Chapter 220 - 202 The Colossals

New York’s youngest millionaire who in the foreseeable future will become a billionaire, Lille...

was still living in a rented apartment.

However, Hell’s Kitchen had undergone significant changes, with a dedicated cleaning company handling garbage, the overhaul of basic infrastructure like electric circuits, signal stations, and heating was complete, and ongoing upgrades were still happening.

This counted as a spectacle, New York City had originally planned to reach a municipal power grid deal with the Osborne Group, but now that the Osborne Group was gone, the upgrade plans were put on hold.

Instead, Hell’s Kitchen had started upgrading - although the so-called upgrades didn’t involve any new technology, it was more about systematization and standards.

There might still be a gap compared to those palatial downtown areas, but it looked tidier, safer, and more cozy now.

The future would bring changes here, but in the short term, it was mainly little modifications.

Looking at the changes here, Lille felt warm inside -

he still had a home to return to, and it was getting better and better.

"Mom! I’m home, and I brought a guest."

Lille closed the door, Maya, wearing an apron, shook the water off her hands, and walked out of the kitchen, appearing to be cooking.

Seeing Lille, she hurried out and held his face, flipping it back and forth as if checking a watermelon for ripeness.

Lille sighed helplessly, "Mom... I’m really fine, didn’t I tell you over the phone?"

"You..." Maya let go of Lille’s head, not knowing what to say.

She wanted Lille to be healthy, and also wanted him to grow up normally and become a responsible person.

Honestly, this is what most parents normally wish for -

but no parent wants their child with no sense of responsibility to stop a terrorist attack!

The whole of New York saw Lille pouncing on the Vulture!

But the child had grown up, what could she, as a mother, possibly say?

The only thing she could do was to make sure the child had a home to come back to, and that when he returned, the lights would be on.

Maya patted Lille on the shoulder, given him a gentle hug, "It’s good that you’re back... Let’s get ready for dinner."

"Okay—but I brought a guest with me."

Lille gestured to Christopher to come in; the boy stood at the door, dumbfounded, observing Lille’s home:

Steel and cement and the luxurious modern decoration looked alien to him, he had never dreamed of such things; although it was high-end, it did not entice him.

But Lille’s apartment wasn’t high-end; it used a lot of wood in its structure and furniture, which he could understand!

It was his dream home!

"Christopher Fernard, he was the child abducted by Osborne Group to the United States for illegal human experiments... uh, I mean, the boy.

He’s a Latovian; I think we could use him to help his family back in Latovia."

"Uh... Hello, ma’am, you can call me Christopher..."

Christopher was a little unsure, Maya looked very much like a gypsy, which was also the main ethnicity in Latovia -

he was just a gypsy, living by the caravan, moving from village to village.

"Fernard? Do you have a relative named Casto Fernard?"

"I don’t know, ma’am." Christopher shook his head, "I was raised by the elder; I don’t know if I have any relatives."

Maya was momentarily stunned, this was quite common in Latovia, with orphans everywhere.

But certain gypsy tribes, like Maya’s, had the habit of raising orphans, fostering orphans, even though the caravan itself wasn’t rich but could at least continuously have young people.

But it had been a long time since Maya came to New York, many things could have changed.

Lille patted Christopher, "Put your things down; your room is across the hall, but we all eat together during meals.

Oh, by the way, you have a..."

"Hey! Boss—the server replacement is complete; we now have a whole building of servers... if this goes on, we’d better buy this building from Mr. Rigordo..."

Skye jumped out from the opposite door, holding a laptop.

She looked up and saw a stranger, and then looked at Lille, "New roommate?"

"New neighbor, he might be a bit lacking in common sense - show him around."

Anthony and John’s focus was gradually shifting toward political activities, Skye was basically maintaining the servers on her own, which was a bit tough.

It was just right for Christopher to do some work and learn some information from the internet.

"Alright... He looks like a startled little rabbit."

After settling Christopher, Lille enjoyed a sumptuous meal at home.

In terms of efficiency and energy value, Cyberpunk World’s synthetic food crushed natural food.

But for dining, natural food cooked in traditional ways had a better sensory experience.

After finishing the meal, Lille received a phone call, the Silver Mink Security Company, which had been called to New York by the Osborne Group only to suddenly lose their job, had arrived.

...

The Silver Mink Security Company, formerly known as the Wild Pack, originated in Sircaria, a unique small Eastern European country in the Marvel World.

