"Motherfucking hell, that is absolutely a cheat!"
Deli stared at the kill replay. In the killer's perspective, he was just a tiny black speck in the distance, barely visible at all. And yet the instant he appeared, less than a second later, the other player had already raised the scope, taken aim, and put a bullet straight through his head.
That kind of reaction speed and precision? If that was not cheating, then what was?
"Streamer, that guy's streaming too. Search Spiderweb for his channel. It's called Hardcore Human Physics Cheat Scene!"
"Holy crap, this guy is going berserk!"
"He's been murdering everyone nonstop ever since he dropped in, picked up a rifle, and then found a sniper rifle!"
Deli listened to the chat messages with growing curiosity. He exited the game and opened Spiderweb.
There it was.
The channel titled Hardcore Human Physics Cheat Scene.
At the moment, more than ten million people were watching live. Some were game players with headsets. Others had come purely out of curiosity.
"At that reaction speed, are we sure this isn't a real sniper playing the game?"
"Streamer, say something. I'll donate if you talk!"
"Seven straight wins, every single run ending as the last man standing. That is pure skill."
The live chat was a riot of Chinese, English, Russian, and who knew what else. Spiderweb had users all over the world, and after Drex Valen worked out a deal with the Rabbit side, people could use it without needing to jump through hoops or bypass restrictions. That only pushed Spiderweb's growth even further.
Its registered user count had already broken one billion.
An absurd number. Probably one no platform would ever match again.
After all, registering an account on Spiderweb cost money. It was not free. A huge crowd of freeloaders had not bothered signing up yet.
But the new style of interaction, watching videos and firing off live comments, had left even the cheap-seat crowd twitching with interest.
Deli looked at the streamer's screen and realized there were no obvious lock-ons, no strange aim assists, none of the tricks he had expected.
That streaming method showed the player's actual screen directly, which basically shut down most cheating possibilities.
Was this guy even human?
Deli fell into the same stunned silence and self-doubt that everyone else did.
Meanwhile, Drex Valen was having a great time.
Mostly because he was not cheating. He was doing this all himself.
A head slowly came into view in front of him.
Drex calmly raised the scope, lined up the target's skull, and pulled the trigger.
Another gorgeous corner kill.
"My God, he fired the moment that guy jumped out, and still got the headshot first!"
"What kind of reflexes are those?"
"My heart was about to jump clean out of my throat, and then the streamer shoved it right back down!"
"That's nine straight wins now, right? Can he get seventy kills in one match?"
Drex glanced at the scrolling comments and enjoyed the attention. For him, this was just a way to unwind.
Along the way, he ran into a few people with freakishly fast reflexes and outstanding natural talent. None of that mattered. He still put them down with a single headshot.
By now, his ID had become the undisputed legend of Bloodbath to the Last. A lot of people who had been shattered by him came over to watch his stream, eager to see the impossible reversals and instant kills for themselves.
Of course, some people tried to snipe him.
Drex simply switched weapons in a split second, then followed that up with a five-shot burst from a rifle that landed five headshots in a row and blew the entire audience away.
After more than a dozen consecutive wins that day, Drex finally called it a night.
During the time he had been developing the virtual headset, Tony Stark had been fighting back. On top of that, Nick Fury already had the evidence in hand, and Drex had given Tony a copy of it too.
So when the hammer finally fell, Obadiah was caught completely off guard.
Nick Fury had originally planned to arrange an "accident," letting Obadiah vanish without a trace and without disrupting Stark Industries.
He had not expected the Black Queen to be watching the whole thing.
When Fury tried to bury the matter quietly, the Black Queen immediately exposed it through her own outlets, including the Global Daily and Spiderweb. Then she applied a little more pressure, enough to send Stark Industries' stock into chaos.
She also forged evidence showing that Obadiah had evaded more than twenty billion dollars in taxes.
Though, to be fair, that part did not even need much forging. Obadiah really did have a mountain of tax-evasion records.
That kind of thing brought out the IRS, that lovely, cheerful little beast of a government agency, and once they got involved, Obadiah was finished.
"Why does the IRS have War Machines?"
Drex stared at the screen in surprise.
The U.S. Air Force and Navy had fought over War Machine allocations before and still could not get enough of them. Yet somehow the IRS had War Machines too?
Not just one, either.
Ten of them.
You are a tax bureau. A tax bureau.
Obadiah's fall was not the end of it. Given how he had been smuggling Stark Industries weapons to terrorists in Afghanistan and to the Ten Rings, there was a very real chance he might "accidentally" fall to his death in prison.
With Obadiah gone, Stark Industries was thrown into a full-scale crisis. Then the Black Queen moved in from the shadows and hit the company again, causing even more damage.
Tony Stark did not even have time to step in and save the company before Stark Industries officially declared bankruptcy.
"Break it, then build it back up."
Drex leaned back with a faint smile. "Tony Stark, standing on the ruins of Stark Industries, hoisting the Stark banner high, and saying Stark never fell. That sounds about right."
Blade Tech Industries had already stripped a lot of good stuff from Stark Industries.
The patented technologies could not be taken, of course. Those were Tony's personal property.
But the weapons division's production lines, the ones Drex had been eyeing for a long time, were now available to him legally. And the United States was even willing to give face on that matter.
Not out of kindness, naturally. They simply could not find anyone else who could absorb that many machines and that much equipment. At this point, only Blade Tech Industries could swallow it whole.
Once the machinery, equipment, and weapons division talent had all been absorbed, Blade Tech Industries officially became an unstoppable giant in the global military-industrial market.
Its production capacity jumped dramatically, and even the smaller orders could now be delivered quickly.
Though "small" in this case still meant over a hundred million dollars.
Drex felt that Blade Tech Industries was finally starting to resemble a real monster, the kind of all-consuming corporate titan that Umbrella had once been in people's nightmares.
It had flagship products in six major fields: military, materials, energy, medicine, networking, and news. And in every one of them, it was ahead of the world.
Outside, people were even saying something ridiculous.
"Once you step into Blade Tech Industries, you've already stepped into the future."
A lot of people genuinely believed that.
Drex walked up to the batch of machines and instruments that had just been delivered.
He had already seen the atomic structure.
Now all that was left was replication.
Copying something that already existed was not difficult for Drex.
So next, Blade Tech Industries gained several new production lines, along with a few secret lines hidden in other locations.