Chapter 903

Dragon’s Heritage was, at its core, nothing more than a magical mechanism. In the terminology of Ashina Noriko’s homeland, it would be classified as a special technique.

Its purpose was to siphon vitality from those affected by it and transfer that energy to its source: the Divine Dragon, the Sakura Dragon, which used the stolen life force to heal its wounds.

There were two ways this process could occur.

The first was direct killing, which required little explanation. The second was considerably more subtle. Instead of immediately taking someone’s life, Dragon’s Heritage gradually drained the vitality of everyone around its bearer.

Those affected by the second method developed a peculiar illness known as Dragonrot.

Initially, the symptoms resembled an ordinary respiratory infection. Victims developed persistent coughing, which gradually worsened as their life force was depleted. Eventually, their bodies simply gave out.

Most of the stolen vitality was transferred to the Sakura Dragon to aid its recovery. However, in the interest of maintaining the system, a portion was left with those bearing Dragon’s Heritage, allowing them to resurrect after death.

This was precisely why two very different organizations had spent centuries attempting to unravel its secrets.

The Ashina clan, a minor family obsessed with creating an army of immortal warriors, desperately wanted to master the technique.

The Hand had a different motivation. Devoted to the pursuit of immortality and the preservation of life itself, they hoped to understand Dragon’s Heritage and use it to achieve eternal life.

Both organizations had invested enormous resources into researching it.

Neither had made much progress.

Their research continued until Dragon’s Heritage mysteriously disappeared.

The prevailing theory was that someone had wielded a legendary weapon called the Mortal Blade, a divine sword capable of severing immortality, and destroyed the mechanism.

The truth was considerably less dramatic.

The Sakura Dragon had simply fallen dormant. Once its wounds had healed, it departed, leaving the Dragon’s Heritage without a purpose.

However, the underlying mechanism had never truly vanished.

It had continued passing down through generations of descendants born from the union of the Ashina bloodline and the Divine Heir’s lineage.

The Sakura Dragon had served as the source that activated the entire system. Without it, Dragon’s Heritage was like a dormant gene: still present, but incapable of functioning.

Neither the Ashina clan nor the Hand had managed to reactivate it despite centuries of research.

Eventually, both organizations had concluded that the technique was permanently lost.

But that was hardly a problem for the Eredar Twins.

Strip away the mysticism, and Dragon’s Heritage was simply a system for extracting, manipulating, and transferring life force.

The Burning Legion had been doing essentially the same thing for tens of thousands of years.

Warlocks were thoroughly familiar with the process.

The twins didn’t even need to conduct extensive experiments. The moment they examined Noriko, they understood how Dragon’s Heritage worked and identified the missing component.

Restoring it was trivial.

In fact, their modifications had made the technique considerably more efficient than its original form.

A textbook example of how the creator’s successor could improve upon the original design.

Most importantly, the revised Dragon’s Heritage no longer required the stolen vitality to be transferred to an external source like the Sakura Dragon.

Its bearer could retain all the life force they harvested.

Not that the Eredar Twins or Evenson particularly needed such a technique.

If they wanted to acquire vitality, they had far more direct and efficient methods available.

Why bother with an elaborate system when they could simply mass-produce soulless cloned bodies, use them as living batteries, and drain their life force in an instant?

Compared with that, Dragon’s Heritage was painfully inefficient.

Its only real contribution to their operations was Noriko herself: an exceptionally skilled ninja assassin who could now return from the dead.

And that was more than enough.

Elsewhere aboard the ship, Natasha wiped her mouth after another brief coughing fit.

Her throat had suddenly become unbearably itchy. Given Umbrella’s reputation and the nature of its research, she’d briefly suspected that she’d been exposed to some kind of biological agent.

Fortunately, the sensation disappeared as abruptly as it had begun.

Perhaps she’d simply caught a cold.

She put the matter aside and returned to the question that actually concerned her.

"Has Umbrella finally decided to openly declare war on S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

S.H.I.E.L.D. had been investigating Umbrella for a long time.

Unfortunately, the results had been disappointing.

They possessed a substantial amount of intelligence suggesting that the company had emerged from the remnants of Nazi Germany. Yet, strictly speaking, most of that information amounted to rumors and circumstantial evidence.

They had nothing concrete.

More puzzling was Umbrella’s behavior after becoming publicly known.

The company had never openly threatened world peace, nor had it taken any direct action against S.H.I.E.L.D.

