"Night City, Night City, try the brand new product from Whole Foods now: the brand new dumbass flavor from Burger King!"
"If you’re hungry, don’t call mom, order a Burger King from Whole Foods delivered to your ho. Order now and enjoy crazy Thursday special offers, quickly click the website link below!"
Bang!
Lille opened his eyes, sighed, and blasted the vending machine with his gun.
"Damage will be charged to... to the property account, we apologize for any inconvenience caused."
The vending machine’s speech was cut off mid-sentence as Lille altered its data, promptly changing its response.
Damn capitalism, putting vending machines in rented apartnts and they even autoplay advertisents.
No one could do anything about it, it seed.
Of course, prior to this, it was possible to choose to block the Super Skyscraper’s advertisents at specific tis, but unfortunately, Lille had blown the circuitry earlier. It might have been so rookie electrician who mixed up the wires, causing the system to forget the user settings.
Lille got up from bed and started checking his external devices.
In the Marvel World, Bloom Company already had a new office location, and Lille, in accordance with Cyber Monitoring’s data architecture experience, had redesigned the server cluster units.
Excluding the computational power used to maintain the regular operations of ctOS, each server cluster unit could offer 1 CCU of computational power.
The total computational power was 7000 CCU, with the external devices being able to use two-tenths of this power for cross-dinsional scheduling, although one-tenth had to be used for data synchronization of cross-dinsional industrial and security protocols.
This ant that Lille’s personal readily available computational power was now basically stable at 700 CCU, which already crossed the threshold for a minor conflict.
Generally speaking, the entry-level technical standard for stay-at-ho hackers was around 400-500 CCU—
However, the sa computational power could achieve different levels of performance in different hands, also depending on factors such as CPU core, hacker’s own intelligence, among other factors.
Simply put, in cyber battles, the one with the initiative greatly dominates, and Lille, with his special connectivity to Cyberspace via Si Anweisitan, had a 99.9% capacity that most hackers lacked, giving him an advantage when necessary.
Moreover, the size of the server would continue to expand. If Lille could take over New York and deploy ctOS across the city, the server’s power could reach 15000 CCU.
After spending several foggy days in Cyberpunk, Lille opened his inbox.
[Sender: Pan’an]
[Pan’an: The machines are up and running! The first batch of plasma has arrived, and the clan is overjoyed!]
[Pan’an: When will you co by again? We’ll treat you to a drink then!]
[Sender: Regina]
[Regina: Rember that big shot Jefferson Perares? He really wants to et you, asked to check with you again.]
[Regina: Kantao also wants to set up a eting with you, they don’t like communicating online.]
[Sender: Cheson]
[Cheson: Bro, want to move the smart ammo production line over to your place?]
[Sender: Old Captain]
[Old Captain: Hey, Daddy, your car is fixed. Thunder Company also sent a rep who wants to talk to you, when would you like to set a ti?]
[Sender...]
Facing an inbox full of unread ssages, Lille rubbed his temples—there was a lot to deal with here, too.
[Sender: V]
[V: Shut-in, what the hell are you doing cooped up in your room all day?]
[V: Wanna go out for a spin?]
[V: You dead or what?]
[V: If you don’t answer, I’m breaking the door down!]
[V: Forget it, I’m heading out with Jack to Wolf’s. Mrs. Wales said sothing about an aweso Thursday. I bet it was Jack’s idea, free food and drinks.]
[V: You can’t say I didn’t warn you.]
[V: I’m off.]
[V: I’m really off now, you sure you’re not coming?]
[V: Mute, are you?]
Lille glanced at the ti, and it indeed was Thursday; V must have gone off to drink already.
He might as well head to the Wanderer’s outpost himself to make sure the production line was running smoothly and bring his car back.
With two repaired chanical arms grabbing the supply box and tucking it under his hacker jacket, Lille checked his weapons and gear, prepared to step outside.
In Night City, you had to be ard at all tis.
