The Diablo's Apprentice

The most pitiable existence is an apprentice who cannot surpass the realm of a grandmaster.
-Leonardo da Vinci-

The interrogation continued late into the night.

Not Irene Adler. Me.

“Um… Watson?”
“…”
“What you ate was like royal jelly. You’ve heard of it, right? Royal jelly. Yes?”

Watson’s expression did not change.
She was a statue carved from solid pure-white marble.
Unfocused eyes. I couldn’t tell what she was looking at.

I thought saying ‘royal jelly’ would get through to her. Did I make a mistake?

I was thinking that, when—

“Holmes.”

Watson opened her mouth without warning.

“Hm?”
“My specialty is Eastern medicine, and my grounding in Mysticobiology isn’t as deep as yours, but there are several problems with the logic you just unfolded.”
“What are they? Tell me.”
“Royal jelly is made by worker bees and fed to larvae, and the thing you secretly mixed into our meal is something larvae excrete… no, secrete.”
“Is that such a big difference? Either way, it came out of a bug’s mouth.”
“…”

Watson silently closed her mouth.
As expected, no expression returned to her face.

-Flinch.

A dense killing intent suddenly pricked my skin. When I turned my head, I saw Mrs. Hudson glaring at me.

“Now, I think there may be some misunderstanding. I was only acting from the wish that, in this harsh London Murim, Watson, you and Mrs. Hudson might live peacefully without facing the threat of poisoning—”
“Holmes.”
“…”
“Your tongue is a bit long today.”

-Shrrk.

The pure-white blade of the Snow Halation Iron dagger, steeped in Yin Qi, revealed the color of a special season.

A melody in my middle elixir field churned with ominous foreboding.
It cannot stop. It will not stop.

“Mm… It seems today is not my day, so let us meet again next time.”

Yan, the one who caused this situation, was subtly backing toward the exit.

“Holmes. How about you admit your mistake at this point and apologize? You did it for your reasons, so if you say you’re sorry, both Mrs. Hudson and I are willing to make peace. How about it? Let’s practice together. Repeat after me. ‘I’m sorry, Watson.’ Now. Your turn.”
“I… I’m…”
“Yes. That’s it.”
“To be shackled by the mere trappings of aesthetic consciousness and forget the essence, what a grievous thing indeed…! The White Worm of the Chelmsford Yan Family is a precious Fantastic Beast that protects the lives of modern duelists who suffer under threats of all manner of poison! Yet instead of being grateful for the antidote pill the White Worm labored to produce, you insult it as if it were some impure thing! I do not care if you ignore my arrangements! But to treat the White Worm’s sincerity as nothing…! I, Holmes, cannot hide his disappointment!”

Watson ignored my words, turned her head, and looked at Mrs. Hudson.

“Ma’am.”
“Yes, Doctor Watson.”
“May I borrow a Bible and incense?”
“Of course. The undertaker is here as well.”
“London has lost yet another gentleman like this. It is truly a regrettable thing.”
“What are you—”

-Ssae-aeng!

A sharp dagger cut off my voice and flew at me.

Thanks to the fact that Watson had no talent for knife-throwing, I barely survived, and after much hardship I succeeded in calming the two of them down.

After that, I immediately spent a full hour explaining how beneficial the White Worm’s antidote pill was to us.

“There is not the slightest toxicity in the antidote pill. Understood?”
“I said I get it, so stop. I understand, alright?”

After relentless persuasion, the two of them decided of their own accord to split the antidote pill into three pieces and each take one.

“Mm… The taste really is…”
“So the food tasting strange all this time wasn’t because that underworld maid lacked skill, but because of the antidote pill…”

Thus, the mysterious poison was neutralized before it could even exert its efficacy.
Now, even if we met the Mistress of Green Willow, she had no means left to harm us.
We could go to Mycroft without worry and hear whatever we needed from Irene Adler together.

“It is fortunate the White Worm produced the antidote pill in time…”

I believe the Afternoon Tea party’s history is relatively shallow, yet the fact that they created a bizarre virulent poison that operated by Qi Frequency without expensive ingredients must mean that, starting with the first leader, all manner of eccentrics had taken refuge in the Afternoon Tea Party.

I don’t know how such a force weakened to the point that its elders could be wiped out by just me and the Zuckerberg Family’s civil engineering.
Perhaps they deliberately gave up brute force and chose the path of surviving through schemes.
And it was also possible that other circumstances I did not know existed.

‘I will learn it all if I speak with Irene Adler.’

Whether the Mistress of Green Willow would open her mouth readily was a separate matter, but in any case, by detaining Irene Adler, I had secured a path leading to James Moriarty.

My ultimate goal is to send James Moriarty to the heavenly tribunal and peel away one layer of the darkness cast over Europe.