It had cooperated with Justin Hammer in the past, but Hammer was hardly a terrorist. He had no particular desire to wage war against the world and had largely been manipulated by Whiplash.

Subsequent investigations suggested that Umbrella had simply used the partnership to introduce its biological products to the United States government.

If that counted as criminal behavior, then half the weapons manufacturers in America deserved to be arrested.

There were also incidents involving enhanced soldiers attacking a special facility and another enhanced individual assaulting an American patrol in the deserts of Afghanistan.

But unless the American government acknowledged those incidents, they were difficult to establish as official acts of aggression.

And during the Battle of New York, Umbrella had even dispatched its special operative, Dottie Underwood, to fight alongside the Avengers against the Chitauri invasion.

Taken together, these actions had left Nick Fury thoroughly confused.

What exactly was Umbrella trying to accomplish?

Surely a corporation with such a suspicious history hadn’t gone through all this trouble simply to make money.

Nobody would believe that.

"That’s a rather unfair accusation."

Sarah shook her head.

"Umbrella has absolutely no intention of making an enemy of S.H.I.E.L.D."

And she was telling the truth.

Their current operation hadn’t originally been directed against S.H.I.E.L.D. at all.

"Really?"

Natasha clearly wasn’t convinced.

"Then why are you here? You’re not going to tell me you came aboard a secret S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel without any interest in the classified information stored here."

Umbrella’s behavior this time had been considerably different from its previous operations.

A secret S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel had been hijacked by a group of pirates. Shortly afterward, Umbrella personnel had appeared, eliminated the pirates, and remained aboard the ship.

If they weren’t interested in the information being transported here, what exactly were they doing?

Playing vigilante?

Natasha continued.

"And those pirates were working for you, weren’t they?"

In her estimation, Batroc and his men had been hired by Umbrella to provide cover for an intelligence operation.

The pirates would hijack the vessel, creating an excuse for Umbrella to intervene. Once the information had been stolen, all responsibility could be pinned on the pirates while Umbrella quietly disappeared into the background.

Unfortunately for them, S.H.I.E.L.D.’s rescue operation had arrived too quickly.

Umbrella hadn’t had time to withdraw, forcing them to eliminate the pirates prematurely.

Sarah didn’t answer.

Her expression became rather peculiar.

It was the sort of expression that said she neither confirmed nor denied any of the accusations.

And, to be fair, there was some truth to Natasha’s suspicions.

Sarah had indeed made contact with Batroc and his mercenaries.

Her original plan had been to cooperate with them and board the vessel together.

Unfortunately, negotiations had collapsed almost immediately.

When Sarah approached Batroc, she’d expected the usual mercenary negotiations.

Instead, the man had launched into a passionate speech about the honor and professional integrity of a true soldier of fortune.

He refused to expose his employer to unnecessary risks.

Sarah had been thoroughly unimpressed.

Honor? Really?

This was a man who accepted money to do practically anything. What kind of honor did he think he possessed?

He simply didn’t want to share the payment.

Sarah had even offered to work without compensation.

That had made matters worse.

According to Batroc, someone willing to work for free was even more suspicious than someone demanding money. It clearly meant she had ulterior motives, and therefore couldn’t be trusted.

He refused to let her aboard under any circumstances.

Sarah had been furious.

Fine.

If he wouldn’t let her board voluntarily, she’d make sure he had a very memorable voyage.

"Well, I suppose that’s how things stand."

Natasha interpreted Sarah’s silence as confirmation.

She produced a silver USB drive and plugged it into the computer terminal.

Her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard as she initiated the data transfer.

Then she glanced sideways at Sarah with a teasing smile.

"Honestly, you’re the head of security, and you’re personally handling an intelligence theft operation? That’s taking ’additional responsibilities’ a little too seriously."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Can’t Umbrella afford to hire a few more employees? Surely your company isn’t experiencing financial difficulties."

"Ha..."

Sarah slowly raised her head and looked toward the ceiling at a forty-five-degree angle.

She was fighting back tears.

"You’re imagining things."

Her voice was unusually subdued.

"Although I could spend an eternity with you and still find it too short, my work here is finished. Feel free to continue whatever you’re doing. I’ll be leaving now."

"This is a S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel."

Natasha kept her attention on the computer screen, watching the progress bar.

"You can’t just walk in whenever you like and leave whenever you please."

Sarah smiled.

"Have your combat skills improved that much since we last met?"

Her tone was light and provocative.

"Don’t forget. You’re not my match."

"That’s true."

Natasha nodded, glancing sideways at her.

