I Became a Knockoff Arms Dealer in the Marvel World

In the vast expanse of white snow, Quicksilver trudged forward, one step deep, one step shallow, leading a group of soldiers across the snowy terrain.

A heavy snowfall had blanketed the ground the day before, leaving the snow nearly thirty centimeters thick. Quicksilver cursed under his breath as he walked.

"F*ck! If I have to eat penguin meat and sea lion meat one more time, I'm going to puke!"

It wasn't entirely Pietro's fault for grumbling so much. After all, Carl had really done him dirty this time.

With just a few well-crafted lies, Carl had tricked him into coming to the Arctic to spend his days with nothing but ice and snow for company.

Only someone as shameless as Carl could pull something like this off.

Back then, Carl had schemed to send Quicksilver to the Arctic purely to get rid of him. At the time, Pietro was constantly hovering around his sister Wanda, guarding her from Carl like a hawk, afraid that Carl might deceive his kind and innocent sister.

To deal with this, Carl painted a grand and enticing picture, weaving tale after tale until Pietro finally took the bait.

As a result, Pietro found himself stuck in the Arctic for over six months, harboring an ever-deepening resentment.

Crunch! Crunch!

The group marched forward through the snow, the biting wind howling around them. Apart from the sound of their footsteps, the world was eerily silent.

"Huff."

Pulling down his face mask to catch some fresh air, Pietro exhaled, his breath instantly freezing into white frost crystals on his face in the bitter cold.

When he had first arrived in the Arctic, Pietro had arrogantly thought that with his super speed, it wouldn't take long for him to explore the entire region.

But upon actually stepping foot into this desolate, uninhabited wasteland, he quickly realized how naive he'd been.

First came the relentless cold. Even with a body far stronger than the average human's, he struggled to endure it. Within days of arriving, Pietro fell ill.

In this icy wilderness devoid of human life, if not for the ample supplies they had brought, he might've died from hypothermia and fever—an otherwise trivial illness—early on.

Later, Pietro also realized just how vast the Arctic truly was. Even with his speed, circling the entire region was an impossible task.

As the days stretched into weeks, with no sign of the crash site of the old relic they were searching for, Pietro began to doubt Carl's intentions.

Carl had sworn with absolute confidence that the crash site of the world's first superhero from the last century was located in the Arctic.

But now, upon reflection, Pietro suspected Carl might've just heard some random rumor and said it offhandedly. Yet he had foolishly believed him and come all this way.

A month into the fruitless search, Pietro was ready to give up. But by then, Carl and Wanda's relationship was heating up, and Wanda had grown accustomed to sharing her days with Carl, enjoying their little world of two.

Wanda, once Pietro's devoted sister, had become someone else's sweetheart. Back then, she even privately urged Pietro to keep searching a little longer.

And so, Pietro had no choice but to grit his teeth and stay in the Arctic, enduring the hardship while watching Carl and Wanda indulge in their two-person paradise from afar.

"Wanda really is blinded by love, abandoning her brother as soon as she gets a boyfriend. Damn Carl! If you dare to hurt—"

Pietro paused mid-step to rest, still muttering under his breath.

Boom!

Suddenly, a low, resonant crash echoed from afar. Pietro looked up and saw an icebreaker flying the Russian flag in the distance. It appeared to have collided with something, the sound reverberating across the icy expanse.

Frowning, Pietro observed the icebreaker.

Their expedition team was situated near the edge of the Arctic Ocean. While encountering an icebreaker here was rare, it wasn't entirely impossible.

The real issue was that the icebreaker seemed to have struck an iceberg. The vessel was severely damaged and had come to a complete stop.

Growing up in war-torn Sokovia, Pietro was no saint. But after spending over half a year in this godforsaken Arctic wasteland, he was desperate for human contact.

The soldiers in his expedition team were clones. Though they obeyed Pietro without question, engaging them in meaningful conversation was out of the question. Their intelligence wasn't sufficient for complex dialogue.

Of course, Pietro didn't know they were clones. He simply thought that soldiers were naturally taciturn.

By now, he was starving for interaction with ordinary humans.

"Plus, there's bound to be fresh vegetables on that icebreaker. I haven't seen anything green in months!"

At the thought, Pietro licked his lips. Day after day of eating roasted penguin meat, sea lion meat, or Arctic shrimp had long grown stale.

Supplementing essential vitamins with pills was all well and good, but Pietro craved the taste of real, fresh vegetables.

"Let's head over and see if we can trade for some fresh produce."

Pietro turned to the expedition team's captain, a bearded man named Levin Cook.

Levin, of course, didn't object to such a small request.

"Understood, sir. Unit 1, take five men and board the icebreaker as an advance party. Secure control of the ship!"

Hearing Levin's suggestion to seize the ship by force, Pietro didn't say much.

In the Arctic, the expedition team didn't carry cash or other useless currency. As for online banking, why bother when you could simply take what you needed?

Having lived most of his life in poverty, Pietro wasn't about to waste money from the little savings Carl deposited monthly into his account as expedition wages.

After all, despite Carl's scheming, he still paid Pietro a generous allowance to keep him stationed in the Arctic. Without that, Pietro would've left long ago.

The group made their way toward the icebreaker, with a team of elite soldiers leading the charge.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"WTF!? Cyka blyat!"

A few gunshots and curses later, Pietro and the rest of the team arrived at the icebreaker, only to find the advance party had already secured control of the vessel.

One of the advance soldiers, dressed in an arctic suit, signaled from the deck that the ship was safe.

By now, Pietro had grown numb to violence. After half a year in the Arctic, he was on the verge of losing his mind.

What were a few deaths to him? He didn't care.

Just as Pietro was about to climb aboard and inspect the food supplies, his gaze fell on something unusual near the icebreaker's bow.

"What's that?"

He noticed a faint black metallic edge jutting out from where the icebreaker had struck the iceberg.

Abandoning his ascent, Pietro descended the rope ladder and approached the collision site to take a closer look.

"This… is this part of an airplane's tail fin?"

Pietro's spirits surged. Could it be that they had accidentally discovered the crash site of the old relic they'd been searching for?

"Hurry! Clear this ice immediately!"

The icebreaker, a Russian vessel equipped for offshore oil exploration, was stocked with drilling equipment and heavy machinery.

Expedition team members quickly rounded up a group of experienced drill operators and held them at gunpoint, forcing them to start work.