Mercenary

"They're on the third floor! Surround him, now!"

"Kill that son of a bitch!"

Five Black men carrying rifles charged up from the stairwell first. Whether they saw anyone or not, they sprayed the area ahead of them, creating invisible suppressive fire—otherwise known as scaring people.

Bang! Bang!

With five gunshots, bullets from nowhere struck all five of them in the head. They dropped dead on the spot, and the noisy gunfire abruptly vanished.

The sudden silence told the other gunmen, who had been about to rush in, that the five men were finished. They immediately pulled back to the fourth floor, their expressions tense as they aimed their guns at the stairwell. The moment their target appeared, they would fill him with bullets.

While the group stared intently at the stairwell, a head appeared outside a distant window behind them. Meng Zu pushed off with both hands, leaped up onto the ledge outside the window, and reached out to shove the window.

"Damn, it's locked!" Meng Zu looked at the gunmen watching the stairwell, then at the layout of the room. He drew a Beretta from inside his jacket with his right hand, then smashed the glass in front of him with his left arm.

The gunmen guarding the stairwell immediately turned around at the sound behind them. Meng Zu had already jumped in through the window. Bang! Bang! Bang! He fired four shots in rapid succession, instantly blowing the heads off four gunmen. The rest reacted at once and returned fire.

The instant he fired, Meng Zu forcefully leaped to the side. Bullets struck where he had just been standing. He did not dare stop, rolling twice across the floor and slipping behind a corner, vanishing from the gunmen's sight.

"Fuck!"

"Blow him up with grenades!"

As he spoke, one gunman pulled a grenade from behind his back, yanked the pin, and hurled it hard toward the corner. The others followed suit, pulling grenades from behind their backs and tossing them toward the corner.

A series of explosions rang out. After waiting a while and noticing no movement, the gunmen cautiously approached to check whether Meng Zu had been blown to death.

Just as several of them were about to reach the corner, every light in the room suddenly went out. Their vision was swallowed by darkness. Then, two flashes of fire lit up in the blackness. A burst of extremely rapid gunfire erupted, only to stop moments later.

"Fuck, you guys carry this many grenades? Aren't you afraid a bullet will hit them and blow you bastards up?" Meng Zu emerged in the moonlight shining through the window. After confirming that none of the gunmen on the floor were still alive, he headed toward a room.

Inside, a scar-faced middle-aged Black man sat in a chair, controlling his breathing as he aimed a Desert Eagle at the wooden door. Bang! A gunshot rang out, and the middle-aged man slumped limply in his chair. A bloody hole had appeared in his forehead.

Meng Zu pushed open the door and walked up to the man with a frown. He took out his phone, turned on the flashlight, and shone it on the man's face. Without any lights, Meng Zu had been unable to make out his features clearly.

After confirming the man's identity, Meng Zu marked the mission as complete on his phone. When he turned and scanned the room, he spotted a safe. To his surprise, it was unlocked and opened with a pull. The thick stacks of Franklins inside made him smile.

Meng Zu carried a large bag out to the black sedan at the entrance, tossed it inside, and made a call.

"This is Meng Zu."

"Yes, it's me. Please arrange twenty-seven fast-food meals. Deliver them to the Exploding Wolf Gang headquarters."

Meng Zu sat in the car and played on his phone. About half an hour later, two vans drove over and stopped at the entrance. Meng Zu put away his phone and got out.

Seven people stepped out of the vans. A middle-aged man in a hat nodded slightly at Meng Zu, then entered through the doors with the other six, carrying their tools.

After the seven people loaded all the bodies inside into the vans, Meng Zu walked up to the hat-wearing man leading them and took twelve gold coins from his pocket, handing them over. "Thanks for your hard work."

The man accepted the coins and said with a smile, "Mr. Meng Zu is as polite as ever. Have a good night."

Meng Zu and the other man drove away in different directions. About an hour later, Meng Zu arrived at a villa in Queens, parked the car in the garage, and entered his home.

However, the car was now sky blue, and even its license plate had changed to a different number. Standing before the bathroom mirror, Meng Zu poured some liquid from a bottle into his palm and vigorously rubbed his face. After about a minute, the skin on his face became slightly wrinkled.

Meng Zu felt around near his ear, then pinched a piece of skin and slowly peeled a thin human-skin mask from his face. His appearance was now drastically different from before. Originally, Meng Zu had looked like an ordinary Asian man in his thirties with a square face, the sort who would disappear unnoticed in a crowd. Of course, that was in China. In America, people tended to have trouble distinguishing Asian faces. Unless they knew someone personally, it was difficult for them to remember an Asian person they had met only once.

Now, Meng Zu looked like a young man around twenty-three. He had a slightly pointed face and was not particularly handsome, but his delicate features made him seem younger than he actually was.

