25: Chapter 25 Daredevil's Fear, Bloodline Fusion Upgrade

"Click."

The metal grille was pushed open.

Wearing his dark red blind vigilante suit, Matt Murdock leaped lightly from the ventilation duct, landing on the thick carpeted office floor like a cat.

There was no sound.

But as soon as Matt landed, his legs buckled uncontrollably, and he fell to one knee.

"Ugh..."

His stomach spasmed violently. Matt pulled down the lower half of his mask and leaned over the carpet, vomiting bile.

It was too terrifying.

As the distance closed, Matt's super senses spiraled completely out of control.

An ordinary person would only see Lynn sitting in a chair drinking wine. But in Matt's sensory World, the black-haired youth before him was not human at all.

He was an aggregation of countless types of extreme, dangerous auras.

Violent vitality, nuclear radiation temperatures hot enough to melt a person, the sulfurous smell of the abyss of Hell, and a thick, inescapable stench of blood. Every beat of Lynn's heart fell upon Matt's ears like a heavy hammer, slamming into his cranial nerves and giving him a splitting headache.

This was an absolute crushing of life levels.

"I don't like people dirtying my carpet."

Lynn sat in his leather executive chair, gently swiveling the red wine in his goblet, looking down at the retching Matt kneeling on the floor.

"Sorry."

Matt endured the extreme physiological discomfort, using his blind cane to stand up. "But this carpet originally belonged to a criminal. And you have taken over his evil in an even more brutal way."

Lynn chuckled and drained the red wine in his glass.

"Matt Murdock. A blind lawyer by day who fights for the poor, and Daredevil by night, getting beaten up on the streets in spandex."

Lynn set down the wine glass, ruthlessly exposing his identity. "Did you run into my building just to tell me this nonsense?"

Matt's whole body jolted. The other party actually knew his true identity perfectly well!

But he did not back down, tightening his grip on his billy clubs.

"You killed Kingpin, and Hells Kitchen will fall into chaos. Those rules you set are only meant to satisfy your dictatorial desires. You don't have the right to take the lives of others; the law..."

"Thud!"

A dull thud interrupted Matt's words.

Lynn casually grabbed a solid copper paperweight from the desk and, without looking, tossed it.

Under the passive enhancement of [Absolute Precision], the paperweight turned into an afterimage, striking Matt's chest with pinpoint accuracy.

"Ugh!"

Matt didn't even have time to react before the massive kinetic energy sent him flying backward, slamming heavily into the wall and instantly breaking two ribs.

"The law?"

Lynn stood up and walked slowly toward the fallen Matt, his eyes looking at him as if he were a ridiculous Joker.

"When Kingpin was alive, he used black money to bribe judges, Police, and politicians. Your law couldn't touch him. Every night you beat those drug dealers black and blue on the streets and send them to the station. The next day, they pay bail, return to the streets, and slaughter the families of the people who reported them."

Lynn raised his foot, stepping on Matt's chest and applying slight pressure.

"Your ridiculous 'no-kill rule' is the biggest tumor in this neighborhood. You're afraid to bear the guilt of killing, so you release them to continue harming others. Your self-satisfied hero games are just condoning crime."

"No... that's not it..." Blood leaked from the corner of Matt's mouth as he argued in pain, "Killing only creates more monsters!"

"But in front of monsters, only an even more vicious monster can maintain order."

Lynn cut him off coldly. "I killed Kingpin. I vaporized the gangs that wouldn't listen. From last night until now, the crime rate in Hells Kitchen is Zero. No one dares to rob civilians in my neighborhood because they know if they're caught by me, they won't even get a chance to go to court."

Lynn moved his foot and kicked Matt toward the edge of the shattered floor-to-ceiling window.

"Go back to your lawsuits, blind man. Don't bother me again. Otherwise, I don't mind New York having one less lawyer."

Matt clutched his broken ribs, lying in the rain.

His proud, steadfast convictions were shattered in the face of Lynn's cold facts and absolute power.

He didn't speak again, nor did he try to fight back, knowing it would be meaningless. Matt fired a cable and, dragging his heavily injured body, leaped gloomily into the rainy night.

Lynn watched Matt disappear into the darkness and withdrew his gaze with disdain.

In this crisis-ridden Marvel Universe, moral baselines are the most useless things. Only absolute power can dominate everything.

Just then.

On Lynn's left wrist, the Bloodtrix, which had been in a gray dormant state, suddenly erupted with high-frequency vibrations.

Deep within the watch face, a crimson light flickered like breathing.

[Gene bank restructuring complete.]

A cold, mechanical synthesized voice sounded directly in Lynn's mind.

[Detected host's recent intake of high-intensity genetic sequences: Mutated Hardening (Tombstone), Absolute Precision (Bullseye), Delayed Aging/Inferior Serum (Black Widow), Abyss Demon Crystal (Ancient Demon).]

[Beginning deep digestion and potential extraction...]

Lynn felt a burning sting on his wrist.

An extremely pure and massive surge of energy fed back from the Bloodtrix, flowing through his limbs like an electric current. The muscle fibers throughout his body tightened again, and his bone density became visibly more compact.

His basic physical fitness in human form underwent another terrifying leap!

A few seconds later, the burning sensation dissipated.

[Gene extraction complete.]

[Bloodtrix charging and core repair progress breakthrough: 10%!]

With this prompt, Lynn saw a subtle change in the Bloodtrix's face.

The inverted triangle core area, which could originally only hold a single pattern, split from the center with a very fine dark gold line, dividing it in two.

[System permissions updated.]

[Congratulations to the host for officially unlocking the core advanced function: Dual-Fusion!]

[Function Description: The host can simultaneously activate two known alien genes during transformation for a perfect fusion at the physical and energy levels, giving birth to a new alien demon god with dual characteristics.]

Listening to the explanation in his mind, Lynn's black pupils suddenly erupted with two bursts of fanatical light.

Dual-Fusion?!

This meant he could combine the absolute strength of "Four Arms" with the invincible defense of "Diamondhead"?

Or perhaps combine the extreme speed of "XLR8" with the million-degree heat of "Heatblast"?!

The stacking of combat power was definitely not as simple as one plus one equals two; it was a geometric explosion!

"Getting more and more interesting..."

Lynn stroked the Bloodtrix flashing with crimson light, his mouth curling into an extremely dangerous arc.

While Lynn was immersed in the joy of the Bloodtrix upgrade.

High above the distant skies of Queens, New York.

"Boom—!"

A meteorite trailing a long black flame smashed through the thick thunderstorm clouds.

The meteorite didn't hit the ground; instead, it accurately smashed through the roof of an abandoned warehouse.

Inside the warehouse.

The meteorite's outer shell cracked due to the high temperature.

A mass of viscous, pitch-black liquid organism, seemingly possessing its own consciousness, slowly crawled out from inside the meteorite.

It had no eyes, yet it could scent the aura of various life forms in the air.

Suddenly, the mass of black slime stopped crawling. It seemed to sense something and snapped toward the direction of central Manhattan—the direction of Fisk Tower.

There, a host aura as deep as a black hole existed, so powerful it made the slime instinctively tremble, yet it was an aura it desperately craved.

"Hiss—"

The black slime let out a faint hiss, transformed into a dark shadow, and quickly merged into the New York rainy night.