Black Market Island was even more prosperous and bustling at night than during the day.
Many killers, assassins, and prostitutes were night owls. Gone was their daytime listlessness; every one of them was brimming with energy.
Hawkins and Mark suddenly appeared on the crowded street. The bustling street fell abruptly silent, followed by an unending chorus of blades being drawn.
The seemingly ordinary pedestrians and vendors transformed one after another, every one of them becoming a cold-blooded killer.
The closest killer to Hawkins and Mark was a passing woman. The second the two appeared, she drew a serrated dagger and turned to stab Mark in the waist.
Although Mark had once been severely injured by Rook's Meteor Hammer and sent flying by George's staff—
He was actually very strong. At the very least, dealing with ordinary killers like these took no effort at all.
Before the female assassin could touch Mark, Silver Wolf's claws sliced open her throat. Her eyes widened, and she fell straight to the ground.
Her collapse was like the sounding of an attack horn. The killers continuously closed in on the two of them, wielding every conceivable weapon, but Mark blocked them all. One after another, they died beneath Silver Wolf's claws.
"You really think possessing a Cursed Relic means you can do whatever you please?"
Suddenly, a bald head emerged beneath Mark's feet. Baldhead sneered, grabbed Mark's leg, and dragged him directly underground.
Seeing Mark get pulled underground, the other killers began stirring again.
Hawkins looked up at the few killers on the rooftops, then turned to those before him and asked, "Do you really think I'm weaker than my own subordinate?"
"What's strange about a boss being weaker than his subordinate? You don't think a few words can scare us off, do you?" A mocking laugh came from the crowd.
At that moment, a throwing knife shot in from outside Hawkins's field of vision. Hawkins raised a hand and caught it perfectly, smiling as he said, "Then let's give it a try!"
With a flick of his wrist, the throwing knife pierced through the crowd and struck the killer who had just spoken.
In an instant, several killers lunged out from the crowd. Before they could touch Hawkins, they suddenly exploded instead. If it had been the old Hawkins, he really might have been caught off guard. The problem was that Mother Hawkins's thought speed was synchronized with Mother's.
Put simply, he was equivalent to constantly being in a state of Brain Overclocking—and at a hundredfold overclocking, at that.
To everyone else's senses, a second passed in the blink of an eye. But in his perception, a second was stretched infinitely long, equivalent to several hundred seconds.
Thus, when flesh and blood exploded outward, he could clearly see a bone stabbing toward him. He calmly evaded the bone's attack, twisting sideways and stepping back without even getting a drop of blood on himself.
In other words, there was a cold-blooded killer in the crowd wielding a Cursed Relic. This was definitely not going to be the final attack.
Hawkins's eyes rapidly darted up, down, left, and right before his gaze locked onto a dwarf. The dwarf was far shorter than an ordinary person. Every step he took through the crowd deliberately avoided others' lines of sight, while he tucked his hair into other people's clothes.
That hair was long and thin. With the right technique, it could easily pierce through clothing and reach a target's skin.
"Now this is more like it."
Hawkins smiled faintly. These killers were less killers than bandits.
Granted, there was the factor of their overwhelming numbers, but more importantly, this world's civilization was far too backward. So-called killers were really just a pack of common men who dared to kill.
Hawkins had already noticed that these people possessed almost no technique. They were all wild and untrained, and even their ambushes were extremely crude.
The only one who had surprised him even slightly was probably the bald man who had dragged Mark underground.
Right!
What was going on with Mark now?
Within Eternal Space, Mother opened the Chat Group in her consciousness and asked, "Mark, are you dead?"
No one answered. After a moment, Ai Miye finally sent, "Hawkins, Mark is fighting someone underground. He opened a video."
So Hawkins opened the video. Sure enough, Mark and Baldhead were exchanging blows underground.
Baldhead was quite strong. Though he possessed no Curse Power, a layer of soil covered his body's surface, and it could actually withstand Silver Wolf's claws.
The soil was not pushed aside by their presence, nor were they injured by its presence. If Baldhead could do this because of his Cursed Relic, then what about Mark?
Mark himself had no ability to burrow underground. Hawkins was certain of that.
He had been dragged underground by Baldhead. Under normal circumstances, once Baldhead let go, Mark should have been trapped in the soil—or even crushed until his body exploded.
Yet the truth was that he was neither trapped nor exploded. Instead, he was fighting Baldhead underground in full swing.
What was protecting Mark?
Curse Power?
Mother's thinking ability was beyond human imagination. From a single phenomenon, Mother could see through to the essence hidden behind it.
At that moment, because of Mark's underground battle, Hawkins realized the true nature of Curse Power—Probability Power.
