The two men arrived and saw the scene of bodies strewn everywhere without showing the slightest surprise. The man carrying a shield shrugged.
"Oh, Thornton, looks like we're too late. Fang's already gotten what he came for."
The man holding the silver pistol, Thornton, replied coolly:
"Can't be helped, Gale. This might be a hidden quest of B-rank or higher, but the boss said the main quest comes first. Don't the people in the East have a saying? The steak wriggling in your stomach is the one that truly belongs to you."
The two split up to inspect the scene. After walking a few steps, Thornton spotted the silver case lying open and exclaimed excitedly:
"Oh! We're not too late after all. Looks like Fang hasn't taken the key quest item yet!"
Gale hurried over and bent down to examine it. His eyes lit up.
"It really is a Retroviral Vector Injection! These are incredibly hard to get. It's a quest item for a B-rank hidden quest! With this, we can get close to the CEO with pancreatic cancer and earn a ticket into Area 51!"
Just then, a slightly hoarse voice came from the darkness nearby:
"Oh, gentlemen, please don't touch my things. I only went to catch a runaway quarry. That doesn't mean I've given up my spoils."
The sea churned beneath the night sky, and a faint fishy tang rode on the sea breeze. A Black man emerged slowly from the darkness. His upper body was bare and powerfully built, but a crescent-shaped, blood-red scar marked his chest.
The scar had clearly healed long ago, but it was easy to imagine how terrible the wound had been. He wore only a pair of tight black shorts below the waist.
In his right hand, the Black man was holding a bloodied human head! The moment he appeared, he exuded the terrifying pressure of a savage beast.
At the sight of him, Gale and Thornton both changed expression. Thornton swiftly raised his silver pistol and took aim, while Gale stepped forward and braced the toy-like shield in front of himself. One took the offensive, the other stood on guard; their teamwork looked flawless.
Only then did Thornton speak in a low voice:
"Fang, there's no conflict of interest between us. I only came to check things out because I got a tip. I have no intention of making an enemy of you. So how about we each take a step back? I'll return the Retroviral Vector Injection, and you let us leave."
Fang smiled, showing a full set of gleaming white teeth.
"What a coincidence. I was just about to say the same thing. Looks like we're of one mind. Maybe we can have a drink together sometime."
Fang Linyan, hiding on the second floor, was undoubtedly bitterly disappointed. He was desperate for the two sides to fight, preferably with one fleeing while the other gave chase. Then he could fish in troubled waters.
After hearing about the Retroviral Vector Injection, he had immediately pulled out his smartphone and searched it online. He discovered that it was an extremely advanced cancer treatment.
The technology had originated in "gene therapy," which had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine a few years earlier. Since cancer was essentially caused by mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes, the idea was to inject mutated genes into the body to suppress cancer at its source!
Online, he could only find the full name of the retroviral vector: retrovirus vector. It was a technology that existed only in theory. He hadn't expected that an actual injection based on it had already been developed.
So Fang Linyan could be certain that the injection in the silver-white case was, for now, his only hope!
But he hadn't expected the two sides to have no intention of fighting. In just a few sentences, they had dispelled the tense atmosphere! He couldn't help feeling deeply disappointed, but all he could do now was wait in silence.
When Gale heard Fang mention having a drink, he smiled too.
"I know a bar with great drinks. How about tomorrow night? My treat."
Fang burst out laughing.
"Then it's settled."
As he spoke, he raised a fist and gave a mock swing in their direction.
This fist bump was a common Black greeting, and seemed perfectly ordinary.
But the instant Fang swung his fist, he suddenly opened his loosely clenched hand. A ping-pong-ball-sized object dropped from his palm and exploded before it hit the ground, flashing with blinding light!
A flashbang!
Fang Linyan felt a stabbing pain in his eyes. Everything turned completely white, and he instinctively raised his hands to cover them. Even so, tears streamed down his face.
That would have been bad enough, but at the same time Fang launched his attack, Gale—the very man who had repeatedly offered to "treat them"—suddenly crouched and hurled the toy-like Blue and White Five-Pointed Star Shield in his hand!
The instant the shield left his hand, it created the illusion that it wasn't a shield at all, but a truck weighing a thousand tons, roaring toward them and barreling straight at them.
The tiny shield shot forward like a level-twelve gale. Its immense pressure shoved aside the debris, corpses, wooden crates, and even vehicles on both sides!
But faced with the shield hurtling straight at him, Fang only gave a savage grin. He neither retreated nor dodged; instead, he raised his hands and charged forward!
He slammed both hands against the edge of the Blue-White Five-Star Shield. A sizzling sound immediately came from his hands, and smoke rose from them. The air filled with the pungent stench of burnt flesh.
It was as if he were holding not a shield, but a red-hot steel ingot.
That wasn't all. Fang underwent a rapid transformation. Hair sprouted all over his body, his skin turned green and rough, and the muscles of his bare torso bulged rapidly. His lower jaw jutted out as two fangs grew from his lower gums! His entire body swelled to more than half again its former size, transforming in an instant from an ordinary man into a giant over two meters tall!
This was the ability Fang took pride in: Orc Transformation! It instantly awakened the orc bloodline in his body and multiplied his combat strength!
Yet even after completing his Orc Transformation, he still couldn't resist the tremendous force of the shield. Fang's thick arms held it back for less than a second before it knocked them aside. The shield drove him backward and then slammed squarely into his chest!
Half of Fang's chest caved in. He spat out a mouthful of blood as his massive body was sent flying five or six meters backward, crashing hard into the windshield of a Lincoln Navigator.
The windshield shattered with a loud crack. The impact was so powerful that the vehicle itself was knocked back more than two meters. Its tires scraped across the dock's concrete surface, leaving two black skid marks over half a meter long, while the air filled with a burnt stench. The car's security alarm immediately began blaring, "Woo-waa! Woo-waa!"
After delivering the blow, the Blue-White Five-Star Shield rebounded, arcing through the air before returning to Gale's hand. But Gale, despite landing a clean hit, looked grim. A distinct crack had appeared across the shield's surface. It seemed that although the thing was powerful, using it came at a price.
Thornton, meanwhile, fired straight at Fang!
His gun had clearly been modified. Its recoil was astonishing, and he needed both hands to hold it. After firing, his arms jerked upward as he absorbed the tremendous recoil. The gunshots weren't loud, but they carried a muffled, bone-rattling rumble.
After Fang took a bullet, his whole body was knocked sideways another half-meter against the vehicle. He rolled off the hood, scattering shards of glass as he went.
The flashbang Fang had thrown seemed to have had no effect at all on the two men. As the saying goes, one mistake leads to another, and Fang's oversight had unquestionably cost him dearly.
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