The Road Ahead, The Nature of War

"Stay here! Protect the colonel! I'm going after him!"

Luke leaped out of the metal apparatus, glanced around, and immediately pieced together what had happened.

He casually threw on his coat, ordering Rogers to guard the base, and the latter nodded instinctively.

Everyone watched as Luke bent his legs slightly and sprang upward.

The Super Soldier Template loaded, his body reborn.

Like a coiled cannonball, he launched straight from the bottom floor of the control room to the second.

Catching the railing with one hand, he flipped over cleanly and landed steadily on his feet.

Thankfully, the data-driven abilities from his character panel let him quickly adapt to his vastly enhanced physique.

Unlike Clark in his childhood, who often struggled with losing control of his powers!

Luke pushed off the ground, surging power flooding from within, and the concrete floor cracked into a web of fissures beneath him.

He tore through the air like a sweeping gale, kicking up a fierce gust.

With a heavy thud, the ground seemed to tremble.

His whole body shot forward like a sharp blade, leaving a blur in his wake!

In just two breaths, his tall figure had already reached the corridor.

That assassin sent by Hydra was clever, though.

Even while fleeing, he remembered to smash the button-controlled door, trapping the pursuers inside to buy time.

"Too bad, to me, it's as thin as paper!"

Luke didn't slow down or stop.

His straight-charging form suddenly accelerated, slamming through the thick metal door.

A loud bang echoed, and a clear human-shaped dent appeared in the door!

"Alright, I take that back. It did sting a little!"

Luke shook his head, admitting that metal door wasn't as fragile as paper—more like a thick wooden plank.

Bursting out of the secret base into the back room, Luke came to an abrupt halt, kicking up a gust that rattled the bookshelves.

Stepping outside, he saw the old woman from the antique shop, their contact, lying on the ground with two gunshot wounds.

And outside the door, a black sedan had already started.

The Hydra assassin was spraying wildly with a Thompson submachine gun.

Rat-a-tat-tat!

A hail of bullets shattered the car windows and mowed down a few plainclothes agents stationed outside.

The sudden eruption of gunfire sent pedestrians into a panic.

Afraid of getting caught in the crossfire, they ducked and fled, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Luke took a few strides out of the antique shop, ready to give chase, when the sedan parked at the entrance exploded instantly.

Blazing flames, a shocking shockwave—his tall figure stood firm within it, unshaken.

Watching the car carrying the Hydra assassin turn a corner and vanish at the end of the street, Luke let out a cold laugh and broke into a sprint.

"Why'd you stir up such a big mess?"

The Hydra member sent to pick him up asked, almost complaining.

Their mission was to assassinate Abraham Erskine and sabotage the Super Soldier Project—not to orchestrate a terrorist attack in New York!

Because once things blew up, escaping would come at a huge cost.

"There are two Super Soldiers! We've got pursuers... just drive!"

The assassin gasped, cold sweat trickling down his back, as if a fierce beast had locked onto him.

Even sitting in the getaway car, having shaken off the plainclothes agents, he still felt no sense of escape.

He was a plant Hydra had spent a lot of time and effort embedding into the military committee.

If Berlin hadn't ordered Erskine's elimination, he would never have exposed himself!

On the front lines, the Allied Nations and the Axis Powers fought with soldiers, guns, and leadership.

But in the intelligence war, it came down to cracking encrypted radio communications and the depth and duration of spy infiltration.

This assassin, named Gregg, was one of Hydra's longest-planted spies in New York, with access to the highest-level intelligence.

He could have played a much bigger role, but now, that chance was gone.

"Back in Berlin, the Fuhrer will personally award you a medal!"

The Hydra member driving the car said enviously.

"If I can make it back to Berlin, then I... wait! Someone's behind us!"

The assassin Gregg was just about to say that after finishing this mission, he planned to go home and get married, when the corner of his eye caught a tall figure sprinting toward them in the rearview mirror.

The Hydra member, who thought he'd made a clean getaway, stared wide-eyed in utter disbelief.

"I've had the pedal floored the whole time..."

He muttered.

Was there really someone in this world who could chase down a four-wheeled car on two legs?

The assassin Gregg quickly raised his gun, sticking his head out the window to return fire.

Luke leaped high into the air, dodging the submachine gun's spray, and landed squarely on the speeding car.

