"Good thing they haven't put the walls up yet."
After setting Mary Jane down, Lu Wen brushed the cement dust off himself.
Just now, he had run to the edge midway along a floor of this building under construction, calculated the angle, and launched himself in a massive leap the moment Mary Jane appeared. After catching her, he landed squarely on the concrete of the same floor.
And just as he had said, it was lucky the walls weren't up yet, or he would have crashed into one with her in his arms and ended up covered in dust.
"Uh... th-thank you."
Still shaken, Mary Jane looked at the stranger who had suddenly appeared and saved her, and stammered out her thanks.
"Don't mention it. Someone hired me."
Lu Wen didn't spare her another glance. Honestly, he didn't much like this version of MJ. It had nothing to do with the actress's looks; he personally just found this version's characterization unlikable.
"Oh my God! You really came."
Peter, who had missed his catch, swung over on a web. Mary Jane immediately went up and hugged him.
"Of course. I accepted your job, so naturally I'll see it through," Lu Wen said without turning around. He was watching the dark shape rapidly approaching.
"Mary Jane, are you okay?" Peter gazed tenderly at Mary Jane through his torn mask.
"I'm fine." Mary Jane also gazed tenderly at the man who had once again stood before her in a moment of peril.
As for how that peril had come about, never mind that. The point was, he was standing before her.
"Hey, Peter! I'm not interrupting, am I?"
Just as the two looked about to share a kiss to set the mood, Harry, who was tangled up with Sandman, called out to his teammate.
Seeing Harry nearly get slapped off his glider by Sandman, Peter immediately shot out a web and went to help, without even having time to say anything to Mary Jane.
Lu Wen paid them no attention. His gaze stayed locked on the black figure darting through the shadows.
Seeing his opponent rapidly approaching, Lu Wen had no intention of passively waiting for the attack. He left Mary Jane behind and ran upstairs.
After running up two floors, he stopped in a relatively open area, casually picked up a brick, and hurled it into the darkness!
Boom!
He had actually thrown that brick with the force of a cannonball.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't have any beef, do we?"
Venom Eddie crawled out of the darkness, his long scarlet tongue hanging out, his tone flippant yet probing.
He hadn't gone straight in to bite Lu Wen's head off. The lightweight version of Spider-Sense Venom gave him was stabbing at his brain so hard his nerves hurt.
"True, but someone hired me to take you down! Besides, I'm a little interested in that black parasite on you. If you'd consider handing him over yourself, I could spare your life."
"Roar!!!"
Venom opened its huge mouth and let out an angry roar, spittle flying.
That remark about a black parasite had clearly struck a nerve.
Venom struck first. Black goo wrapped around Eddie's body as it launched itself forward, claws aimed straight at Lu Wen's face.
It wasn't slow. An ordinary person would have had their skull split open by that blow.
But to Lu Wen's enhanced senses, it was nothing special. He stepped aside, raised a hand to catch Venom's wrist, and used its momentum to slam it down.
Bang!
Venom was smashed bodily into the concrete floor, sending rubble flying and leaving a shallow crater.
"Decent reflexes. A little short on strength, though." Lu Wen let go and took a step back.
Venom crawled out of the crater and tilted its head, clearly not having expected a human to possess that kind of strength.
It bared a mouthful of sharp teeth and let out a low growl. The black goo covering it began to writhe and swell, its body visibly growing two sizes larger.
"Roar!"
This time, it had learned its lesson. Instead of lunging straight at him, it rapidly climbed the wall under cover of darkness, circled around from the side to get above Lu Wen, then hurtled down like a black cannonball.
Lu Wen glanced up and raised his right arm across his body to block.
Venom's claws struck his forearm with a dull impact, as if they had hit a steel plate. They only sliced through his sleeve, leaving just three faint white marks on the exposed skin.
"That's it?"
Lu Wen caught Venom by the throat, tightened his fingers, and hauled it straight out of midair before slamming it hard into the floor again.
This time, he used even more force. Venom's entire upper body sank into the concrete, cracks spreading around it like a spiderweb.
Eddie gave a muffled grunt inside the symbiote. Venom struggled to break free, but Lu Wen's hand stayed immovable as an iron vise.
"Let go! Let go!" Venom's voice grew chaotic as Eddie's consciousness and the symbiote's took turns roaring. "How are you so strong?"
"A little stronger than you." Without a change in expression, Lu Wen stood up with it in his grip, turned toward a nearby steel beam, and flung Venom at it.
Venom hit the steel beam with a dull thud and slid to the floor. The black goo covering it began to contract and break apart, exposing half of Eddie's face.
The ringing vibration of the steel caused some discomfort to the noise-sensitive Venom.
Once the sound faded, the black goo rapidly wrapped around Eddie's body and crawled swiftly toward a window.
Lu Wen's pupils contracted slightly. He lunged forward, grabbed Venom's back, and tore hard!
"Gaaah-" Venom Eddie let out a howl of pain!
With that pull, Lu Wen tore a chunk of Eddie's flesh and a large patch of Venom off his back.
Venom turned and roared at Lu Wen again, then raised a hand and shot out a web to make a quick escape, the torn portion of its back rapidly healing.
Lu Wen dropped the flesh and black goo onto the floor. This small remnant of Venom abandoned Eddie's flesh, quickly gathered into a ball, and sprang toward Lu Wen, attempting to take him as a host.
Lu Wen simply stepped back, dodging the little lump of Venom, and hooked a steel reinforcing bar up with his foot. When it sprang up again, he skewered it.
Even impaled, Venom wouldn't settle down. It tried to crawl along the bar toward Lu Wen's hand, but just as it was about to touch his skin, an orange light suddenly appeared and enveloped it.
Ssssss...
"Squeak, squeak!"
The little lump of Venom instantly felt a searing pain as though it had been thrown into a raging fire. It squeaked like a mouse, its surface sizzling as it roasted like a lump of burning asphalt.
Watching Venom shrivel into a ball under the radiation from his chest cannon, Lu Wen controlled the cannon's energy buildup, maintaining its current state as he carried Venom around the floor and found an empty iron bucket.
He snapped the steel bar, leaving the short section with Venom attached, and dropped it into the bucket. Then he pinched the bucket's opening shut, making a sealed iron cage for the weakened little lump of Venom.
He tried it, and this time he could put it into the System Space.
He had tried when it was skewered on the bar, but couldn't put it in. The system's explanation was that the System Space functioned as a spatial inventory and could not store living beings with complete independent consciousness or complete soul consciousness. It could only store inorganic matter and life without independent sentience.
To store a living being, it had to be sealed, with an outer restriction isolating it.
Sure enough, after beating Venom half to death and enclosing it in an iron shell, he could put it inside.
If he wanted to capture people in the future, he would have to beat them unconscious and then seal them, physically or magically, before he could lock them in the System Space.
"Aah!!!"
Having just finished dealing with Venom, Lu Wen heard a scream. He turned to see Peter being sent flying by Sandman's huge fist.
I've got Venom. No more slacking off. It's about time to wrap up this job.
Lu Wen strode to the edge of the floor, his chest beginning to charge.
Sandman, who was wildly swatting at Harry as though swatting a fly, had completely failed to notice that a heavy hitter behind him was charging up a big move.
Boom!
Having put some distance between them, Harry was just about to fire miniature missiles to blow Sandman apart when he saw an orange-yellow beam pierce Sandman's enormous body. Then, with a boom, the sand-and-stone giant, its chest and abdomen blasted hollow, broke in two and collapsed onto the ground, unable to pull itself together again.
Before you continue