Crouched across the street from the heavily guarded building, Wayne could clearly see the criminals inside carrying out their patrols with utmost vigilance.
The men stationed outside the building carefully searched every location where someone might be hiding.
Even the rooftop was covered, with snipers keeping a close watch over every movement.
This was no longer the kind of security an ordinary gang could maintain.
Then again, an ordinary gang could never have unified the entirety of Hell’s Kitchen into such an impenetrable stronghold.
If Wayne wanted to enter the building through normal means and obtain the supplies he needed, it would be an extremely difficult task.
But from the very beginning, he had never intended to knock politely on the front door.
Wasn’t the night the perfect time for a bat to hunt?
“See anything?”
Hearing the voice over his radio, the sniper on the rooftop calmly replied,
“Nothing. Not even a ghost.”
“Even so, don’t let your guard down. Otherwise, the boss will skin us alive.”
The man on the other end of the radio sounded far more relaxed.
“Just stay in your surveillance room and keep eating your hamburger.”
Chewing his gum, the sniper pulled off his headset.
Laughter immediately erupted from the surveillance room.
“Hahaha!”
“That bastard…”
The sniper couldn’t help feeling annoyed.
Here he was, exposed to the wind and weather, while the other guy got to sit comfortably indoors eating.
But there was nothing he could do.
Life simply wasn’t fair.
Taking a deep breath, he focused once more through his rifle scope, scanning the surrounding area.
Then, within his narrow field of view— a black shadow flashed by.
The sniper immediately swept the area with his scope, trying to locate the fleeting figure.
But there was nothing.
It was as though he had imagined it.
He lowered his eye from the scope and shook his head.
“Sometimes, even the world’s greatest sniper sees things that aren’t there.”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“Sometimes… what you see isn’t an illusion.”
A deep, chilling voice suddenly spoke from behind him.
The warmth instantly drained from the sniper’s body, as though he had fallen into an icy abyss.
He couldn’t tell whether whatever stood behind him was human— or something else entirely.
“What… are you?”
The sniper cautiously tried to speak to the figure behind him.
Wayne stood silently at his back, watching the subtle movements the man was making.
“A criminal.”
Wayne bent down, clamped a hand over the sniper’s mouth and nose, seized his head, and smashed it against the edge of the rooftop.
Thud.
There was no scream of pain.
Only the gradual limpness of a body losing consciousness.
The sniper was out cold.
The sniper’s position was indeed an excellent vantage point from which the entire area could be observed.
But it was of no use to Wayne.
More importantly, directly behind the sniper was a skylight overlooking the building’s top floor.
Several men inside were laughing heartily, raising their glasses in celebration.
Each had a beautiful, voluptuous woman in his arms, groping them without restraint.
On the coffee table before them sat stacks upon stacks of U.S. dollars.
Not far away stood a safe used to store even more cash.
Wayne had already found what he was looking for.
As for why these men simply left so much cash lying around, the answer was simple.
To drug traffickers like them, money wasn’t the most important thing.
Their product was.
But in Wayne’s eyes, the product was meant to be destroyed.
The cash, however, would be used to build his base.
Looking down at the debauched scene below, Wayne waited for an opportunity— a moment when every one of them completely let their guard down.
Once one person indulged in humanity’s most primitive desires, the rest would soon follow.
One of the men snorted a line of white powder into his nose, then let out a long, satisfied breath before sinking back into the sofa.
The woman beside him knelt down with practiced familiarity.
“Mmm~ Hahaha! This is the kind of life we’re supposed to be living!”
Clearly high on drugs, the man burst into manic laughter.
No one around him mocked him.
Because they all felt the same way.
“Spider-Man? Superheroes? They’re just a bunch of cowards who don’t dare kill anyone! Hahaha! Look how that turned out—the boss took him out himself.”
The man holding a glass of whiskey watched everything before him with complete indifference.
“If those pests hadn’t kept getting in our way, we’d have been enjoying the good life long ago.”
Perhaps the mention of Spider-Man reignited his anger.
One of the men roughly pulled the woman beside him into his lap.
He lifted his head, waiting for her to continue servicing him— only to notice a figure silently watching them through the skylight.
“What the…”
The man drew his pistol, about to tell the intruder to mind his own business.
But Wayne moved.
Launching himself high into the air, his cape spread behind him, blocking out the moonlight and revealing the unmistakable silhouette of a bat.
Crash!
The shattering glass instantly jolted awake those who hadn’t completely lost themselves to the drugs.
The brightest light in the room was destroyed the moment Wayne descended, pierced by a Batarang.
Only dim, murky lighting remained, casting an eerily intimate glow over the room.
The instant Wayne landed, their enjoyable evening had already come to an end.
“Son—”
The man Wayne had seized tried to spit out a threat.
The only response he received was Wayne’s iron fist.
One punch.
The man’s face caved under the impact.
He would likely spend the rest of his life living on liquid food.
His entire face was drenched in blood, with several bloodied teeth scattered across it.
He looked like… a dead dog.
Except for the man who was still completely out of his mind on drugs, everyone instantly sobered up.
One after another, they drew their pistols and aimed them at Wayne.
Before they could pull the trigger,
Wayne had already fired his grappling gun.
The sharp hook pierced straight through one man’s thigh.
“AAAH!!”
The man’s scream meant nothing to Wayne.
Without the slightest hesitation, Wayne used him as a weapon, swinging him through the air and knocking down everyone around him.
Pulling the trigger again, he reeled the man back toward himself before driving a powerful punch into his chest, sending him flying.
Without giving the others even a moment to react, Wayne had already closed the distance to another man.
His speed and strength were on full display.
Wrapping one arm around the man’s body, he executed a devastating shoulder throw.
The unfortunate gangster smashed straight through a nearby sofa.
Meanwhile, the man who had been completely high earlier was still laughing maniacally, utterly oblivious to the fact that all his companions had already been taken down.
He even waved at Wayne.
“Come on! Join us! I like threesomes!”
Wayne’s response was simple and direct.
One punch after another rained down on the man’s face— until it was completely unrecognizable.
But Wayne was certain of one thing.
The man wasn’t dead.
(End of Chapter)