At first glance, Butcher seemed ruthless and heartless, using any means necessary to deal with superhumans, but in reality, he was also a pitiful and tragic man with a heavily cuckolded head.
Because the man who had cuckolded him was none other than Homelander, who stood at the absolute apex of The Seven and indeed all superhumans.
Homelander had not only used extremely shameless methods behind the scenes to threaten Butcher's wife into submission with Butcher's life, but had even scored a bullseye on the first try, leaving Butcher's wife to bear him a son who was a born superhuman.
What an absolute mind-fuck and bitter irony.
Driven by the irreconcilable hatred of having his wife stolen, Butcher had assembled a small team of ordinary humans and superhumans mixed together called The Boys, in order to combat The Seven.
Their ultimate goal was to obliterate Homelander, the very symbol of superhumans.
Yet Homelander was simply far too powerful.
The vastly disproportionate gap in strength between the enemy and themselves caused The Boys to lose and fight again, only to fight and lose again.
Through a stroke of accidental luck, Butcher learned of the existence of a certain "secret weapon" from the former Soviet Union that might just be able to deal with Homelander, and he had now found Him in Russia.
Aided by the Temporary Compound V passionately sponsored by Maeve.
Butcher and Hughie Campbell, those two time-limited "supermen", leading a few of their comrades from The Boys, had finally succeeded in physically infiltrating the location where that "secret weapon" was stored.
This was a dimly lit laboratory decorated in the style of the previous century.
Yet when Butcher used brute force to pry open the lid of the "secret weapon" container, which resembled a rusted iron coffin, he discovered that what was stored inside was not any sort of so-called "secret weapon" at all.
Instead—
"Holy shit?!"
"Soldier Boy?!"
"He's actually still alive?!"
Butcher, Hughie, Mother's Milk, Frenchie, and the others all wore expressions as if they had seen a ghost.
Only Kimiko maintained her usual slightly dim-witted look, tilting her head and looking with a hint of curiosity at the outrageously handsome man before her.
"Hey, bro, I'm still alive. Are you guys surprised? You gotta know I'm fucking Soldier Boy, man. Who dares kill me? Who can kill me?"
"You? Or you?"
"A bunch of damn weaklings!"
"Don't you see I ain't wearing clothes?"
"Your trench coat looks nice. It's mine now."
Leon, wearing only a pair of Super Elastic Fiber Underwear and sporting streamlined muscles resembling an ancient Greek sculpture, broke free from the restraints within the iron coffin that had imprisoned Soldier Boy, walking toward the members of The Boys with an immense sense of oppression.
His target was extremely clear; it was the black leather trench coat on Butcher, and he reached out to grab it directly.
"Hey, buddy, calm down."
"There are corpses all over the floor. You can just strip a uniform off one of them to wear..."
As Butcher waved his hands and retreated, he was aggressively closed in on by Leon, who grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him into mid-air: "I want this one!"
Whoosh—
Leon's sudden eruption instantly made the nerves of everyone present tense to the absolute limit.
Seeing this, Hughie, who had gained the superpower of teleportation through Temporary Compound V, flashed completely naked to the side of Butcher and Leon, naively thinking he could pry open Leon's hand.
"Let him go!"
Hughie shouted while trying to pry the hand away.
"Hughie, don't provoke him!"
Butcher was far more rational, but his warning obviously didn't move as fast as Hughie's teleportation.
"Hoh~ You have a superpower like that and you didn't run away, but instead actively teleported to my side?"
Leon turned his head with considerable interest to look at Hughie, who was gritting his teeth and exerting strength with his entire body. The hand with which he held Butcher aloft remained as unshakable as a hydraulic iron clamp.
The disparity in strength between the two sides was evident at a glance.
"Courage commendable,"
"But I wasn't talking to you!"
Bang—
Leon threw a kick without a second thought.
It damn near went straight through Hughie's stomach, and the latter was seen doubling over and flying horizontally like a cannonball, crashing through a wall before making no further sound whatsoever.
"Hughie!!!" × 3
Mother's Milk, Frenchie, and Butcher all cried out in alarm simultaneously.
Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!
Zing—
The first two picked up the guards' rifles from the ground and unleashed a barrage of gunfire at Leon's back from four or five meters away. Red light flashed in the latter's eyes as two orange-red laser beams shot point-blank toward Leon's eyes.
Kimiko, meanwhile, picked up where Hughie left off, continuing to tug at Leon's arm.
Claws, teeth, elbows...
She used every part of her body that could be used for attacking.
Yet could these attacks truly be effective against Leon?
The answer was naturally in the negative.
Following more than ten seconds of concentrated fire.
Mother's Milk and Frenchie's rifles ran out of ammunition first.
Immediately afterward.
Butcher's laser eyes also began to overload, forcing him to close his eyes and deactivate them.
"Whoa~"
"What were those two laser beams just now? Glow sticks? They felt pretty punchy, actually. Don't stop, keep shooting!"
Leon shook Butcher, whom he held in his hand, and urged him impatiently, too lazy to even bother with Kimiko, who was still biting his calf with her teeth.
When The Boys and the others discovered that Leon hadn't even had his defenses breached, nor had a single hair on his body been lost, they both felt a surge of absolute hope and plunged into the depths of utter despair.
"How is that possible..."
Butcher's face was plastered with disbelief.
You had to know.
Although his laser eyes definitely couldn't compare to Homelander's, a conservative estimate still put them at around sixty to seventy percent of the power of Homelander's laser eyes.
Yet even so.
Released point-blank at Soldier Boy, and even shot directly at the most vulnerable part of the human body—the eyes—it had turned out to be completely useless.
Even Homelander's physical defense didn't reach such an exaggerated level, did it?
Thinking up to this point.
Butcher no longer had any thoughts of going toe-to-toe with Leon.
After all.
Being unable to beat someone was no disgrace; knowing when to yield and when to stand tall was the mark of a true man.
Eliminating Homelander was their current primary objective.
The stronger Soldier Boy was,
the more advantageous it would be for their plan of driving the tiger to devour the wolf.
"Hey, listen to me, Soldier Boy. After Vought learned the news of your death, they created a new you. He is... urgh!"
"I said, keep shooting! Don't you understand what I'm saying?"
Before Butcher could finish speaking, Leon lowered his collar and instead grabbed him by the neck, slowly tightening his grip and bit by bit robbing him of his right to breathe.
"Now! Right now! Immediately!"
Gold light flashed within Leon's eyes, but much like two lightbulbs, they simply failed to gather the light into a beam, always dissipating right as they neared concentration.
"Fuck!"
Butcher had never felt the Grim Reaper so close to himself, and the instinct for survival drove him to struggle as much as possible. After a brief buildup of strength, two orange-red laser beams shot out from his eyes once more.
Zing—
"That's more like it!"
Leon gladly continued to absorb the laser beams shot out by Butcher with his eyes.
During this process.
The corners of his mouth couldn't stop curling upward; he was practically high as a kite!
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