"Are these your new friends?" Hyde asked, delivering random blows. "Oh, Doctor Watson would simply lose consciousness from surprise if he knew!"
Holmes used the furniture in the laboratory as a shield, trying to break the distance. However, the power of Hyde's attacks was beyond human capabilities.
Evasion at the limit of his strength was the only salvation. The enemy's timing was impeccable: one missed blow, and it wouldn't be limited to a simple cut.
"Oh, I'm delighted with them myself, even though they appeared quite recently!" Holmes replied. "But they are definitely useful!"
In this duel, he tried to adopt elegant poses reminiscent of Eastern martial arts, but against such an opponent, the best tactic remained escape. On the move, he threw everything he could grab, but it yielded no results.
"Perhaps it's time to stop playing games!" Hyde roared.
He instantly disappeared from view.
Holmes spun his head, and when his opponent appeared directly behind him, he drew his pistol. But he had recklessly expended all the bullets earlier: there was no time for reloading, nor any cartridges. In despair, he simply threw the weapon at the enemy's face.
"Agh!"
Thanks to this, Hyde's dagger, aimed at his stomach, deflected and grazed his arm. Holmes cried out in pain but immediately grabbed a strip of fabric lying on the floor and tightened it around the wound.
"Heh-heh. You got lucky. Too bad. I really wanted to rip open your belly so blood would spurt out like a fountain..."
"Blood doesn't spurt out like a fountain, idiot," Holmes retorted. "Did you even study medicine?"
He had to buy time at all costs. Hold out until Victor and his creation were safe. The only question was whether his own body would survive by then...
He cautiously checked his Command Spells. Two strokes remained. One would be used for an emergency summoning of Modred here. But whether the second would be enough to finish Hyde was unknown.
"Finish up there quickly, Modred..."
He mentally urged his Servant.
◇
"Where are you dragging me! I still have things to do..."
"Shut up! You'll bite your tongue off!"
Meanwhile, Mordred, Ritsuka, Mash, and Deadpool, dragging Victor and his creation, tried with all their might to break away from the pursuing mechanical dolls. However, running with such a burden and simultaneously escaping pursuit was impossible.
"Damn it!"
Unable to bear it, Mordred almost threw Victor to the ground. In the street in front of the mansion, she turned to face the pursuers.
"Just running isn't the answer. Hey, Mash! Cover me. We'll break these tin cans here, and then we'll go back and crush that Hyde or whatever his name is."
"Understood!"
The two stood against the army of clockwork dolls.
"I... I'll kill too!"
"And who will protect Wade?" Ritsuka caught Dedchu, who was already rushing into battle. Reinforcements might arrive, so Dedchu had to guard the rear.
"Damn it! Damn it! If it weren't for this failed experiment with the golem, the world would be at my feet...!"
"What? The raccoon is talking?"
Seeing the red creature jumping with indignation, Victor's eyes widened. But it seemed he was addressing the wrong person.
"How many times do I have to repeat myself?! This! Is! Not! A! Raccoon! I! Have the voice of Ryan Reynolds! And the other one – Bradley Cooper! If you don't understand, watch 'Guardians of the Galaxy'! Got it?!"
Dedchu seemed furious. Having listened to the incomprehensible shouts and the irritated babble of the strange creature, Victor, as if struck dumb, averted his gaze and dejectedly stared at the ground.
"Let's go!"
While Dedchu poured out his anger, Mordred charged forward with a battle cry. A swing of her sword from bottom to top – and the doll's torso instantly split in two. Then three more mechanisms attacked her, extending sharp spikes, but Mash quickly intervened in front of Mordred, taking the blow on her shield.
"Excellent switch!"
With a triumphant smirk, Mordred delivered a wide horizontal strike, knocking off the spike-wielding manipulators. While the dolls staggered, leaking oil and scattering gears, she finished them off: knocking them down, crushing their heads with her gauntlet, and piercing them through.
"Puny little things!"
Victory over ordinary opponents meant nothing to her. Too easy, not even a sense of satisfaction. However, soon her intuition told her: something else was approaching from afar.
"Oh dear, it seems we've seriously angered the wrong person? This looks like it's taking a turn for the worse."
The fog suddenly thickened. Nothing could be seen beyond arm's length. But most importantly, such a density of fog meant...
"Kha! Kha-kha! U-u-ek! Wh-what is this?! Has the demonic fog already arrived?!"
Victor choked, his body convulsing. Mordred, realizing, wanted to rush to him, when suddenly...
"Ca-aught~"
Hearing a disgusting whisper right in her ear, she sharply swung her sword. Everything happened so fast that Mash didn't even have time to react.
"So, you're the 'whore killer' the Master was talking about?"
"Ow... I cut my hand. But it's okay. I'll quickly recover with this person's heart."
In front of them stood a small girl with silver hair. She wore some kind of ragged clothes, her arms and legs were wrapped in bandages, and in her hands she clutched two daggers as sharp as scalpels – it was clear she was far from an ordinary child.
[Servant's reaction! Wow, it's a girl?!] – Romani's voice in Ritsuka's communicator trembled with surprise when he realized that the source of the signal was this child.
"Listen, which of you is my mother?" the girl asked. "I... I want to return to Mama's embrace. For starters..."
In an instant, she disappeared.
"Where did she go?!" Mordred frantically looked around and suddenly noticed a dark silhouette darting towards Ritsuka.
"Hey! Get down!"
"A-a-ah!"
In despair, Mordred threw her sword and, at the last moment, managed to save Ritsuka. The silver-haired girl jumped aside and smiled with that frightening sincerity that only children have.
"Heh-heh, I love to play. But if I only play, Mama will be upset. So I have to go back to her embrace."
