From the moment Calvin accepted the infiltration mission, he had never seriously intended to infiltrate anything.
Sneaking into a fortified criminal facility sounded simple when written in a mission briefing.
Actually doing it was another matter entirely.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
clearly did not understand the Hand as well as it thought it did.
There were already ninjas hidden around the outside of the warehouse district.
Did anyone seriously believe there would not be more waiting inside?
Unless Calvin suddenly developed something like Mystique’s shapeshifting ability—or happened to pull out a Diamond Pickaxe and tunnel his way underground—quietly slipping into the laboratory was wishful thinking.
He did own a disguise mask, but with the enemy already on alert, it was far too late to make proper use of it.
Besides, the mission objective displayed by the system only required him to recover biological tissue from the anomalous test subject.
It never said he had to infiltrate the facility to get it.
As long as the objective was completed, the route he took to reach it was irrelevant.
There was also one other consideration.
These people were kidnapping civilians for human experimentation.
Calvin had absolutely no interest in showing restraint when overwhelming force was both easier and considerably more satisfying.
Natasha was left almost speechless by his declaration.
What exactly did he mean by going in loud?
There were only two of them, and he wanted to assault an entire criminal organization head-on?
An organization with military-grade weapons and Hand ninjas protecting it?
How was that anything other than suicide?
“Agent Calvin, I need to remind you of something.” Natasha’s voice carried a trace of exasperation.
“There are at least a hundred gang members in that warehouse district, and we already know there are Hand ninjas mixed in among them.
Attacking the entire compound directly is effectively volunteering to die.” “We’re agents, not an assault battalion.
That wind barrier of yours might stop bullets, but can it stop explosives?” She glanced down at the dozens of grenades Calvin had arranged across the rooftop.
“And another thing.
You aren’t seriously planning to throw those from here, are you?
We’re several hundred meters away.
Even if you somehow managed to throw a grenade that far, the fuse would detonate before it reached the target.” Natasha was beginning to regret calling off the reinforcements.
Calvin had appeared cautious when they first met.
Now she was beginning to suspect that recklessly insane might be a more accurate description.
Still, she had to admit he was interesting, and she had no intention of letting him get himself killed this quickly.
Calvin grinned.
“Agent Romanoff, just watch and learn.
And remember to give me a glowing performance review when Fury asks.” With that, he rose to his feet and activated Dead Eye.
His gaze locked onto one of the sentries scanning the surrounding streets from an elevated guard post.
Calvin’s muscles tightened.
He raised one arm high, then snapped it forward and hurled a grenade toward the distant target so quickly that his hand became a blur.
Strangely, despite the tremendous force behind the throw, there was almost no sound.
The grenade streaked across the distance and struck the sentry with terrifying precision.
The gangster barely had time to register what was happening before the projectile itself hit him hard enough to kill him.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion followed immediately afterward.
Fire erupted into the night as the one-story guard tower vanished in the blast, taking the man inside with it.
That grenade was far more powerful than any ordinary fragmentation grenade had any right to be.
[Item: High-Explosive Grenade] [Effect: Possesses explosive power far beyond that of a conventional grenade.] [Evaluation: A throwing weapon even a ten-year combat veteran would recommend.] Months of relentlessly grinding ordinary daily missions had allowed Calvin to accumulate plenty of relatively mundane system items like these.
Combined with Dead Eye and his superhuman strength, they transformed him into a human precision mortar.
As for why the grenades made almost no noise as he threw them, or why their fuses did not simply burn out halfway to the target…
Calvin had max-level Wind Technique.
Using the wind to suppress the sound of a projectile in flight was easy enough.
Manipulating airflow around the grenade to control its fuse timing and ensure it detonated exactly when he wanted was hardly beyond him either.
With a little practice, he could even suppress the sound of gunfire.
That alone could save him a fortune on suppressors.
At this point, Calvin was stacking raw stats and broken mechanics on top of each other until the concept of a fair fight had become completely irrelevant.
The sudden explosion caught the gang entirely off guard.
For one brief second, the entire district went silent.
Then chaos erupted.
“Move!
Get inside!” “We’re under attack!” “Find whoever’s firing!” At another guard tower nearby, a gangster immediately triggered the alarm and started shouting into his radio.
“Hostile attack!
Hostile attack!
They’ve got mortars!
Repeat, they’ve got mor—” He never finished the sentence.
A high-explosive grenade slammed directly into his head.
A moment later, both the man and the guard tower disappeared in another explosion.
Unsurprisingly, nobody below assumed that someone was literally throwing grenades at them by hand.
