An Ounce Of Prevention

Where chivalrous intent, Kung-Fu, and discernment clasp hands, a blood calamity finds no opening.
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, <Faust>-

The day before the operation was carried out.

When Yan visited 221B Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes showed him the fourteen poisons Irene Adler had been administering through the maid, written out in order.

The reason was simple.

Even before his Regression, the Little Heavenly Demon had tracked Irene Adler. He knew how deep her mind ran.

Besides, this was London Murim, where the means that could be used for crime were far more varied than in the world he originally lived in.

He had already detoxified all fourteen delayed-onset poisons using White Worm’s antidote pellet, but he couldn’t believe a woman like Irene Adler would administer poisons that weren’t even that strong without thinking.

It was less a conclusion drawn from intuition than a kind of certainty.

If it was administered for the purpose of checking him, there was no need to use poisons with only weak toxicity.

If it was done to see how they would react, the surveillance had been lax.

Surely, Irene Adler had another reason for preparing the poison.

The fourteen delayed-onset poisons were each things that could be collected from insects and herbs, but since the Little Heavenly Demon couldn’t place the combination, he had to seek Yan’s help.

He had exceptional knowledge of poisons as well, but in London Murim there existed far more varied medicines and toxins than in the world he used to live in.

With independent research, there was nothing he couldn’t uncover, but he was going to meet Irene tomorrow morning.

Since he hadn’t been able to spare time, battered by various incidents including the royal ballroom, seeking advice from someone who lived on poison was an efficient decision.

“I’m curious whether this combination of fourteen delayed-onset poisons I wrote down looks familiar to you.”

The Little Heavenly Demon held out the list of poisons he had written down beforehand to Yan.

“This……. I don’t know it at all.”

Yan shook his head.

“Why are you asking something like this all of a sudden?”
“Well, the truth is…….”

Yan asked the reason, but with Watson watching beside them, the Little Heavenly Demon couldn’t bring up the story of the maid administering poison into their meals, or the matter of White Worm.

Instead, he fabricated a nonexistent case, telling Yan that a fictional person had drunk the fourteen poisons above in order, and asked if it rang any bells.

“…Maybe the fourteen poisons are all just ingredients?”

Yan, who had long been subjected to the Tanne Clan’s human experiments, quickly produced a plausible hypothesis from experience.

“Ingredients……? You mean using the human body as a vessel to compound the poison?”
“That’s right.”
“Then even if there’s resistance to each ingredient—”
“It would be hard to resist the completed poison.”

Holmes thought for a moment.

If Yan was right, shouldn’t he prick his own finger with a needle even now, squeeze out a drop of blood, and feed it to him.

But he couldn’t bring himself to reveal the truth in front of Watson.

To make Watson understand, he would have to tell her about the White Worm he was raising in secret, and that he had secretly mixed White Worm’s secretion and the fourteen delayed-onset poisons the maid administered into her meals.

“For now, how about we try mixing the ingredients written here directly.”

Fortunately, since Yan had brought various poisons in his bag, they could begin the experiment at once in front of Watson.

By conjecture, what Irene Adler made by mixing fourteen ingredients would be a special poison manufactured according to a secret recipe unknown to the martial world.

However, depending on the order and ratio of mixing the ingredients, the finished product could change endlessly.

It was impossible for the two to make a finished product in a short time.

No.

From the start, the fourteen poisons showed no sign at all of blending into one.

“Feels like the ingredients are wrong. Maybe something’s missing.”

No matter how different the mixing ratios were, if the ingredients were correct, there was no reason they wouldn’t blend.

“…So that’s what it was. Now I know.”

The Little Heavenly Demon, who had been drooping his head as if half-listening to Yan insist something was clearly wrong, suddenly sprang up from his seat and ran into the room.

What he brought back was a handkerchief embroidered with the initials I.A.

“What are you trying to—”

Before Yan could finish, Holmes confirmed Watson had glanced elsewhere for a moment, then lightly shook the handkerchief once over the mortar.

And the next moment.

“Hm?”

The fourteen poisons, which had remained as powder no matter how much water they poured or stirred, turned transparent as if it were a lie, and dissolved into the water.

Colorless and odorless.
Yet precisely because of that, it was a strange liquid that gave off an eerily ominous feeling.

No doubt about it. This was the poison Irene Adler had been trying to complete.

“So that’s it.”

Until now, the Little Heavenly Demon had thought the substance on Irene Adler’s handkerchief was merely a kind of tracking scent used to pursue a target, undetectable by ordinary means.

But its true identity was a substance used to combine fourteen poisons into one.

“There was one more ingredient.”

Yan didn’t know the full story, but he realized that what was on the handkerchief was the puzzle’s final ingredient.

Thus, the prototype was completed.

“I don’t know what this has to do with this case at all……”
“I’ll tell you when the time comes. I guarantee it’ll be useful.”

Watson, who had no dream that the poison was lurking inside her own body, watched Holmes and Yan’s ‘waste of time’ with a calm face.

Yet for some reason, after Yan swallowed the completed poison—

“…Huh?”

Nothing happened.

He didn’t spit blood and collapse or lose consciousness like when he drank Black Worm’s test poison before.

He was literally standing there, perfectly fine.

