16 Blackwing
"I am."
Turning around to where I heard the voice from, I see a man standing on top of a building, staring down at me with a scowl.
He is wearing black body armor with a long cape behind him. On his head is a helmet that covers most of his face except for the mouth. Around his eyes is an outline of a bat that pops out of the helmet.
There is a clear bat theme going on with this guy. It almost reminds me of a grumpy hero from the studio next door. I use observe on him, hoping to get some more info.
[Observe skill leveled up!]
Ah, finally, after continuously using observe on everything, it reached level 3. I only dread at how much xp I will need to reach level 4.
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[Name - Joseph Manfredi (Blackwing)]
[Level - 26]
[HP - 450 / 450]
[Description - A well-trained human with the ability to control bats.]
[Affiliation - Manfredi Family, Circus of Crime]
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He can control bats? He might even be a little cooler than Batman, definitely nowhere near as rich, though. Oh, and he is like thrice my level.
As for his affiliation, I am not surprised to see Manfredi Family on there, but what the heck is the Circus of Crime? I'm not a big fan of circuses in the first place because clowns are scary but seeing that name, I think I will ignore them like the plague in the future.
"Hey, what the hell are you staring at me for?" He says. To Joseph, it seemed I was just staring at him the whole time I was actually looking at the system.
Well, I still have around 20 seconds left on my magic shield cooldown, so I might as well chat a little with this guy while waiting for it to reset. "Just looking at your costume, you make it yourself?"
He reacted to my question in a very unexpected way as the frown turned into a smile, and he started laughing boisterously. "Damn right I did. You know my dad never appreciated my work. I'm glad at least someone has good eyes, even if that someone is a person I will have to kill."
"Well, you could, you know, not kill me? Not that you have the ability anyway. You could choose to turn around and go home." The surprise on his face tells me he never considered that option.
"What? No way, dad would kill me if I just went back like that!" He has only said three lines and mentioned his father twice, this guy has some problems.
"Well, okay then. I'm ready to fight whenever you are, by the way." I still have about 500 health worth of shield left, and the cooldown is almost over, so there is no reason to delay this any longer.
"Good, let's get started then." He says, raising his hands in a dramatic manner. "Rise my dark ones and attack!"
I can hear the cops behind me cocking their guns as Blackwing continues to stand in that pose with his arms in the air. Nothing is really happening, though?
"Sorry, it takes a while for them to get here, just hold on a minute." Blackwing apologizes. He seems very polite for someone working for a mafioso family. Of course, I'm not as polite as him. Instead of waiting for whatever he is calling for to get here, I shoot some web at his face and pull him forward to make him come tumbling off the roof.
He tries to yell something at me angrily but seeing as his mouth is webbed, I only hear a mumble come out as he falls to the ground.
He manages to barely land on his feet but seeing as he is only a normal, well-trained human, he still takes around 100 damage from it. He rips off the webs and yells, "How dare you attack me when I wasn't even ready!"
"I was supposed to let you get ready?" I ask him, looking around to find a good place to web away to once his summoned things, probably bats, arrive.
"That would have been the honorable thing to do!" He says, pointing a finger at me. "It matters not for my little ones have arrived. Raise your eyes to the sky and feast your eyes on my most loyal subjects!"
Before I even look up, I see the ground get covered in a large shadow. The is a swarm of bats in the sky, as expected. They come in all sizes, most look like regular tiny bats, but some are almost half as big as a human, clearly somehow having been mutated.
They all look feral and bloodthirsty. I can now understand why the police keep taking casualties to this guy. Blackwing himself isn't very threatening, but the bats sure are. It's a good thing I have an idea of how to take care of them.
I web myself up to a roof to be on the same level as the bats, mid-air I hear Blackwing laughing below me. "You can try to run all you want, but my bats will still catch and eat you, Spider!"
Yeah, okay, let's see what you say once I'm done with them. Also, what's up with the cops being idiots here? Blackwing is standing there completely defenseless, but they are all shooting at the bats in the sky. I'm gonna take a guess that his armor must be bulletproof or something because not even Yuri is attempting to shoot him.
Standing on the roof, I am pretty much eye-level with the bats. Using observe on a few of them, I discern that they aren't all that strong individually, with the small bats having a maximum of 5 health each while the big ones have around 50.
When my mana burst out before to create the magic shield around me, I somehow grasped the feeling, and I'm now hoping to recreate that to construct some other spells that I remember from novels. Something more offensive in nature.
