"Baron Strucker."
Luke let the name hang in the air, watching the holographic figure stiffen almost imperceptibly. There was something deeply satisfying about this—like landing a perfect skill shot in ranked, except the target was a Nazi supervillain instead of an enemy ADC.
"Correct? I know everything about you. Your operations in Eastern Europe. Your research facilities. Your... special interests."
He paused, letting that sink in, then moved his finger to the next hologram.
"The same goes for everyone here."
His gesture was slow, deliberate, theatrical. He'd learned a long time ago that presentation mattered. In League, you could tilt your opponents just by emoting at the right moment. This was the same principle, scaled up to international shadow conspiracy levels.
"Mr. Werner Reinhardt." Luke's finger stopped on the aged figure. "Oh, that's right—you go by Daniel Whitehall now, don't you? Much more modern. Less... Nazi-ish."
Whitehall's hologram didn't react visibly, but Luke caught the slight tension in his shoulders. Good. The old bastard was rattled.
"The Countess." Another point. "The Chieftain. The Banker."
Each name was a bullet, and Luke was firing them with the casual confidence of someone who'd brought a machine gun to a knife fight.
"Dr. List—Strucker's pet scientist. Baron Heinrich Zemo, who vanished after the war and only came crawling back once HYDRA was profitable again." Luke let a hint of mockery creep into his voice. "Very loyal. Very committed to the cause."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees. Even through the holographic projections, Luke could feel the collective shock rippling through HYDRA's leadership.
These were people who'd spent decades—some of them nearly a century—hiding in the shadows. They'd built empires of secrecy, compartmentalized their operations so thoroughly that even their own organization couldn't track them all.
And this stranger in white robes had just rattled off their identities like he was reading from a grocery list.
"How..." one of them started to ask, then thought better of it.
Luke suppressed a smile. The answer, of course, was Wikipedia. Or more specifically, the Chinese equivalent—Baidu Baike. He'd spent countless hours on that site back in his old life, reading about fictional universes and their intricate lore. Who knew that obsessive wiki-diving would become a superpower?
But to the HYDRA heads, it looked like something else entirely. It looked like omniscience. Like the Assassin organization had eyes everywhere, agents in every shadow, informants in every corner of their supposedly impenetrable network.
The beauty of it was that Luke didn't have to lie—not really. He just had to let them fill in the blanks themselves. The human mind was remarkably good at constructing narratives. Give people a few data points that seemed impossible, and they'd build entire conspiracy theories around them.
"Your organization..." Pierce spoke carefully, his voice betraying none of the alarm that must have been screaming through his mind. "Your intelligence capabilities are... impressive."
"Impressive?" Luke allowed himself a small laugh. "Mr. Pierce, my organization has been watching yours since before SHIELD existed. We know things about HYDRA that HYDRA doesn't know about itself."
That was technically true, in a certain light. The wiki articles had been very comprehensive.
He continued before anyone could interrupt. "I know that your various divisions don't share information freely. I know that you're all paranoid about moles and compromised cells—rightfully so, given how often it happens. I know that no one in this room has complete intelligence on everyone else."
Luke let that statement land, watching the subtle shifts in body language. The Countess's jaw tightened. The Banker's hologram flickered slightly—probably his hand trembling on whatever controls he was using. Zemo's expression remained frozen, but that itself was telling.
"And yet," Luke spread his hands, "here I am. Naming names. Listing locations. Describing operations that you thought were buried so deep that God himself couldn't find them."
Silence.
The kind of silence that follows a grenade landing at your feet but before it explodes.
Pierce cleared his throat. "I believe, Mr. Assassin, that you've made your point."
"Have I?" Luke turned to face him directly. "Because I want to make sure everyone here understands exactly what my organization brings to the table. We're not just another cell looking to join the great HYDRA family for the dental plan and the matching 401k."
A few of the holograms shifted uncomfortably at the casual mockery. Luke didn't care. He'd never been good at respecting authority figures, even when they were fictional Nazi remnants with delusions of world domination.
"I believe this level of intelligence capability qualifies me for a position among HYDRA's supreme leaders. Wouldn't you agree?"
The question hung in the air like a challenge.
Something had changed in Luke since absorbing the Sparda bloodline. The power thrumming through his veins had brought with it a confidence he'd never possessed in his old life. Back then, he'd been the kind of person who rehearsed phone calls before making them. Now he was standing in a room full of the world's most dangerous men, essentially telling them he was better than all of them combined.
It felt good. It felt right.
"Mr. Assassin." Pierce's voice was measured, diplomatic. "That's quite enough demonstration, I think. The council has seen what you're capable of."
The other heads didn't argue. What could they say? This stranger had accomplished in five minutes what none of them had managed in decades—complete intelligence dominance over the entire organization.
"My organization specializes in assassination and intelligence," Luke continued, pressing his advantage. "Our operatives aren't Inhumans or enhanced individuals in the traditional sense. We don't rely on random mutations or experimental serums."
He paused for effect.
"But any one of my assassins could handle a dozen Winter Soldiers without breaking a sweat."
Pierce's expression soured immediately. The Winter Soldier was his crown jewel, his ultimate trump card. Hearing it dismissed so casually clearly stung.
