Doctor Shinigami stood with his hands behind his back, looking down at the training ground below.
Two hundred handpicked Hydra commandos stood there.
They were all burly and well-equipped, with a cold, murderous glint in their eyes.
This is the "absolute trump card" that Hydra South American Branch has painstakingly built over decades, using countless sums of money and brainwashing techniques.
But in Doctor Shinigami's eyes, this was just primitive people showing off their stone axes.
"This is what you call elite?" Doctor Shinigami turned around, his tone full of undisguised disdain. "Slow-witted, stiff-muscled, their brains filled with superfluous emotional circuits. Useless except as cannon fodder."
The Hydra tactics instructor standing to the side, his face flushed, couldn't help but retort, " Mr. Schmidt, these soldiers were selected through Siberia Winter Project! They wiped out an entire Navy SEALs!"
"Seals? In Shocker's grand plan, that level of combat strength wouldn't even qualify them to be gatekeepers."
He walked to the control panel, his fingers flying across a row of red buttons.
"Since you're so confident, let's take a test."
The gates of the training ground suddenly opened.
The elders leaned out, hoping to catch a glimpse of some enormous bio-engineered behemoth or a heavy armored vehicle.
But no monsters rushed out; instead, three strange figures dressed in black bodysuits and wearing masks with bizarre patterns on their faces emerged.
They were thin, even looking somewhat malnourished, and carried no firearms, only oddly shaped short knives.
"Three?" the instructor sneered. "Two hundred fully armed Hydra elites? Are you kidding me?"
Doctor Shinigami ignored the noisy fly and simply uttered a single word into the Mike: "Begin."
"Babble--!!"
The three strange men in black moved simultaneously.
Before the assault team members could even raise their guns, the black shadow had already crashed into the crowd.
There was no tactical evasion, and no cover for firing.
A commando pulled the trigger, and the bullet struck the monster in the chest.
An ordinary person would have collapsed long ago, but this strange man only shuddered slightly, as if he felt no pain, and then with a backhand stroke, he sliced open the team member's throat.
"Babble--!"
Strange screams rose and fell.
The three strange men moved in perfect unison, cooperating with each other, using their bodies to block bullets and their severed arms as weapons.
Less than ten minutes.
Two hundred elite Hydra lay dead in pools of blood, their cries of agony echoing across the field.
The three strange men remained standing.
Their bodies were riddled with holes; some had their intestines spilling out, while others had half their heads severed, revealing the still-beating biochemical brain tissue inside.
But they remained in neat rows, facing the Doctor Shinigami on the high platform, and let out those screams that made people's sanity drop wildly.
"Ee--! Ee--!"
The instructor was ashen-faced, his legs trembling, and he couldn't utter a single word as he looked at the hellish scene below.
"See that?" Doctor Shinigami spread his arms wide, taking a deep, blissful breath. "These are Shocker Combatant. They feel no pain, are tireless, and absolutely obedient. At my command, even if they're left with only a head, they'll bite off an enemy's ankle."
The Hydra elders in the stands looked excited.
"This... this is insane." The bald old man covered his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, his voice muffled. "Don't they have pain receptors? That one... that one with its intestines spilling out, was still trying to attack?"
"Pain is a biological self-protection mechanism; for consumables, it's a redundant design." Doctor Shinigami turned around. "As long as the central nervous system isn't damaged, they will execute the final command until the body completely collapses."
He walked to the console and brought up a set of data models.
"Gentlemen, let's do the math. Training a Hydra agent, from selection, physical training, tactical indoctrination to equipment provision, takes at least five years and costs over three hundred thousand dollars. If they are killed in action, the compensation and the cost of retraining them are astronomical."
Doctor Shinigami pointed to the three convulsing monsters below.
" Shocker Combatant, raw materials are free—anyone will do. Homeless people, prisoners of war, even terminally ill patients. The modification surgery takes three days and costs only three thousand dollars."
Doctor Shinigami held up three fingers, his smile so radiant it sent chills down one's spine.
"No psychological counseling needed, no need to worry about betrayal, and no need for a pension. As long as their central nervous system isn't completely destroyed, they will execute the final command until the body completely collapses."
Three thousand dollars...
The other withered elder's eyes lit up; greed overcame fear.
"If it's this price, we can build an army."
"Not just the military."
Doctor Shinigami corrected, "It's a tsunami. It's Locust swarm."
"Imagine ten thousand, a hundred thousand inexplicably strong, painless monsters storming into Times Square in New York, storming the White House in Washington. How many could S.H.I.E.L.D..'s so-called super agents kill? Even if Captain America were resurrected, could he fight ten? A hundred?"
"When their ammunition ran out, when their shields could no longer be raised, when their spirits crumbled from the killing, our fighters continued to surge forward, trampling over the corpses of their comrades and biting through their throats."
The voice of Doctor Shinigami was full of seductive power, echoing throughout the hall.
"That's Shocker's philosophy—quantitative change leads to qualitative change. As long as there are enough of them, even if they're gods, I'll kill them without hesitation."
The bald old man finally put down his handkerchief.
"We have as much raw material as we need from South America," the old man said ominously. "The homeless in the slums, prisoners of war from anti-government forces, even the entire population of some remote villages..."
That's right.
Doctor Shinigami nodded in satisfaction, and even patted the old man on the shoulder—though it was through a handkerchief, which was unusual for him.
"Bring them all over. Also, expand the underground laboratory; I want to build an assembly line."
He didn't want to listen to these old guys' nonsense anymore, so he waved his hand to signal them to see him out.
After seeing off these old guys, Doctor Shinigami went into the deeper parts of the laboratory.
This is his private space, filled with glass jars containing various deformed biological tissues.
Doctor Shinigami is not satisfied with being a basic combatant.
Those were just cannon fodder, meat shields used to deplete the enemy's ammunition.
The real trump card is a "weird general" like Bucky.
He walked to a dissection table with an Andean vulture nailed to it.
The raptor was not dead yet; its chest cavity had been cut open, and its heart was still beating weakly, but a pair of mechanical turbines had been transplanted into its wings.
"Where are the limits of bioengineering?" Doctor Shinigami picked up his scalpel, his eyes focused. "Combining the wild genes of animals with human intelligence, and then adding the cold ruthlessness of machinery... that's the right path for evolution."