Chapter Sixty-Five: The Lone Wolf

In the deep of night, the sun had long since sunk beneath the horizon, and darkness, thick as black mist, shrouded the city streets along the French coast.

Boom—
Rat-tat-tat!

The defensive line on the beach at the front had already collapsed. Unrelenting artillery fire and gunshots engulfed the inner city, covering an area of more than ten miles in a ceaseless storm.

The Allied forces advanced with heads down, while the German soldiers resisted desperately. The two sides were locked in chaos, their fierce nocturnal exchange of fire illuminating scenes of carnage—hellish and grotesque—sprawled across the ground.

Corpses and mangled remains lay everywhere. Shattered helmets, empty magazines, and spent bullet casings littered the earth. Blood pooled, dripping and flowing together as if a rain of crimson had fallen.

And yet, the battle had only just begun. The prologue was barely sounded. Tonight would be a sleepless night, filled with slaughter and gunpowder—a night destined to become an unprecedented conflict that the peoples of great nations would later refuse to remember.

At the edge of the city streets—

"Devil! He's a devil!"
"Retreat! Fall back—everyone, retreat!"

Unlike the deadlocks elsewhere, here the battle was utterly one-sided. A dozen German soldiers, well-armed but pale with terror, fled for their lives.

Not far behind them, from the shadows of an alley, a hulking, upright figure stalked after them, dragging a bloodstained sword in one hand.

The creature seemed sheathed in a dark, chitinous armor, its muscles perfectly sculpted—without the brief illumination of artillery fire, it would have melted into the night. Its eyes were a narrow, blazing crimson; its fangs bared in a snarl; its body wild, bestial, and imposing. This was Kyle, wholly enveloped in his symbiotic Venom form.

Behind him, the alley was strewn with the bisected corpses of soldiers, a dozen or more. Fresh blood still seeped onto the cobblestones, washing them in red.

"Grenades! Throw all your grenades!" the German officer at the front screamed in terror. The remaining soldiers obeyed at once, hurling every grenade they carried behind them.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A chain of explosions ripped through the passageway, collapsing nearby houses and sealing off Kyle’s advance.

The German officer exhaled in relief, his legs limp and numb as he collapsed to the ground, laughing hysterically in the release of his fear. "Ha! Ha ha ha! That monster is dead! Finally, it's—"

But his words froze in his throat. He felt an icy chill at his back, and a great shadow fell over him, cast by a towering figure.

"Captain, behind you—" The other soldiers stared in horror past their officer, as if they had glimpsed the most terrifying sight of their lives. They trembled uncontrollably, stumbling backward.

The German officer couldn't even rise, nor turn his head. His teeth chattered as he rasped, "Fire—keep firing—shoot—"

A sharp sword-point plunged down from above, effortlessly piercing the officer's skull.

"Captain!" the remaining soldiers cried, tears in their eyes. Grief and rage gave them fleeting courage, and they fired at the shadow behind the officer’s body.

The bullets pelted the black silhouette, falling uselessly to the ground—a testament to the futility of their final stand.

With a swift motion, Kyle withdrew his sword from the corpse. Cloaked in Venom's armor, he charged through the hail of bullets, closing the gap in an instant. His horizontal swing cut through the soldiers like wheat before a scythe.

Silence quickly settled over this corner of the battlefield once more.

Kyle had lost track of how many enemy soldiers he had slain. It was meaningless. Immersed in the blood-soaked night, his body remained in a state of feverish excitement.

He cast a silent glance at the corpses, preparing to move deeper into the battlefield when something caught his eye on a distant street. He stopped in his tracks.

Less than a hundred meters away, another squad of ten German soldiers was engaged in a fierce firefight with a lone adversary.

The man, initially resisting with gunfire, soon discarded his weapon and charged the Germans head-on, as if unafraid of death—a lone wolf hunting prey. Bullets whizzed by as he surged forward, wielding claw-like weapons and fighting with desperate fury.

Was it courage or madness? To rush unprotected into the guns of ten well-armed soldiers could only end one way.

Kyle watched coldly, intent on leaving, but what happened next sent a tremor through his entire being.

The man did not fall. Instead, he broke through the gunfire, plunging into the midst of the German soldiers. His claws flashed, lives ended in a spray of blood. His efficiency in slaughter rivaled Kyle’s own.

In the blink of an eye, the ten Germans were dead. The man stood alone amid the carnage, then vanished into the night.

The Venom mask melted away into black threads, revealing Kyle’s handsome face—now filled with utter shock and disbelief.

“Could it really be him? How could that be possible?!”

This was the world of Marvel, the world of the Avengers. How could he exist here…

Without hesitation, Kyle dashed at full speed toward the scene.

Within seconds, he arrived at the site of the massacre. He quickly scanned the area, but nothing remained except the broken bodies of the ten Germans, lying in pools of blood. The lone wolf had vanished.

Kyle inspected the fatal wounds on each corpse. Most were at the neck or chest—three deep claw marks carved down to the bone. Each was killed with a single, decisive blow.

His heart raced, his thoughts in turmoil.

Was it truly him?

Kyle fell into contemplation, but soon sensed something and spun around, his gaze fixed on the shadowy corner of a nearby alley.

From the darkness emerged a middle-aged man in a Soviet uniform. He leaned against the wall, fished out a cigarette and lighter, and lit up slowly.

His hair was cropped short and black, his jaw covered with rough stubble, giving his rugged features a masculine allure.

He took a drag, exhaled a plume of white smoke, and cast a cold glance at Kyle, who stood among the German corpses.

“Who are you?” he asked, his tone icy. “An American soldier?”