He jumped from the rooftop without hesitation.
The blade in his hand scraped against the outer wall as he dropped, throwing off a long streak of sparks that flashed like fire in the night. His body cut cleanly through the air, smooth, controlled, and almost absurdly graceful for someone diving straight into a battlefield. In the span of a breath, he crossed the height of the building and hit the street at speed, carrying all that momentum toward the plaza in front of the financial tower.
Before his boots had even fully settled, both pistols were already roaring.
Muzzle flashes burst from his hands in quick succession as bullets tore into the tide of red-clad ninjas pouring from the entrance. He knew perfectly well that handguns alone weren't enough to erase a flood like this, but they didn't need to. Slowing them down for even a few seconds was enough to buy space, buy positioning, buy initiative. Against enemies like these, tempo mattered almost as much as firepower.
Behind him, under the cover of overlapping gunfire, a black van screamed across the pavement and slid into place with a sharp drift.
The vehicle stopped hard at his back. Its side door flew open, and a black six-barreled M134 protruded from the darkness inside like some mechanical beast finally lifting its head.
"Sir, the M134 is in position!"
He sprang backward in one smooth motion and landed beside the mounted gun. The weapon's metal frame shifted under his grip, and a series of mechanical clicks ran through the rotating assembly as he brought it to bear. Looking at the red ninjas rushing toward him in dense, murderous waves, he couldn't help smiling.
According to the system's judgment, every single one of these things counted as bronze-tier prey.
If that was true, then tonight's harvest might outstrip even the vampire slaughter.
That thought alone was enough to sharpen his focus. With a single mental command, his compound-eye ability activated.
The world changed.
Trajectories became clearer. Movement slowed just enough to feel readable. Angles, speed, lines of advance, the spacing between bodies, the tiny windows where one bullet could rip through more than one target—everything seemed to unfold in front of him with cruel precision.
Then the gun spoke.
The six barrels spun, and in the next instant a blazing stream of rounds ripped into the plaza. The sound was no longer ordinary gunfire. It was a metal storm, a sustained tearing roar that drowned out shouts, drowned out the chaos, drowned out almost everything except destruction itself. Dust erupted into the air. Shattered gravel bounced across the square. Windows trembled. The entire entrance area looked like it had been caught in the center of a miniature war.
The shadow ninjas kept coming anyway.
They rushed out of the lobby fearlessly, throwing themselves into the torrent of bullets without the slightest hesitation, but courage meant nothing in front of pure saturation fire. Bodies burst apart into drifting ash. Rows vanished before they could even spread out. Every time the front collapsed, another layer surged up from behind it and slammed into the same wall of metal.
It was brutal. It was efficient. It was beautiful.
Far below the financial building, in the underground parking garage, another scene was unfolding.
At the center of the space, an altar engraved with intricate lines pulsed with a dim, unnatural glow. Every time that light flashed, more ninjas in red emerged from the ritual formation. Their faces were blank and wooden, like puppets wearing human skin, and yet their movements were fast and practiced as they flowed toward the stairwell in a constant stream. What was being built wasn't a defense. It was an army.
And beneath that parking level, there was still another floor.
There, a ring of priests in scarlet robes and red demon masks surrounded Daredevil, chanting in low, eerie rhythm. Kingpin stood off to the side with the leaders of the Hand, dressed in his usual white suit and leaning on his cane, but his expression was darker than usual. His eyes kept drifting toward two familiar figures nearby.
Murakami. Sowanda.
He knew both of them had died. He'd confirmed it through his own channels. Police who cleaned up the aftermath had said the lower halves of their bodies had been ground away beyond recognition.
And yet now they were standing there alive.
That alone was enough to make even Kingpin's pulse tighten.
A man in a blue suit suddenly rushed in from the passageway, panic plain on his face. "Boss, it's bad. The Shadow Ninjas are being suppressed. That Iron Man is pinning them down with gunfire and stopping them from getting out."
Madame Gao frowned. "A gun? That shouldn't be possible."
The man swallowed and corrected himself immediately. "Not just a gun. A Gatling gun."
Everyone froze for a beat.
His voice came out faster as he tried to explain. "I've never seen anyone use one like that. His accuracy is insane—at least thirty percent, maybe more. The ninjas are reviving faster and faster, and the altar won't be able to support this much strain for long."
Alexandra fell silent.
Then she slowly turned her head toward a man standing in the corner.
He was shirtless, with a massive black wolf spider tattoo spread across his chest. He hadn't spoken a word since arriving, and unlike the others, he radiated something colder and more direct—something closer to pure violence than ritual.
"La Muerto," Alexandra said evenly. "Black Wolf Spider. I brought you here from thousands of miles away. It's time."
He said nothing. He only nodded once and turned to leave.
That was enough for Alexandra. She watched him go, and the confidence in her posture returned almost immediately. Whatever was happening above ground, she clearly believed he could deal with it.
Then her attention shifted back to the ceremony.
The summoning was reaching its end.
The priests' chanting grew louder, more urgent, the words crawling through the underground space like insects. The air itself seemed to thicken. The old priest at the center suddenly tore off his red mask, revealing a lined face framed by white hair and beard. Black mist rose from his hands as he cried out with fanatical intensity.
"Black soul spell! Accept our offering and this perfect vessel we present to you! Descend, and rule as supreme master. Let the age of mankind end here. Let none survive but the Snakeroot!"
The moment the final invocation fell, something arrived.
There was no shape to it at first, no clear outline, only a descending pressure that made the skin crawl and the lungs tighten. It was vast, malignant, and impossible to describe in any ordinary way. Daredevil, trapped at the center of the ritual circle, suddenly let out a scream so sharp it cut through the chanting. His body twisted violently, as though something invisible was boring into him from the inside and forcing its way into his flesh.
