Chapter 1653: An Unjust Loss, and Going Home

While his clones were busy, Luke slowly counted his gains.

The four Death Soldiers added up to more than 30,000 experience and credit points.

Together, Luke and his teammates had killed more than 400 Hydra members in SHIELD and on the three carriers, which was a total of 120,000 experience and credit points.

As for a big boss like Pierce, he had the astonishing “net worth” to match – he alone was worth 520,000 experience and credit points.

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Who knew how many wars and violent conflicts this guy had engineered worldwide over the past few decades.

Even if the system didn’t rate this sort of evil behavior as highly as Pierce killing someone with his own hands, this was still a terrifying amount of points, and was a record for a single boss.

Lastly, Luke’s contribution rate toward stopping Project Insight was 40%. Factoring in the contribution points from his teammates, he had earned 7.23 million experience and credit points from this mission.

Coupled with other recent gains, the host’s experience in the system was now 7,665,000 / 9,000,000.

Credit: 10,811,000

Level: 24

Strength: 33 (Level 1 Star of Justice +10, Level 2 Star of Justice +20)

Dexterity: 14 (Level 1 Star of Justice +10, Level 2 Star of Justice +20)

Mental Strength: 26 (Level 1 Star of Justice +10, Level 2 Star of Justice +20)

Sure enough, Hydra was a super gift bag.

He had almost leveled up twice in a row because of this mission, and he had reaped an even bigger harvest than from the Battle of New York.

It could only be said that in terms of doing bad things, while Hydra wasn’t as strong as the Chitauri, it had a lot more determination and will.

Diligently doing evil for decades and insisting on stirring up trouble worldwide wasn’t something that an ordinary person could do.

The Bat Squad also hadn’t run into any danger during this operation.

Except for Luke, everybody else had been using robots. The whole operation had gone very smoothly, and couldn’t compare with the Battle of New York.

But that didn’t mean that Hydra and Pierce had been stupid.

Luke couldn’t help but admire Pierce’s Project insight.

The biggest and most fatal reason for Pierce’s failure was that he ran up against Elena’s “Foresight Drawing.”

If he hadn’t been exposed by this unpredictable ability beforehand, Pierce’s plan would’ve been flawless.

After gleaning from Elena’s drawing Pierce’s plans for the carriers, Luke had stayed one step ahead with his own arrangements.

Under the pretext of running a test, Pierce had planned to activate and even fully charge the reactors of the three carriers in the launch facilities.

Everybody thought that it was just a test, and wouldn’t interrupt the process.

Only the four Security Council members could stop the test in an emergency, but they had been tricked by Pierce into going to SHIELD, and had been given pins that could kill them.

Once the three carriers were fully charged, they could activate the protective shield when they took off.

Even if the American government noticed something was wrong, it would still take them some time to confirm the situation.

By then, the carriers would have already entered orbit, which would be enough to deal with a first wave of attacks from various countries and complete an all-out attack on North America.

If they ran into another unavoidable attack, they could send out all their mid-range missiles to blow up dozens of important cities in Europe and Asia.

At that point, more than 20% of Project Insight would have been completed, and it would be enough to successfully cause chaos in the world.

It was a pity that Pierce had run into a cheat who had not only “foreseen” the key to this plan, but had also gotten Natasha to transform into council member Holly to cut the plan short and subdue Pierce.

Without instructions from Pierce, Hydra’s people could only continue with the plan.

So, there was no one to give troublesome orders like stopping the Bat Squad, rescuing Pierce, or launching the attack ahead of schedule.

Hydra was an extremely strict organization.

A major operation like Project Insight couldn’t be changed on a whim.

For example, if any of the three carriers opened fire beforehand, they definitely wouldn’t be able to enter orbit, and only 5% of their goal would have been achieved.

This would be a failure for Project Insight, which was a heavy investment and hard to replicate.

Even then, Pierce still wouldn’t have lost.

If it had been Steve and Natasha who caught him at the time, the two Death Soldiers would’ve still had a chance to hold them back for a while so that Pierce could escape and stabilize the situation.

In the end, the two Death Soldiers were killed instantly, and Pierce was unknowingly hypnotized by Luke.

The moment Luke used Mental Hypnosis and Illusion to obtain the classified information in Pierce’s head, the boss had lost his last chance.

Pierce had always factored in the possibility of taking everything down with him.

If the three carriers immediately opened fire and blew up at the same time, the consequences would have been just as serious.

In short, Pierce’s loss was both unjust and not.

What was unjust about it was that an unknown person with the power of “foresight” had uncovered his Project insight in advance.

But anyone could have lost in the face of such a cheat-like ability, so it wasn’t unjust.

…

Five days after the internal strife in SHIELD, Luke had finished allocating his remaining seven points to his attributes, and Selina returned from her vacation.

Luke hadn’t wanted her to bother with things here while she was on vacation, so he had lied to her.

But now that her vacation was over, he told her what happened.

Selina wasn’t too displeased. After all, this had been a trip back with her parents to their hometown.

This could be considered fulfilling Mario and Sandra’s wishes, and would probably be the only time she would ever go back to show off.

These two had been docile for too many years and, without the support of Selina, who was used to huge scenes, they weren’t confident in their words.

However, they still brooded over the fact that their marriage hadn’t been approved back then, and it felt like the tide had finally turned in their favor.

This had nothing to do with slapping other people in the face. It was just that this was something they had held inside them since they were young.

If they had lived ordinary lives, this indignance would have faded naturally as they aged.

But Selina had changed everything for their family.

While she couldn’t be considered some sort of bigshot magnate, the sense that Selina’s grandparents got was that she was absolutely hamming it up as some rich city folk.

There were two misunderstandings here.

Firstly, Selina had always told her family that she invested 20,000 to 30,00 dollars a year in a “small company,” and Mario and Sandra had never doubted her.

After all, it was unbelievable that their daughter, who originally made roughly 30,000 dollars a year from work, could make more than 300,000 dollars a year.

Secondly, when Selina’s mother, Sandra, went back to her hometown, she too downplayed the family’s income, and said that their ranch had to pay back loans, and they only made 100,000 dollars per year.

What she was saying was, “I don’t have any money right now.” In other words, the family only had “fixed assets,” so no one could ask them for money.

That night, Luke, Selina, and Gold Nugget roasted skewers on the roof.

Luke, who was seasoning the eggplant in his hand, couldn’t help but laugh when he heard this “homecoming” story.

The reason Selina had downplayed things to her family in the beginning was because she had been worried that they would lose their heads over so much money at one go, and she had asked Luke for advice.

In the end, when Sandra went back to her hometown, she downplayed things after asking Selina for advice.

Thankfully, that was the end of the matter.