The other leaders, however, leaned forward with undisguised interest. The Winter Soldier was a legend in certain circles—HYDRA's ghost, the invisible hand that had shaped fifty years of history. If this Assassin organization could mass-produce fighters at that level...
"How?" Strucker demanded. His obsession with enhanced individuals was well-documented, and Luke had just dangled the ultimate prize in front of him. "What methods do you use?"
"Natural transformation techniques." Luke kept his face straight as he delivered the bullshit with complete sincerity. "Unlike the artificial enhancement that created Captain America or the Winter Soldier, we don't need serums. We don't need to strap people to tables and inject them with experimental compounds."
He could almost see the gears turning in their heads. A method for creating super-soldiers without the unpredictable side effects of chemical enhancement? Without the astronomical costs of the programs they'd been running for decades?
"Just the right training methods," Luke concluded, "and anyone can become a warrior beyond human limits."
It was, of course, complete nonsense. But they didn't know that.
Pierce was already calculating—Luke could see it in his eyes. The SHIELD Strike team, personally loyal to HYDRA, enhanced to super-soldier levels through this mysterious "natural" technique. An army of Winter Soldiers at his command.
The man's ambition was practically visible.
"This is... most intriguing," Strucker murmured. He was trying to hide his excitement, but Luke had spent years reading opponent behavior in ranked games. The Baron was hooked.
Not that Strucker planned to share anything in return. Luke knew from the wiki that the Baron was currently sitting on his greatest prize—two young enhanced individuals who would eventually become the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver. He was obsessed with Inhumans, convinced they were the future, and he looked down on the other HYDRA heads as fools chasing inferior power sources.
But that was fine. Luke wasn't here to make friends.
After thoroughly bamboozling HYDRA's entire leadership, Luke made his exit from Pierce's residence.
The night air was cool against his skin as he stepped outside, Riven and Skadi falling into step beside him. They'd been waiting in the shadows, ready to intervene if things went sideways. Not that Luke had been worried—if the holograms had somehow turned into a physical threat, Riven could have torn the building apart before anyone landed a hit.
"That went well," he said, allowing himself a satisfied smile.
He'd done it. He'd bullshitted his way into becoming a supreme leader of HYDRA, one of the most powerful shadow organizations in the world. Most transmigrators in his situation would spend entire story arcs scheming and plotting to achieve this kind of infiltration.
Luke had just walked in and lied through his teeth.
The benefits of HYDRA membership were legendary, after all. Employee perks, global resources, connections in every industry and government on the planet. Why did powerful people join HYDRA? The ideology? The noble cause of "order through control"?
Please. Even most HYDRA members didn't believe that propaganda. It was recruitment material for idiots and true believers. The real draw was simple: resources and benefits.
For the right price, capitalists would sell the rope used to hang them. Joining a shadow organization was nothing compared to that.
Not that Luke intended to actually help HYDRA. He just wanted to use them—and keep them from bothering him while he built his own power base.
Given enough time, he'd steamroll everything anyway. Waifus and subordinates included.
Two days later, Luke met with Blade in one of their usual spots—a rooftop overlooking the East River, far from prying eyes.
The Daywalker looked troubled. More troubled than usual, which was saying something for a man whose default expression was "murder contemplation."
"The vampire population in New York is declining," Blade said without preamble.
Luke raised an eyebrow. "Declining? That's good, isn't it? Fewer bloodsuckers to worry about."
"Not like that." Blade's jaw tightened. "They're not being killed. If they'd fled the city, there would be traces—travel records, sightings, something. But they're just... disappearing. Unnaturally."
That was an interesting choice of words. Luke turned it over in his mind, fitting the pieces together with what he already knew about the vampire world's future.
"You think someone else is hunting them?"
"That's what I assumed at first. Someone as efficient as your team, maybe. But the pattern is wrong. When you kill vampires, you leave ash. When they run, they leave trails." Blade shook his head. "This is different. They're vanishing without any evidence at all."
Luke's mind went to the conversation he'd had with Gitano. The revelation about Damaskinos and his Reaper project. The possibility that the purebloods might be cooperating with the very threat Luke had warned them about.
If Gitano was rounding up vampires for Damaskinos's experiments...
"Watch yourself," Luke said quietly. "Things might be about to get more dangerous than usual."
Blade studied him for a long moment. The Daywalker was many things, but stupid wasn't one of them. He knew Luke wasn't telling him everything.
But he also knew better than to push.
"Yeah," was all he said. "I'll be careful."
They exchanged what little additional information they had, then parted ways. Luke had another target to hit tonight—Blade had provided the location earlier in the week.
The building loomed ahead as Luke approached with Riven and Skadi flanking him. It looked ordinary enough from the outside. Professional. Corporate. The kind of place you'd walk past without a second glance.
The sign above the entrance read: HEMATOLOGY RESEARCH CENTER.
"Blood Research Center," Luke muttered, shaking his head. "What a creative cover."
Somewhere inside, vampires were waiting. They just didn't know yet that they were about to become loot drops.
Luke checked his weapons one final time, then nodded to his companions.
Time to get to work.
PLZ THROW POWERSTONES.
300 , 500 , 1000 for each milestone 1 Bonus Chapter