Vroom—
The chainsaw roared in the Joker's grip, its frantic buzzing vibrating against Lomue's racing heart.
Yet, Lomue remained eerily calm. He even posed a question: "What about the girl?"
"You mean..."
"The girl who came with Sherlock."
"Oh, her."
Sensing an opportunity to finally break him, the Artist let out a muffled snicker behind his hand and abruptly yanked open a steel shutter.
The full moon hung high outside, its light appearing almost blindingly bright.
Both of them wore pitch-black rings on the middle fingers of their right hands. However, the Artist's left arm appeared to be severed, the stump charred with the black residue of an explosion. In contrast, a gold ring had appeared on Lomue's left hand.
Lomue squinted, his vision blurry for a moment before the world snapped back into focus.
The Artist was built sturdily, and the mask on his face wasn't actually a mask—it was a tapestry of scars, carved inch by inch with a blade, blood, and paint. A crimson line stretched from his manic grin all the way to his earlobes.
He tilted his head back, pinching the corner of something with his hands, unfolding it with the practiced elegance of a butler preparing a dinner service.
It was a sheet of human skin.
Fresh blood dripped from it, splattering onto the unrecognizable corpse lying beneath.
"Was she someone important to you?"
The Artist's breath grew ragged. He paced around Lomue with wide eyes, his gaze locked onto the man's face, desperate to see a flicker of rage or a shadow of terror. "Tell me... tell me, was she!?"
But the Artist was destined for disappointment.
The response he received wasn't the breakdown he craved; it was a fist.
The nylon ropes binding Lomue had disintegrated at some unknown point. He lunged forward with sudden violence, burying a punch directly into the Artist's face.
The young man calmly straightened his displaced collar. "I gave you a chance. Many times. I warned you repeatedly."
As the moonlight poured in, his slightly upturned face and indifferent eyes looked down with cold disdain.
Sent flying several meters away, the Joker crashed onto the never-ending assembly line. A spray of blood arched through the air, staining a dusty Union Jack hanging nearby.
He stared at the flag for a moment, dazed—but only for a moment. Rage and the sting of humiliation instantly swallowed what remained of the Artist's sanity.
He scrambled to his feet, teeth grinding with a visceral snarl. Pure, unadulterated fury made him abandon all pretense of a "duel."
"You want to die? Fine! Right now!"
His scarred face contorted in agony, the flesh seemingly coming alive as the colorful lines of his scars began to writhe and bend.
The air in the room suddenly curdled. The Artist's spine snapped straight, his shoulder blades emitting the sharp cracks of breaking bamboo.
"Weren't you supposed to be powerful? Weren't you... supposed to be unafraid of me?"
His vertebrae protruded one by one, tearing through his oil-stained overalls. His silhouette began to swell and bloat, faintly taking on the jagged outline of a goat. When he spoke again, it was no longer a human voice:
"Are you... afraid... now?"
A third vertical eye split open beneath his Adam's apple. Its mocking pupil scanned the room before pinning itself on Lomue, desperate to harvest a single grain of fear for its pleasure.
Once again, it was disappointed.
Lomue gently rubbed his ring. "Sherlock Holmes has a high IQ, but in reality, she's always been quite clumsy. She doesn't know how to speak to people, how to keep a low profile, or how to navigate social graces. She is eternally arrogant, as if being a genius grants her the right to look down on everyone... Tell me, how many people do you think hate a person like that?"
He stepped onto his own shadow. He didn't move, and the moonlight remained still, yet his shadow began to churn. It bubbled like water at a hundred degrees Celsius. The darkness became sentient, as if something was clawing its way out.
"Sherlock Holmes is destined to stand at the summit, just as she is destined to always stand on the edge of a precipice... But I am the only one who knows that Sherlock isn't nearly as strong as she appears."
She would feel miserable for hurting someone's feelings with a misplaced word. She would blame herself if a killer succeeded because she arrived a second too late. She often felt so frustrated by her own social ineptitude that she would mutter to herself in front of a mirror for half an hour.
Lomue took a soft step forward.
Wooo—
The sirens wailed in the distance.