The bats quickly swarm around me while I try to fiddle with my mana. They are doing some damage, but my shield still holds firm, with an additional one I can cast at any time now that my cooldown is over.
I manipulate my mana roughly the same way as to how it moves when forming a magic shield. Drawing it out of my body, I empty my mana bar by a fair amount. I try to shape it into some sort of a projectile, but my control is not good enough, and it just dissipates into the air.
I wasn't expecting to get it on my first time anyway, so I try again and again, recasting my magic shield once it runs out of points. On my fifth try of forming the mana into a projectile, I already succeeded, surprising even myself as I thought it would take at least a few more tries, I guess I got lucky.
[New skill created - Mana bolt]
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[Mana Bolt - Active] (Level 1 - 1%)
[Cost - 50 mana] [Cooldown - 5 seconds]
Fire 1 magical bolt constructed from mana out of your hand dealing (INT x 1) damage to the target and other enemies close to the target.
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Maybe the Ancient One will be proud once I go to her and show off my own magic?
The mana bolt hits the bat nearest to my right hand and explodes upon contact killing the bat instantly as well as dealing splash damage to all the bats around it killing a good few hundred of them.
Some big mutated ones survive, but they are all badly wounded and unable to get off the ground, with only a few health points remaining and injuries all over their bodies.
Blackwing seems shocked at seeing his bats die so quickly, he attempts to speak, but all I hear is gibberish coming out of his mount instead of coherent words. In a panicked state, he points to me, and all the other bats that had previously been targeting the cops fly toward me, swarming around just like the previous group.
Did he learn nothing from the previous attack? I cast another Mana Bolt, which is already off its short cooldown, killing all the new bats that gathered around me. I see some notifications that the skill had leveled up a whole eight times from those two attacks.
"Wha… What the fuck did you just do? How could you kill all my little ones with such little effort? Damn it, my dad is totally going to ground me for this failure…." Blackwing shouts angrily.
I'm currently standing in the middle of a bat graveyard. Holy shit, there are at least half a thousand dead bats here.
"Sorry?" I say, but that only makes him angrier for some reason, hmm… "If you don't wanna go back home to daddy, you can go to jail instead."
I personally think that's a pretty good compromise, so without further ado, I jump off the roof and sling behind him. He turns around and swings at me, but he is level 26 due to his ability to control bats, not physical abilities, after all, so I easily duck under it before charging at his stomach and knocking Blackwing to the ground.
Tumbling after him, I put my hands on the ground and push myself off into the air, webbing his legs and arms to the ground before he could manage to get up. Shortly after, I easily land back on my feet. That almost looked like a real Spiderman move, I think.
For good measure, I put more webs all over his body so he definitely wouldn't be able to break out before the cops are ready to transport him out of here.
[Gained 891 experiences from the battle]
[Leveled up 4 times!]
In addition to the insane amount of experience, I picked up his drops which made the eyes under my mask go big.
In terms of money, I picked up a whole 38 million dollars, all of which is now sitting in my inventory. How does the system even calculate how much money I get? Did I just steal this guy's whole savings or what?
I have no doubt these drop rates will be nerfed in a future update, but I might as well abuse it while I can. Looking at the money in my inventory, I am astonished to see 40 million. I guess all the thugs I beat up during the day accumulated to a lot of money as well, I hadn't really bothered to check, but I guess I can make a fortune like this.
The other drop I got from Blackwing was a sword.
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[Silver-Blood Sword] (Uncommon)
[Durability - 300 / 300]
[Attack - STR x 3 damage]
Deals 2x damage to vampires and werewolves. 5% of damage done is returned to you as health. Sword absorbs the blood of slain enemies to repair itself.
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This sword is colored red like blood, making it look really cool while also being incredibly strong. I want to use it, but for some reason, I feel like people would disagree with Spiderman running around New York, beheading criminals with a blood-red sword. I will just leave it in my inventory in case I ever need it.
I am about to leave the scene, but Yuri stops me. "Wait up, Spiderman." She leans into her car, looking for something. After a few seconds, she comes out with a cell phone.
"Let me tell you my number." She says, "If you ever need a contact in the police force, just give me a call, and maybe I can help out. Most of the police force appear to be fans of you after all the easy criminals we found webbed up and carried off to prison today."
I save her number in my phone. "You aren't going to track me through calls or something, right?"
She shrugs. "I'm probably going to get a pay rise for catching Blackwing today, I see no reason to find out your real identity, let us just keep this partnership a secret between us, make sure to call me whenever you catch some big-name criminal, okay?"