Click—
The door opened, and Lille had just taken a few steps out when he ca to an abrupt halt—
To his surprise, V was right there in the hallway outside his door, a face-to-face encounter.
They looked at each other, a silent tension in the air.
Lille broke into a run back the way he ca!
Bang!
V grabbed the door with one hand, yanking Lille back out!
V turned with a sinister smile, cracking her knuckles with a snap and cackle, "Ignoring ssages, sneaking out? What were you planning?!"
Planted on his rear, Lille shouted desperately, "Spare , heroine!!"
"Spare you, huh!"
V grabbed Lille by the throat and dragged him back into the house, while her other hand started rummaging through his head!
The screams drew startled glances from onlookers; people going up and down the stairs even changed color and hid in their hos—
If this was a Cyberspace ntal breakdown, it would be bad news!
So of the more timid even called the NCPD:
"Hello, NCPD? I’m hearing so grueso screams here... yes, very grueso..."
...
Two hours later, Lille and V appeared on the streets of Saint Domingo.
"So for just this, why all the sneaking around, and not even responding to my ssages!"
V crossed her arms, puffing up with irritation as she looked at Lille.
Lille’s head was swelled with a big lump, his face bruised and battered.
"...Didn’t you say you were off to Wolfpack for so fancy ’Thumping Thursday’? It’s not a job, so why would I need to bring you along?"
V gave him a doubtful look: It’s exactly because it’s not a job that I need to keep an eye on you!
"No need to bring along, then why run away?"
Lille fell silent; after all, he couldn’t just say the atmosphere at the ti seed right for making a break, could he?
Yeah, why did he run away!
Thinking this, Lille straightened his back a bit, "I don’t know! You scared !"
V thought about it and figured she might have made a mountain out of a molehill; she was just annoyed that Lille wasn’t replying to her ssages.
"Alright then, how about we drive back to Wolfpack later?"
"Might not be possible, I need to check if everything’s stable at the Wanderer base."
"Oh, so it’s the Wanderer base you’re going to. I’ll co too."
"Alright then."
Out of the blue, Lille asked, "Are you just going to stand Jack up like that?"
V shrugged her shoulders, "I used to enjoy bars because they were good for picking up jobs and catching up on rumors, bragging a bit too—it was for business.
Now, it’s not necessary. When there’s work, just give a shout, right?"
"So you’re just going to stand Jack up?"
"..." V glanced at Lille, "Our relationship is solid; he totally understands if I duck out once. What, you don’t want to co with you? Doing jobs behind your brother’s back?"
"How could that be! Without the famous V covering , I wouldn’t dare take any jobs recklessly."
"That’s well said."
Approaching Old Captain’s car mod shop, Lille could see Old Captain from a distance, waving at them eagerly.
Mackinaw was quietly sitting in the garage, showing no signs of having taken any serious damage.
You have to admit that even if car companies aren’t that impressive, the chanics are professionals.
Standing next to Old Captain was a guy dressed in... quite a flamboyant style, sporting big shorts and a flowered shirt with an utterly crap color sche, all sorts of gaudy pink, green, and purple.
He wore sunglasses and an expensive watch...
This fellow was so excited he might surpass... no, actually outdo Old Captain.
A second ago, he had been standing quietly to the side, arms folded like a docile corporate drone.
The next, as soon as Old Captain waved, he jumped up excited, following Old Captain’s lead and apparently even shouting ’Daddy’ judging by his lips.
"Who’s that guy?" V asked curiously.
"...Er, I’m seeing him for the first ti too," Lille said slowly, "But I guess... he’s probably a representative from Thunder Company."
"Oh—," V drawled, "turns out he’s our other ’son’, huh."
They walked toward the shop, and Lille’s chanical arm erged from beneath him, its optical sensors looking back and forth between them and the figure in the distance.
It seed to be confirming that Lille’s visual processing wasn’t malfunctioning.
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