The bricks crumbled into molten slag, dripping from the edge of the rooftop and leaving a trail of black marks on the three-story exterior wall.
Ron withdrew his hand. The molten lava on his ten fingers receded beneath his skin, the temperature at his fingertips dropping from 1200 degrees Celsius to normal body temperature.
He returned to the folding table, tossed the system panel into the air, and drew a horizontal line across each of the three intelligence lines with his finger.
First line: Kingpin. A local criminal empire under the protection of Hydra, plus an unknown magical force coveting the Time Stone.
Second line: Hydra. Project Insight, three sky carriers, simultaneously slaughtering millions two years later. The Winter Soldier is their spearhead.
Third line: The Green Cloak. Identity unknown, strength unknown, even the Purple Man's mind control couldn't penetrate it.
The three lines intertwined, all passing through the same node—Kingpin.
Ron's index finger touched Kingpin's name.
Cutting this node severed Hydra's agent in New York, Green Cloak lost its interface, and all three lines of communication were simultaneously disconnected.
The system displayed Kingpin's data.
[Wilson Fisk. Sin Value: 12000.]
[Imprisonment Requirements: Level 4 of Impel Down (Imprisonment Cap 15000).]
[Level 4 Unlock Condition: Justice Value 20000.]
[Current Justice Value: 10200.] Nine thousand eight hundred short.
Ron closed the panel and went downstairs.
Frank sat on the cot, cleaning his gun; his bandaged chest was still slightly bleeding.
Ron spread out his analysis of the three fronts on the table—he didn't use pen and paper, but dictated it directly.
Frank's hands moved slower and slower as he listened.
He stopped cleaning the base of the gun barrel.
"Who should we attack first?"
"Kingpin. But we can't imprison him yet. Impel Down's level isn't high enough." Ron held up three fingers.
"Three days. In these three days, we'll clean up all the small and medium-sized targets in New York who are qualified to enter Impel Down."
"Accumulate enough Justice Points to unlock the fourth level."
"Day Four—Close the Net." Frank shoved the barrel back into the receiver, locking it shut with a click.
"Division of Labor?"
"You and Jack, Queens. Kingpin's perimeter—casinos, drug depots, loan shark dens." Ron turned to Jessica. She leaned against an iron pillar, a white cloak draped over her shoulders.
"You use the Soul-Soul Fruit's perception to sweep every nook and cranny of Hell's Kitchen. Every hidden stronghold, every hiding gang member—their soul fluctuations can't be concealed. Mark the locations and send them to Frank."
Jessica nodded.
"I'll go clean up Hydra's safe houses in New York myself. There are two coordinates in the Drug Eater's intelligence that I haven't used yet."
Frank stood up, his gun tucked into his waistband.
"Is three days enough?"
"Enough."
— Three days.
Half a day before departure, Jessica stood in the open space outside the shipyard, eyes closed.
The spiritual perception of the Soul-Soul Fruit pushed outwards from her body, encountering Frank—a rough, thorny, iron-gray cloud of energy. Encountering Jack—the constantly taut grid lines under pressure. Encountering Lin Xiaowei in the medical area—a warm, white glow.
"Radius two hundred meters." Jessica opened her eyes.
Frank stood beside her, his vertical pupils fixed on her.
"Push again." Three seconds. A vein throbbed in her temple.
"Three hundred and fifty."
"That's enough." Frank turned and walked towards the dock. "Run and practice, keep up."
— During the day, Ron sat on the judge's bench, wearing a black robe. After Fisk Corporation's jurisdictional objection was rejected, Donovan's legal team changed their strategy—submitting a new procedural motion every day, purely to delay. Ron rejected each one, each objection meticulously crafted, leaving no room for the appeals court to overturn it.
Night fell, and the judges changed into black trench coats.
Night One. Frank and Jack dismantled three drug depots on Jamaica Avenue in Queens. Jack's Armament Haki lasted six minutes, one minute longer than the previous day. Frank's partially awakened Ryuo came in handy against the armored car—a single slap on the hood sent the engine shattering into pieces.
Ron sneaked alone into the basement of an office building in Manhattan's Lower East Side. The Nine-Headed Egg Safe House. Seven agents, three encrypted terminals, a cabinet full of bioweapon samples.
Lava burned through the locks. Observation Haki pinpointed the location of all seven before they even drew their guns.
Cleared the area in four minutes.
The seven were imprisoned on the first floor of Impel Down. The hard drives of the three terminals were completely emptied by the system.