"E-um... Listen, she's not a Berserker, is she?" Deadpool muttered, looking at the girl. "She speaks kindly, but she's talking nonsense. She's completely lost her mind."
"If you're going to stand there like a statue, then I'll be 'it'!" ♪
She disappeared again.
Dedchu instinctively shielded Ritsuka, taking a defensive stance. However, this time the girl had a different target.
"Protect this professor!"
As soon as Mordred shouted the order, Mash, raising her shield, rushed to where Victor lay face down. But the fog was so thick, and the visibility so low, that it was impossible to make him out.
"Damn it, I'll tear this fog to shreds!!"
Enraged, Mordred gripped her sword, concentrating mana, causing scarlet lightning to dance around her. Magical outburst – one of Saber-class skills. She intended to unleash a colossal amount of compressed energy to disperse the mist in one go.
"Ha-ha-ha! I've felt something like this before. It seems it was also a Saber. But now everything is different. The fog is everywhere, so it's useless."
As the girl predicted, her efforts were in vain.
"U-ek! Kha-kha! But... my... if my creation is with me... this... this fog...!"
Taking advantage of the chaos, Victor, suppressing a painful cough, crawled towards his object of research, wrapped from head to toe in bandages.
"Hey, this is no fun."
"A-a-a-ah!"
The girl, appearing as if from nowhere, pinned Victor's hand to the ground with her sword and, clicking her tongue, burned him with an icy glare.
"Ah, you bitch!"
"Na-ah. You can't move. I'm still 'it'. I can kill this uncle. Although I'll kill him anyway, heh-heh..."
Hostage-taking at the most inconvenient moment.
The situation was a stalemate: Mordred and the others had to protect Victor, but the girl could kill him at any second. Mordred mentally blamed herself for only making things more complicated.
"If that's the case, there's no choice. I'll have to use 'that method'..."
At that moment, Dedchu, who had been silently observing from the side, left Ritsuka and confidently walked forward.
"Wade! What are you planning? It's dangerous!"
"Kid, just watch and learn. Ah... I didn't want to resort to this."
As he walked, Dedchu shed the Mystic Code he received from Da Vinci-chan – an outfit that mimicked his former human appearance. Without this equipment, he turned into an ordinary little animal. The rodent's body lost all strength and healing factor.
"Fluffy!"
"Hey, raccoon!"
His friends wanted to stop him, but they were afraid of provoking the girl. Meanwhile, Dedchu, completely undressed, approached his opponent closely, looking at her with shiny bead-like eyes.
"And who are you? What a cutie! Can I hug you?"
Dedchu, without taking his eyes off her, clenched his will into a fist, cleared his throat with a dry cough, and spoke:
"Pika-a! Pika-pi! Pika-pika? Pi-i-i... Pika-a-pi-i~"
"How adorable!"
Instantly discarding the bloodlust hidden behind a mask of innocence, the girl, like an ordinary child of her age, rushed to Dedchu and hugged him.
"Pi... pika... damn it, I can't breathe... pika!"
Ritsuka, Mash, and Mordred froze in stunned silence, as if they had been hit with something heavy on the back of their heads. So this was "that method." Using the natural charm of a rodent to appeal to the enemy's childish feelings. The idea seemed absurd, but judging by the girl's reaction, it worked flawlessly, making the situation even more ridiculous.
"Gh-h... this fog..." Victor, whom the girl had left alone, seemed to have completely lost his mind from the poisonous fumes. With a mad glint in his eyes, he crawled towards his experiment.
"Hey! Don't move! What are you doing?!"
Mordred tried to stop him, fearing he would attract the killer's attention again, but he didn't hear her. Reaching the motionless body, he forced himself to stand up and began to tear off the bandages.
"Look! My creation! I, Victor Frankenstein, have finally accomplished with human hands what was considered only possible for God! This is my creation! My child! My son and my daughter! Open your eyes! My..."
Seeing what was hidden under the bandages, Victor screamed in horror and fell to the ground. The girl, who had just been happily playing with Dedchu, turned around belatedly. The expression of childish delight on her face instantly turned into the mask of a cruel executioner.
"I told you, but you still didn't understand. Uncle, you're an idiot. And idiots must die!"
"No!"
Her blade pierced Victor's heart with perfect accuracy. The snow-white shirt instantly turned scarlet, blood gushed from his throat, escaping with a choked gasp.
"A miracle... a monster... I... created a monster."
However, the pain of the mortal wound was nothing compared to the shock of his creation's appearance, which turned out to be an ugly monster, far from his ideal.
"U-u-u..."
Victor's "monster" stirred and opened its eyes. The creature, sewn from many corpses, took the form of a fragile red-haired girl, but the sinister aura emanating from her caused disgust even in Mordred and Mash.
"Kha! I... I didn't want this...!"
Not feeling death approaching, consumed only by primal horror, Victor touched the cheek of his revived creation.
"This monster... a failure!"
The first thing the red-haired girl saw when she opened her eyes was her creator. His bloody face, eyes full of terror, and the dying whisper that she was a monster and a mistake. Her eyes widened.
"Y-y-i-i-i..."
The red-haired girl's face contorted with rage, hatred, and despair. Grinding her teeth, she grabbed the hand touching her cheek.
"Y-Y-I-I-A-A-A-A-A!"
Golden lightning bolts erupted from her body. Along with a scream full of unspeakable pain, a blinding light flashed, engulfing the fog, the creator, and the silver-haired girl. And then...
"Everyone to the ground!!"
Hearing Holmes's voice from the mansion, Ritsuka and the others immediately ducked.
The next moment, an explosion of monstrous power erupted, sweeping everything in its path.