Then, using his hands like tearing paper, he ripped open the metal roof.

Gregg, sitting in the passenger seat, tossed aside his empty submachine gun, drew a pistol, and aimed at Luke, ready to pull the trigger.

Luke's expression was blank as he reached out with his right hand and grabbed the PPK automatic pistol.

With a bang, the 7.65mm small-caliber bullet slammed into his open palm, but it sounded like hitting a steel plate—a metallic clash.

Luke raised an eyebrow slightly, squeezed hard, and crushed the pistol into a lump of scrap metal.

"Monster!"

The driver screamed in terror.

But Luke found him too noisy, grabbed him with one hand, and tossed him aside like trash.

Crash!

The man smashed through a shop window on the street, collapsed, and lay still—alive or dead unknown.

"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place! Hail Hydra..."

Gregg, seeing the terrifying power Luke possessed, felt despair creep in.

After shouting Hydra's motto, he prepared to bite down on the potassium cyanide hidden in his teeth.

He had the resolve to die for the organization and didn't fear death.

"I already know you're Hydra—how could I not see that coming?"

Luke curled his lip, as if he'd anticipated it, and reached out to dislocate the man's jaw.

In his eyes, the other's movements were too slow; if he focused, it was like watching a freeze-frame, one frame at a time.

Hydra was a tightly managed, massive organization. Every spy and agent sent on missions, to prevent capture or discovery that could lead to intelligence leaks, would smear poison on their collars or hide it in hollowed-out false teeth.

That much, the Strategic Scientific Reserve knew.

Ignoring Gregg's terrified gaze, Luke lifted him out of the car like a chicken.

A few minutes later, Rogers and Carter drove up.

They brought the captured assassin and the driver back to the antique shop in Brooklyn.

"Nice work, Luke!"

Back at the secret base, Colonel Phillips praised him.

He'd seen the human-shaped dent Luke left in the wall and heard about the incredible feats of outrunning a car and stopping a bullet with his palm.

Looking at Luke, who was now taller and more muscular than before, the colonel seemed to make a decision.

"You all step out. I need to talk to Cahill."

Glancing at the bustling medical bay, Colonel Phillips raised his voice.

He shooed out the doctors and nurses, then turned to Luke with a grave expression.

"Something on your mind, Colonel?"

Luke shrugged on his coat. As one of only two "Super Soldiers,"

he, like Rogers, couldn't escape the blood draws.

Dr. Erskine had been shot and killed, and all the samples were used up—it shouldn't have been this way.

The original plan had only one Super Soldier, but with Luke added, the remaining serum samples had been consumed too.

Even with a wealth of research data to support it, reverse-engineering Dr. Erskine's serum formula

remained, for now, a daunting task.

The only hope now lay in the blood of Luke and Rogers—the key to replicating the serum was hidden in their genetic code.

But the military's fantasy was ultimately a fragile illusion.

First off, Luke wasn't even a true Super Soldier.

The energy from the serum had all gone into activating his cheat, unlocking a gift pack, and hadn't done a thing to transform his body.

This was also why Luke had felt almost no pain after the injection.

Moreover, he had loaded the Superman Template.

Trying to extract anything from his blood was nothing short of a fool's dream.

Even decades later, what the military produced through so-called reverse engineering were nothing but inferior products riddled with severe side effects.

"Have you thought about your future path, Luke?"

Colonel Phillips's expression was stern as he spoke in a low voice. "Replicating the serum formula and creating new Super Soldiers won't succeed in the short term. With the plan scrapped, those politicians will do everything they can to shift the blame off themselves!"

"As a fellow Super Soldier, I have higher hopes for you. Rogers is a good man, but you outperform him in every aspect. I can see it, Luke—you're a born warrior. You won't hesitate when it comes to enemies!"

"In that regard, Rogers falls far short. He still clings to some naive idealism. That does nothing to help win the war!"

"The essence of war is plunder! It's violence! It's a means to seize benefits! Even though we call it a just war, a war for freedom, war itself has no good or evil!"

"Rogers doesn't understand this truth. I hope you can."

Hearing this, Luke was greatly surprised. He hadn't expected the colonel to see things so clearly.

After all, in the original story, the man had only come across as a typical stubborn, rigid military figure.

ps: Dear readers, any votes? Any collections?