Why Are You So Proficient? (Part 2)

Peter was startled, then shouted toward the door, "Stop! You can’t do that! They’re afraid of this, stop…"

Seeing that the people outside showed no reaction at all, Peter looked around again. He rushed to the corner and said to the purple Slime, "Hurry up and bond with me. I’ll get you out of here!"

With nowhere to hide, the Symbiote could only crawl onto Peter’s arm again. In an instant, the purple Spider-Man reappeared. He slammed hard into the glass observation window. The glass shattered on impact, and the entire building trembled.

Drake dodged to the side without the slightest hint of panic. He took out his phone, pressed a few buttons, and said, "It got out again. Activate the emergency protocol!"

The moment Spider-Man rushed out of the room, he saw a large number of armed personnel charging toward him. The purple Symbiote said to Peter, "Run! They’ll kill you!"

Looking at the dark gun barrels pointed at him, Peter said, "Don’t panic. I’ve got experience!"

As he spoke, he stretched out a hand toward the wall, then froze. The armed personnel facing him were also stunned by his gesture, unsure what he was trying to do.

Peter said helplessly in his mind, "Whenever I make this gesture, could you please cooperate and shoot webbing?"

"Webbing? What’s that?"

"Use your Slime to make thin but tough spider webs, stick them to the wall, and let me swing across."

"What??? …Fine, I’ll try!"

In the brief instant that followed, the armed personnel opened fire. Peter sprinted forward and stretched a hand toward the wall. A strand of purple webbing stuck to it. Using his running momentum, Peter swung through the air, kicked down two armed personnel who were firing at him, and landed behind them.

Peter looked out the window and muttered, "Dr. Dora should be on the third floor… Get ready! Jump!"

"Wait, human!! Are you insane?! This is the thirty-second floor. I might not be able to—"

Before the raspy female voice could finish, Peter burst forward, smashed through the building’s glass, and went into free fall.

He even shouted in midair, "Woohoo!!!"

"You really are insane!!!" the Symbiote screamed in his mind.

Just before he hit the ground, Peter stretched a hand toward the wall. A purple web caught him, and he swung with its momentum, kicked open a window, and landed in front of Dora, who was holding a stack of documents.

"Perfect!"

"Help…"

Dora pushed up her glasses and asked, "Is the plan going smoothly?"

"The plan changed. Drake sent guards to hunt me down, so where’s the security room? We need to get the map first."

"Follow me."

Ten minutes later, on the rooftop of another high-rise in Brooklyn District, Eddie and Matt stood at the edge, watching the firelight coming from inside the Life Foundation building. Matt said somewhat helplessly, "I knew it. That kid is always like this. It’s unrealistic to expect him to infiltrate anywhere. He only knows how to force his way in."

At that moment, Eddie picked up his phone. The cold light reflected across his face, making his expression seem even more indifferent. He said, "The map’s here. Get ready to move."

At the same time, in the underground level of the Life Foundation building, Thor rolled on the spot and dodged the attack coming from across the room.

He looked back at the ordinary people huddled in the corner. There were homeless people, elderly people, and crying children. The anesthetic injected into their bodies was taking effect. Other than curling up and trembling in the corner, they could not even run away.

And Thor was facing a man who had gone mad.

After Thor had been sent underground disguised as a homeless man, the people in lab coats injected every one of them with anesthetic. Then they picked out a man from the group and threw him into a laboratory.

Before long, the person they had thrown inside charged out in a frenzy and began madly attacking the others. Meanwhile, the people in lab coats merely watched coldly from behind the observation window. "Second-generation Subject 0083. Combat capability has increased significantly. Sanity remains insufficient."

Thor was completely unaffected by the anesthetic. Seeing the crazed man about to attack those unarmed civilians, he could only step forward to fight him.

The madman kept lunging at the crowd. Thor bent his knees and lowered his center of gravity, staring intently at his movements. The moment the man shifted his feet, Thor immediately rammed into him, attacked his lower body, disrupted his balance, and sent him staggering back several steps.

Compared to Peter’s Superhuman Strength and Matt’s superb technique, this madman was highly aggressive, but clearly not nearly as outrageous as either of them.

Thor was a battle-hardened warrior. In the cosmos, he had fought every strange race imaginable, and his combat experience was incomparably rich. He quickly found the man’s weakness.

This lunatic was crazy and strong, but he had no reason and could not see through Thor’s feints. Thor would often pretend to lunge left and bait him into attacking right, then suddenly stick out a leg to trip him before unleashing a barrage of punches.

The researchers outside the observation window frowned. One of them picked up a radio and said to the other end, "Activate the emergency protocol. Send someone over to deal with this Batch of Goods."

Inside the room, Thor raised both arms and blocked another wave of attacks from the madman. He shook his wrists and looked at his arms. Several claw wounds had already been carved into them, and he was bleeding heavily.

Just then, a mass of Slime suddenly erupted from the madman’s body. Immediately afterward, a huge monster appeared in the center of the room. It opened its giant mouth full of sharp teeth and roared at Thor. Thor gritted his teeth and said, "You again? Are you Symbiotes never going to stop?!!"

"Damn it! How did they get into the Nine Realms??? What are the troops guarding the external passages even doing? When I get back, I’m going to drill them hard!!"

A crazed Symbiote was not something Thor, with his mere mortal body, could withstand. The enormous Symbiote monster charged headfirst into him, smashing Thor into the wall. Two of his ribs broke, and both arms he had used to block the impact were fractured.

Thor gritted his teeth, coughed up two mouthfuls of blood, and still climbed to his feet, continuing to stand in front of the ordinary people.

The insane Symbiote roared again. Just as it lunged into the air, a purple figure flashed past overhead.

