Friday. Night surrounded this secluded dock. Dim yellow lights feebly illuminated the silent container yard.
The water's surface reflected the scattered lights cast by the distant urban area. Driven by the wind, fish-scale-like ripples appeared, one after another.
The low hum of a car engine broke the dock's tranquility. A Ford slowly came to a stop at the periphery of the container yard.
Several workers loading and unloading cargo beside a truck exchanged alert glances.
One among them stopped his work, subtly gripped the firearm inside his jacket, and walked slowly toward the Ford sedan.
A window on one side of the back seat rolled down slowly, revealing a somewhat gloomy face.
"Is everything going smoothly?" Inside the car, a middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit spoke slowly.
Seeing the man's face, the person outside the car loosened his grip on the pistol and answered the man inside respectfully: "Boss Falcone, everything is going very smoothly."
"That is good. The quantity of this batch is larger than usual. I do not want any problems."
In the thick night, a black shadow, almost blending as one with the darkness, stood quietly on the dock's crane, overlooking the container yard below.
The night wind flowed, and a pure black cloak swayed slightly in the gentle breeze.
"I'm in position." Kyle lowered his head slightly and whispered into the walkie-talkie on his chest.
Cedric's response came quickly from the walkie-talkie, "Ten seconds."
Standing on the crane, Kyle watched the people in the distance moving wooden crates one by one onto the truck, his eyes filled with excitement.
He strode forward into a run, jumped with force, and Kyle's body immediately soared into the air, tracing a graceful arc in the pitch-black night sky.
After crossing a distance of dozens of meters using the crane, Kyle hung silently upside down right above this group of people.
The workers below were still focused on moving goods from the containers to the trucks. Not a single one of them noticed that a black shadow was hanging right above them.
For the sake of the cargo's safety, they hadn't concentrated all the goods in just one or two containers on the freighter, but had distributed them into a dozen containers with special markings.
You have to realize, a freighter has over two hundred containers.
Stace glanced at the container in front of him. The "special cargo" in this container had already been emptied by them.
Seeing his colleagues still busy, Stace turned around and walked alone toward another container deep in the yard that held special cargo.
The container door was half open. The light projected from the dim electric lamp above could only illuminate the corners of the outermost few boxes.
It was pitch black inside the container, like the mouth of a man-eating abyss; it looked a bit creepy.
If it were anyone else, facing such a scene alone might be a little frightening.
However, Stace's heart remained unperturbed.
It wasn't the first time he had done something like this—sneakily loading and unloading unspeakable special cargo in the dead of night.
With light steps, he arrived in front of the container carved with a mark only they recognized, and picked up a wooden crate stacked on the very outside, just like usual.
Only this time was clearly different from usual. The moment he picked up the crate, it felt like something grabbed his hand. A surge of immense force transmitted through, and suddenly dragged him into the container where you couldn't see your own fingers.
A terrified scream, along with a loud bang of the container wall being impacted, immediately attracted everyone else's attention.
"Hey, Stace?"
No response.
The two men by the truck exchanged bewildered glances, gripped the weapons they carried tightly, and slowly approached the container Stace had just gone to, one behind the other.
"Stace?" The man walking in front tentatively called out to the container again.
Bang! Bang!
The only response he got was the shattering of glass and the crisp sound of metal colliding.
The surrounding visibility instantly dropped a level.
The man looked toward the sound. By the dim light, he bent down and picked up a bat-shaped piece of metal from the ground.
Just as he was examining the metal piece in his hand, he turned his head only to find his companion looking up at the sky above like a fool, staring blankly. "What's wrong?"
The man also looked up, following his companion's line of sight. "Hunter, what are you look—"
A black shadow entering his vision made the unfinished words freeze on his lips.
The black shadow descended from the sky in an instant. A miserable howl, even more terrified than the one before, immediately resounded through the entire container yard.
Hunter howled in terror while running for his life toward the outside of the yard.
People scattered all over the dock heard his voice and rushed to the place where the sound came from to check the situation.
A black shadow flashed in front of Hunter. Hunter didn't hesitate to draw the pistol at his waist and fiercely pulled the trigger at the spot where the shadow had briefly appeared.
Inside the Ford sedan outside the yard, in the back seat, the fat man named Flass realized immediately upon hearing the gunshots that something had gone wrong.
"I'll go take a look."
The lights in the entire container yard had been mostly destroyed. Hearing the sound of gunfire, the group seemed to find a backbone and gathered toward the direction of the gunshots.
"Ah!" Another short scream rang out, but came to an abrupt halt.
Hunter couldn't suppress the fear in his heart and pulled the trigger wildly again.
"Where the hell are you?!"
"Here." A whisper that made one's hair stand on end sounded from behind his head.
Yet another short scream rang out in the yard.
An environment like the dark night is, for humans, always the most feared thing.
Listening to the screams coming one after another from all over, and watching the number of their companions constantly decrease, fear spread in the hearts of the gang members.
Fear can make people break down, and it can also make them go crazy.
The firearms in the gang members' hands fired wildly in all directions, but aside from the crisp sound of bullets colliding with metal container walls, there was nothing.
Only when the bullets in their magazines were emptied did their muzzles stop spitting fire.
In the flickering light, two figures wearing strange armor suddenly rushed out from the shadows behind the containers, flying up and down through the crowd.
Every rise and fall of the figures represented the collapse of one or even several people.
Flass, who had gotten out of the car to check the situation, listened to the sound of fists hitting flesh in the crowd and the screams of his subordinates; he knew the matter had gone beyond his control.
He turned and ran without hesitation.
"Something's wrong! Boss, you'd better leave, quick!"
Flass ran back to the Ford sedan in a panic, but as he pulled the door open, he discovered that his boss had fainted inside the car at some unknown point.
Even the driver had fallen victim.
"F*ck!"
He looked up and found a blonde, blue-eyed boy who had appeared on the roof of the car in front of him at some point, looking at him with a smile.
A fist, not very large, rapidly enlarged in Flass's eyes.
With a muffled sound similar to knocking on a gourd, Flass fainted.
The container yard behind Kyle, where gunshots had been blazing, also slowly quieted down.
Soon, three figures wearing armor produced by Weasley Industries walked out of the darkness, all three faces wearing thick excitement.
"What should we do next?" George asked.
Kyle rummaged through the leader of this group and found a mobile phone that was about the same size as a brick.
After dialing the UK emergency number, he tossed the mobile phone to George.
"Tell the police where we are and what happened here. Let them handle the aftermath."
He fished a bottle of potion out of his pocket. The other three recognized it immediately; the potion in Kyle's hand was Veritaserum.
If he used potions, it wouldn't generate magical fluctuations.
This way, the Ministry of Magic wouldn't be able to track them either.
"Now, let's see where exactly these guys have stashed their money."
Kyle dripped three drops of Veritaserum into the other party's mouth, and then began the interrogation.
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