Ch.5Chapter 5 – A Scandal in Bohemia (2)

“G-Get out of my way!”

“…Ugh!”

The young nun who jumped in to stop the vagrants threatening me screamed and collapsed after being struck by the knife they were wielding as a threat.

“M-Master Adler!”

“Are you alright?”

And at that very moment, people who appeared to be servants from my house began running from a distance. The vagrants immediately fled as fast as their legs could carry them.

In the end, all that remained were myself and the blood-covered young nun.

If someone who knew nothing about the situation had witnessed this incident, they would have praised the young nun’s great courage.

‘Holmes was right after all.’

But as I knelt down, pretending to check the nun’s condition, I had already reached that conclusion.

After carefully dabbing my finger in the blood she was shedding and tasting it, I could tell it was red paint.

Even with a gender change, Holmes was still Holmes. If I hadn’t known about this development beforehand, it was such an impressive performance that I would have been completely fooled.

“Please forgive our incompetence, Master Adler.”

“W-We’re sorry. We should have come further out to meet you…”

“W-We have no excuse.”

As I was contemplating how to navigate this awkward situation, the maid and housemaids who had belatedly arrived before me began kneeling one by one.

“I-I’m sorry…”

“Please forgive us…”

As I quietly observed them, the maids turned pale, tightly shut their eyes, and began trembling.

“It is my responsibility for failing to properly manage everyone. I will take the punishment on behalf of everyone, so please forgive the other girls, Master Adler.”

The female head servant kneeling before them had bruises and wounds all over her neck.

‘…This is ridiculous.’

I could roughly understand why everyone at the detective academy had given me such cold stares.

It seemed that Isaac Adler, before I possessed his body, had been quite the human garbage.

“…How does this nun appear to you?”

“S-She seems badly injured.”

“She looks dead.”

When I fixed my gaze on Holmes and asked a question to change the subject, the maids, after briefly checking my expression, began murmuring amongst themselves.

“She’s not dead yet. But I don’t think she’ll last until she can be taken to a hospital.”

“………”

Seeing the butler check her pulse and say that, it seemed Holmes also knew how to feign a comatose state.

“S-She was a brave nun. If it weren’t for her, Master Adler would have been in danger…”

“We can’t just leave her lying on the street. May we take her to our mansion?”

As I quietly looked down at her, the voices of a maid and the female head servant reached my ears.

‘That’s exactly what Holmes is aiming for.’

Holmes staged this incident to get into the mansion to look for the photograph of the Queen of Bohemia that I possess.

The vagrants from earlier must also be actors hired by Holmes.

If I let her into the house, a fake fire commotion will probably break out in a few minutes with Watson’s help.

Holmes, who would be lying in the room as if dead, would use that opportunity to observe where I was heading.

“Support her and take her to my room.”

I need to use that very point to my advantage.

After all, “A Scandal in Bohemia” is an episode where Holmes is defeated.

If I just follow what Irene Adler does in that story, the photograph will be safe.

“S-Should we wash her…?”

“We’ll take her right away.”

The female head servant, who silenced the maid who was muttering with surprised eyes, began carrying Holmes and heading toward the house.

‘Just follow the original story, just follow the original story.’

Since the game was still in development, I didn’t know the details, but this world was based on the Sherlock Holmes series.

Having read the four novels and 56 short stories countless times, I should be able to survive here.

Of course, separate from survival, having to complete quests that made me laugh just by looking at them was quite a daunting task.

For now, let’s focus on the situation unfolding before me.

“Where are you going, Master Adler?”

“Ah.”

As I was walking with that determination, I stopped at the butler’s call and opened my eyes wide.

“Welcome, Master Isaac Adler.”

“Welcome.”

Dozens of servants were waiting in front of the mansion to greet me.

And among them, there wasn’t a single man.

‘This is really something else.’

I began to seriously wonder what Isaac Adler had been doing in London.

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Holmes, carried by the head servant, and Adler enter the massive mansion.

‘…Good, it’s going according to Holmes’s plan.’

Dr. Watson, who had been watching from behind an alley, suddenly recalled the conversation she had with Holmes just moments ago.

“The photograph is probably inside the mansion. Adler might carry it on his person when he’s away from the mansion on weekdays, but since it’s the weekend, he’s likely keeping it somewhere in the house.”

“But didn’t the queen, who feared the photograph, search the house several times before?”

“Hmph, if it could have been resolved at the level of that lewd queen, I wouldn’t have taken on this case.”

“Then how do you plan to find it?”

“Simple. I’ll make the opponent reveal the hiding place themselves.”

Holmes, changing into a tight-fitting nun’s habit, continued speaking.

“When faced with a crisis, he will go to retrieve what is most valuable to him. Men are inherently that kind of creature.”

“Hmm.”

“Of course, Adler, known as London’s worst scum, will naturally head straight to where the photograph is, his eyes glazed over.”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

While Watson didn’t agree with everything Holmes said, she completely agreed that Adler would exhibit such behavior.

“Once I get inside the mansion, I’ll give you a signal by opening a window when the time is right. At that moment, you throw the smoke canister through the window.”

“And then?”

“Shout ‘Fire!’ loudly. That’s your task for today.”

Watson, recalling the plan she had made with Holmes, took a deep breath and looked ahead.

