The cold sea breeze swept the gun smoke and dust away from the docks, scattering the last echoes of gunfire.
A deathly silence hung over the docks, broken only by the muffled groans of the armed men strewn across the ground. Bullet holes riddled the steel sides of the shipping containers, and ruined guns lay scattered everywhere. The smugglers who had been so arrogant moments ago had all collapsed, twitching nonstop. Some were even foaming at the mouth.
The man before Rimuru trembled violently, cold sweat mingling with dust as it streamed down his face. His broken arm throbbed with excruciating pain, but the terror in his heart overwhelmed it as he faced the frightening figure before him: nearly two meters tall, clad head to toe in gold and white armor, with a mechanical dragon hovering at his side.
He had watched his companions get knocked ten meters into the air with ease-and those ten meters were height, not distance. Their boss had been punched into the shape of a flip phone. Now he was almost glad he had only broken an arm. He raised his head, his eyes full of fear and his teeth chattering so hard he couldn't even put a complete sentence together.
"I-I'll talk! I'll tell you everything! What do you want to know? Just ask!"
That left Rimuru feeling awkward. "Didn't I ask?"
System: "You really didn't. I don't even have eyes, and I could tell you just wanted to beat them up."
Uh...
Rimuru got a little heated. "You couldn't tell me without being asked? How did you ever make it in a gang? How can you be so clueless?"
The man nodded frantically, too afraid to look directly at the armor's coldly gleaming faceplate. His throat was dry and hoarse, and a sense of grievance welled up in him. "Inside these containers..."
"I didn't ask what's inside the containers. I asked who your boss is. Can't I look inside the containers myself?" Unbelievable. Why were these villains always so weird?
"My boss is Wilson Fisk. All this cargo belongs to him."
Wilson Fisk? Which Fisk? Why does that name sound familiar? Could it be Kingpin?
Rimuru asked suspiciously, "Does your boss go by the name Kingpin?"
The man froze for a moment, then nodded. Their boss did indeed go by Kingpin.
"What were you about to say was inside these containers?"
The man trembled at the question and stammered, "It's not cargo at all! It's people! Innocent men, women, and children who were kidnapped or tricked! They're Kingpin's merchandise. Wilson Fisk, the emperor of New York's underworld."
"We're just his low-level runners. Tonight we're secretly transporting people. These victims are being sent to an underground warehouse in Brooklyn. Some will be sold as slaves on the overseas black market, some will be used for illegal human experiments at underground clinics, and another group will be handed over to gangs to pay off debts or used to blackmail people."
Rimuru hurriedly opened the containers to check. Without exception, every one of them was full of people: men, women, and even children. Quite a few of them were Asian.
Seeing what lay before him, Rimuru raised an eyebrow slightly, his face inside the armor instantly turning cold.
Having spent so long in the Marvel Universe, he had naturally heard the name. He had seen news about the man before, too. He wasn't just New York's underworld emperor; he was also in politics. That made things a little tricky. Rimuru couldn't just go up and kill him.
Unlike world-overturning supervillains such as Loki and Ultron, or technology-wielding criminals like Ivan Vanko and Vulture who pursued profit, Wilson Fisk was an underground king rooted deep in New York's darkness.
He had no superpowers or high-tech armor, yet with his terrifying brute strength, ruthless and decisive methods, and underground connections and armed forces spread throughout the city, he held a firm grip on half of New York's illicit industries. Human trafficking, organ smuggling, loan-sharking, gang wars-there was no evil he wouldn't commit. It was said that forty percent of all crime in America could be traced back to him. Police, investigators, and ordinary gangs alike dared not provoke him lightly. He was the undisputed overlord who truly ruled New York's dark side from beneath its neon lights.
He normally lurked in the shadows, operating in secret and never personally involving himself in the petty business of low-level transfers. Rimuru hadn't expected that what he had stumbled across tonight would be human trafficking of the most heinous kind.
"So the boss behind this is that underworld big shot."
Rimuru straightened, all amusement gone from his voice, leaving only coldness. "Fuck, hiding behind the scenes and trading in living people, treating ordinary people like merchandise and test subjects? That's ruthless."
The man on the ground hurriedly shook his head, terrified of angering him. "That's really all we know! Mr. Kingpin is extremely cautious. His low-level subordinates can't get anywhere near his core plans! Every deal goes through a single line of contact. We've never even seen his face! All we know is that this group is crucial. If anything goes wrong, every one of us will be disposed of, without even a corpse left behind!"
At that very moment, in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s airborne command room thousands of miles away, an alarm sounded softly once again.
Hill quickly refreshed the live monitoring footage coming in from the port. Seeing the armed men lying all over the ground, along with some bound victims, her expression instantly grew grave.
"Director, the follow-up sweep of the port conflict is complete. Everyone involved has been incapacitated, and a large number of illegally detained civilians were found at the scene. The intelligence points clearly to Wilson Fisk, the leader of New York's underworld, as the man behind this human trafficking operation."
Nick Fury, who had been leaning back in his chair, abruptly sat upright. His one eye locked onto the dock footage on the screen, and his expression darkened completely.
The situations he feared most had come knocking one after another.
First came the strange car with unknown, forged authorization documents, then the Dragon Knight Armor Rimuru had developed in secret. Now Kingpin, the greatest hidden threat in New York's underworld, had been dragged into it as well-and over the most heinous kind of human trafficking, no less.
"Kingpin?" Fury tapped the desk lightly with his fingertips, his voice icy. "That guy's been a little too quiet lately. I thought he'd reined himself in. I didn't expect him to have the nerve to traffic people across borders on such a large scale."