Night Two. Jessica's Soul-Soul Fruit uncovered four casinos hidden in the basements of residential buildings—all peripheral forces of Kingpin, using the residential area as cover.
Frank and Jack eliminated them one by one. Jack's shooting style had changed—his finger felt different on the trigger, and each bullet's impact point was centimeter-precise. The deteriorating serum and intense training were reshaping his neural circuits.
Ron cleared out the second Hydra safe house in the Bronx.
This one was three times larger than the first. Twelve agents, two elites in exoskeletons.
The exoskeleton's alloy shell was over two centimeters thick, housing a modified Hydra power servo system. The two elites stood at the corner of the corridor, Gatling gun barrels aimed at the safe house's only entrance.
Ron didn't go through the entrance.
His right palm pressed against the concrete wall on the left side of the corridor. A powerful shockwave seeped into his palm, penetrating the twelve-centimeter-thick wall and reaching the exoskeleton on the other side.
The shockwave traveled from the armor's surface into the shell's interior. The two-centimeter-thick alloy didn't deform—it didn't need to. The shockwave bypassed the shell, acting directly on the servo motors inside. The motor's rotor shattered at a microscopic level, the bearing housings disintegrated from the inside, and the wiring harness's solder joints broke at the shockwave frequency. Both exoskeletons locked simultaneously.
Joints couldn't bend. Fingers couldn't pull triggers. Two elite soldiers were bound in place by their own iron shells, unable even to fall—their knees were locked, forcing them to stand rigidly upright, glaring at Ron as he walked in from behind their helmet visors.
Ron walked between them, patting the chest of the left-hand armor.
Snap.
The exoskeleton split in two along the center line of the chest armor, like peeling an aluminum-shelled egg. The person inside fell to the ground, their face covered in blood from the shattered wires.
Twelve men imprisoned.
Third Night. Jessica detected an unusual spiritual fluctuation at the northernmost end of Hell's Kitchen—ten meters underground, in an abandoned subway maintenance station, six of Kingpin's remaining henchmen were destroying documents.
The six men were imprisoned before Frank could even react as he jumped down the ventilation shaft. Gray Wolf's claws smashed the shredder, and Jack blocked the exit from the other side.
Six men imprisoned. The documents were completely extracted by the system. — Three days. Twenty-seven targets were imprisoned in Impel Down.
The system panel displayed a summary at the end of the third night.
[Three-Day Operation Summary: 27 criminals imprisoned. Total Sin Value: 9200.]
[Justice Value increased to: 22400.]
[The unlocking conditions for Impel Down's fourth level, "Scorching Hell," have been met. Consume 20000 Justice Value to unlock?] Confirm.
The shipyard floor trembled.
Ron's consciousness was pulled into the interior of Impel Down. A dark red crack appeared at the bottom of the third level, and scorching air rushed up from it. The crack widened, extending downwards into a new staircase.
Fourth Level—Scorching Hell.
The rock walls were dark orange, continuously radiating high temperatures. The temperature remained stable above 200 degrees Celsius. The Seastone concept for the cages was three times thicker than that of the second level, with more complex swirling patterns.
Imprisonment Limit: Sin Value 15000.
Kingpin's 12,000 is more than enough.
[Additional Features Unlocked: Conceptual Seastone Handcuffs increased to 15 pairs. Devil Fruit Furnace upgraded to Intermediate—capable of smelting A-rank and below extraordinary origins.]
[Remaining Justice Points: 2400.] Ron leaves Impel Down.
The cell is ready.
Next, it's time to stuff Kingpin in.
—The next morning.
Ron hadn't even left the house when his phone vibrated.
News notification.
The New York Times front page headline—"The Underground of the Fisk Empire: A Triple Supply Chain of Drugs, Arms, and Money Laundering."
Author: Ben Yurik.
Ron clicked to read the full article. Bank statement screenshots, transaction record tables, anonymous whistleblower testimonies—all intelligence he had anonymously sent out two weeks ago. Ben Yurik had spent fourteen days cross-checking, supplementing interviews, and constructing the narrative framework.
The article's final paragraph read: "Mr. Fisk's legitimate business is the city's most expensive mask. Peel it back, and you'll find not a businessman, but an empire built on violence and fear." Ron turned off his phone.
A real-time tracking popped up—Fisk Enterprises' stock price plummeted by forty percent within forty minutes of the market opening. Three partner banks froze Fisk Enterprises' credit lines. The boards of directors of two publicly traded companies issued emergency statements announcing the termination of all cooperation with Fisk Enterprises.
Kingpin's "legitimate mask" shattered.
—That night, at 11 PM.