Originally, they were mercenaries employed during World War II to help the government fight the Germans, and continued to hunt down remaining war criminals after the war ended.

But in modern times, Sircaria remained plagued by war, internal strife, and external troubles, until a terrorist attack overthrew the local government, and the Wild Pack was removed from the new government’s roster, becoming mercenaries.

After years of effort, the Wild Pack had now transformed into a PMC, but before landing their first job, their client dissolved the contract.

Their leader was Silver Sabulnov, nicknamed Silver Sable, a competent female mercenary with short silver hair.

Seeing Lille come downstairs, Silver left the wall she was leaning against and stood straight:

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Lee."

"Let’s skip the pleasantries; you guys are looking for work." Lille held a document in his hand, "I’ve already drafted the contract.

However, it’s not about security work in New York, but back in your homeland, Eastern Europe."

Silver looked surprised as she took the document.

Lille explained, "I plan to develop mechanized agriculture in Eastern Europe, starting from Latovia. I’ll need a batch of security personnel for this.

This task is much more sensitive than regular city security work, so the payment won’t disappoint you."

"Latovia, agriculture?" Silver quickly read through the document, "Latovia? Agriculture?

Aren’t you a high-tech company? Why the sudden interest in this?"

"There are too many reasons, international relief, technological needs, and that half of my blood is Latovian...

But these shouldn’t be your concerns."

"We don’t take just any contract.

If it were a Federal Government contract in some Middle Eastern country, I might consider it a bit, as it might look like some intervention activities.

But Latovia... shouldn’t be a problem."

Since Silver had no objections, the cooperation should be finalized.

Having settled this, Lille suddenly had a thought....

Doing genetic research while farming, was that making him like... Cyberpunk World’s biotechnology?

Puronium wheat might actually be worth researching.

But the more he thought along those lines, the more... fitting it seemed.

Despite lacking agents to conduct overseas investigations, Lille still found active companies recently online and picked out some potential opponents:

Cyber Technology, Peak Technology, Hammer Industries, Stark Industries...

Thinking about it, these companies did resemble those in the Cyberpunk World.

But there was still a lack of a heavyweight giant -

Lille observed that multiple energy companies in the United States had undergone numerous mergers and restructures since the economic crisis.

It was as if they were converging.

Something massive was silently growing, absorbing resources, gradually taking shape.

Let’s see who will win.

...

Shield Bureau headquarters.

"... so that suit managed to take down our most elite agents and U.S. soldiers in an instant? Then why weren’t there any casualties after the Osborne building was mistakenly bombed?"

Fury was reporting in front of a holographic screen, sporting injuries, with his right hand in a cast.

"The Vulture suit poses a significant threat. Osborne equipped it with many experimental-grade military materials.

As for why the bombing didn’t cause casualties, I guess it was due to that masked Spider-Woman; the NYPD suggested this possibility in their report."

"Speaking of which, there’s still no information on her identity?"

"None."

"We’ll leave it at that for today."

Alexander Piers, Minister of the World Security Council, and current direct superior of the Shield Bureau, ended the communication and switched to another call.

"... Cyber Technology has acquired the technology they wanted, but they suffered heavy losses doing so."

"Indeed, Interpol is investigating the issue of the human experiments in Eastern Europe. According to current operational guidelines, we must stay undercover; the investors are very unhappy about what happened."

"And you’re to blame for it all, Dr. Zola. What’s going on with you? You claim to be the only ’network God’ in this world, but you, the so-called God, got hurt by mere mortals?"

"I’ll learn from this."

"The Death Warrior program must not have any more issues."

"It won’t – Osborne has another technology that needs more in-depth research, but our people can’t figure it out. I suggest handing it over to Stark Industries."

"What project?"

"A biologically enhanced version of the Rhino armor. Osborne had intended to use gamma radiation to bind high-strength polymers to human bodies, but they hadn’t made a breakthrough, gamma rays are hard to control."

The Lizard Man, Rhino armor, and Vulture suit all proved that the gene-modified brain-machine interface adaptation methods created uncontrollable monsters.

Agents or soldiers, whatever they might be, were more useful if they were obedient.

But a raging Rhino, invulnerable and heavily armed, could be unleashed on the battlefield to wreak havoc.

"Gamma radiation... why not let the military continue? I remember General Ross was leading the super soldier serum project."

"We’ll provide them the data too, but keep the work distributed."

Distributed operations and combining progress from various parties, he secretly conducted human experiments abroad.

Piers understood immediately—it was the same old playbook.