No one understood the threat Kingpin posed better than S.H.I.E.L.D.
He seemed to be nothing more than a gang boss, yet he possessed terrifying physical strength that far surpassed an ordinary person's. After years in the shadows, he was meticulous and decisive in killing. His forces were deeply entrenched and had infiltrated every industry in New York. Most troublesome of all, he was in politics. On the surface, he was an exceptionally clean politician. He never left conclusive evidence of his crimes, and whenever something went wrong, his low-level subordinates took the fall. S.H.I.E.L.D. and the New York police had investigated missing-person cases many times, but had never managed to get anything on him.
"Director, should we deploy a special operations team immediately to secure the warehouse and rescue the victims?" an agent beside him asked in a low voice.
"Go ahead."
Fury had a feeling that tonight's events might uncover even more. His gaze returned to the gold-and-white armored figure standing on the docks.
Fury spoke in a low voice. "Sigh... it looks like Kingpin's smuggling crew is no longer the main attraction in tonight's farce."
On the screen, Rimuru raised a hand and activated the armor's area-wide scan. Pale blue scanning waves instantly swept across the entire port, penetrating every container and pinpointing ordinary people curled up in the dark, trembling. Most were women and children.
"An underground warehouse in Brooklyn, huh?"
Rimuru murmured under his breath, the interest in his eyes turning cold and hard.
This Kingpin big shot sells living people and exploits the innocent beneath New York. The darkness in this city is far more disgusting than I imagined. No wonder a bunch of weird villains keep popping up in New York. So your experiments are what made them all.
"Since I've run into this, there's no reason to stand by and do nothing."
Rimuru maneuvered the armor into a slight lean and spoke in a cold mechanical voice to the surviving criminals sprawled on the ground. "Tell your boss Kingpin that I'm taking everyone here tonight with me."
"And pass along a message: he doesn't get to make the rules in New York. If he does business in living people, he should be ready to pay the price."
With that, he paid no more attention to the criminals groaning all around him. He opened the containers one by one, comforted the frightened victims, and activated the armor's medical module to stabilize them.
"Gillvalis, notify S.H.I.E.L.D. and tell them to come clean up."
The heavy Dragon Knight Armor's thrusters erupted with brilliant flames, lifting it off the ground to hover steadily a hundred meters in the air. The mechanical dragon stretched out beside it in sync, a low mechanical rumble like a dragon's roar cutting through the night sky over the port as a blue trail streamed behind it.
"Next stop, Brooklyn."
Rimuru changed direction and shot through the air, racing toward New York's Brooklyn district amid the roar of the thrusters.
He wanted to see whether this underground king, who had dominated New York for years and whom no one dared provoke, would pay a sufficiently painful price for his human trafficking when he saw Rimuru in the Dragon Knight Armor.
Meanwhile, in the S.H.I.E.L.D. command room, Nick Fury watched the gold-and-red streak heading straight for Brooklyn on the monitor and rubbed his brow, his face full of resignation.
"Coulson, update the file."
"Add an associated individual: Wilson Fisk. Raise the incident rating. The Dragon Knight Armor has intervened in a New York human trafficking case for the first time. Its objectives are to rescue the victims and strike at the underworld. The scale of any further conflict is unknown."
He sighed deeply, his tone deeply complicated.
"I knew this kid's test flight with his new toy would cause trouble. Should I ask Tony, his guardian in name, to rein him in?"
"Tony stirs things up in the skies and in technology, and Rimuru's going straight for the powers ruling New York's underworld. Sooner or later, those two geniuses are going to turn this city upside down."
At the same time, deep inside a hidden underground warehouse in Brooklyn.
The dim, enclosed space was cold, damp, and foul-smelling. Rows of iron cages stood neatly arranged, crammed with frightened men and women. The muffled sobs of children echoed through the vast underground space, and the air was thick with fear, despair, and the smell of rust.
Meanwhile, on the top floor of Fisk Tower, an immensely imposing, powerfully built figure nearly two meters tall stood in the center of an office. His body beneath his black suit was knotted with muscle, and a violent aura surrounded him, warning strangers to keep away.
Kingpin slowly raised a hand, his fingertips rubbing a cold fountain pen. A bottomless gloom and ruthlessness filled his eyes.
The emergency communication his men had just sent him had cast a dark shadow over his previously calm mood.
An important low-level team transporting people had gone completely out of contact, and the dockside base had fallen entirely.
"Unknown armor? A mechanical dragon over ten meters long accompanying it?"
Kingpin quietly repeated the last intelligence his men had sent back. His deep voice carried a bone-chilling coldness, and the pressure around him abruptly dropped.
In his decades dominating New York's underworld, he had controlled countless forces and encountered countless ruthless people, but he had never heard of such a terrifying unknown figure appearing in New York.
"Stark's armor? No."
Kingpin immediately dismissed the idea.
He had long since heard of Tony Stark's Mark Armor. Its size, colors, and combat style were all completely different. This was definitely not a product of Stark Industries.
A stranger, an unknown with terrifying strength, had also managed to intercept his most secret human trafficking shipment with precision.
"A new variable? Or a trump card S.H.I.E.L.D. has been hiding?"
Kingpin frowned slightly, unable to understand how tonight's operation had been exposed. It had never occurred to him that tonight's events were purely an accident.
"No matter who you are."
"You dared touch my people, cut off my business, and break my rules. Tonight, Brooklyn's underground can serve as a grave for a new set of bones."