Meng Zu sprayed the peeled-off human-skin mask with some solution, placed it in a box, then put the box and bottles into a hidden compartment behind the medicine cabinet. He turned a wooden decoration on the cabinet four times, and the cabinet slid back into place, completely concealing the hidden compartment.

Meng Zu sat in the living room, eating pizza while watching television. Only after the program ended did he turn off the TV, take a shower, and return to his bedroom.

Lying on the bed, Meng Zu opened the system panel that only he could see.

Host: Meng Zu (Human)

Strength: 4 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Speed: 4.3 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Constitution: 3 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Spirit: 6 (2 for an ordinary adult human male)

Health: 150 (50 for an ordinary adult human)

Energy: 60 (50+10)

Mercenary Points

Skills:

Basic Dynamic Vision (Passive): Enhances the ability to capture, analyze, and perceive moving targets.

Basic Neural Reflex (Passive): Enhances brain response and bodily control.

Basic Firearms (Passive): Enhances firearm knowledge, familiarity with firearms, and firearm power.

Basic Stealth (Passive): Reduces one's presence in dimly lit areas, making one harder to detect.

Basic Danger Sense (Passive): Allows one to sense impending danger.

Basic Combat (Passive): Possesses highly proficient combat techniques.

Basic Disguise (Passive): Familiar with disguise techniques and capable of deceiving others by altering one's appearance.

Multifunctional Bullets (Active): Can change bullets into one of the following attributes: armor-piercing, explosive flame, freezing, holy light, or mithril. Armor-piercing bullets (2 Energy each); explosive flame and freezing bullets (4 Energy each); holy light and mithril bullets (5 Energy each).

Leap of Faith (Active): Jumping from a great height onto a soft surface causes no damage. Costs 10 Energy.

Teleportation (Active): Set a teleportation point and teleport oneself there. Costs 50 Energy within the same planet.

Clue Guidance (Active): Can point toward the object being tracked for 5 minutes. Costs 20 Energy.

Items: Mana-Recovery Ring (+10 Energy, restores 5 Energy per hour)

Resurrection Cross Necklace (revives the wearer 3 seconds after death and restores them to normal condition)

Red Potion x2 (slightly restores physical condition), Blue Potion x3 (restores 20 Energy)

Storage Space: 20 cubic meters. (Cannot store living creatures)

"1,023 Mercenary Points already. My luck was pretty good today. Should I do a ten-pull?" Meng Zu muttered to himself. He opened the mysterious shop and glanced at the newly refreshed items for the day. Yep, the prices were as absurdly expensive as ever. He decided to try his luck with the lottery instead.

Actions spoke louder than thoughts. Meng Zu sat up and opened the lottery pool. There were two options on the interface: one was an ordinary draw with no shine to it, while the other was an Advanced Draw glowing with golden light. An ordinary draw cost 100 Mercenary Points, while an Advanced Draw cost 1,000.

So far, Meng Zu had only performed three Advanced Draws. The first time, blessed by absurd luck, he had obtained Multifunctional Bullets directly. The second and third times, however, had only given him 1 point of Strength and 1 point of Spirit. That made Meng Zu realize that getting Multifunctional Bullets on his first try had been a stroke of ridiculous luck.

It took half a year of missions to save up 1,000 Mercenary Points. Meng Zu usually only accepted one mission a week, since most of his jobs involved killing.

Meng Zu tapped the ordinary draw for a ten-pull. In an instant, his 1,023 Mercenary Points dropped to 23. Light flashed, and ten small boxes appeared in the lottery pool. The boxes opened automatically: three 0.1-point Strength boosts, two 0.1-point Spirit boosts, three 0.1-point Speed boosts, one 0.5-point Constitution boost, and a silver-white ring.

"Something good came out!?" Meng Zu immediately checked the ring. Vitality Ring (+1 Constitution, restores 5 Health per hour).

The ring immediately appeared in Meng Zu's palm. He put it on the index finger of his left hand. "A whole year, and another piece of equipment finally dropped. One restores mana, one restores health. Today really is my lucky day." Looking at the rings on both his index fingers, Meng Zu was overjoyed.

After directly using the rest of the items he had obtained, Meng Zu's panel became:

Host: Meng Zu (Human)

Strength: 4.3 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Speed: 4.6 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Constitution: 4.5 (1 for an ordinary adult human male)

Spirit: 6.2 (2 for an ordinary adult human male)

Health: 225 (50 for an ordinary adult human)

Energy: 60 (50+10)

Mercenary Points: 23

After finishing all that, Meng Zu went to sleep in high spirits. He dreamed of catching crabs at a reservoir with his friends when he was young.