‘Those people…’

The female head servant, estimated to be around her age. Most of the maids appeared to be around Holmes’s age.

All of them, greeting Adler with bowed heads as he entered the house, had bruises and wounds on their necks and arms.

‘Are they being abused?’

As a doctor, she could immediately tell.

Those marks weren’t made overnight.

‘What a piece of trash…’

Watson’s eyes began to burn with a sense of justice.

Being a kind-hearted lady, she had felt guilty until just now about involving innocent people in the case, but upon reflection, it seemed such concerns were unnecessary.

If they succeeded in retrieving the photograph with this operation, the queen would personally purge that trash.

Then, freedom would surely come to those poor girls.

– Clunk…!

As Watson, thinking such thoughts, wandered around the mansion, she looked up when a window opened.

– Slide…

Upon seeing Holmes’s signal, she steeled her resolve and took out a smoke canister from inside her coat.

‘Please succeed this time too, Holmes.’

And with that, she threw the smoke canister forcefully into the room.

“…Hah.”

Taking a deep breath, she was about to cup her hands around her mouth to shout when…

– BOOM!!!

A massive explosion occurred right before her eyes, and she was blown backward by the impact.

“Ugh…”

As a result, Watson rolled on the ground for a while before violently colliding with a wall.

– Crackle…

In her field of vision, Adler’s mansion engulfed in massive flames came into view.

“F-Fire… why is it real…”

Muttering with lifeless eyes, Watson lost consciousness due to the impact of hitting the wall.

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“Mmm…”

Holmes, lying in Adler’s room, sits up while clutching her throbbing head.

“Oh my.”

Her vision is filled with the interior of the room engulfed in flames and her own head, which is now actually bleeding.

Could Watson have thrown a Molotov cocktail instead of a smoke canister into the room?

Thinking this while examining the room, Holmes’s eyes fall on the smoke canister rolling on the floor, emitting smoke.

Seeing that, it didn’t seem like Watson’s canister was the problem.

‘The source of the fire seems to be from the living room area, not here.’

Holmes, shifting her gaze here and there to find the cause of this situation, notices thick smoke seeping through the cracks of the door.

‘All the windows in the living room were closed. Then it must be an internal factor, not an external one.’

There were two possible scenarios:

Either Isaac Adler had noticed her plan and made the first move, or someone targeting him, who had a terrible reputation, had carried out a terrorist attack.

‘…This is troublesome.’

Either way, it wasn’t a good development for Holmes.

Having taken a paralyzing drug for a perfect performance, her body wasn’t moving well.

And having been caught in the impact of the explosion that hit the mansion, her body was completely messed up.

It seemed impossible to get out of bed right away.

“…Tsk.”

Holmes’s expression turns cold.

If this explosion was intended by Adler, he would have already grabbed the photograph and fled.

Even if it wasn’t intended by Adler, if he died or if the photograph wasn’t in this room, the result would be the same.

In other words, it was a very bleak situation where the only outcome to expect was that Adler had been caught up in this incident and died.

‘…A mana user wouldn’t die here.’

But to make matters worse, Adler was one of the extremely rare mana users in the world.

The reason he could act so arrogantly was because Adler was one of the few magicians in England who received treatment akin to nobility.

Rumors said his skills were very poor, but still, it didn’t seem like a mana user would die from something like this.

‘I need to change the plan before it’s too late.’

Thus, Holmes quietly clicked her tongue at the completely tangled situation and began to think.

– Thud, thud…

“…?”

She tilts her head at the sound of footsteps coming from beyond the door.

“Cough, cough…”

At that moment, the sound of coughing right in front of the door.

– Creak…

Holmes quickly closes her eyes and then slightly opens them to see Adler staggering into the room after opening the door.

“Ugh…”

He was covered in blood, having suffered severe burns all over his body, as if he had been directly caught in the explosion’s impact.

‘So the photograph is here.’

Holmes was convinced of the photograph’s existence as she looked at Adler, who had managed to enter the room despite his condition.

As she quietly smiled inwardly, she momentarily held her breath.

Adler, who had been looking around with a pale face, fixed his gaze on the bed where Holmes was lying and urgently approached.

“…Found it.”

Holmes, who had closed even her slightly open eyes to avoid being discovered awake, heard Adler’s relieved voice in her ear.

‘Did he hide the photograph in the bed?’

Holmes, who had already searched the bed once when no one was around, was contemplating whether to open her eyes or not, when at that very moment…

– Slide…

Suddenly, Adler’s arm gently wrapped around her waist.

“….? …….??”

Holmes’s thoughts momentarily froze as she was embraced by a man for the first time in her life.

“That was a close call.”

Adler, who had picked her up, muttered in a genuinely relieved voice as he headed outside.

“…Heave.”

After placing Holmes down in the mansion’s yard, Isaac Adler staggered back into the mansion.

“”………..””

The servants of the mansion, who had been rescued and were in the yard, looked at Adler’s retreating figure with disbelieving eyes.

‘When faced with a crisis, he will go to retrieve what is most valuable to him.’

As Holmes took in all these scenes, she suddenly remembered what she had said to Watson earlier, shrugging her shoulders.

‘Men are inherently that kind of creature.’

The gaze of the arrogant genius girl, who had never changed that thought even once since birth, quietly wavered.