Manhattan

"Hmm, hmm. Kid, let go, that's not for you to touch. I don't want to scold you, nor do I want this thing to misfire at your head," Wade said, his words spilling out as if they hadn't passed through any filter of thought. After speaking, his expression grew serious. He hadn't smelled the strong scent of alcohol on the kid, but rather a faint whiff of blood.

The smell of blood on Aiden, combined with his hand resting on Wade's lower back, feeling for the gun, made the situation dangerously clear.

"You seem to have hit rock bottom, as if losing something else doesn't matter anymore, right?" Aiden said, putting the gun away at his own lower back.

"Ah!" Wade's mouth hung open in disbelief, unable to grasp the fact that he had just been robbed in a bar. What baffled him even more was that he felt somewhat persuaded by the kid's argument. If his whole life was falling apart, what did one more loss matter?

At his lowest emotional ebb, Wade perhaps did something utterly incomprehensible: "Heh, you make a good point." He clinked his glass against Aiden's beer bottle as if he had found a kindred spirit.

"Ptooey!" Wade spat out the drink he had just taken a sip of, "What the hell is this? Don't you know my taste?" he complained, looking at Weasel with dissatisfaction.

"Juice, it's nutritious, you need this," Weasel said, obviously aware of Wade's critical condition, his sympathy for his friend evident.

Aiden, no matter how confused, realized that the storyline of the expansion was about to commence. He planned to take over the factory before Wade could destroy it.

It was all quite simple. All Aiden had to do was show up here nightly, waiting for a special character named Smith, the one who would lead Wade into the mutant factory.

"Damn, how can we attract customers with this stuff?" Wade grumbled, setting down his glass, his mood foul. He seemed to know there was no chance of getting a proper drink here tonight and stood up to leave.

"Hey, where are you going?" Weasel called out hurriedly.

Wade glanced back at Weasel disdainfully, striking a saucy pose before striding out of the bar.

"Well, I admit, Vanessa is quite tempting," Weasel shrugged helplessly.

Aiden watched silently, finishing his beer. He had no intention of wasting time and was ready to tackle the simplest task in this expansion.

"Got any jobs involving gang leaders? You know, preferably around the slums of Manhattan," Aiden inquired. If he could get a mission here, he might also get some useful information and save some effort.

"Heh, friend, you haven't made a name for yourself yet; no one's going to pay you. But you can register with me, and I can help you make some connections," Weasel offered with a grin.

Aiden frowned and stood up to leave. In this expansion world, Deadpool was a created being, and Aiden, whose mindset was gradually shifting, was very eager for the mutant factory. If he could get his hands on the special serum that triggers the mutant gene in humans and the detailed process of creating mutants, Aiden could have his own powerful mutant army. After all, his organization and team templates weren't given to him for nothing.

It might be laughable for a newly arrived vagrant to have such ambitions, but for Aiden, it was better to have ambitions than none at all.

"Leaving too? Off to find a hot chick?" Weasel's teasing voice followed Aiden, who didn't respond.

"Cold as a stone," Weasel muttered with a huff after Aiden left.

Aiden strode out into the dimly-lit alley, looking around before quickly making his way to the main road and hailing a cab.

"Where to, sir?" the black cab driver asked amiably.

"This is New York, right?" Aiden confirmed.

"Uh, yes?" the driver replied, perplexed.

"Manhattan, the slums, the really chaotic kind, like Harlem," Aiden specified a location known for being one of New York's most disorderly areas, a predominantly black neighborhood rife with gangs.

"What did you say? Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the driver started, but his words were cut short by the gun Aiden pressed to his head. "Choose, you have three seconds."

Without hesitation, the driver started the car. Gun violence is a topic America can never escape; every night, someone might die by the gun. It was no joke.

As the streetlights became sparse and the grand boulevard dark and damp, Aiden knew they were nearing the slums.

"You can stop wherever you're comfortable, but remember, don't make me walk too far. You know the consequences of deceiving me," Aiden said, not wanting to trouble the driver, though he already had.

After another ten minutes, Aiden got out of the car. The driver sped away, and Aiden found himself in a desolate and decrepit environment that felt like another world. Manhattan's slums lived up to their infamy, maintaining their style from the original world—a vivid hellish landscape.

Aiden roughed up the street thugs with ease, his lv6 close combat skills impressive, and the Super Soldier Serum enhancing his physical prowess. The thugs were no match for him.

The word on the street spreads fast among thugs, and after pressing a gun to the head of the seventeenth hoodlum, Aiden finally got the information he sought. It seemed the thug's cousin worked for a drug dealer with a booming business and reputation in the area. The gang might not have a name, but with plenty of underlings, the dealer qualified as a gang leader.

With a target in mind, Aiden set to work. He wasn't interested in wasting time and even set himself a challenge to complete the task overnight.

The betrayed cousin was cornered by Aiden in a nightclub that offered all vices. In a private room, amidst the shrieks of strippers, the cousin was shot in the leg and then pummeled into a pig-headed mess before, like his cousin, opting to betray his drug-dealing boss. It seemed betrayal ran in their blood. Perhaps it was a genetic trait in their family.