Even Kingpin, who had seen more horror than most men could imagine, felt his heart jolt.
Could these lunatics really summon demonic power?
And if they could… what exactly had he aligned himself with?
He didn't notice the Five Fingers exchanging glances, excitement flickering in their eyes like hidden fire.
Back above, the M134 kept vomiting flame.
The ninjas charged like rabid beasts, stubborn and relentless, hurling themselves toward him over the growing carpet of ash. In his head, the system notification kept ringing one note after another.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
It was so constant it almost became music.
Even while firing, he split part of his focus and started opening reward packs as fast as they came in. Information flooded into his mind in great chaotic bursts, but his brain processed it cleanly, almost greedily.
Congratulations: free attribute points, four.
Congratulations: aircraft carrier driving mastery.
That one made his eye twitch.
Great. One more reason to kill Fury.
Then another notification hit.
Congratulations: first thirty-kill streak reward. Free attribute points, thirty.
His grin widened at once. So the streak rewards did exist. They were just annoyingly hard to trigger.
More bronze packs cracked open. More rewards poured in. Another wave of points. More junk. More usable things. Then the next major threshold arrived.
Congratulations: first fifty-kill streak reward. Free attribute points, fifty.
Double score.
By the time he ripped through the current pile of bronze rewards and streak bonuses, the total gains had become outrageous. He picked up three skills and more than a hundred attribute points in one burst of carnage. Aircraft carrier driving, CAD proficiency, League of Legends proficiency, and one hundred and eight free attribute points.
A ridiculous haul.
A rich one.
A beautiful one.
Then, in the middle of all that satisfaction, his eyes caught on something wrong.
Inside the flood of charging ninjas, one figure moved differently.
The system reacted before his conscious mind fully did.
Gold-tier prey.
The man was bare-chested, the black wolf spider tattoo on his chest standing out starkly against his skin. He moved with terrifying speed, so fast and so controlled that he was obviously beyond normal human limits. Unlike the shadow ninjas, he wasn't charging head-on. He used them as cover, weaving through the chaos, crossing left and right in irregular bursts that made him hard to track.
After coming out of the lobby, he didn't rush at the gun van immediately. Instead, he cut diagonally across the square and headed straight for the blockade line at the side.
The move was smart.
Too smart.
He twisted the minigun toward him, and a furious stream of fire chased at the Black Wolf Spider's heels. But the man's reflexes were absurd. He shifted, ducked, changed direction, then drove a punch into a stone planter so hard it exploded apart. In the same motion, he grabbed a massive chunk of masonry and hurled it at high speed.
The rock screamed through the air.
He snapped the barrels upward and tracked it like anti-aircraft fire. A split second later, the stone shattered apart midflight, fragments raining harmlessly before they could smash into the van.
But that tiny interruption was all the Black Wolf Spider needed.
He was already near the first defensive line.
Then the screaming started.
Fury's voice exploded in the headset. "What the hell is that thing? Who can stop him?"
An arrow flashed through the dark—probably Barton's—and he was almost sure it hit. The problem was that the Black Wolf Spider didn't stop. He didn't even stagger.
That made his expression harden.
He knew for a fact the man had already taken multiple rounds earlier. Not pistol rounds. Not something light. These were 7.62mm rounds. On top of that, he was sprinting at top speed while throwing stones weighing hundreds of kilos as if they were toys.
That kind of physical strength was monstrous.
He kept trying to swing the M134 back onto him, but trees, police vehicles, flower beds, and fleeing bodies broke line of sight over and over again. The angles collapsed faster than he could reclaim them.
In those few seconds, the Black Wolf Spider tore into the first line.
One police car after another was lifted and thrown skyward. Not shoved. Not tipped. Thrown. The vehicles arced through the night and crashed directly onto firing positions with horrifying precision. The moment they landed, explosions bloomed. Flames erupted. Men screamed. The first defensive line, built from ordinary agents and police officers, disintegrated in only a handful of breaths.
That wasn't normal superhuman strength.
That was at least five tons, maybe more.
His mind ran the numbers almost instinctively. A modified patrol car weighed close to three tons. Throwing it high enough, far enough, and accurately enough to break a fortified point in motion required outrageous power.
So this was what a gold-tier target looked like?
Natasha was also classified at gold-tier. Looking at it from that angle, her identity as one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s top agents must have boosted her value significantly.
Then another realization hit him.
The Black Wolf Spider had gone around instead of charging straight in. He'd cut through the line, shattered the defense, ignored everyone else—and yet his final direction still seemed to be pointing back toward him.
Blade tried to intercept. Barton fired again. Natasha moved in from the side.
It didn't matter.
The distance kept shrinking.
"Damn it."
He opened the system interface without hesitation and dumped all one hundred and eight free attribute points directly into strength.
The increase hit instantly.
His raw strength jumped to one hundred and sixty-nine. If he layered the dragon-force burst on top of it, he could break past the five-ton threshold in an instant.
But even then, one thing was clear.
It still wasn't enough.
His eyes flicked across the system's current prey count.
Iron-tier prey: 3 out of 37.
Bronze-tier prey: 12 out of 49.
Silver-tier prey: 1 out of 5.
Gold-tier prey: 0 out of 1.
He made his decision on the spot.
Instead of keeping the barrels trained on the Black Wolf Spider, he swung the M134 back toward the tide of Shadow Ninjas and opened fire again. The bullets tore through them in dense blazing ribbons. Ash exploded across the square as the kill count climbed one body at a time.
From the corner of his eye, he watched the Black Wolf Spider leap.
The man launched himself forward in a savage arc, coming straight at him with terrifying speed. His expression didn't change at all.
Right on cue, the system chimed.
Ding. Congratulations. You have obtained the Thousand Kills achievement: Special Achievement Pack.
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