E/d note: There is an important notice regarding the series at the end! Word count is not affected!
'Inner dialogue/thoughts'
"Normal dialogue"
[System]
[Diary entries]
(Word count: 1,082)
~ With Luke ~
"See? That wasn't too hard, was it? You're lucky you spoke up so quickly, I would have made you go through that for as long as it took to get my answers. Don't worry about dying though, I'll keep you alive just enough." Luke started.
"So, tell me, does anyone else know about Wanda and Pietro?" Luke asked. Not receiving any response from the attacker, Luke started forming swirling water spheres on his palms to appear intimidating.
"N- No, there is no contact until we have hold of the twins." The attacker replied, afraid of experiencing the same pain again.
"You're not playing me a fool, are you? You really think I'll believe that for a mission like this, you would not have sent word back that you have found the twins?" Luke intensified the sphere to test him.
At this, the attacker quickly spoke up, "I swear! It's what we were told by the higher ups!"
Hearing this response, Luke thought HYDRA, or at the very least his attacker, were fools. 'He should be telling me the truth. Being in excruciating pain is a motivating factor to not experience it again. Especially since I made it known that I could prolong that feeling for however long I wanted to.'
'If the attacker had informed the rest of HYDRA, then this would have been a problem. HYDRA would know the location of the twins and can send for henchmen reinforcements, or worse, Bucky himself.' Thinking of the different scenarios that could have played out, Luke thanked his guardian angel for once again bringing luck upon him.
Seeing that he was finished getting the answers he wanted, he turned back to look at the attacker, who recoiled at Luke's gaze. "Since you've been so cooperative with me, I guess I'll let you go." Luke began with a smile, as he released the water that was holding the attacker.
Surprised at being let go, the attacker stood up and began limping away, thinking to himself to report this incident and the location of the twins as soon as he got out of sight of Luke.
However, just before he could take a second step, the attacker felt his body changing. At the first stage, the attacker had felt a sudden thirst, a thirst that was akin to an all-consuming fire. He tried to swallow his saliva but found that he could not do so.
The attacker's skin then turned loose and shrivelled, mirroring his body's sudden desperate dehydration. He felt a sudden yet agonizing pain spreading throughout his entire body. Each blink was like a stab of pain to his eyes. His muscles spasmed, twisting his limbs in knots.
A thick fog of confusion surrounded his thoughts, hallucinations dancing before his eyes with ghostly apparitions flickering at the edge of his vision. Faces and voices tormenting him.
With each breath a shallow rasp, the world began to sway to the attacker. He did not know what was happening to him, but he knew that his organs were beginning to fail. Turning around painfully, he was meet with the cold gaze from Luke.
Staggering towards Luke, the attacker's legs gave out, sending him sprawling onto the ground. His world narrowed to darkness as his vision dimmed ever so quickly.
At the final stages, the attacker's body felt numb throughout. As his consciousness slipped away in his final moments, the attacker was embraced by the darkness, forever in the clutches of eternal sleep.
'Tsk. I knew it would get ugly, but to see it happen right in front of me as I dried out the fluids is disgusting.' Luke thought as he saw the now a withered shell of the attacker's body, lying motionless on the ground beneath him. The desiccation was complete, leaving a stark reminder of what had just happened.
As the adrenaline faded off and his simulated experience receding into the recesses of his mind, Luke felt like he was poured an ice-cold bucket by reality.
'In this world, one wrong move can lead to my instant death. Before coming here, I was a normal human being who thought the Marvel Universe was just a fictional one. And even with the simulation's assimilation, I am still actively suppressing most it because I fear I would lose touch between what's real and what's a simulation.'
'But the earlier mental breakdown and tonight's assassination attempt has woken me up to reality. This is not a fictional universe, this is not even a simulation. This is the real world, where I live and breathe.'
'So what if I have a system? It does not make me omnipotent nor omnipresent. And my knowledge from my previous life? It can be a good guide but will certainly not qualify me as omniscient. Hell, some things are beginning to change now too.'
'Fury now suspects SHIELD and both Wanda and Pietro are released from the clutches of HYDRA too early. The domino effect will only keep chaining from this point forward. I have to start grounding myself to reality during my meditation sessions now.'
Luke began to walk back towards where he was first attacked while scanning the surroundings. 'It seems the attacker chose the optimum location to carry out his assassination, none of the CCTV at the main street would point towards the direction of the fight, and the area where the attacker ran towards is out of sight of the main street and into a secondary street without any CCTV coverage.'
