The recluse has his own ingenious plan.

After the questioning of Laura was over, to Lux and the others’ surprise, the girl actually joined their group. Originally, they had been worried that offending such a terrifyingly powerful, seemingly unkillable monster girl would make the rest of their journey a nightmare. After all, she neither needed rest nor could be hurt; there was no telling when Laura might leap out of the shadows to claw at them.

But unexpectedly, Joss handled the matter with ease, successfully bringing Laura into their team.

“Handled? Not at all! Why are we bringing her along?” Simon was the first to voice his displeasure.

Oh, so you’re afraid she might ambush us on the road, so you just keep her close, and then there’s no risk of being ambushed, right?

“Think about it. If we let her go, she could attack us at any time. But if she’s with us, then there’s no need to worry about being ambushed, is there?” Joss gave a thumbs-up and flashed a grin straight out of a toothpaste commercial.

No matter how much the other three objected, in the end, Joss set off with Laura in tow.

It wasn’t that he was being stubborn; he simply posed one question: “Even if I don’t take her along, do any of you have a way to eliminate this threat for good?”

Hearing this, Lux and the others fell silent. Killing her was impossible—her regenerative powers were too strong, her combat prowess too terrifying, and she was tough as nails. If they couldn’t beat her in a fair fight, there was no chance against a surprise attack either.

After some thought, the three had to accept the reality: with no way to know if Laura might turn on them, keeping her close was actually the safest option.

As for how Joss managed to win Laura over, it wasn’t by threatening her with clothing. At this stage, everyone still held onto their ideals. If things truly turned bloody, such tricks wouldn’t work at all.

Instead, Joss discreetly showed Laura his own mutated hands (with Little Black’s assistance), at which point she considered him one of her own. In the story Joss spun, he was also a pitiful experiment, not so different from Laura herself. And there was even a perfect plan to help them both disappear from the American military’s radar—if Laura cooperated.

The plan was simple enough: during an explosion, they’d pretend to be caught in the blast and be declared dead.

Joss had already mapped out the timing and steps; the crucial explosives had been prepared from the start. When the time came, he’d detonate them in the enemy base and slip away in the chaos.

The only problem was, he hadn’t quite figured out how he could possibly survive such an explosion.

...

With Laura now among them, the second half of their journey became almost absurdly easy. Though Joss’s true combat strength was on par with hers—perhaps even greater—he kept his identity hidden by operating at the peak of ordinary human capability, never showing his full hand. His fighting skills were exceptional, but the difference between amateur enthusiasts and true masters is subtle, and even if noticed, didn’t prove much.

As a result, Joss mostly fought with firearms like any normal person, which meant the group’s pace remained modest.

Now, though, their encounters with enemies followed a set pattern.

A wild enemy appears!
Our side releases Laura!
Laura goes berserk—super effective!
The enemy falls in droves!

An indestructible Adamantium monster was simply too terrifying for a battlefield of mere mortals; no armor plate or riot shield could withstand a single swipe of Laura’s claws. Add to that her petite, agile frame—she could cut down enemy leaders in a crowd as if it were nothing, sweeping through the battlefield in a storm of unmatchable carnage.

When Joss and the others reached their destination, they were actually more than half a day ahead of schedule.

“That’s the base up ahead. Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Simon asked, peering through binoculars and glancing again at Joss.

“We’ll stick to the plan,” Joss replied, nodding to the group. He and Laura each shouldered nearly five hundred kilograms of C4 and began walking toward the enemy stronghold.

Joss’s plan was brutally straightforward: he and Laura would each carry a pack of C4 into the base, then find a spot that looked important, set the charges, light the fuse, and run.

Lux and the others had no objections to this arrangement. After days of travel, they’d seen for themselves that Laura’s immortality rendered such dangers meaningless to her. As for Joss—well, anyone who came up with such a harebrained scheme probably deserved whatever happened.

The trio exchanged odd glances as Joss’s figure receded into the distance. Though they hadn’t known him long, for some reason, the thought of Joss marching off to his doom didn’t evoke the slightest pang of regret.

Regret? Not at all—who wants to live forever, anyway???

They nodded to each other, then each took a hundred kilograms of C4 and headed in different directions. All they had to do was set homemade timers to detonate the explosives at various points in the enemy base after a set period.

Their main purpose wasn’t destruction, but diversion—to draw the enemy away and give Joss and Laura a shot at breaking in.

“What’s wrong? Worried about them?” Laura asked, glancing sideways at Joss as he looked back over his shoulder.

“No, I just think… we fought together, after all, and now we may never see each other again. It’s a strange feeling.”

“Oh? Don’t tell me you still haven’t figured out how to get yourself out of this alive?” Laura sneered, clearly most interested in that aspect of Joss’s plan.

He hadn’t even left himself a way out!

But Joss just shook his head. “No, I just suspect those three side characters will be forgotten by the author before long. Anyway, forget that. When it comes to planting bombs, my safety margin is much better than yours.”

At this, Laura looked intrigued. “Oh? You sure? Even at this scale, an explosion like this is nothing to me—I can recover in ten seconds. What about you?”

“Me? I can do this.” As he spoke, Joss took off his Little Black-brand gloves and tossed them to the ground.

“Come on, Little Black, you carry this inside—I’ll keep watch out here for you.”

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emmmmmmmm—Back from the hospital. The pain in my finger bones and joints is suspected to be gout, and the skin lesions are apparently an allergic reaction... It really does make typing hard, though.