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Sure enough, when dealing with a force like the vampires, you couldn't chase them one nest at a time like a dog hunting rats.

You had to gather them together first—

Then wipe them out in one blow.

Deacon Frost's ambition to ascend as the Blood God had been crushed by Blade.

Along with him, the vampire power base built around Deacon suffered a devastating blow.

Of course, some vampires and human followers belonging to that faction had avoided disaster simply because they never went to Eternal Night Temple.

But those survivors would not find it easy to carry the banner of the radical vampire faction.

Because the Twelve Houses—who had been manipulated by Deacon and suppressed by him—would never let such an opportunity pass without taking revenge. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

At the very least, Deacon Frost's fortune would be carved up by those old monsters.

Any radical survivors hoping to rise using Deacon's inheritance would first have to ask whether the watching elder vampires approved.

And when vampires dealt with their own kind, they were just as vicious.

There was no sense of brotherhood or shared bloodline among them.

Completely unlike Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants, which loudly claimed our own do not kill our own and placed mutant collective interests first.

Whether members under Magneto actually killed mutants was another matter.

But Magneto himself truly was quite tolerant toward mutants.

Otherwise, the X-Men roster would have gone through several complete replacements by now.

In any case, in practical terms, Los Angeles streets suddenly became much cleaner.

The police had an easier time.

Street gangs no longer lived in fear that they might somehow offend vampires.

Those dark creatures who boasted themselves as more evolved than humans were not the sort to welcome random thugs seeking refuge.

If they weren't careful, those gangsters asking to join simply became convenient blood bags.

What gang member looked for protection just to die?

They wanted backup in fights, cover when committing crimes, and someone powerful watching their backs.

But vampires not only looked down on street-level criminals—

They regularly ate them.

If gangs welcomed vampires, that would be the real miracle.

So when those sunlight-hating creatures disappeared from the streets of Los Angeles, people might not openly celebrate in public—

But privately, many were quietly delighted.

Some even celebrated in secret.

Hollywood was much the same.

As a long-standing Jewish stronghold, vampires had exerted influence there for many years.

But they had never done so with the arrogant, domineering attitude of Deacon Frost's radicals.

No one wanted mysterious new bosses appearing overhead, demanding a cut of the money.

Worse still, those dark creatures not only ignored existing rules—

They wanted to make new ones of their own.

That was what people truly could not tolerate.

Henry quickly began to experience the benefits of fewer radical vampires.

Charlize Theron was still filming in Australia.

But her agent, J.J. Harris, remained in Hollywood.

Besides handling the actress's career, Harris also managed other talent.

Over the past year, the resistance and obstacles standing in her way had suddenly vanished, making work far smoother.

From time to time, the agent would visit Stark Pictures personally and chat with Henry about industry matters.

Partly to show how seriously she took Charlize's career.

Partly to use the studio's channels to gather information.

And partly to cultivate ties with the company's executive director.

Henry didn't dislike this kind of goodwill mixed with self-interest.

At least it was mutually beneficial.

Not one-sided exploitation.

Beyond those visible improvements, the combat testing of the Duck-form Duck-Leopard Armor and the Multi-Directional Tracking Combat Missiles had become Henry's main private research focus recently.

Inspired by the Macross anime franchise, the weapon system had presented many technical difficulties when adapted into the Marvel universe—

Though not as many as expected.

First, these missiles were primarily designed for space combat outside an atmosphere.

So they didn't require wings or fins for steering.

They relied entirely on multidirectional thrusters for maneuvering and propulsion.

They could still be used in atmosphere, but range became significantly shorter, and some design/material adjustments were necessary.

Second, the reason their attack paths looked so erratic was because they constantly overcorrected during pursuit.

They'd overshoot the target, then turn back again.

Normally, such wasteful fuel consumption would get both the thrust-program engineers and the missile physicists dragged before a firing squad.

But this overloaded design accidentally gave the missiles unpredictable flight paths—

Making them harder to intercept or evade.

What should have been a flaw became a strength.

A true marvel of engineering history.

So their bizarre movement wasn't an intentional feature.

It was the lucky result of one mistake layered atop another.

Negative times negative equals positive.

The initial launch direction determined from which angle a missile would begin tracking the enemy.

With Henry's current technology, he could control course changes mid-flight instead of letting missiles track independently—

But precise fine-tuning remained impossible.

Or rather, he had never intended precision in the first place.

Unpredictability was one of the weapon's greatest strengths.

Chaos was the point.

Its only real weakness was size.

Once warhead payload and fuel were installed, there wasn't much room left for anything else.

So these missiles lacked true fire-and-forget capability.

They required an external system for locking, tracking, and control.

If every function had to be built into each missile, they wouldn't be merely thumb-thick anymore.

They'd need to be two or three times larger.

As things stood, control signals were transmitted wirelessly through the quantum computing system Henry had built behind the scenes.

Fortunately, his communications systems were based on alien technology.

Modern Earth technology couldn't crack them.

It probably couldn't even detect them.

Meanwhile, the explosive compounds had been upgraded.

At equal weight, their power was several times stronger than TNT.

The propellant formulas were also from the Galactic Empire version of science, far more efficient than Earth fuels.

Still—

Miniature missile size remained the greatest limitation.

Once you required enough explosive force to matter, fuel capacity simply couldn't support long-distance travel.

That was why Henry classified them as combat missiles.

Without heavy maneuvering, they could fly only about one kilometer.

If maneuvering restrictions were removed, their practical combat range dropped to roughly five to six hundred meters.

Unless used outside atmosphere.

In space, fuel dynamics differed enough that range would increase substantially.

As for enlarging the missiles to carry more explosive and more fuel—

That idea barely crossed Henry's mind before he discarded it.

The true strength of the system lay in overwhelming targets through sheer numbers.

Tracking from multiple directions made interception difficult.

And they could lock onto multiple targets simultaneously.

Those qualities made them ideal for close-range chaotic multi-target combat.

At medium and long range, they were actually less suitable.

Besides, these things had originally been meant to shoot down aircraft.

Using them on people was already somewhat excessive.

Armored vehicles, tanks, armed helicopters—

All perfectly manageable.

Increase the power further?

Then what exactly was he planning to fight?

This universe didn't have Gundams.

During development, Henry had even removed the warheads entirely, replacing them with inert counterweights, and used Katie as the simulated target.

That tiger had received excellent dodge training as a result.

Since the first real combat test had been against vampires whose speed exceeded both humans and tigers, Henry had gathered a great deal of valuable battlefield data.

All of it could be used to improve the combat missiles further.

Though he had no intention of switching careers to become an arms dealer, the era of superheroes appearing in bulk was drawing ever closer.

And for some reason, Henry felt an increasing sense of urgency pushing him toward certain preparations.

You could also say that if he didn't spend his time researching alien technology and building strange weapons, he had no idea what else to do with a super-brain like his.

Money was trivial.

Not worth pursuing.

If it couldn't be converted into something beneficial to him, then it was merely a boring number.

And anything money could buy—

What was better than what he could personally build?

That sense of confusion had begun affecting his daily life as well.

Until—

A distress call interrupted everything.

Again?

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