[Blais: The Network Supervision captured a set of special signals just as you passed through the Evil Land segnt. These signals bear evidence that they originate from an unknown agent.]
[Blais: It’s not Arasaka, not Military Technology, not even Peizhuo Petrochemical or Su Petrochemical...none of the usual suspects with a roster of high-quality agents. Clearly, it’s also not related to you.]
[Blais: This agent seems to be involved in investigating Hot as well, but for now, it’s unclear what connection they have with that hacker nad Dante.]
Fortunately, Blais wasn’t like a crazed fan clamoring to see Lille, but Lille was indeed very interested in what Blais had to say.
Before entering Dog Town, he needed so ti to gather more intelligence and clarify so doubts.
The biggest doubt was that guy nad Dante; the Network Supervision was clearly targeting Arasaka, and Dante was a point of investigation in this chain.
However, Lille was unclear about the specifics; his main focus at that ti had shifted to Munemasa and eventually, he inexplicably ended up facing off against Ye Group.
If looking at the situation from a conspiratorial, overarching perspective, Lille would generate a very troubling guess:
The initial investigation focused on Arasaka Group’s Soul Killer and the Network Supervision had achieved partial success.
But the subsequent investigation suddenly switched to Munemasa and directly tied to those with blue eyes, the confrontation ca quickly and abruptly, so fast it felt like being halfway through a roller coaster ride only to discover it’s actually bungee jumping.
Moreover... no matter how much the blue eyes wanted to control humanity, that company was actually one of the pillars of Night City’s municipal confidence:
Land is a city’s most basic production resource, and anyone who wants to control Night City must confront Ye Group, Arasaka included.
So, from a conspiratorial viewpoint, Arasaka successfully disconnected from a chain of investigations, got a breather when it was gaining an advantage through Network Supervision—
and struck a major blow to what would definitely be an obstacle on their path to ascendancy in Night City.
Who benefits the most, carries the most suspicion...
Arasaka, coincidentally, is also that most adept at conspiratorial maneuvers company. Arasaka Saburo, if you step out of the indigenous viewpoint of this world, is also the top player in the whole "Cyberpunk" series, officially appointed as the instigator turning the world into its current shattered state.
Lille had a premonition that the information carried by this agent would be crucial in unraveling the mysteries.
But...
[Lille: You’re not suggesting I turn back now, are you? Then I might need to pack a few more nuclear bombs.]
[Blais: You still have so?!]
[Lille: Haha, just kidding.]
[Blais: ?]
Dissatisfaction was evident in his tone, and even through the internet connection, it felt like Blais’s blood pressure might be spiking.
[Blais: Our agent went missing after being sent to Evil Land, and I was thinking, don’t you have a few underlings there?]
[Blais: The Network Supervision Committee would issue a direct official mandate, but I think...]
[Blais: The company dislikes handling tasks related to other companies, but I want to know the truth.]
[Lille: Nice, you’ve beco rebellious.]
Blais didn’t reply: Is that a complint?!
[Lille: Alright, I’ll get my guys to screw up the Network Supervision’s mission right away.]
[Blais: What?]
[Click—]
Real-ti communication ended, and Lille stepped out of his vehicle.
Great Empire Mall, the most common large unfinished building type in Taiping State, had vast and desolate interiors, with moonlight streaming in through a skylight in the middle of the building, illuminating the muscles of the Animal Gang’s muscle-bound n.
Greasy sweat reflected the moonlight, making these bald heads shine.
One particular muscle-bound figure under the moonlight was using all her might to shift the arm before her.
This muscle-bound individual was not ordinary: firstly, she was a woman, with dark hair.
Secondly, the woman appeared to be over two ters tall, with muscles as hard as steel, blood vessels and tendons visible on the skin surface like electrical wires on Vortex Gang mbers.
As she exerted herself, these muscles and blood vessels wildly expanded...looking at any particular part, one might think it’s not human muscle, but so sort of alien creature’s.
