But why did everyone from Monster Company mysteriously die, even a cybernetically modified person like Big Bear couldn't escape, yet he didn't have a scratch on him? He had been in direct contact with Big Bear, so if the company was behind it, wouldn't it be easiest to simply off a temp worker like him?
However, Li Pan had no time to ponder that question now. Seeing that the Whirlpool Gang was about to pry the door open, and to avoid Big Bear ending up boneless and dead, he immediately disabled all the warehouse's defense systems, except for those in the second-floor control room, using his general manager privileges to lift the access restrictions to the underground warehouse.
"You're here to loot, right? So come and get it. What, am I supposed to risk my life to safeguard the company's assets? Don't be stupid."
The Whirlpool Gang, halfway through drilling the wall, were really dumbfounded. What's happening? The warehouse door opened without connecting to the server? Was there a power outage or disconnection?
But it didn't matter, as they were all here to grab the goods anyway. So they started hauling.
The Whirlpool Gang dropped their cutting machines and swarmed in to clear out the warehouse.
This sudden turn of events caught the 'invisible company hound' completely off guard; never did it expect that before it could get its hands on the items, the Whirlpool Gang would rush in so quickly.
Warehouse Section Seven on the second underground level had its own independent subsystem and defensive measures. This corporate assassin might not have known about the warehouse's security measures, might have had a password, so it didn't use brute force to hack through; it was probably trying some hacker device to bypass the door lock.
Yet before it could unlock the door, the Whirlpool Gang had already come flooding down.
Interestingly enough, the Whirlpool Gang was also heading straight for Warehouse Section Seven on the second underground level.
There was no place for hopping and skipping inside the warehouse, just one freight elevator and a corridor.
And Li Pan, out of kindness—to prevent everyone from stumbling around in the dark and possibly twisting an ankle—suddenly turned on all the lights.
He even switched them to high-beam mode, and with a swoosh! Just like that! The warehouse was as bright as day!
No need to thank me.
The hound's invisibility wasn't literal disappearance, but adaptive optical camouflage that blended with the environment, combined with magic puppet image erasure and illusion projection specifically for cameras.
The hound had intended to hide in a corner and wait for the Whirlpool Gang to pass, but the sudden flood of light had caught it off guard. Unable to fully vanish amid the rapidly changing lights and shadows, its outline was clearly exposed.
"Ah! Christ, you scared the hell out of me!"
"What the hell! There's someone! Someone's hiding here!"
"God damn it! You gave me a fright!"
"Da-da-da! Da-da-da! Da-da-da-da!"
The folks from the Whirlpool Gang were just so simple and honest, immediately expressing their regards with a welcome of gunfire and grenades.
Thus, facing this barrage of bullets, the hound had to hastily change plans.
"Ah! Heads! Heads are flying!"
"Da-da-da!"
"Ahhh!"
"Ninjas! There are ninjas underground! We need backup! Ah!"
"Da-da-da-da!"
Wow, damn, it went straight to hacking and slashing, what a bloody scene...
The hound's infiltration had failed, no more hiding, it was time to show its hand. The images on the monitors went from horror movie to action-packed sword-fighting scenes in an instant.
Blades flashing, limbs severed, heads rolling—as the 'Invisible Hound' switched from invisibility mode to combat mode, it moved as swiftly as a whirlwind, becoming blood streaks and afterimages on the recordings!
Clad in a black latex bodysuit, arms and legs armored with metallic knee pads and wristguards, a body with curves in all the right places, a masked electronic visor over the face, and a long ponytail—it might not necessarily be a woman, considering that these days you can customize anything, and for all you know the impressive rear end might come with a hidden surprise like a spiral electric cannon to catch you off guard, but let's not digress.
In any case, this person, dressed like a Takamanohara ninja, brandished a katana with a blade that gleamed with heat effects and plasma sparks, cutting a swath from the second basement floor all the way up to the second floor, chopping the Whirlpool Gang's members to pieces as though they were mere vegetables.
Even now, when guns are common, the cold and brutal mode of fighting with real swords that sends adrenaline soaring is still quite popular on TV station gladiator shows and various underground sporting events in pitch-black Super Dream movies.
Li Pan had also watched many such movies and could instantly guess the intruder's strength.
"Great stuff, with that speed, they've definitely got military-grade central nervous enhancements! That's sixth-grade custom tech—an entire set of artificial spine and nervous system that significantly boosts reaction speed and perception, as if time itself has slowed down."
"This stuff is designed and customized for starship navigators, electronic ghost hackers, mecha pilots, old tycoons with Parkinson's syndrome, and spoiled rich kids chasing the ultimate rush. An entire set of this equipment along with surgery costs at least ten million to start!"
"Not to mention they're wielding a Muramasa thermal line katana! It can slice through alloy armor! Damn, even with a kitchen knife, they could turn you into seventeen or eighteen pieces in one second!"
"And this company hound is indeed a master at fighting, absolutely precise with the sword, slice after slice—when I play Fruit Ninja, I'm not nearly as fluid as this human slicing ninja. Obviously, their brain chip implant is top-notch. After all, with such expensive full-body gear, invisibility, speed boosting, they've got to equip a top-tier operating system and exclusive martial arts software passed down from grandmasters to perform at their best."
"Shit! My fighting power at best doesn't even break fifty thousand, and they're probably in the tens of millions, maybe even a billion! I can't handle that... no way..."