As if there wasn’t a single uncomfortable thing.

“Is it a ratio issue……? I don’t feel any toxicity at all.”
“Even if the mixing changes, the ingredients are the same. Shouldn’t it show some efficacy at least? If not……”

The Little Heavenly Demon considered a few possibilities.

There was no way the poison Irene Adler completed truly had no efficacy at all.

“Like the ingredients, the completed poison is also delayed-onset, or—”

It only displayed lethal toxicity when certain conditions were met.

One of the two.

“The latter.”

Irene Adler was a woman who tried to control and dominate everything with her own hands and will.

Delayed-onset poisons take different times to manifest toxicity depending on the target’s realm and preparedness.

No matter how he thought about it, Irene Adler wouldn’t tolerate that kind of variable.

There had to be a separate method to trigger the poison’s effect.

“…If I don’t prepare, I’ll be hit without even a chance to respond.”

Irene Adler would have had a purpose in compounding an unknown poison.

If tomorrow’s meeting didn’t end pleasantly, she would trigger the toxicity by some means.

If he let that happen, not only would he fail to reclaim the Vermilion Phoenix’s egg, his life would be at risk.

Not only Holmes himself.

Given that Watson and Mrs. Hudson had also been given the same poison, the power of life and death over everyone living in this boarding house might fall into Irene Adler’s hands.

Perhaps she would take the three lives as hostages and demand a deal in exchange for the antidote.

“That can’t be allowed.”

He didn’t want to grant Irene Adler’s request of all people.

Fortunately, the Little Heavenly Demon had a way to escape the binding of the poison Irene had administered.

“If I’d realized this earlier, things would’ve been easier……”

After sending Yan away, Sherlock Holmes took advantage of Watson sleeping and fed White Worm a single drop of his blood.

However, even for White Worm, it was impossible for it to immediately spit out an antidote pellet for a poison completed through such a complex process.

Unlike last time, when it quickly spat out an antidote pellet after being fed weak poisons, the Black Worm test poison he fed it earlier still hadn’t returned as an antidote pellet.

Perhaps the strange pellet it spat out midway might be the test poison’s antidote, but no matter how he looked at it, both its shape and color were different from the antidote pellets he’d seen before, so he couldn’t be sure.

In any case, the more lethal the poison the Mistress of Green Willow painstakingly completed, the longer White Worm would take to make the antidote pellet.

If he waited, it would surely be completed, but he was going to steal the Vermilion Phoenix’s egg from Irene Adler tomorrow morning.

The Little Heavenly Demon had no time.

At this point, he had no choice but to wait for another helper he had asked for.

Holmes tried to sleep, carrying his worries.

And the next morning.

-Knock knock-

“B-beauties sleep in, but London’s number one pretty girl arrived without being late, okay!! Little Heavenly Demon who can’t do anything without Miss Louise, hurry up and praise me!!”

The final helper arrived at 221B Baker Street right on time.

Suspecting that Irene Adler’s handkerchief might have not only the poison’s final ingredient but also a tracking scent on it, I wiped my entire body down with medicine before departing.

Then I lent the clothes I normally wore to Head Professor Louise, who had transformed into the exact same appearance as me.

Her Kung-Fu were at a level beyond common sense, so she could mimic not only another’s face and build, but even their outfit.
Even so, I made her wear my clothes because I was worried that Afternoon Tea Party Kung-Fuists, or spirit beasts they raised, might notice something suspicious through scent.

In any case, with this, they wouldn’t be able to realize through scent that someone else had worn my appearance and infiltrated the estate.

“Not bad acting. As expected, a popular children’s-book writer really is different.”

As I’d expected, Head Professor Louise was mimicking everything from my gait to my way of speaking, to a level where those who didn’t know me well wouldn’t notice.

With acting skill honed through storytelling, plus experience built from staging plays based on her stories many times, it likely wasn’t difficult for her.

While Louise Carroll waved the rose bouquet in front of the estate, I, wrapped in stealth garb, waited outside and watched for an opening.

Through Mycroft, I had already learned that Green Willow Manor’s staff were bustling to procure ingredients and prepare the luncheon gathering.

Irene Adler was the Afternoon Tea Party Leader.
She wouldn’t want to reveal to me who would be attending the gathering she hosted in secret.

As expected, only a few minutes after the disguised Louise Carroll caused a commotion, people who looked like Afternoon Tea Party affiliates began slipping out the back door.

“Now.”

With the Butler Agency agents’ cooperation, I captured one of them.

Right there on the spot, I used both the bone-folding trick and the face-changing trick, then used disguise tools to perfectly impersonate the unconscious Afternoon Tea Party member.

After that, it was simple.

Take the clothes I stole, return to the back door of the estate, make an appropriate excuse, eavesdrop on the two’s conversation through a single door, then move the roses with Poltergeist.

“Kuhuk!”

As agreed in advance, each time Irene Adler released Qi Frequency or did something suspicious, Head Professor Louise put on a passionate performance, coughing up blood.

The Mistress of Green Willow was completely deceived by her acting and the Zuckerburg Family’s formation, and in the end she mistook it for all of London burning and hid in the underground shelter on her own.

“Easy.”

I became able to move freely, without worrying about the poison.