Chapter 610 - 581: Hot Cutting Blade

"Who do you think the client is?"

Three vans were driving down the streets of Dog Town, two of which had their roof cut off and the body simply reinforced with welded steel bars.

The removed rooftops exposed steel tubes of varying thickness, one of which was clearly a heavy machine gun, and another...

It looked like a cannon, but it was uncertain...

Naturally, passersby dared not look.

Lille sat in the vehicle, asking the people inside a question to exercise their brains.

Jack thought about it and said, "Could it be a team? Like checking if competitors are engaged in dishonorable conduct, to strike them hard off the field?"

V thought for a while, shook his head, "Unlikely, there are too many teams making deals here. Instead of relying on digging up dirt to combat opponents, it’s better to join in, especially since I hear this place produces sports stars?

Checking a team’s accounts, I guess it’s just about taxes."

"Very close." Lille nodded, looking back at Matt holding two small blocks of concrete, "How about you?"

"Me?" Matt was startled, "I think... I don’t know..."

"Smarten up, kid." Jack ruffled Matt’s head, "You don’t think people in sports just stick to sports, do you? Haven’t you heard of athletes being screwed by their agents?"

"Err... okay." Matt humbly asked for advice, "So what’s really going on then?"

"Like I said, sports, especially football, which has a strong international influence, FIFA’s power and money-generating abilities are beyond imagination.

Everyone says as long as they pay taxes honestly, no one would care too much, but places like Dog Town make tax evasion and avoidance very common.

A bunch of organizations that like to skirt the edge of the law, with deep pockets, are of course... hotbeds of corruption."

"I told you it’s the enforcement agencies auditing." V wrapped his arm around Lille’s shoulder, chortling, "How about that?"

"Not bad."

V, as if having an epiphany, continued, "Then we act under the name of a wanted criminal to help them, and if they use this information to make arrests, it would seem illegal on their part... though I don’t know why it matters if it’s legal."

"The situation in Europe doesn’t support shooting randomly on the streets... probably that’s it."

To be honest, Lille wasn’t very clear about the specifics in Europe, he could only gather from miscellaneous memories and notes that it was a place very... particular about control, or in a word he was very familiar with: authoritarianism.

However, America had suffered multiple wars and natural disasters, and Europe wasn’t far behind, plagues, floods, wars were just as common.

In authoritarian societies, struggles would likely occur within a "legal" framework, at least not letting barbaric battles be massively exposed to the public.

In such a case, investigating Luxor Manor by Interpol or the European Union Tax Authority should avoid hiring well-known criminal organizations.

V seemed to understand Lille’s point, bizarrely commented, "So they pretend to hire a group, claiming it was another group that did the investigation, wouldn’t that work?"

"That’s the concept, so what we are dealing with might not necessarily be this sports academy, depending on her attitude."

As they spoke, the car had already arrived at the entrance of Luxor Manor. From the outside, the buildings here definitely looked different from other unfinished buildings and ownerless lands in Dog Town, despite the concrete façade, at least the structural integrity of the buildings was intact, and a high-tech security system was visibly in place at the entrance.

Just...

V asked puzzledly, "Why don’t I see any security guards?"

"That’s good news, get ready to get out." Lille turned to Matt, "Ready to join the international sports academy?"

Matt appeared much more composed than before, nodded, and began to dress.

The car boldly drove towards the main gate, with Lille donning tactical goggles and beginning to scan the surrounding electronic devices.

Just as he was scanning with the probe, the surveillance cameras also started scanning them, followed by a voice that sounded very professional—

[Welcome, uh... to your arrival, may I know what brings you here?]

Lille pinpointed the probe and directly hacked into the communication, and a line of text appeared in the speaker’s visual system ——

[Burger King: Two things. First, I have an excellent athlete ready to come here for further training and looking for a professional team.]

[Burger King: Second, I see that your Sports Academy in Dog Town is pretty miserable, not a single security guard? Do you need me to arrange that for you?]

[Burger King: It’s a bit cold outside. Open the door first, let’s talk inside.]

Fiona, emotionally charged, shouted, "Security’s gone? Isn’t it because you scared them off?!"

Everyone says mercenaries value reputation, but if they could predict their own death, who the hell would care about that?

Indeed, her last security had just taken off at the drop of a hat!

It was only her incredible business acumen that stabilized clients still scouting for newcomers in the market, preventing complete chaos.

Alright, if they want to talk, let’s talk —— these guys are real thugs; if you didn’t know better, you’d think they owned the place.

Just as she steeled herself and was about to let Lille through, a loud bang suddenly erupted from the main gate!

Boom!

The van, equipped with a machine gun, shuddered as the cannon fired, shaking so much that the Wild Man King thought it was about to fall apart.

She looked down at her feet: indeed, the van had split open, but it was reinforced with steel bars along the body and chassis, so... it should still work fine.

The cannonball was hand-rolled by Lille using materials bought from the stadium; obviously, it was slightly lacking in precision, and without her manual control, the cannon would have skewed off.

A weapon is fine as long as it works; the Wild Man King gave Lille a thumbs up.

The two vehicles slowly drove into the defensive positions at the entrance, with Matt pushing Lille, while Jack and V walked ahead, through the explosions of flames and black smoke to reach the door.

The high-quality blast-proof door had an exaggerated gash from the armor-piercing bullet, but the hole was not large enough for three people to pass through.

Lille tapped on his wheelchair, giving Jack a knowing look.

On the left side of the wheelchair back, what were initially handles for pushing suddenly sprung out, transforming like sword hilts.

A dramatic mist surged from tracks hidden within the wheelchair, and through the gaps, intense orange-red glows could be seen ——

Munemasa had once designed a blade heating device on Centaur Mecha; this was designed based on that device.

Lille’s cooling prosthetics were fully connected to the chair back. Every time the prosthetics operated, the heat generated would be centralized to these twin tracks for orderly cooling through the heat pump; of course, these graphene-based tracks could also heat themselves.

This track had always been heating up a weapon assembled from Chroni Titanium shards since the assembly was completed:

A Hot Cutting Blade.

Jack, understanding the cue, held the wheelchair with one hand and grabbed the hilt with the other hand, yanking it fiercely. The softened Chroni Titanium’s hardness was slightly reduced, straightened on the spot by the limiter in the track, and the friction sparked a fierce spray of sparks as a broad-bladed sword with flames emerged on the spot!

Calling it a sword might be a bit improper, as the state of this weapon was rather rough; the high heat allowed Chroni Titanium shards to soften slightly and begin bonding under high pressure; however, this softening was weak, and the pressure was not like that in normal forging environments, so the bonding was not complete, the shape change wasn’t either.

The material that could still maintain hardness at such a temperature was Chroni Titanium, so the strength difference between the limiter and the blade wasn’t substantial; rather than saying the blade was straightened, it was more like a row of serrations had been created on the blade.

In the end, what was pulled out was a broad-bladed sword, the fractured Chroni Titanium metal slightly bonded under high temperature and pressure, but still maintaining clearly visible cracks. Its lethality as a blade rested entirely on its ultra-high temperature ——

Bang!

The temperature, close to 1000 degrees Celsius, could easily soften a steel door substantially, but it would only make a less than10% impact on the performance of Chroni Titanium.

Perhaps this blade wasn’t so perfect, the material bonding not so complete, yet it was sufficient to deal with a steel armored door.

The fractured broad-blade sliced into the gash, starting to cut.

[Fiona: What are you doing!]

[Lille: Just checking your security system.]