91 Dying Like an Extra in a Riot

Because most of the forces had already been swept away by Joss, the two of them found the riot’s hideout with little effort.

That little boss, who in the original story had even taken the initiative to attack, caught a distant glimpse of Joss’s fighting power and decisively chose to back down.

In truth, Joss had seen it then as well, but instead of disturbing it, he pretended he knew nothing and quietly left.

What if the system’s battle judgment was learned from Kakuzo?

If a glance from eight hundred miles away counted as combat, then the mission would be considered a failure, damn it.

Fortunately, that did not happen, and the two sides met in battle successfully.

The fight held few surprises. Purely in terms of strength, the riot could completely overpower Little Black, and in the matter of shaping its body into weapons, it was far superior to her as well.

However, as one of the people who had stayed at Joss’s side the longest, Little Black had been by his side through every battle, and from constant exposure had picked up a few rudiments of hand-to-hand combat.

Added to that was her body, formed of a non-Newtonian fluid. Some movements were even more effective for her than for Joss, and it was precisely this that allowed her to withstand the disparity in strength.

Under normal circumstances, the two would have been evenly matched at most, and Little Black would still have had some difficulty defeating the riot.

But once Tornado joined the fight, that delicate balance was easily broken. Even without the infrasound and flames that symbiotes feared most, it still left the riot suffering bitterly.

What was more, the ordinary doctor serving as the riot’s host had no remarkable physical traits to speak of. So long as he did not drag things down, that alone was cause for gratitude; the riot could not possibly expect him to be of any real help.

The outcome, too, was unsurprising. Little Black and Tornado both understood the other’s abilities, and neither of them had Joss’s habit of throwing himself into reckless trouble. They fought steadily from start to finish, pressing the riot down step by step until it was utterly defeated.

"Venom! You traitor! You stupid trash! The lowest of the low, the most miserable waste! Do you even know what you are doing?!"

After its defeat, the riot transformed into a huge, terrifying head the size of a basketball and roared in fury.

It had never imagined that it would be defeated by Venom, the symbiote it had always looked down upon as the most useless of all!

Little Black shrugged and looked at it with complete indifference.

"Of course I know. I’m just cutting down my old boss in one stroke."

"What do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to help humans? And with that appearance, do you think you’re human now?!"

How could it not tell that there was no host within Venom’s body now? No matter how hard it tried, it could not understand why.

"Human? That doesn’t sound so bad, actually. There are snacks to eat, comics to read. Compared with crowding together with things like you—sticky and stinking—it’s much more fun. Ah, right, my name is Little Black now, so please stop calling me Venom."

Idly twirling her hair around her fingers, she flipped the dagger in her hand and drove it straight into Doctor Drake’s chest. At the same moment, Tornado pinned the riot in midair, leaving it only able to watch helplessly as its host died.

"All right. I’m not really the kind who enjoys killing my own kind, so whether you live from here on out depends on your own ability." Only after confirming that Doctor Drake was truly dead did Little Black rise to her feet with a satisfied nod.

A deranged anti-human like Doctor Drake deserved to die. As for the riot without a host, it was nothing worth mentioning.

Still, because Joss had specifically said not to kill the riot, and because she herself truly did not want to slaughter one of her own kind, Little Black did not deliver a fatal blow.

"Mm... I’m tired..." Tornado stretched lazily. The long robe Joss had thrown to her, of the same style as the one from the Terrifying Tornado, outlined her perfectly smooth figure with no trace of movement.

"Get used to it quickly. Staying beside that guy, this kind of thing already counts as normal." Little Black sighed and shrugged.

"Ha? Attacking the base of a large corporation counts as normal?" Tornado’s eyes widened, making her look especially cute.

"Most of the time he’s fine enough. After all, he is a superhero, so he doesn’t go wild. But every now and then his brain seems to short-circuit and he does something extremely questionable... Well, as long as I have something tasty to eat, I’m fine. I don’t know about you."

"I-I... I only followed him because I was bored, that’s all! Once I’m powerful enough in the future, I’ll just kick him away!" Tornado said furiously, hugging the air with both arms.

Seeing her like that, Little Black let out a dry laugh and dropped the subject, instead beginning to search for Joss’s figure.

During this battle, not only had the coordination between the two of them improved, but Tornado had also gained far better control over her surging power in the heat of combat.

Though her total power had not increased, she would no longer be like before, when every use was full-force output, capable of exhausting herself to death after only a few uses.

It was as if she were a bottle holding only a hundred milliliters of water. In the past, whenever she used her own power, she would simply open the cap and splash it out all at once.

No matter how small the matter, it consumed a great deal of strength, and even after being enhanced, it would never have been sustainable for long.

Part of that usage came from her own infrequent practice; another reason was that the bottle itself had been of poor quality and incapable of fine control.

After the enhancement, however, the bottle had been fitted with the most advanced measuring scale and valve. With only a little practice, she could easily command that power.

Compared with the richly rewarded Tornado, Little Black herself had almost no change at all.

After all, reality was not a game; there was no leveling up by killing monsters. For Joss to achieve such a thing, he still relied on that rather unreliable system.

As for the others, whether it was Wolverine or Captain America, or even some beings far older than them, the extent of their improvement was so small it was nearly impossible to see, let alone any possibility of a qualitative leap.

As a symbiote, Little Black’s own strength had never been terribly important. So long as she bonded with someone sufficiently powerful, she herself was considered powerful enough.

Unfortunately, after being altered by the system, she had already become an independent life-form, a mature symbiote in her own right. She had to make her own way now.

She had never had any trouble controlling the body’s strength; at most, she could still improve in tactics and technique, but a true qualitative change was plainly impossible.

"Tch... Why am I even thinking about this nonsense? How dull I am." With a cold snort, as though quarreling with someone unseen, Little Black threw the matter to the back of her mind.

Not far away, Joss, who had already completed his task, was walking toward them while waving.