Probability, or chance, reflected the likelihood of a random event occurring.
A random event was an event that might or might not happen under identical conditions.
For example, Mark had now been dragged underground. If the overall probability of the event was 100%, and there was a 99% chance that he would be injured but also a 1% chance that he would not be injured, then when Curse Power covered his body, the chance of not being injured would be amplified by Curse Power to 99%. As one rose, the other fell, and the probability of injury would naturally be suppressed to 1%.
As long as his luck was not so terrible that it dropped below zero, he definitely would not be injured.
Hawkins immediately thought of George's Negative Curse Power. If the Curse Power they possessed was Positive Curse Power that increased probability, then Negative Curse Power should decrease probability.
One increased while the other decreased—the Great Path was simplicity itself!
However, Hawkins soon had another thought. Since the essence of Curse Power was Probability Power, why could Mark not burrow underground before, yet now move freely beneath the earth?
He dodged an assassin's sneak attack and tried covering his body in Curse Power, using his thoughts to control it in an attempt to sink into the ground. The result, however, was failure.
"No. Mark's Curse Power isn't helping him burrow into the ground. It's a manifestation of Curseguard. Mark doesn't actually have the ability to burrow underground."
Suddenly, Hawkins understood why his attempt to burrow had failed.
Although Curse Power was Probability Power, it had no inherent target. It merely increased a certain probability. If an object did not possess the relevant qualities to begin with, it could not conjure the corresponding probability of those qualities out of thin air.
It was like someone wanting to run a little faster. With Curse Power's blessing, there was a certain chance that he could run faster. But if that person wanted to fly, without wings or propellers, he could not fly even with Curse Power's blessing.
Furthermore, Curse Power was not sensitive to matter in the Real World and could barely affect matter in the Real World.
Other than the Curse Caster herself or himself, Curse Power only bestowed enhancements upon Cursed Relics.
Hawkins rapidly organized his discoveries while absentmindedly killing the killers who tried to attack him one after another.
Although discovering the essence of Curse Power was a leap forward, it also gave rise to countless questions. For instance, why did the Dream Realm possess Probability Power, and what was the Dream Realm's essence?
And without sufficient information, even with Mother's thinking ability, Hawkins could not arrive at answers to those questions.
Reasoning was not imagining things out of thin air. It was gathering information, summarizing information, and making reasonable judgments.
Without information, there could be no judgment.
Hawkins put away his thoughts. For now, he should hurry and finish the task at hand.
"Blinded by profit—you've seen so many people die, yet you still don't know fear. Isn't it good to stay alive?"
Hawkins looked at the killers around him and sighed softly. The air around him compressed slightly, then blew outward carrying the Masha Virus.
Wherever the wind passed, the killers infected first swayed like drunkards. They struggled to stand steady but could not, while their breathing gradually became ragged and their vision blurred completely.
Very soon, they collapsed one after another, utterly ceasing to breathe.
The killers farther back in the crowd, who had originally been itching to make a move, all changed expression at the sight. They immediately turned and fled like mad, every one of them beginning to run.
Gold Coins were good, but only if one lived long enough to spend them.
Hawkins did not pursue the killers. Instead, through the faint tremors in the ground, he quickly found where Mark and Baldhead were fighting.
He slowly raised his hands, and Ball Lightning appeared in both of them.
A massive electric current centered on his body, forming an enormous electromagnetic field.
The surrounding soil began to float upward. Then an earth dragon drew in vast amounts of soil and shot swiftly into the sky, while Mark and Baldhead were affected as well, dragged from underground to the surface even as they fought.
Mark was kicked by Baldhead and sent flying into the air, where he was caught by the floating Hawkins.
"Damn it, I'm running!"
Seeing the earth dragon in the sky, Baldhead's expression changed at once. He glanced at Hawkins and tried to burrow underground to escape, but before he could jump below, his body involuntarily floated into the air.
Like a mongrel in water, he frantically paddled and flailed his limbs, but he could not break free from Hawkins's magnetic field control at all.
Mark asked in surprise, "Captain, what ability is this? Can it be exchanged for?"
"It's just ordinary Electromagnetism, merely an application of magnetic fields," Hawkins answered calmly.
Mark froze for a moment before asking, "So... Electricity-Generating Cells?"
"More or less. I'll post some knowledge on the Forum later. Study it properly," Hawkins replied, narrowing his eyes.
Though he brushed it off in a single sentence, achieving control on this scale actually required an enormous amount of calculation. If Hawkins had relied solely on his own brain, even doubling his Overclocking would not have made it possible.
But now Mother handled the calculations. Hawkins only needed to control it, and everything became simple.