With the Dragon-Level monster crisis resolved, Demon King Piccolo's corpse did what monster corpses always seed to do in this world.
It degraded.
Naturally, quietly, as if the universe itself had decided the matter was over.
That wasn't enough to stop the people inside S.W.O.R.D. from talking, though. A few of them had already started wondering whether monsters were so kind of cleansing agent the Earth itself produced, with humanity as the infection that needed to be removed.
Drex Valen didn't care much for that theory.
With billions of people on the planet, of course a few idiots were going to exist. That wasn't paradise. That was just life.
Umbrella Corporation's mainfra sat five hundred ters beneath headquarters.
A buried server room.
A chanical cathedral built to imitate the underground Hive complex, except every inch of the vast space belonged to Black Queen.
Cold machines housed a true artificial intelligence.
No one in the modern world could even begin to calculate the value of that.
Black Queen could coordinate multiple top-tier scientists at once, analyze massive streams of data, suggest optimal solutions, estimate the probability of success for different research paths, and rge human intuition with the brute force of machine computation. She could cut developnt cycles down dramatically, eliminating wasted effort before it ever beca expensive.
And that was only the beginning.
She could also keep learning.
Feeding on endless information, she could optimize construction thods, material selection, engineering pathways, software systems, and a hundred other branches of industry. If necessary, she could even handle programming and financial operations.
In short, the machine could think faster, rember more, and never sleep.
At the mont, Black Queen was reading the project file labeled:
Umbrella, Over All.
The plan itself had existed in her database for a long ti.
Only now had Drex granted permission to activate it.
Data flows rolled through her systems as she handled staffing assignnts across the world and began distributing personnel into the proper divisions.
The first branch was Black Umbrella.
That division handled security, military power, and direct force. On the surface, it was a rcenary and private security company. In the shadows, it was an assassination and cleanup arm.
As soon as Black Umbrella was created, Black Queen activated one of Drex Valen's manufactured androids.
The man had silver-gray hair and a face that looked permanently one bad decision away from homicide.
Gin.
The only decent soul, enforcer, and ace of the old Black Organization.
Drex decided he was perfect for heading Black Umbrella.
Gin woke up with the mory package already inside his head.
"So I'm the director of Black Umbrella," he said.
Black Queen had already prepared a black trench coat and hat for him.
He put them on without a word.
The second branch was White Umbrella.
That division handled money.
Investnts. Luxury goods. Daily necessities. Consur markets. Anything that could be sold, scaled, or turned into revenue.
It was also responsible for public image, charity, and anything involving diplomacy with the outside world.
Drex intended to give that division to Urd.
The final branch was Red Umbrella.
That one handled the internet, intelligence, scientific research, industrial engineering, and electronics developnt.
On the surface, it managed Umbrella Corporation's public operating systems. In the dark, it gathered intelligence while staying out of governnt oversight and pushed forward cutting-edge technological research.
Simple enough in principle.
The three branches each covered a different domain.
Force.
Information.
Wealth.
And they all needed one another.
Black Umbrella provided security and muscle.
Red Umbrella supplied intelligence, advanced devices, and the technology Black Umbrella used in the field. Anything Red Umbrella discarded as obsolete would be thrown to White Umbrella so it could be sold and monetized.
White Umbrella had the ssiest workload.
It had to move Red Umbrella's products, manage profitable civilian businesses, and keep generating more and more revenue to feed the other two divisions. If necessary, it would also handle charity work and all public-facing diplomacy.
If the three branches coordinated properly, the entire corporation would grow like a snowball rolling downhill.
A corporate monster.
Black Umbrella could be built by founding a security firm, buying an existing one, recruiting retired soldiers, pulling talent out of the dark corners of the internet, or even throwing money at countries that allowed private armies until a legal identity could be established. A training base could be built there too.
As long as the money existed, all of that could happen at once.
After that, Drex would pick the best candidates and pull them into Black Umbrella's real core.
Because Black Umbrella's true job was simple:
Eliminate anyone who learned secrets they were never supposed to know.
Deal with traitors.
Remove leaks.
Clean up the kind of problems that could destroy a company if the wrong outsiders ever found out.
Given Umbrella Corporation's current power and Drex Valen's reputation, recruitnt was the least of his worries.
The sa went for Red Umbrella and White Umbrella.
Gin reported for duty on his first day and imdiately asked Black Queen for all the company personnel files so he could start reviewing them.
At the sa ti, Black Queen contacted a group of rcenaries she had been watching for a long ti.
The project file included the very best operatives from the world's three top rcenary organizations.
Even before the plan formally launched, Black Queen had been collecting data on them and tracking their movents.
Over ti, so had been cut from the list as the model changed. So had died. But more than a hundred still remained.
In the Marvel world, becoming a top rcenary ant standing near the peak of human capability. Of course, people like Captain Arica, who had been enhanced by the Super Soldier Serum, didn't count.
Black Queen ran the numbers.
"Among rcenaries, the strongest physical profiles tend to co from Black recruits," she said. "Their natural athletic advantages are asurable. If we buy them out permanently, the cost is too high. A one-year contract is more reasonable. We can buy them out later in stages. One hundred top rcenaries at current market rates would cost about one hundred and thirty million dollars each per year. That cos to thirteen billion total."
Drex didn't even blink.
He approved the funds instantly.
He had no intention of brainwashing rcenaries. They were rcenaries. That was the point.
Everyone knew they worked for money.
What many people didn't understand was that a lot of elite corporate bodyguards had started as rcenaries too.
rcenaries understood one thing better than anyone else:
If the price was right, they would take the bullet for you.
The best ones were like that.
Once they accepted a mission, they would finish it unless they were all dead. No retreat. No surrender. That was especially true of the truly top-tier operatives.
Black Mountain, Afghanistan, Iraq, and half a dozen other war zones all had their fingerprints on them.
These were the kind of n who, if you paid enough, would fight entire armies for you.
If you had the money, they would assassinate a head of state.
If you had even more money, they would help topple a country.
If you wanted, you could buy them out completely and own their lives until the day they died.
You could throw them into a war zone and make them protect you with their bodies.
You could drag them through cannibal-infested forests and trust them to bring you out alive.
That level of loyalty only existed in the very best rcenaries.
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