to you.”

“All right.” Isengard moved to one side and helped up the weak, strengthless Kaslana.

Seeing this, Klein suddenly found the situation absurd.

We discussed so much just now, made all those preparations, and laid a trap. In the end, we still couldn’t hold back the Apostle of Desire, and things turned out like this… Accidents always outnumber preparations… That is why Magician is only Sequence 7…

Leaving the room, Klein headed straight to the second floor and entered his bedroom.

Nothing about the room’s arrangement had changed at all. Even the distance between chair and desk was no different from before. Yet Klein could almost see the figure wrapped in pitch-black liquid.

He sat there, staring straight ahead, patiently and calmly waiting for the opportunity.

As expected of a Coldblooded… Klein looked at the glass of the bow window and felt that perhaps he could divine what it had reflected.

The Demon pathway is very good at crime, so it shouldn’t be so easy for him to leave clues behind… But I can try above the gray fog… Klein circled the room to inspect it, then began burning some casual mysticism notes he had made.

Not long after he finished cleaning up, he saw several strangers come up to the second floor.

The one in the lead was a man with firm, hard facial lines, yet his brown hair was fluffy, messy, and stubborn.

In his hand was an ancient silver mirror with strange patterns. On either side of the mirror, black gemstones had been set as “eyes.”

“Hello, Mr. Moriarty. I’m Ikanser Bernard from the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery. May I examine this place?”

Klein nodded.

“No problem.”

He then added politely, “Would you like me to follow along and answer any questions at any time?”

“All right. Thank you. Mr. Stanton mentioned your situation.” Ikanser revealed a faint smile.

Several team members followed behind him. Their attitudes toward Klein varied; some ignored him, some were curious, and some carried considerable hostility.

My situation? Just how did Mr. Stanton introduce me? What kind of story did he make up? Klein’s thoughts flashed rapidly as he followed beside Ikanser and entered the bedroom once more. The other official Beyonders split into pairs and spread out to examine different areas of the second floor.

“This is where the Apostle of Desire sat?” Ikanser pointed at the chair before the desk.

He had clearly already questioned Isengard Stanton.

“Yes,” Klein answered calmly.

Ikanser said nothing further. He lifted the silver mirror and stroked its surface three times with his right hand.

After a brief pause, he spoke in a deep voice.

“Honorable Arrodes, my question is: what did the Demon who sat here earlier look like?”

The surrounding light suddenly deepened, as though tinged with the dampness after rain. On the surface of the silver mirror, strange water-light flashed and gathered into a scene:

A person covered in viscous black “liquid” sat on the chair, back to the window and facing the bed.

Immediately afterward, the image changed. The full-length mirror in the room’s corner vaguely reflected the black figure’s side profile—a side profile likewise concealed by “pitch-blackness.”

Yet a few contours could still be faintly made out.

The Apostle of Desire had high cheekbones and a pair of cold blue eyes.