Late at night, the Hell’s Kitchen precinct of the NYPD received a call from the “FBI” demanding an urgent response.
Blade, like the Punisher, was a Level 10 agent of SHIELD, and SHIELD impersonating the FBI was practically standard operating procedure.
The officers worked through the night, rescuing over a dozen infants suspected of being trafficked from a building that had suffered a “terrorist attack.” A few female survivors were also sent to a hospital owned by Stark Industries for treatment at the “FBI’s” insistence.
Early the next morning, NYPD headquarters received a barrage of emergency calls from pedestrians on Wall Street.
The callers all claimed to have witnessed a horrifying sight: seven or eight severed heads hung from a streetlamp, strung together like a cluster of grapes.
Yet just as curiosity emboldened them to step closer for a look, the morning sunlight hit the street, and the cluster of heads spontaneously burst into flames, quickly burning down to a pile of ash.
Reporters had already caught wind of the story and rushed to the scene to cover the incident.
“Wall Street” and “strung up on a lamp post”—putting those two together naturally invited a lot of speculation.
As a result, the case immediately dominated the day’s headlines, becoming the talk of the town among New Yorkers.
This suited Liam Price’s purpose just fine.
Those blood-sucking, baby-eating beasts had undoubtedly received his warning loud and clear.
He intended to hunt vampires on a regular basis going forward.
After all, he had two toddlers to raise now, making earning a living all the more important.
Last night, he hadn’t taken those vampire heads to perform any “blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne” nonsense.
Liam Price was merely putting waste to good use.
Unlike the weaker vampires, the boss of last night’s gang, Deacon Frost, wasn’t entirely dead even though he was down to a severed head.
Frost had even managed to regrow vocal cords, begging Liam Price continuously, “Don’t kill me!
I’ll give you money!
I have so much wealth!” This was pure desperation talking.
The guy clearly hadn’t heard the saying: *If I kill you, your money is still mine.* What annoyed Liam Price, however, was that while Deacon Frost’s head dutifully led him to a safehouse in Manhattan to fetch the money, Liam Price discovered upon arrival that the guy barely had any actual cash.
That so-called “wealth” turned out to be several hundred kilograms of narcotics!
It forced Liam Price to make an extra trip to dump all that toxic garbage into the Atlantic Ocean.
In the end, Liam Price only managed to scavenge a little over a hundred thousand dollars in cash from Frost.
Because of this, Deacon Frost didn’t even earn the right to his own streetlight.
He and his top lieutenants were hung together on a single post, turning to ash under the morning sun.
Of course, Liam Price had no time to watch the sunrise with them.
In the middle of the night, he had carried the baby rescued from the vampires’ den back home along with the salvaged cash.
Seeing little Broly secretly pulling the sled dog Ah Fu into bed with him, sound asleep together, Liam Price simply smiled and refrained from waking his eldest son.
“That brat…
I’ll introduce him to his little brother tomorrow morning.” Only then did he fully calm down and recall the system notifications he had brushed aside in the heat of the moment.
[Ding!
Congratulations, Host!
You have successfully adopted your second child: Konrad Curze.] Liam Price felt like he had heard this name before, though it didn’t ring as clear a bell as his first son, Broly.
Just like when he adopted Broly, the system granted him a reward for becoming a father once more.
[Ding!
Reward issued.
Host has obtained the attribute template of Konrad Curze’s biological father.
Open your personal attribute panel to view.] Liam Price instantly felt a wave of dizziness.
He quickly set the baby down on the sofa before opening his status screen.
[Host: Liam Price] [Age: 28] [Strength: 46 / 150] [Physique: 130 / 1300 / Infinity] ↑ [Agility: 25 / 100] [Intelligence: 13 / 1300 / Infinity] ↑ [Charisma: 20 / 1300 / Infinity] ↑ [Perception: 99 / 1300 / Infinity] ↑ [Talents: Saiyan Upper-Class Warrior, Emperor of Mankind Template] [Skills: Chinese Home Cooking (Intermediate), Multipurpose Vehicle Driving (Novice), Hunting (Intermediate), Mechanics (Novice), Childcare (Novice)] [Status: Currently loading “God-Emperor of Mankind” psionic talent.
The host’s frail brain and low-potential intelligence are undergoing passive development.
Dizziness and headaches are normal.
Please bear with it for a moment.] Bear with it my ass!
Just as he finished reading his status, Liam Price felt like his skull was about to explode, as if ten thousand Nanny Rongs were stabbing needles into his brain without end.
The pain nearly brought him to his knees.
Yet somehow, the moment his knees were about to touch the ground, an unexplainable surge of pride prevented him from bowing down.
He froze right there in place.
At the same time, as his brain was restructured and overhauled, a flood of faded memories began to sharpen.
“Holy shit!” Liam Price couldn’t help but blurt out a curse as he remembered who the Emperor was.
This man was the sole and supreme ruler of the Imperium of Man, the savior of the human race, from the Warhammer universe—the place transmigrators least wanted to go.
The Emperor went by many nicknames: the Big Gold Guy, Big E, Xenos Slayer, Chaos Basher, the Master of Mankind Left Without Kith or Kin, the Corpse-Emperor, Brute-Force Tech Enthusiast, the Omnissiah, the Fifth Chaos God, King of the Golden Throne…
Jokes aside, there was no denying that this man was absurdly powerful.
He was quite possibly the most powerful psyker in Warhammer history, as well as a Perpetual with practically infinite battery life.
While Chaos-worshiping scum fought tooth and nail to achieve daemonhood or godhood, the Emperor had long rejected being worshipped as a deity, steadfastly viewing himself as a mortal man.
Even though he could answer the calls of the faithful across half a galaxy.
Even though he could single-handedly defeat a C’tan and turn it into his tool.
Even though he could, whenever he wished, transform into the ultimate Chaos God capable of dragging the Ruinous Powers out of the Warp and drowning them in the Golden Throne…
However, as powerful as the Emperor was, he was by no means omnipotent.
He was certainly not a good father.
The Primarch sons he created from his own genome—even if their growth was interfered with by Chaos Gods sabotaging their pods—suffered from his deeply flawed parenting after being retrieved.
Apart from a select few raised by reasonably competent adoptive parents, the remaining Primarchs all had varying degrees of mental instability, prone to flying off the handle at specific triggers.
Otherwise, no matter how skillfully Horus—the Warmaster chosen by all four Chaos Gods—maneuvered his alliances, so many Astartes Legions wouldn’t have turned against the Imperium during the Horus Heresy.
And this time, the system had granted Liam Price the [God-Emperor Template] specifically so he could properly raise one of the most problem-ridden Primarchs: Konrad Curze.
“I’ll show that Old Gold Man how a good dad raises a son!” An inexplicable surge of ambition washed over Liam Price, immediately followed by an even sharper pang of agony in his brain.
It was ten thousand times worse than Nanny Rong’s needles!
Liam Price gritted his teeth and endured in silence as the system developed his talents second by second.