Sitting on a wooden chair with a broken backrest, Chris cleaned the blood and bits of flesh from his shield by simply cycling it through his inventory. A satisfied expression played across his face as the gear returned to its pristine state.
This meticulous inspection, appearing almost as an obsessive trait, didn't hold much practical weight. His suit was already covered in blood that had begun to grow tacky and stiff, and his face and hands were far from clean.
Aside from Chris, the tavern, which was currently in such a state of disarray that there was barely a clear spot to stand, held no one else who was still upright... or alive.
Leveraging his high Strength of 24 and the defensive boost from dual wielding shields, Chris had once again cleared a bar full of lackeys with near zero damage. He had nearly wiped them all out. The only exception was the bartender who had accepted his coins and provided the map, he'd managed to escape through a secret passage in the storeroom.
Chris's aggressive approach was always calculated based on terrain and his current state. He wouldn't blindly charge into an underground tunnel where the path ahead was completely unknown.
Despite the bloodstains covering him, looking as though he needed a scouring pad to get clean, it was all the blood of others.
Among defensive gear of the same tier, the Cyclops Head was usually a jack of all trades but a master of none, possessing quite low defensive performance. However, under the enhancement of the Captain America template, its defensive capabilities had returned to a respectable level.
Simultaneously, Chris remained equipped with the Captain America Shield in his primary hand.
[Captain America Shield, Shield, Template Weapon. Requirements, Captain America Template/Strength 15. Defense 25, Shield Bash Damage 1..1. Durability, Infinite.]
An accidental byproduct forged from Proto-Adamantium, this shield was indestructible and possessed extreme properties for absorbing kinetic energy and resisting extreme temperatures, radiation, and other external forces.
The shield could negate 100% of all frontal ranged damage from attacks smaller than the shield itself, ricocheting the blocked attacks away.
It could absorb physical and energy impacts to the greatest extent possible while maintaining its own structural integrity.
Because the Captain America Shield was a template weapon that could be enchanted alongside gear of the same type, its shield bash damage had been heavily nerfed, much like the whip in his previous template. Furthermore, its attributes couldn't perfectly replicate the original source material. After all, the original game was just an NES title with limited hardware capabilities.
But unlike its offensive power, the shield's defensive performance hadn't been weakened in the slightest, fully reflecting its characteristics from the original game.
The Captain America Shield and the template Chris had loaded were both based on the NES version of 'Captain America and the Avengers'. Interestingly, the NES version was the only port among many platforms to feature such a massive departure in gameplay.
In the original arcade version, player could control up to four characters: Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Vision. The gameplay was more of a side scrolling beat 'em up.
On the NES, however, the genre shifted toward something similar to 'Bionic Commando', featuring exploration, light puzzle solving, and a large world map with selectable stages.
To save cartridge space, the number of playable characters was cut in half, leaving only Captain America and Hawkeye. The developers even created a "reasonable" plot line where Iron Man and Vision were killed off.
Yet, this drastic change in game mode also gave Captain America and Hawkeye significantly stronger individual performance compared to the original version. This enhanced performance was now reflected in the template Chris was using.
In the game, as long as the shield was facing the enemy, all incoming ranged attacks could be ricocheted.
While Chris was blocking the door to prevent the gang members from escaping, he had come under fire from half the enemies. It was clear that the handgun ownership rate among this group was quite high.
But Chris, acting as a "Scallop Warrior," didn't just have the Cap shield; he had the Cyclops shield as well. When held together in front of him, they formed a literal wall. The gang members soon realized that their concentrated fire hadn't breached the defense. Instead, the unpredictable ricochet mechanism of the Captain America shield had caused over a dozen instances of friendly fire, leaving them groaning and bleeding in agony.
When they stopped their barrage, it was Chris's turn to act.
The Captain America shield and the Cyclops head began to alternate, ricocheting through the crowd.
While the former's bash damage was weaker, its kinetic momentum was immense. Combined with Chris's 24 Strength, even a shield with a poor aerodynamic profile would be deadly, let alone one designed for flight. Throwing it at this strength was enough to punch through a man's palm at mid range.
The Cyclops head lacked the speed and precision of the Cap shield, but throwing it was like hurling a marble bust. You either dodged it, or you didn't.
Notably, under the Captain America template, the shields behaved differently in Chris's hands.
Normally, a shield was just a shield, a piece of armor meant for defense. When you chose to throw it, you were essentially giving up ownership temporarily. The gear's bonuses would vanish the moment it left your hand, and there was no such thing as a soul bond. In theory, if another player picked it up, it was theirs.
But Chris had thrown his shields, yet the bonuses remained active on his person. He could clearly feel a persisting connection between himself and the gear.
With a simple, spring-like flick of his empty arm, both the Captain America shield and the Cyclops head would automatically snap back onto their respective arm slots.
This was clearly the effect of the [Shield Master] skill, specifically the part describing the connection between the user and their shields becoming tighter and more coordinated.
With this strange "man and shield as one" harmony and his unique set of shields, Chris could even pull off some truly bizarre maneuvers.
This passive wipe of the bar lackeys had yielded some rewards. The nearly twenty grunts had contributed three Black Iron Treasure Boxes, a drop rate significantly higher than that of zombies.
The first box contained a windproof lighter and a pack of three cigars that could slightly accelerate MP recovery. The second and third boxes contained a "Moth Gang Combatant File" and a "Moth Gang Gunman File" respectively.
The moment these two paper items entered his hands, Chris's bounty mission progress jumped forward by half.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]