With a deafening bang, the crazed Symbiote crashed to the floor. A much smaller purple figure had grabbed it by the throat and was pounding it viciously.

Only after the crazed Symbiote had been beaten back into the man’s body did Spider-Man stand up.

At that moment, intense alarms rang throughout the entire building. The lights began to Blink, and piercing sirens filled every room. Spider-Man turned around and saw armed guards rushing into the room. He nodded at Thor, then said to the Symbiote in his mind, "Buddy, get ready to go big!"

"Go big? What does that mean?"

"You…" Peter said in disbelief. "Are you really a Symbiote? Don’t you know the Symbiote routine?"

"Like suddenly turning into a sharp-toothed monster, then using countless Slime tentacles to grab everything and swing it around wildly…"

"I…" The Symbiote said despairingly, "Only that lunatic Venom does things like that! I’m an agile-type Symbiote! I’m not one of those violent maniacs!"

"Don’t worry about that! Hurry up and get ready. Do what I say, they’re about to fire! Three… two… one!!!"

Along with the muzzle flashes, purple Slime erupted outward. A purple Symbiote monster appeared in the middle of the room, punched several armed personnel blocking its way into the air, and jumped out the window.

At the main entrance, a group of armed personnel rushed out in pursuit. Seeing that he had achieved his goal, Spider-Man prepared to leave.

But then, glass suddenly exploded somewhere over a dozen floors up in the Life Foundation building, and a huge gray figure jumped down.

A silver-gray Symbiote slammed a fist into the ground and said, "Phantom!! Don’t think you can escape!!"

"Riot!! You traitor to the Agents of the Cosmos!!" the female voice roared.

"I think your Symbiote species has some misunderstanding about me. I really never abused Venom! The two of us worked together quite happily!"

"Venom?? You’re Venom’s former host???"

"You’re the one who went to the spaceport in Andromeda, blew up the dwarves’ spaceship, dumped shit on them, and publicly insulted their commander, causing the dwarves to blame everything on the Agents of the Cosmos??? Hahahahahahaha!!!"

"Wait! That wasn’t me, I’m—"

The silver-gray Symbiote had no intention of listening. With a roar, it charged at Spider-Man. The gray and purple Symbiotes instantly tangled together in battle.

While they were fighting fiercely, Eddie and Matt had already infiltrated the Life Foundation building.

Eddie looked at the map Spider-Man had sent over, and the two quickly reached the underground levels of the Life Foundation building. At that moment, Thor was transferring the ordinary people who had been injected with anesthetic.

Since Thor alone was far too slow at moving them, Matt could only stay behind to help him while Eddie headed alone for the underground core hub.

After working with Venom to take down a large number of security measures, then using Slime to pry open the core hub’s lock, Eddie smoothly entered the room where the Life Foundation stored all its data.

Getting in was one thing, but faced with that pile of complex machinery and layers upon layers of security procedures, Eddie said, "I’m just a reporter. Isn’t cracking this a little too much to ask?"

"Shut up and watch."

In an instant, Venom appeared. He controlled Eddie and walked over to the machine, performing a dazzling series of operations as he spoke. "Ha, it’s actually a downgraded civilian version. This thing is ancient. Relying on this to protect your data would be worse than keeping two dogs here."

"The hardware is terrible too. The output is absurdly slow. Let me see… He should fire all his programmers. The security program is as fragile as paper."

"If the idiot who designed this algorithm can earn such a high salary, then all I can say is that their boss has water in his brain."

Eddie asked in his mind, "What kind of person was your previous host? Why are you so proficient?"

Venom pushed up a pair of nonexistent glasses and said, "Found it. It’s right here!"

Eddie hurriedly looked over. At that moment, Matt, who had finished rescuing the people, also came over. Looking at the data flashing across the large screen, he said, "These should be transaction records between the Life Foundation and The Hand."

"Let me see… They sold The Hand quite a few Immortality Factor serums. Hm??? Why are they so cheap???"

"Oh, I get it!" Matt said as realization dawned on him. "I know why The Hand fell out with Kingpin!"

"Why?"

"Didn’t Kingpin previously sell The Hand a Batch of Goods of Immortality Factor serums? According to the information I investigated, he sold them at a very high price and claimed they were one-of-a-kind. Aside from official channels, he said only he could supply them."

"And then The Hand bought cheaper ones from the Life Foundation?"

"Exactly. The Hand must have felt they’d been conned. They had just spent a high price on a Batch of Goods from Kingpin, only to discover that what they bought was neither one-of-a-kind nor worth that much. Kingpin obviously would not give them a refund afterward, so of course the two sides fell out."

"The only question is, how can they sell them so cheaply? The production cost of this stuff should be high, shouldn’t it?" Matt said, stroking his chin.

Then Venom spoke up. "Because what they’re selling isn’t Immortality Factor serum at all. It’s Symbiote extract."

"Symbiote? Isn’t that what you are?"

"That’s right, but don’t compare me to those foolish members of my species. They actually let humans capture them and use them as test subjects. How embarrassing."

At that moment, a huge boom came from above. Eddie and Matt looked up together. Matt said to Eddie, "Go up and take a look first. I’ll stay here and copy the data."

After Eddie reached the surface, he found a purple monster pinning down a silver-gray monster and hammering it fiercely. The silver-gray monster screamed while saying, "Damn it!! Phantom!! How can you be this strong? Aren’t you the weakest one among the Agents of the Cosmos?!!"

"It’s not me!! It’s my host!!!"

The Symbiote called Phantom said with a hint of delight:

"He’s ridiculously strong!!!"

You can try guessing what this incident is about to stitch together. You definitely won’t guess it, hahahahaha!