"But I’m not the only one who came aboard this ship."

She continued watching the data transfer.

"Why do you think I’ve been standing here talking to you all this time? I was buying time until the others finished their assignments."

With that, she reached for her communicator.

But before she could activate it—

BANG!

The door suddenly burst open.

Natasha instinctively turned toward the entrance.

Captain America had stormed into the room.

At almost the exact same moment, she heard glass shattering behind her.

Her stomach dropped.

She turned around.

Sarah was gone.

"Damn it!"

Natasha rushed toward the broken window and looked down.

Nothing.

She knew exactly what had happened.

The last time she’d encountered Umbrella’s security chief, Jill Valentine, the woman had demonstrated an extraordinary invisibility ability.

Catching her now would be practically impossible.

Are my teammates secretly working for the other side?

Natasha resisted the urge to curse.

"What are you doing?"

Steve approached, noticing her strange behavior.

"Captain..."

Natasha sighed.

"Could you please knock before entering next time? Or at least announce yourself over the communicator?"

"Did someone escape?"

Steve quickly understood what had happened.

But he didn’t believe the failure was his responsibility.

"If you hadn’t separated from the team at the beginning of the operation and had stayed with us, this might not have happened."

Steve had been a soldier long before he became Captain America.

One of the things he found most difficult to tolerate was a subordinate who abandoned their assigned position and acted independently.

Such behavior made coordinated operations nearly impossible and endangered everyone involved.

In his eyes, Natasha had taken an unnecessary risk.

"Were you retrieving S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intelligence?"

His gaze shifted toward the computer terminal and the USB drive connected to it.

"I don’t remember that being part of our mission."

"You have your assignment. I have mine."

Natasha’s attention had already returned to the computer.

She had no idea how much information Umbrella might have accessed, copied, or modified. All she could do now was salvage whatever remained.

Steve’s frustration was rapidly approaching anger.

He’d already disagreed with the mission, believing it amounted to cleaning up after Nick Fury.

Now he was beginning to suspect that the entire rescue operation might have been little more than a diversion designed to allow Natasha to recover the classified information.

"You realize your actions could have compromised the entire operation, don’t you?"

"You’re exaggerating."

Natasha replied irritably.

Fortunately, the transfer had just finished.

She pulled out the USB drive and slipped it into her equipment.

"I’ll report this when we get back, and then I’ll—"

Steve stopped mid-sentence.

He had approached the window on the opposite side of the room.

From there, he could see the open section of deck where he’d fought Noriko earlier.

Two soldiers assigned to guard her corpse were lying motionless on the ground.

And beside them...

Noriko was alive.

She was crouching over a scroll spread across the deck.

"Hands!"

She formed a series of hand seals, then slammed her palm against the scroll.

A weapon emerged from within it.

A heavy blade roughly half a meter long.

Noriko ran her fingers along its mechanism.

The weapon unfolded like a flower, its four blades spreading outward until it became an enormous shuriken nearly the size of a millstone.

A Fūma Shuriken.

Noriko spun forward, using the momentum of her entire body as though she were throwing a hammer.

Then she released the weapon toward the information center.

Steve’s expression changed.

"Damn it!"

He immediately raised his shield.

The enormous shuriken struck the vibranium surface and was deflected.

But the impact was so powerful that the weapon itself broke apart.

Its four blades separated and flew in different directions, embedding themselves in the walls and surrounding surfaces.

Then Steve heard a faint electronic beep.

He looked at the fragments.

Small red lights had appeared at the ends of all four blades.

His instincts screamed at him.

"Natasha!"

He grabbed Black Widow and charged toward the window.

The two of them crashed through the glass and landed inside the adjacent room.

BOOM!

A muffled explosion shook the information center.

The four embedded blades detonated simultaneously.

The blast itself wasn’t particularly powerful, but the resulting fragments scattered throughout the room at tremendous speed.

Anyone who had remained inside would have been shredded.

"All right."

Natasha lay against the wall, rubbing her shoulder.

"I suppose that one was my fault."

"Obviously!"

Steve didn’t bother offering her any consolation.

He raised his head and looked toward the deck below.

Then he lifted his shield and leaped out of the information center, landing heavily on the deck.

Noriko was still there.

"You..."

Steve stared at her in disbelief.

"You’re alive?"

He had personally witnessed her being shot. The bullet had struck a vital area, and he’d been certain she was dead.

Noriko casually swung the enormous weapon in her hands.

"Strange things happen."