In truth, Meng Zu was somewhat unusual. He was not entirely a person of this world. He was one of countless transmigrators. In his previous life, he had been an ordinary person in China. One stormy night, he had been walking home under an umbrella when lightning struck. He had no idea whether it was because he had done something wrong or because his pigeon-toed walk had looked too arrogant, but with such a huge tree right beside him, the lightning had ignored it and struck him instead.

Nothing miraculous happened to Meng Zu after he was struck by lightning. He was neither unharmed nor transformed into the Flash. He died on the spot. When he regained a trace of awareness, he vaguely felt as if he were soaking in water. Then he emerged from the water into a bright place, surrounded by people speaking words he could not understand, before losing consciousness again.

When Meng Zu was twenty-four, memories of his previous life suddenly returned. After being struck by lightning, he had died and been reborn in this world, arriving in America. He did not know who his biological parents were. He had grown up in an orphanage before being adopted at the age of six by a middle-aged Chinese man.

The middle-aged man was named Zhang Jun, a freelance mercenary. Meng Zu had never been particularly interested in school, and his grades had been average. Because of his adoptive father, he had instead become more interested in firearms. Zhang Jun had naturally been willing to teach him these things. After all, in free America, there were shootings every day. Knowing how to use guns was extremely useful, especially since Asians were not treated very kindly here. Later, Meng Zu learned that his parents had died in a chaotic incident.

In 2005, Meng Zu graduated from college at twenty-two. After working at a company for a year, he resigned. Familiar with the mercenary trade because of his adoptive father, he entered the profession despite Zhang Jun's objections. That same year, Zhang Jun died of cancer. Meng Zu was twenty-four, and on his birthday, he awakened the memories of his previous life and activated the standard cheat system granted to transmigrators. At the time, Meng Zu had even complained that the system interface looked exactly like the personal panel of some cheap mobile game.

This system was a Mercenary System. Whenever someone hired him, it could generate a mercenary mission. As long as he completed it, he could earn Mercenary Points. Meng Zu had originally not wanted to continue being a mercenary. Mercenaries dealt with bullets all the time, and one stroke of bad luck could get them killed. But after merging with the memories of his twenty-four years in this world, he discovered that this world was extremely dangerous.

This world had Captain America, Stark Industries, and Oscorp. There was also Tony Stark, the familiar playboy who often appeared on television and in gossip magazines. The realization made Meng Zu feel as sick as if he had eaten shit.

Marvel—a world plagued by endless disasters. Whether it was the comic universe or the movie universe, ordinary people could die very easily here. But seeing the familiar Tony Stark made Meng Zu lean more toward this being the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was not as overwhelmingly dangerous as the comic universe, but it was still extremely dangerous. Especially since a giant purple potato would eventually snap his fingers. After thinking it over, Meng Zu decided that the only way was to become stronger. Only then would he have the ability to protect himself.

After the system activated, Meng Zu received a beginner gift pack. Opening it gave him Storage Space, Teleportation, Clue Guidance, Leap of Faith, and the Resurrection Cross Necklace. At the same time, because of the Teleportation skill, the system had given him 50 Energy. Rather than a beginner gift pack, it was more like a survival gift pack. That was why Meng Zu continued working as a mercenary, the profession he knew best.

Mercenaries did not receive jobs often, especially young freelance mercenaries like Meng Zu. They might only get one job a month, or even once every two or three months. One day, Meng Zu discovered that there was actually a Continental Hotel in Manhattan, New York. It left him completely bewildered. Could the John Wick Universe also be part of the Marvel universe?

In 2008, Meng Zu drew the Basic Disguise skill. After careful consideration, he passed the Continental Hotel's assessment and became a member. The Continental Hotel was a neutral assassin guild. It did not force assassins to accept missions, but anyone who wanted to use its services needed gold coins, and those coins could only be earned by completing missions issued by the Continental Hotel.

Since the Continental Hotel was an assassin guild, all its missions involved killing. Meng Zu usually selected one to three missions a month. Once he chose them, the system automatically converted them into mercenary missions, allowing his Mercenary Points to steadily increase.

By obtaining skills and attribute points through lottery draws to strengthen himself, Meng Zu's rating within the Continental Hotel also gradually rose.

Meng Zu had never figured out the purpose of the Health value displayed by the system. During one mission, he had been shot in the leg. Aside from his Health dropping, the injury had also made it difficult for him to move. It was nothing like a game, where as long as Health did not hit zero, he could keep hopping around like nothing had happened. If someone blew his head apart with a single shot, he would still die immediately. However, Meng Zu had discovered another function of Health: only when he had completely recovered would it return to full. When he was in a harmful environment he could not detect, his Health would also decrease. That gave him another way to sense danger.

Sometimes, Meng Zu complained that other transmigrators either joined the righteous side or had powerful backers to rely on, aside from their cheats. Yet he was merely a mercenary with no background, walking the gray line.