'This would be convenient for me. There would be no clear evidence that can point toward me, and the only ones who would suspect me would be Fury or Natasha. And since I have no clue how to cover this up, I'll just have Fury do it for me.' Luke decided internally. He may have been a SHIELD agent, however, he was a field agent. Any cleaning up was done by the clean-up crew.
Resuming his walk back to his apartment, Luke continued planning on how to write his fourth entry.
- End of Chapter 35 -
Next time in C36 - Creating Enemies! Wanda and Natasha finally Meets!
"I can see you looking out through the peephole. Now are you going to open up and talk or do I have to force my way in?" Natasha asked from the hallway.
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.
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"I'd like to see you try." Pietro challenged.
You can support me on p@treon.com/The_Editor982 !
=-=PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING TO CLEAR UP ANY MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THIS SERIES=-=
I've been reading a lot of comments and getting a few dm's regarding the state of this series in Webnovel and on my Patreon. I'm going to address a few of them in this section.
Firstly, this is NOT MY ORIGINAL work. I know I keep saying that this is a translated MTL that's being heavily edited by me, but I feel like I have to reiterate again. Aside from the romance, I am sticking as close to the OG storyline as possible. However, while the ESSENCE of the story remains similar, the chapter contents are entirely different. A simple back and forth reading between this version and the MTL version should be enough to notice that I am literally re-writing most if not all of the MTL chapters. How I re-write them is as follows:
1) I read the MTL chapter in it's entirety.
2) I pick out key points regarding the chapter to have a skeletal framework to work with.
3) Using that framework, I start writing the chapters.
4) While writing, I include other elements, or additional dialouges to flesh out characters or build them since the MTL is pretty one-dimensional in character interactions.
Doing so will allow me to remove any "nationalism" or "MTL-like" structures and sentences from the series. This is also why my editing to this series translation takes much longer than majority of the other "Translators" out there.
Sometimes there will be entirely original chapters like C22 to C24 (simulation mini-arc), or more recently C51 (my favourite chapter aside from C50 at the moment), but these original chapters will be pointed out by me. The rest of the chapters, while could still be considered "Original" due to how much it has changed from the source material, I feel uncomfortable claiming it as my own since I used an already existing framework to write them.
Secondly, some of you have pointed out that the word count is ever changing. Sometimes we get close to 2k word count chapters, and sometimes it is only above 1k. That is because of the content of MTL that I wrote the chapters from. Being completely transparent, the MTL really does not give me much to work with. Most of their stuff is too heavily "MTL", moreover their chapters are insanely short, but appear long because they mostly leave a paragraph line spacing after every sentence. So you get to scroll down more, but that is due to the amount of spacing in between sentences / paragraphs. The only reasons why the chapters even go beyond 1,000 words for most of the chapters in this series is due to the additional elements that I include. There's a guy going around saying I don't put much effort for the chapters or try at all with the series because there's only like 1,000 words for a few chapters, and while it shouldn't, it does affect my mood since I feel like he doesn't understand how difficult for a non-experienced writer to be doing this.
Thirdly, I know some of you want me to change major things in this series, but I really am not a creative writer xD. Changing the romance is already stretching my current writing abilities, and even re-writing the later MTL chapters are becoming challenging because, you know, MTL .-. But, wherever possible or whenever it starts getting too out of hand, I WILL be changing the plotlines. C48 is a good example of such changes.
Fourthly, I will set a poll in the future regarding romance. Yes boys, a Harem or No Harem poll. Once I reach the MTL chapter where a Harem is OFFICIALLY introduced, I will then create the poll. At the moment, Wanda is the only given, BUT, NATASHA could EASILY just slide in with how I'm writing her relationship with Luke. Yes, for those who could pick it up, I have written Nat and Luke to show a very close relationship, this is all in preparation for any possible future scenarios *wink wink*. One side can say "they're like best friends", while the other can say "He's playing the long game". Like real life guy/girl bestfriends honestly :D
LASTLY, can I get cookies :D? I just ended my long stint of 14-hr shifts officially two days ago, and now have been placed on admin duties. Tomorrow 6th June I'll be out the whole day for a cohesion, before finally dekitting on Friday. Which means that if everything goes well, Daily uploads will return on Monday 10th June. Why not saturday? Kinda want to use the weekends to relax and wind down from this long ass cycle before heading back to part-time work and updating this series on Monday onwards.
-=-=-=-=- THANK YOU -=-=-=-=-