If Irene Adler had died, there would have been no point in even going so far as to pick up and offer him information about Moriarty’s proxy accounts right before his eyes.
If I could accompany Irene Adler and make contact with Moriarty, I might be able to learn the secrets of the immense internal energy and peculiar Kung-Fu he possessed.

Still, this time I succeeded after wagering big.
If the plan had tangled even slightly, what would I be doing right now?
Even thinking of it again made me dizzy.

If Head Professor Louise had not turned into my appearance and stepped in, Irene Adler would have held the three of our lives hostage and I would have had no choice but to follow her orders.
I still cannot guess what benefit she sought by moving me, but at least one thing is certain. The Afternoon Tea Party Leader’s purpose is connected to my master.

‘Perhaps I truly must enter the Savile Row estate.’

I felt that there were still secrets I did not know.
And the topic my master left behind, ‘Heavenly Demon,’ still gave me nothing to grasp.
To find out why my master disappeared, I would have to return to that nightmare house.

‘There are not just one or two strange points.’

When I checked the last time I visited, the lock had been replaced.
That meant someone I did not know might be living in the estate.
It was possible my master returned to London and changed the lock, but if so, there is no way he wouldn’t have contacted me.
Even if my master could not inform me of his return for some reason, at the very least, Mycroft, who moved the SIS to gather information on masters entering and leaving London, should have noticed.

It also bothered me that many of the people I met and incidents I experienced recently had ties to my master.
First, Her Majesty Queen Victoria.
Then Elder Newton and Head Professor Louise.
Postmaster General Sir Fawcett and the two elders of Henry Poole & Co. also had some sort of relationship with my master.

What were they seeking, to be associating with my master?
What secret was the Reform Club my master frequented hiding?

There were still far too few clues.
And aside from my master’s matter, there were heaps of things demanding my attention.
For example, finding John Watson, a presence I could never give up.

“For now, how about we each finish Breath Control and gather again on the second floor, ma’am?”

As I was thinking that, I came to my senses when I heard Watson speaking to Mrs. Hudson.
Even after seeing the White Worm neutralize corpse poison and revive a Living Dead at Yan’s house before, Watson still seemed unable to trust the antidote pill, and kept wearing an anxious expression.

In any case, I did not expect even that tendency of worrying about everything to resemble Watson so much.
And after she finished another fine meal, she would open the newspaper as if nothing happened and check the results of the Epsom Derby.

“You truly can’t trust people’s words.”
“Isn’t that natural? You’re the strange one, eating something an unidentified suspicious bug spat out as if it were nothing.”
“Hm. If that is your opinion, I will take note.”

Only after confirming the two of them returned to their rooms for Breath Control could I sink back into thought.

Still, because Yan only hovered and then left, I couldn’t ask what I was curious about.
I meant to ask about the identity of the bizarre pellet the White Worm spat out last time.
It was something whose size itself was different from an ordinary antidote pill. What in the world happened to the White Worm’s body?

My heightened hearing told me that beyond the door, Watson was performing a Breathing Exercise.
With Watson sensitive because of the antidote pill, if I made noise now she would surely get startled, so staying still was best.

I began checking, one by one, what I had to do going forward.

First, as I said earlier, I must find John Watson.
In this world, he has never met me, yet to me he is a precious friend I do not wish to lose.
And Jane Watson said that John Watson ran away one day without warning, and I couldn’t bear how much that bothered me.

Watson is not someone who would leave home without telling his family the reason.
There must be circumstances hidden that I do not know.

Could it be that Watson, like me, crossed over to this side with memories of the other world?

“No, that is going too far.”

There is no basis to call it deduction.
It is no different from delusion.

However, if the cause of my crossing from the other world to this one was, as I previously suspected, the pocket watch Moriarty had…

‘I cannot say there is absolutely no chance that whoever found my corpse took the pocket watch.’

As thoughts arose one after another, my head began to grow complicated.

Going forward, I must firmly guard the Vatican secret hidden in the lodging house, find Watson, and crush Moriarty’s ambition.
And beyond that, I cannot neglect tracing my master’s whereabouts.
Between all that, I must also resolve the bizarre incidents occurring across Europe.

If I do not set priorities and handle them in time, one by one, I will not be able to properly use the future information contained in my head.

What should I do?

As I was thinking that, a brown envelope on the table suddenly caught my eye.
A reply from the magazine that reviewed the manuscript Watson submitted.

“Whew. Now I feel refreshed.”

Just then, Watson, having finished a short rotation, came out of her bedroom and walked this way.

“Right. I should have checked this with you first, but things were so hectic I forgot.”

With a much more relaxed face, Watson opened the envelope.

“Hm?”

In the first line of the thick reply was a sentence I never expected.

[Reason for rejection: A manuscript extremely similar was recently submitted. Plagiarism is an unethical act, so refrain from it.]