Sherlock still had no idea just how badly he’d traumatized poor Yinsen.
After clearing out everyone inside the cave, he simply walked to the entrance as if nothing unusual had happened.
Outside, the Ten Rings had already prepared a proper welcome.
Rifles.
Machine guns.
Heavy weapons.
RPGs.
The instant Sherlock appeared, the entire valley opened fire.
Bullets poured toward him in a steel flood, mixed with rocket-propelled grenades screaming through the air.
Sherlock didn’t even flinch.
This time, however, he didn’t immediately retaliate like he had inside the cave.
He simply raised the Holy Lance of Longinus— and started walking toward the center of the valley.
One step at a time.
Bullets became flower petals around him.
Explosives vanished before they could touch him.
Sherlock walked through the barrage like some forgotten god of warfare, completely untouched by either gunfire or artillery.
Bullets were easy enough.
A simple transmutation array could handle ordinary metal projectiles.
That was practically Alchemy 101.
Explosives were trickier.
Turning an incoming rocket into something else wasn’t nearly as convenient when the damn thing was specifically designed to explode.
That was where the second array nested inside Sherlock’s transmutation circle came into play.
It was one of his own designs.
A compound alchemical array created by combining two different systems he’d studied:
the Universal Analysis principles he’d derived from the Harry Potter world’s magic— and the Deconstruction Transmutation principles from Fullmetal Alchemist.
The concept was brutally simple.
First, analyze the target.
Then break it down completely.
Scan.
Deconstruct.
Erase.
When Sherlock had first created the array, he’d been so excited that he barely slept for days.
How could he not be?
Offense and defense in one system.
At minimum, it looked like the closest thing to an absolute defense he’d ever created.
Then he actually tested it.
And discovered the catch.
Computational load.
The longer he maintained the array, the more information his brain had to process.
And the increase wasn’t gentle.
Keeping the thing active continuously was basically asking his brain to perform an ever-growing mountain of calculations without stopping.
If Sherlock tried to run it twenty-four hours a day like Gojo Satoru maintaining Infinity or Accelerator running his vector calculations, one of two things would happen.
Either his brain would turn into freshly blended oatmeal— or the transmutation would fail catastrophically and send him straight back to Truth.
Neither option sounded particularly appealing.
If Sherlock weren’t trying to build an image of himself as an untouchable monster for the sake of his future peace and quiet, there was no chance he’d use such an exhausting technique purely for dramatic effect.
Unfortunately…
dramatic effect was currently the entire point.
So Sherlock kept walking.
The two transmutation arrays overlapped around him.
An outer layer transformed ordinary gunfire.
The inner array erased anything too dangerous to safely convert.
Together, they carried him straight through a storm of bullets and explosives without the slightest obstruction.
The terrorists eventually realized their weapons weren’t doing anything.
They saw bullets turn into petals.
They watched rockets capable of tearing open armored vehicles disappear before reaching him.
Nothing slowed Sherlock down.
Nothing even made him hesitate.
And still they kept firing.
Because what else were they supposed to do?
Their guns were the only answer they had.
He crossed the last stretch of open ground, white petals gathering beneath his feet, until he reached the exact center of the valley.
Then he stopped.
The Holy Lance rotated in his hand.
Sherlock drove its point straight into the ground.
THOOM.
The amplification ability of the restored divine artifact surged to life.
Using the lance tip as the origin point, an enormous transmutation array spread outward across the earth.
Fast.
Faster.
Until it covered the entire valley.
For one brief instant, nothing happened.
Then every firearm in the valley changed.
Rifles.
Machine guns.
Sidearms.
Weapons still clutched desperately in men’s hands.
All of them dissolved into countless white rose petals.
The valley filled with them.
Petals spun through the air like snow.
For a heartbeat, the battlefield became almost impossibly beautiful.
The gunfire stopped.
The explosions vanished.
White roses drifted beneath a clear sky.
Romantic.
Peaceful.
Almost magical.
And beneath that beauty waited death.
The instant the terrorists lost their weapons— the earth erupted.
Stone spikes burst from the ground throughout the valley.
Most of the men didn’t even understand what had happened before the pillars struck.
Bodies were lifted into the air.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Blood stained the falling petals.
Dust and grime clung to white roses as they settled across the battlefield.
The result was grotesque.
Beautiful.
Horrifying.
Inside the cave, darkness and cramped tunnels had hidden much of what Sherlock was doing.
Out here?
There was nowhere for the eye to escape.
The valley was wide open.
Sunlight illuminated everything.
White petals.
Blood.
Bodies suspended above the ground.
Mountains of weapons and ammunition.
Stone spikes rising like some unnatural forest.
Sherlock had wanted to paint a picture of hell.
Now hell had form.
A few people survived.
Whether through pure luck or because Sherlock had intentionally left witnesses, even he couldn’t have said.
The moment those survivors saw what had happened, they broke.
Completely.
“DEVIL!”
One man threw himself toward the valley exit.
“The devil!”
Another practically crawled over the ground in his desperation to escape.
Weapons forgotten.
Everything forgotten.
They fled however they could, scrambling away on hands and feet like terrified animals.
Sherlock didn’t bother stopping them.
Witnesses were useful.
The message needed someone alive to deliver it.
And besides…
the instant Sherlock finished his masterpiece, exhaustion crashed into him.
Hard.
By then, John and Yinsen had reached the cave entrance.
They stopped.
Neither spoke.
What exactly were they supposed to say?
The scene in front of them was simultaneously magnificent, grotesque, and deeply wrong.
It looked like a nightmare painted by someone with an unreasonable obsession with aesthetics.
For several seconds, John simply stared.
Then he finally found his voice.
“Sherlock!”
Sherlock heard him.
Slowly, tiredly, he turned around.
And the moment he opened his mouth, the terrifying figure who had just transformed an entire valley into an infernal art installation disappeared.
The Sherlock John actually knew came right back.
“Old Zhao!”
Sherlock waved weakly.
“Get over here and hold me up.”
John blinked.
“My damn legs are about to give out.”
That snapped him out of it.
John hurried across the battlefield and caught Sherlock by the arm.
Only now that he wasn’t concentrating on maintaining the transmutation did Sherlock finally have enough attention left to properly look around.
He turned his head.
Saw the nearest stone spike.
Saw what was on it.
His face changed.
John noticed.
Yinsen, who was cautiously approaching behind them, noticed too.
Sherlock’s cheeks puffed out.
“Urk—”
John’s eyes widened.
Sherlock bent over.
“BLEGH—!”
He threw up.
Violently.
John stared at him.
Yinsen stared at him.
Sherlock continued emptying his stomach like it had personally betrayed him.
John’s expression became almost offended on behalf of reality itself.
“You did this!”
He patted Sherlock on the back as Sherlock gagged.
“You created all of this, and now you’re throwing up because you looked at it?”
Sherlock lifted one trembling hand.
“Blegh—shut up!”
He gagged again.
“The fucking—urgh—petals were blocking my view!”
Another heave.
“I couldn’t actually—blegh—see any of this while I was doing it!”
John’s face went blank.
Sherlock continued vomiting.
And off to the side, Yinsen watched the miserable sight in stunned silence.
For the first time since Sherlock had arrived…
the terrifying creature he’d mistaken for some demon walking the earth looked unmistakably, painfully human.
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