Between the distance and the sheer destructive force, the gangsters naturally concluded that a rival organization had somehow brought mortars into the middle of Hell’s Kitchen.
To their credit, the Japanese gang reacted quickly.
They had clearly trained for attacks before, because the surviving members immediately scattered behind cover.
Unfortunately, cover did not help much.
One high-explosive grenade after another landed with impossible accuracy beside their positions.
Concrete and metal protected them from most of the shrapnel, but the shock waves were another matter entirely.
The concussive force tore through their bodies and ruptured internal organs even when the fragments never touched them.
Left with no better option, the survivors began rushing toward the warehouses.
The buildings had been reinforced.
At least inside, they might survive the bombardment.
“Who the hell uses mortars in the middle of the city?!” a balding gang lieutenant screamed from beneath a gambling table inside one of the warehouses.
His face twisted with outrage.
“These lunatics have no respect for the rules!” A moment later, he realized he had badly misunderstood the situation.
Something green and cylindrical landed directly in front of him.
He stared at it.
“What the—” “A grenade?” BOOM!
Flames consumed the room.
The shock wave ripped through everything nearby, silencing the gangsters inside before any of them had time to finish their final words.
…
On the apartment rooftop, Calvin’s arms were moving so quickly that they seemed to leave afterimages behind.
His cheeks were flushed, his grin bright and completely genuine beneath the pale moonlight.
He was having the time of his life.
Natasha, on the other hand, had practically turned to stone.
What she was watching had just taken every assumption she possessed about combat and thrown it out a window.
Throwing grenades several hundred meters was absurd enough.
Doing it with artillery-level accuracy was worse.
And somehow, that still was not the part her brain was struggling with most.
Because Natasha had just watched one of the grenades curve in midair.
Her eyesight had been enhanced beyond normal human limits.
There was no mistaking what she had seen.
One grenade had changed direction in flight, curved around an obstruction, and sailed straight through an opening in one of the warehouses before exploding inside.
‘Homing grenades.’ Natasha stared at Calvin.
‘He’s throwing human-powered homing grenades.’ Her interest in the new recruit increased substantially.
Before she started trying to understand exactly what kind of monster Fury had hired, however, she decided this needed to be documented.
Natasha activated the miniature camera she carried and began recording.
Under the repeated bombardment of Calvin’s high-explosive grenades, the warehouse district was rapidly being torn apart.
Buildings were damaged, barricades had collapsed, and bodies lay scattered throughout the compound.
The Hand ninjas stationed outside the central warehouse complex were not complete idiots, either.
Eventually, they traced the direction the grenades were coming from and identified the apartment building Calvin was using as a firing position.
Unfortunately for them, they figured it out far too late.
Aside from a small number of gang members who had managed to shelter inside reinforced warehouses, nearly everyone caught outside had already been killed.
The few lucky enough to survive were either missing limbs or barely clinging to life.
“You’ll pay for this!” The Hand ninjas shouted in fury and charged toward the apartment building, clearly intent on avenging their fallen allies.
Natasha spotted them rapidly closing the distance and reached for her weapon.
Calvin was already prepared.
He stood beside the rooftop wall holding a Barrett anti-materiel rifle fitted with an extended magazine.
Then he began sending the approaching ninjas a very personal welcome package.
Reload.
Fire.
Reload.
Fire.
The thunderous report of the heavy rifle rolled continuously across the night.
Natasha found herself stunned all over again.
She had never seen anyone handle a Barrett as though it were a submachine gun.
Could a human body even possess this combination of strength, speed, and precision?
Calvin’s hands were moving fast enough to blur.
The massive rifle fired at an absurd rate, yet his accuracy never suffered.
Every shot dropped a ninja.
Within minutes, the gunfire finally stopped.
Dozens of black-clad Hand ninjas lay scattered around the base of the apartment building.
Calvin had to give them credit for one thing.
They really did live up to the whole silent-ninja reputation.
Even getting hit by a Barrett did not give them much time to complain.
With the exterior forces effectively wiped out, only the laboratory remained.
“Come on, Agent Romanoff.” Calvin grinned and headed downstairs first.
Natasha paused for a second before laughing softly and following him.
She was supposed to be the evaluator on this mission, yet so far her contribution had consisted almost entirely of standing nearby and watching Calvin turn a covert operation into a one-man siege.
They had barely reached the first-floor stairwell when Calvin abruptly stopped.
A system notification sounded in his ears.
This one was different.
[Special Elite Encounter Triggered.] [Mission: Release] [Objective: Free the anomalous test subject from its suffering.] [Rewards: 5,000 EXP, Random Rare Item ×1, Special Item ×1.] Calvin’s eyes widened.