A message came through Frank's encrypted channel. Four words.
"Yurik is dead." Ron sat at the folding table, a half-cold cup of coffee in his hand.
"How did he die?"
"The official answer is heart attack. My men checked—there was a needle mark on the back of his neck. A colorless, odorless neurotoxin; the autopsy couldn't detect it." Frank's voice was rough, like a cut on a piece of metal.
"The man who did it is Viktor Lazarev. The head of the Russian 'black market' mercenaries. Kingpin's new henchman." Ron didn't speak.
The liquid in the coffee cup began to bubble.
The temperature of the cup was rising.
Brown coffee stains overflowed from the rim, dripping onto the table with a sizzling sound.
Frank stood five meters away. He saw Ron's hand holding the cup, a dark red light seeping between his fingers.
Jessica peeked halfway out from the medical area. The hot air made her take a step back.
Jack was disassembling a gun; his hand stopped.
The metal walls of the safe house began to smoke.
For a full five minutes.
No one spoke.
Ron placed the coffee cup on the table. A crisp cracking sound came from the ceramic base of the cup against the tabletop—the bottom of the cup was now charred black.
"Viktor Lazarev. Deal with him first."
Ron stood up.
"Then—Kingpin. It's all over tonight." Frank pulled back the bolt.
Ron turned to Jack.
He took a deep blue fruit from his system space. The fruit's surface was patterned with intersecting crosshairs, and a small, indented dot in the center.
The Target Fruit.
Jack stared at the fruit.
"Jack Reynolds. Effective today, your rank is Lieutenant Commander."
Ron tossed the fruit over.
"Eat it."
Jack caught the fruit and took a bite.
A wave of nausea washed over him—he squatted down and gagged three times. On the fourth time, he forced the rest into his mouth, chewed it, and swallowed.
Two seconds later.
His eyes changed. His pupils contracted, forming a very thin crosshair in the center of his iris.
There was a six-millimeter screw on the table.
Jack picked it up and flicked his wrist.
The screw flew out. It embedded itself in a crack in the wall twenty meters away.
A cockroach had been resting in the crack.
A screw pierced the cockroach's abdomen, pinning it to the wall.
Jack looked at his hand.
Frank walked over and patted him on the shoulder.
"I've practiced marksmanship for three months, and you've surpassed it with a piece of fruit." Jack's crosshairs spun halfway in the light.
"I can see the bullet trajectory now."
"Enough talk." Ron picked up the communicator.
"Split into two teams. Frank, Jack, Brooklyn. Viktor Lazarev's hideout is in an abandoned red-brick factory north of the Red Hook Pier district. Take him."
"Jessica and I, straight to the Fisk Building." A voice came through the communicator. Not an internal channel.
Matthew Murdoch.
"Ben Urick." Matthew's voice was low. "I heard about it." Ron didn't ask how he got access to the encrypted channel.
"Legal cooperation—Federal Prosecutor Karen Starr has obtained sufficient evidence. The arrest warrant will be issued tomorrow morning."
"He won't wait until tomorrow morning." The channel was silent for two seconds.
Matthew didn't speak again.
Ron turned off his communicator.
The four men left the safe house.
Frank and Jack turned left, disappearing into the shadows of the dock area.
Ron and Jessica turned right. Two white cloaks unfurled in the New York night wind, the words "Justice" illuminated for half a second by a streetlamp.
A mission popped up in the system.
[Final Mission: Trial of Kingpin Wilson Fisk.]
— Brooklyn. North of the Red Hook Dock area.
The abandoned red-brick factory crouched like a black cube in the night. Three stories high, most of the windows shattered, the red brick exterior pitted and scarred by the sea wind.
Frank and Jack crouched behind an abandoned shipping container across from the factory for thirty seconds.
Frank transformed into a half-beast. The gray wolf's nostrils twitched.
His fur bristled.
"Something's wrong." Jack's crosshairs spun in the darkness, locking onto the factory interior. Through the shattered windows, he saw moving heat sources.
Not twenty.
"Frank—at least eighty inside."
Frank's vertical pupils were fixed on the factory gate. There were no sentries. No patrols. The gate was ajar, the sheet metal swaying in the wind.
An ambush.
Viktor Lazarev was waiting for them to walk in.
Frank grabbed Jack's arm.
"Plan B." Jack turned to look at him.
"What Plan B?" Frank stood up from behind a container, rust clinging to his gray fur.
"No Plan B. Fight."
He took his first step.
In the darkness behind the factory gate, a metal arm reflected a sliver of moonlight.
The Winter Soldier stood there.