Sitting on a wooden chair with a shattered backrest, Cheng Tian cleaned the blood and chunks of flesh off his shield by stowing it in his inventory. A satisfied smile spread across his face.
However, this almost obsessive weapon-cleaning ritual had little practical value, because his suit was covered in blood that was gradually turning sticky and hard, while his face and hands were also somewhat dirty.
Aside from Cheng Tian himself, there was no one else still standing—or still alive—in the tavern, which was so chaotic that there was practically nowhere left to step.
With his 24 points of Strength and the boost in defensive performance from equipping two shields at once, Cheng had once again single-handedly blocked a bar full of thugs and nearly wiped them all out. The reason it was only "nearly" was that the bartender who had taken his money for the map had already escaped through a secret passage in the storeroom.
Cheng Tian's recklessness depended on the terrain and his condition. Faced with an underground passage whose route ahead was completely unknown, he would never risk charging in.
Though he was now covered in blood and so filthy that he would need a scouring pad to clean himself, it was all someone else's blood.
Among armor of the same general type, Troll Head was actually the classic example of being mediocre at everything. Its defensive performance was extremely low, but under the influence of the Captain America template, its defensive performance had returned to a normal level.
At the same time, Cheng Tian had equipped Captain America's Shield in his main hand.
Captain America's Shield: Shield, template weapon. Requirements: Captain America template/Strength 15. Defensive performance: 25. Shield bash damage: 1–1. Durability: -/-.
An accidental product forged from original Adamantium, it was indestructible and possessed extremely strong kinetic-energy absorption, as well as the ability to resist external damage from extreme temperatures, radiation, and other sources.
The shield could completely negate the damage from all frontal ranged attacks whose scale did not exceed the size of its face, and deflect the negated attacks back outward.
The shield could absorb external physical and energy impacts to the greatest possible extent while maintaining its own properties unchanged.
Because Captain America's Shield was a template weapon that could stack enchantments with equipment of the same type, its shield bash damage had been heavily nerfed, just like the whip from the previous template. Its attributes also could not perfectly reproduce the original setting, since its source material was merely a Famicom game with limited capabilities.
Its attack was different, however. The shield's defensive performance had not been weakened in the slightest, fully reproducing the properties it had possessed in the original game.
The source materials for both Captain America's Shield and Cheng Tian's Captain America template were the Famicom version of "Captain's Mandate." In fact, even that translated title had been the result of domestic publishers' careless mistranslations back in the day. Like "Wolf Force" for "Garrison of Chaos" and "Green Beret" for "Green Beret," they were all incorrect translations, yet they had become so deeply ingrained in a generation's memories that they could no longer be changed.
Therefore, the true translation of "Captain's Mandate" should have been "Captain America and the Avengers."
What was even more interesting was that among the same-titled ports on the many different platforms, the Famicom version was the only one in which the gameplay had been drastically changed.
In the original arcade version, players could control up to four characters: Captain America, Eagle Eye, Iron Man, and Vision. The game also leaned more toward the beat-'em-up genre.
On the Famicom, however, the game was directly transformed into something resembling "Bionic Commando," featuring exploration, puzzle-solving, and an action-adventure format with a large map where stages could be selected repeatedly.
To save cartridge space, this version cut the playable roster in half, leaving only Captain America and Hawkeye. It even came up with a "reasonable" original plot for the two removed characters, Iron Man and Vision, killing them off in the story.
However, although the Famicom version had radically altered the game mode, it also gave Captain America and Eagle Eye stronger character performance than in the original version. That enhanced character performance was reflected in the template Cheng Tian had loaded.
In the game, as long as the shield was kept facing the enemy, all ranged attacks that struck it could be deflected.
While Cheng Tian was blocking the door to prevent the gang members from escaping, half the enemies opened fire on him. Clearly, a great many of them were carrying guns.
But this Scallop Warrior had not only Captain America's Shield, but also Troll Head. With the two shields held in front of him, they were practically a wall. The gang members soon discovered that their barrage had not only failed to break through Cheng Tian's shield defense, but, because of the extremely random rebound mechanism of Captain America's Shield, had instead caused their own side to suffer more than a dozen stray-bullet injuries. One after another, they bled and screamed in agony.
But when they stopped concentrating their fire, it was Cheng Tian's turn to act.
Captain America's Shield and Troll Head began ricocheting through the crowd in alternating succession.
The former's shield bash damage was relatively weak, but its impact force was substantial. On top of that, its thrower was Cheng Tian, who had 24 points of Strength. With Captain America's Shield and its excellent kinetic trajectory, even throwing a fountain pen would be enough to punch through an ordinary person's palm at medium range.
Troll Head's throwing speed and accuracy were far inferior to Captain America's Shield, but throwing this thing was like throwing a sketch of a bust at someone. You tell me—were they going to dodge it or not?
It was worth mentioning that, under the influence of the Captain America template, the shield behaved somewhat differently in Cheng Tian's hands.
Normally, a shield was just a shield. Its main function and purpose were as armor. Therefore, when you chose to throw it, it was equivalent to temporarily giving up possession of it. The shield's bonuses disappeared as soon as it was thrown, and there was no such thing as soul binding. In theory, if another player picked it up, it became theirs.
But although Cheng Tian had clearly thrown his shield away, the corresponding bonuses remained on his body. He could also clearly sense that some connection between himself and the shield still remained.
Next, he only needed to make a shaking-arm exertion like a spring-loaded punch within a certain distance, and whether it was Captain America's Shield or the Troll's head, it would automatically return to the arm corresponding to its equipment slot.
Clearly, this was the effect of the description on Shield Master: "Your connection with your shield will become closer and more coordinated."
Relying on this miraculous unity of man and shield, along with the special shields in his hands, Cheng Tian could even perform some extremely strange and astonishing maneuvers...
This passive extermination of the bar's thugs had still yielded some gains. Nearly twenty thugs had contributed three Black Iron Chests, with a drop rate clearly higher than that of zombies.
The first chest contained a windproof lighter and three cigars that could slightly accelerate MP recovery. The second and third chests each contained a document: a "Moth Gang Combatant File" and a "Moth Gang Gunner File."
The instant he obtained these two paper items, Cheng Tian's bounty mission progress unexpectedly advanced by half!
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