She smiled.

"Care for a second round?"

Steve gave a cold laugh.

"A second round? I could fight you all day."

"I know."

Noriko looked up.

"So..."

CRACK!

Thunder exploded overhead.

A bolt of lightning descended from the storm clouds.

But instead of dodging, Noriko jumped directly toward it, raising her enormous blade above her head.

Everyone knew metal conducted electricity.

The lightning struck the weapon.

Under ordinary circumstances, Noriko should have been reduced to a smoking corpse.

Instead, something extraordinary happened.

The blade absorbed the entire bolt.

Its surface suddenly blazed with brilliant light, and arcs of electricity began dancing across the metal.

Noriko twisted her body and brought the weapon around.

Then she shouted in Japanese:

"Gyūō’s Lightning!"

A massive bolt of electricity erupted from the blade and surged toward Captain America.

The attack carried tremendous force.

Unfortunately for Noriko, Steve had a rather unfair advantage against lightning-based attacks.

He could stand behind his shield and endure blows from Thor’s hammer. He’d even fought alongside the God of Thunder and coordinated attacks with his lightning.

If Asgardian lightning couldn’t easily overwhelm him, a technique powered by a single storm bolt wasn’t likely to do much better.

Steve raised his shield.

The lightning struck.

When the light finally faded, the shield was smoking slightly.

Steve himself was unharmed.

But Noriko was already moving.

By the time he lowered his shield, she’d reached the edge of the ship.

She leaped over the railing and disappeared into the ocean.

"She’s getting away!"

Steve rushed toward the edge.

But Noriko wasn’t swimming.

A pair of strange mechanisms on her shoes suddenly inflated, forming air-filled pads beneath her feet.

She landed on the surface of the water.

Then she ran.

The technique was known as Water Strider Technique.

By manipulating the air cushions beneath her shoes, Noriko could distribute her weight across the water’s surface and move forward without sinking.

An inexperienced person attempting the same maneuver would probably end up splitting their legs apart and plunging headfirst into the sea.

Noriko, however, moved across the waves as smoothly as an ice skater.

By then, Rumlow and the other operatives had arrived.

They rushed to the railing, spotted Noriko retreating across the water, and raised their weapons.

But Noriko seemed to have anticipated their reaction.

She drew one hand across her left forearm.

Several small electronic spheres shot out.

"Shadow Clone Technique!"

The spheres flashed.

In an instant, they projected multiple images of Noriko, each one indistinguishable from the original.

The copies scattered in every direction across the water.

Rumlow and his men stared in confusion.

There was no way to tell which one was real.

They had little choice.

"Open fire!"

If they couldn’t identify the real target, they would simply shoot them all.

The operatives emptied their magazines, spraying bullets across the fleeing figures.

But after the last shots rang out, every image stopped simultaneously.

They flickered.

Then vanished.

All of them.

Rumlow stared at the empty water.

"Every single one was fake?"

He scratched his head in disbelief.

The truth was that Noriko had already escaped the moment she’d released the decoys.

She had deactivated the air cushions beneath her shoes, used a weighted drop to plunge beneath the surface, and disappeared underwater.

As a ninja—and one blessed with Dragon’s Heritage—her underwater endurance and swimming ability were extraordinary.

Even the Navy SEALs would have struggled to match her depth and speed.

"She actually got away..."

Rumlow was clearly frustrated.

Initially, he’d assumed that an enemy escaping by swimming couldn’t possibly travel very far. They could simply launch aircraft and search the surrounding waters.

But when he looked up, he saw the storm clouds gathering overhead.

Thunder continued to rumble across the sky, and the air had grown heavy and oppressive.

A violent storm was approaching.

Even S.H.I.E.L.D.’s advanced aircraft would be in serious danger if they attempted to remain in the area once the storm arrived.

Under those conditions, a search operation would be pointless.

"Time to withdraw."

Steve placed a hand on Rumlow’s shoulder.

"During World War II, HYDRA developed miniature one-man submarines. I personally dismantled one with my bare hands. If she chose to escape underwater, she probably has something similar waiting to pick her up."

He glanced toward the darkening sky.

"And even if she doesn’t, the storm will make sure she doesn’t get far."

Rumlow nodded.

"Fair enough."

Still, something about Steve using HYDRA technology as an example struck him as rather strange.

Then another thought occurred to him.

Wait.

That woman had been shot.

He’d seen her corpse.

So how was she alive?

Could it be...?

Rumlow’s expression changed as the implications began to sink in.