Unexpected Gains

The dense cluster of green lights looked like fireflies, but they didn't make this place seem beautiful. If anything, they made it all the more eerie. Luo Xia zoomed in through his Tactical Goggles. These weren't fireflies at all—they were enormous mutant rats.

The rats were about the size of house cats. They had no fur, but were covered in scales, as if they'd pulled on lizard skin.

Luo Xia didn't need anyone to explain it to him. He could tell these things were connected to the lizard monster, perhaps even related by blood.

The mutant rats didn't seem particularly intelligent. The moment they saw Luo Xia, they squeaked and lunged at him.

They weren't slow—if anything, they were incredibly fast. A single leap carried them several meters, and they could jump higher than Luo Xia's chest.

By all rights, Luo Xia had only an ordinary human's physical abilities. Even with all his high-tech gear, he shouldn't have been able to deal with mutant rats lunging at him from every direction at once.

But in reality, Luo Xia taught the rats a lesson: numbers didn't always equal strength.

As the first mutant rat leaped, Luo Xia's Tactical Goggles and Sensor Glove glowed azure at the same time, shining brightly in the dark sewer.

The next moment, both of Luo Xia's hands, gripping the Pulse Pistols, began to shake violently.

The pulse energy, which should have formed a straight line, was flung into a wall of fire by the violent shaking.

The first seven mutant rats to lunge at him were blasted backward with pinpoint accuracy.

But Luo Xia's hands didn't stop moving. Instead, they trembled up and down like ripples, and the pulse energy carved a crooked line of fire across the ground. The mutant rats charging along the floor became a mess of bloody fragments.

Clearly, every mutant rat in the first wave had been blown to pieces. In just two seconds, Luo Xia's hands had shaken at a frequency of over 10 hertz—that is, he'd swung them from side to side or up and down more than ten times in a single second.

No human could make those movements. Nor had Luo Xia suddenly unleashed some hidden potential.

The moment he'd spotted the mutant rats, he'd activated the linked function of his Tactical Goggles and Sensor Glove: Target Lock.

Luo Xia's body wasn't fast enough to hit so many mutant rats at once, but his eyes could keep all of them within his field of vision.

The rest was up to the Tactical Goggles and Sensor Glove.

The Tactical Goggles could instantly calculate the mutant rats' speed, distance, kinetic energy, trajectories, and other information, then mark their paths.

The Sensor Glove would then automatically adjust its magnetic field and his grip, aim on its own, and pull the trigger. The Pulse Pistols had very little recoil, and their pulse energy was barely affected by gravity, so their shots traveled in perfectly straight lines.

As a result, almost every shot hit its target with pinpoint accuracy, and several shots could land in an instant.

No sharpshooter in the world could accurately hit more than a dozen fast-moving targets in two seconds. But with three devices made from the AllSpark, Luo Xia had pulled off the impossible with ease.

All Luo Xia had to do was keep his eyes open for two seconds—and spend a mere two units of AllSpark energy.

Even S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Hawkeye couldn't have managed that with a bow and arrow.

The pistols kept firing, killing every mutant rat that remained. The whole thing took no more than ten seconds. All thirty-two rats were dead, not one left alive.

"Hmm, looks like I'm not much different from a Metahuman now," Luo Xia remarked.

Upon closer inspection, Luo Xia realized that the mutant rats also had remarkably strong regenerative abilities. Several had been blown in half, yet were still alive and struggling to reattach their bodies.

Luo Xia stepped on one of the half-rats, crushing it into a pulp and finally stopping the monster's regeneration.

"Such powerful regeneration..." Luo Xia murmured.

But he didn't dwell on it. He crossed the bloody, trashed area and reached the end of the passage.

It was a dead end, but the space at the end wasn't filthy, nor was it some shabby little hovel. Instead, it was a fairly advanced laboratory.

The room was a full three hundred square meters and seemed to have undergone extensive renovation. It had computers decades more advanced than Skye's old clunker—and more than one of them. Various chemicals Luo Xia couldn't identify were neatly arranged inside a refrigerator, and there was even a sterile laboratory.

At that moment, a tall, thin man in a tattered white lab coat lay inside the laboratory, one arm missing. In his remaining hand, he clutched a syringe filled with green liquid.

It looked like this man was the giant lizard from earlier. Some kind of drug had turned him into a monster, and now that it had worn off, he'd returned to normal.

"Wow, this place must have cost a fortune." As he spoke, Luo Xia walked into the laboratory and took the syringe from the man's hand.

Whatever it was, Luo Xia believed in putting safety first.

He checked the man's pulse. The man seemed to have only passed out, so Luo Xia pulled off a few wires and tied him up securely.

"Violet, copy all the data. Let's see what this monster's story is," Luo Xia instructed.

Violet transformed from a watch into her robot form and drove a finger into the computer's port. Streams of data and countless cell images began appearing on every monitor.

A few minutes later, Violet withdrew her finger and said to Luo Xia, "Commander, I've downloaded all the data. It appears to be an experiment to extract regenerative genes from a living organism. There are some technical materials I can't decipher, but judging from the results, it seems to cause serious side effects. Anyone who uses this drug will..."

As Violet spoke, another voice cut in from beside them: "Turn into a monster."

Luo Xia turned around and saw that the man they'd tied up had woken up.

"Oh, you're awake. Can you tell us what's going on with this laboratory, Dr. Connors? Or would you prefer that I call you Godzilla?" Luo Xia glanced at the information on the monitors and learned the man's name.

"That was just an accident," Dr. Connors explained.

"But it looks to me like you have no intention of ending this 'accident.'" Luo Xia pointed to the refrigerator, which was packed with green vials.

Luo Xia stared at Dr. Connors's face, which still had a faint green tinge, and felt that the gains from this trip through the sewers went far beyond simply recovering the Energy Activation Device.

"Who exactly are you?" Dr. Connors asked, staring at Violet in her robot form.