Norman's Commission

Three days later.

Morning.

Roy was awakened by the ringing of his phone.

When he opened his eyes and saw that Gwen was calling, he suppressed his irritation at being woken up and answered the call.

Before he could speak, Gwen's voice came through.

"Something happened to Dr. Connors."

Gwen said immediately.

"Something happened? What happened?"

Roy asked.

"He's missing!"

"When a janitor was cleaning, he found Dr. Connors's office in complete disarray. It looked like it had been ransacked by thugs."

"The lab was even worse. A large amount of equipment had been destroyed."

"The janitor reported it to his superiors right away, but no one knew what happened last night, and no one could get in touch with him."

Gwen spoke quickly.

After listening to Gwen's account, Roy frowned slightly.

A week earlier, after Gwen told him that something seemed off about Dr. Connors, he had made time to visit Osborn Tower and used the Chakra Sensory Technique to check on Dr. Connors.

Judging by the life force he sensed, Dr. Connors was perfectly normal. There were no signs at all that he had injected himself with the lizard serum.

"Where are you now? Osborn Tower?"

Roy asked.

"No, I came home."

"The Inter-Species Genetics project has been temporarily shut down. The company told everyone to go home and wait for further notice."

Gwen continued.

"All right, I'll come see you in a little while."

Roy said slowly.

"Mm-hmm."

Gwen replied softly.

After ending the call, Roy set his phone aside, got out of bed, and headed for the bathroom.

Although he had no idea what had happened to Dr. Connors, judging from the current situation, there was a good chance that Dr. Connors had lost control after injecting himself with the lizard serum.

In the movie The Amazing Spider-Man, he and Peter's father, Richard Parker, had been colleagues. They both worked for Oscorp and researched Inter-Species Genetics together.

Peter's father had chosen spiders as the target for Inter-Species Genetics.

Connors, on the other hand, had chosen lizards.

Only after obtaining the Decay Rate Algorithm left behind by Peter's father had he finally solved the problem that had plagued him for more than a decade and developed a serum containing lizard DNA, with incredible regenerative effects that could regrow severed limbs.

However, in this universe, Dr. Connors had nothing to do with Peter's family.

Peter's father was not a scientist, nor had he ever worked for Oscorp.

Brushing his teeth, washing his face, styling his hair.

After changing into clean clothes, Roy was about to use Flying Thunder God to head to the rooftop of Gwen's home when his phone rang.

He had assumed Gwen was calling.

As it turned out, it was not Gwen. An unfamiliar, unsaved number appeared on the screen.

Without thinking much of it, he answered the call.

"Who's this?"

"It's me, Norman Osborn."

Norman?

Roy frowned slightly and continued, "What is it?"

"I have a commission. I was wondering whether you'd be interested in taking it."

Norman got straight to the point and replied quickly.

"What commission? Finding the missing Dr. Connors?"

Roy said slowly.

Hearing that, Norman smiled and said, "Looks like your girlfriend has already contacted you. That's right, I want to hire you to find Dr. Connors."

"He took some things that belong to Oscorp, and I want him to return them."

After Norman finished speaking, Roy did not answer immediately and fell silent.

More than ten seconds passed. When he realized the system had not recognized Norman's commission, he said, "How much are you willing to pay me?"

"Ten million."

Norman replied immediately, without any hesitation.

"Ten million is too little."

"I'm not interested in taking commissions worth less than fifty million lately."

Roy said slowly.

Although Norman's commission had not passed the system's assessment, if Norman was willing to pay fifty million, Roy would not mind making an exception.

He had accepted commissions before that had not passed the system's assessment.

Whether a commission passed the system's assessment was not the only reason he accepted it.

If he was not interested in the reward offered by the system, he would not accept it even if it passed the assessment.

Likewise, he might still accept a commission that had not passed the assessment.

Speaking of that, he had to mention the lowest-paying commission he had ever accepted.

It had paid only one hundred dollars.

The client had been a middle-aged man raising his daughter alone.

The client's wife had died in a car accident when their daughter was only three years old.

Although his job was nothing special—he was a supermarket clerk—the client had taken excellent care of his daughter.

His daughter had also done well for herself, getting into Columbia University, one of the Ivy League schools, from an ordinary public high school.

At that rate, once his daughter graduated, their lives would have completely turned around.

However, less than a month after starting college, his daughter died of acute drug poisoning at a freshman party.

His daughter did not use drugs. She did not even smoke.

According to the police investigation, the person responsible for his daughter's acute drug poisoning was also a freshman—and one of her classmates.

Not only that, the young man was both the son of a wealthy family and the son of an official.

His father was a senator, while his mother was a director of a publicly listed company.

Although the young man's goal had not been to kill the client's daughter, he had wanted to do some adult things to her while she was unconscious.

Under a normal legal ruling, he would certainly have been charged with negligent homicide and attempted rape.

But in the end, the young man received only probation.

Somehow, the client had heard about the Fourth Hokage. He sent Roy a commission description on a dark web forum that ran to tens of thousands of words.

Not only was it the lowest-paying commission Roy had received so far, it was also the one with the longest commission description.

Although the description had been deeply moving, Roy had not fully believed the client's claims. He spent some time investigating the matter himself.

After confirming that all the information the client had provided was true, he accepted the commission.

The payment the client offered was everything he owned.

If that was not enough, he was even willing to take out a high-interest loan.

Roy did not accept it. He only asked for one hundred dollars.

What happened next was simple.

Without much effort, he took the young man out of his villa as the client had requested and handed him over to the client.

Roy had no idea what the client did to the young man afterward.

However, a week later, he saw news in the papers that the client had turned himself in.

As for the young man, according to the police's follow-up investigation, they found his mangled, unrecognizable body in a sewer. He could only be identified through DNA.

"Fifty million is too much. With your abilities, finding—"

Before Norman could finish, Roy hung up.

He would not force clients to pay exorbitant fees, but once he named his price, he would not give them the chance to haggle.

He knew exactly how much he wanted to charge.

Haggling meant the other party did not recognize the value of his work.

Since they did not recognize it, there was nothing left to discuss.