"Scotland Yard is fast, but they are always one step behind... Why did you think you were so smart? Did you never wonder why you couldn't find my past records? Did you never wonder how a woman like Holmes, who knows nothing of the supernatural, has managed to live this long unscathed?"
Under the Artist's stunned, trembling gaze, it emerged.
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My : https://[email protected]/AuAuMon
Stop arresting me, Miss Holmes (40 Chapters, Ongoing)
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It had no legs and no arms—only a body composed of pure blackness and a head. But it wasn't a head; it was a grim, hollowed-out sheep's skull.
Light could not pass through its body; instead, the light was swallowed by it. It moved silently, its empty, grey eye sockets drifting toward them.
The Artist let out a howl and turned to flee without hesitation. But in the next second, his world spun. By the time he realized what was happening, all he could see was his own headless corpse.
"Britain is a rotten place. Commoners, nobles, capitalists, demons—countless eyes are fixed on that brilliant, foolish woman who doesn't know how to hide. So, I have no choice. To protect her, I have to be the villain."
Lomue smiled as he raised his foot over the severed head. "Why are your codenames always so terrible? 'M', 'The Artist'... try mine. I am called 'Town in Go'—that's right, the big boss of your criminal empire."
His words fell in tandem with his heel.
Squelch.
The head exploded.
The body collapsed, and silence returned.
Lomue leaned over to pluck the ring from the monster's finger and tossed it into the shadows.
With the possessing demon destroyed, the massive carcass began to disintegrate. Tendrils emerged from the shadows, surrounding it, dissolving it, until the blood, the body, and the sheep-headed horror were all swallowed into the darkness.
Only one man remained, alongside two human corpses.
Lomue opened a window, pulled a dagger from the shadows, and gave himself two shallow wounds before turning his gaze back to the bodies.
The night was silent. The silver crescent moon cast its glow over Lomue's lowered brow.
[Daily News: An explosion occurred recently at the Wayne Factory. The manager claims only one worker sustained minor injuries and has declined to press charges against the company.]
The moonlight lingered, and Lomue watched for a long time. Eventually, he realized that the "Artist" had been nothing more than an ordinary man.
"Anna gave me a paper rose. She said it was a surprise for her father."
"She didn't understand why a family had to be divided by status or wealth. She didn't understand why her father, who loved her mother so much, would divorce her out of an inferiority complex. She said she was going to work at the factory to earn money, to change her family's fate, so her father could truly become an artist."
Lomue took out the paper rose and dropped it in front of the father.
Finally, it sank into the shadows along with the corpse.
Wooo—
The sirens grew piercingly loud. Lomue could already see the flickering blue and red lights.
He was just about to go find Sherlock when—BOOM! A sudden explosion sent a ringing shockwave through his ears.
"Lomue!"
Through the dust and smoke came a heart-wrenching scream.
He turned around, his eyes curving into a gentle smile. "Good evening, Miss Holmes."
"You stupid pig!"
She flew toward him, tears streaming down her face, and pulled him into a desperate embrace. Her eyes immediately darted down to the messy knife wounds on his body.
"I was no match for him... You know I'm just a frail inventor. I took two hits, but Scotland Yard arrived just in time. He ran as soon as he heard the sirens."
Lomue spun a reasonably logical lie.
He knew such a crude falsehood wouldn't normally hold up against Holmes, nor could it deceive eyes that could see through truth and fiction at a glance.
But Lomue wasn't just the vicious "Town in Go," and Holmes wasn't invincible either.
He gently covered the detective's peerless eyes. In truth, the rumors in the criminal world were exaggerated.
"Don't look. That psychopath is gone. Catching criminals is Scotland Yard's job."
The annoying flashes of journalists' cameras began to pop.
"I've always admired the speed of journalism students... Be good now. Your job is to handle these vultures."
As for him, he still had one promise to Anna that remained unresolved.
Lomue quietly tucked the newspaper clipping into his pocket and led Sherlock away.
Seeing the usually unshakable Holmes still looking a bit rattled, he let out a mischievous, slightly wicked grin:
"You didn't actually think I was dead, did you? You lost your cool the moment that nutcase said something. Heavens, Miss Holmes... to think such a crude, low-level lie could deceive you. Am I really that fragile in your eyes?"