"Green Bull, you and Wolf Spider go up floor by floor. See if you can grab a high-ranking Hand member and get intel on the Dragon Bones!"
"Yes!" "No problem!"
"Thresh! You come with me..."
"Thresh!"
"Thresh! Stop fing yelling! You've already turned that guy into a sieve!"
Seeing Thresh holding his Demon Gatling Gun, firing rat-tat-tat into the ground while performing an "Ahahaha" duet with the demon head on his gun barrel...
Shield walked up and kicked him, sending him stumbling to a kneel. Only then did Thresh calm down.
It seems this infinite ammo Gatling gun isn't entirely a good thing! I'll have to ask the Young Master to add a barrel cooling mechanism for this idiot later!
Looking at the bastard Thresh scratching his head awkwardly, even the usually steady Shield felt speechless.
Although Thresh had always had a bad habit of getting excited as soon as he opened fire, back when he had to worry about reloading and adjusting firing angles, he could at least retain some rationality. He never disobeyed orders or compromised the mission.
But now, Young Master Luca had given him a brand new infinite ammo Gatling gun, and "thoughtfully" added a demon head that screamed along with him.
It made the guy go so crazy he couldn't even hear orders.
Shield was genuinely worried that Thresh would cause problems during a mission if this continued.
However, now wasn't the time to dwell on this. Seeing Thresh had calmed down, Shield spoke again.
"Thresh, we're going straight underground to find the location of the Dragon Bones. And to see who exactly happened to invade the Hand at the same time."
After speaking, Shield ignored whatever expression Thresh was making under his mask. Following the building schematic scanned by the black and white Haros, he strode toward the elevator shaft.
"This is it!"
In front of Shield were just a few ordinary office elevators.
However, according to the scan data from the Haros, this was the only entrance to the deep shaft elevator leading underground.
Shield didn't have an elevator pass for the building, and the heavy Muscle Enhancement Armor he and Thresh wore wasn't suitable for riding elevators anyway. Naturally, they had to take the unconventional route.
"Thresh, stand back!"
As he spoke, Shield retracted his Quinque Shield, letting it revert to the red-and-black meat chunk hanging on his back.
Then he clenched his right fist. Crimson bands of light suddenly lit up on his pitch-black armored right arm.
Shield threw a violent punch.
BOOM~
A loud crash.
The metal elevator doors in front of him caved in instantly.
But that was only for a split second.
The deformed metal doors couldn't even hold for half a second before shattering along with the stone walls on both sides. With a BANG, they slammed heavily against the inner wall of the elevator shaft.
"Used too much force? I thought a dedicated elevator like this would have better protection."
Muttering to himself, Shield grabbed the mangled metal debris inside the shaft and yanked it out, causing gravel from the sides to rain down with a clatter.
Sticking his head in to look down the dark elevator shaft, Shield waved to Thresh behind him.
"Let's go. Down we go!"
With that, he leaped forward, jumping straight down.
THUD~
A somewhat dull, heavy sound.
Shield, who hadn't even activated his jetpack, landed solidly on the ground.
Compared to the relatively luxurious business lobby above, this place appeared much dimmer and cruder.
A few weak miner's lamps barely illuminated the area. The surroundings were all rough-hewn rock walls, seemingly excavated in a rush.
Only a few specific spots had sporadic reinforcements. It was unclear if anyone had ever inspected this construction project that clearly posed safety hazards.
However, Shield and Thresh weren't in the mood to do a safety inspection for the Hand.
The first thing that caught their eyes were the ninja corpses lying haphazardly on the ground.
"As expected, the ninjas that turn to ash upon death are the minority even within the Hand, huh?"
During the fight in the lobby upstairs, Shield had noticed that some enemies turned directly to ash after being killed, while others left corpses like normal humans.
The ninjas that turned to ash were clearly stronger and more fearless than the others.
A few of them were tricky even for his squad to handle.
He had been worried that most of these special ninjas had been drawn away by the other intruders, making the lobby fight easier.
But looking at it now, the situation didn't seem too bad.
Shield walked up to a fallen corpse, bent down, and pulled a strange-looking arrow from it.
The arrow was strange because where the arrowhead should have been, there was a three-pronged electric grapple claw.
Longbow, who watched this through Shield's armor camera, scoffed disdainfully.
"Bow and arrow? Heh~"
Shield ignored Longbow's comment. He just spoke with some hesitation.
"This seems to be from that group Young Master Luca joined..."
Just as Shield said this, he immediately sensed several extremely faint whistling sounds coming from behind him.
Before he could turn around to check or dodge...
Thwack, thwack, thwack~
Three arrows hit his back in a triangle formation.
Instantly, pale blue electric arcs flowed over his entire body. High-voltage electricity crackled and popped on the surface of his armor.
However, no matter how the electricity danced around him, Shield calmly turned around. He even had the presence of mind to warn Thresh not to act rashly.
"Thresh! Stand down!"
The demon head, which had just started glowing red and preparing to laugh, stopped abruptly.
The rapidly spinning, pre-heating Gatling barrel also spooled down.
Looking toward the nearly pitch-black tunnel in the distance, Shield spoke slowly.
"Is that Mr. Clint Barton, Hawkeye? We are employees of the Aurantius Group. We mean you no harm!"
As he spoke, Shield reached behind his back to pull out the three crackling arrows.
However, awkwardly...
Shield discovered that his bulky Muscle Enhancement Armor made it impossible for him to reach his own back.
Fortunately, the armor itself was immune to EMP attacks. Not pulling out the electric arrows just added some special effects to his suit.
At that moment, the person who had just fired the arrows slowly stepped out of the shadows.
However...
"Sorry, I think you've got the wrong person."
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