Her muscles were as tough as steel cables, pulling on her overly iron-laden heavy bones, making her whole being resemble a high-speed operating crane, and she could even hear a faint creaking noise when exerting force...
This was an arm wrestling match, and across the table was Jack.
Indeed, she was engaging in an enthralling arm wrestling match with Jack across the table.
"Drink! Drink! Drink!"
Other mbers of the Animal Gang were chanting rhythmically, so smashing nearby concrete blocks to serve as drum beats, others who had better conditions picked up steel bars from the ground to strike against discarded equipnt, blending these sounds into a surge of adrenaline.
[Sender: Blais]
[Blais: By the way, how did you guys manage the Animal Gang?]
[Lille: Money, plus a high muscle content.]
[Blais: What?]
Bang!
The woman’s arm slamd down, creating cracks in the concrete block used as a table, dust billowing!
The visual impact was extre: though Jack was already a robust man among ordinary people, the Wild Man King was entirely a drug-induced giant whose palm was probably the size of two of Jack’s heads combined!And what’s more, it’s a prosthetic driven purely by muscle power!
"Damn! This dude is the desert husband NCPD was talking about!"
A bald man in the group of strongn suddenly shouted out. Jack, with a burger in his mouth, looked at the bald man who instinctively shrank back.
V patted his shoulder and joked, "Now you’ve really earned that title."
Jack’s opponent, known on the streets as the Wild Man King and also the de facto temporary leader of the Animal Gang, looked at his hand smashed into the concrete, his hand bloodied and mangled, his mind went blank:
What the hell?
This guy initially was just sowhat strong, and I mocked him with ’Didn’t you eat?’ and he just nodded—
If the opponent nodded, the words were already out, I couldn’t very well not let him eat, right?
Then he started to eat while exerting force.
And the more he ate, the stronger he got!
The Wild Man King is a pure Animal Gang mber, aning she has no prosthetics except for a brain-computer interface and so communication devices, so she couldn’t specifically rember what she had just seen.
But she felt...
Wasn’t Jack a bit more muscular than before?
Did this muscle... grow in a matter of minutes?
Jack didn’t care much, he grabbed another whole box of burgers, and devoured it all, packaging included!
"Burp..."
Jack patted his stomach and gave Lille a thumbs up.
Not bad, Jack’s condition had returned as well.
The communication van was theirs, the AI was theirs, Jack had returned to his basic state, the Animal Gang...
The Animal Gang was helping the Network Supervision Committee for money, but now the Network Supervision had fled, and Lille had impersonated a mber of the Network Supervision, taken over the van, and even promised them a salary...
There was no reason to fight on sight, and they could even help them out.
Of course, all of this was based on the fact that the Wild Man King really was a native who didn’t keep up with the news.
She didn’t even know that the current complete network paralysis was caused by a nuclear explosion.
Looking at her face full of sha, as if nothing mattered except that she had lost muscle-wise, Lille suddenly thought:
She might not even know it was a nuclear explosion.
"This isn’t fair! A rematch!"
"What’s unfair about it? My brother was arm wrestling you with a bunch of broken implants, look at his arm..."
Lille lifted Jack’s arm, whose gorilla boxer arm barely touched before entering repair mode, all the parts popped out, revealing it was a pair of prosthetics.
All the electronic devices were broken, including the prosthetics.
Well, that ant a high gold content: there were theoretically no native muscle fibers inside the gorilla arm!
Even if there were, it was just a very small part...
And that little bit was enough to beat her!
Lille pulled out an exquisitely made thing and said, "It’s just a bit of dication and an auxiliary injector, I can leave one for you after this job is done, just get the money ready."
The Wild Man King looked at the item, made up of different colored tals, suggesting it had very high-end functions, so high-end that it required strict planning for each region’s tal strength.
The screws and rivets looked robust and orderly, the edges were smooth, without any extra burrs, looking quite comfortable.
Several slender wires and optical fibers neatly wrapped and extended, covered under a thin film, occasionally revealing a faint blue light, flickering like breathing, and at the core, a light green liquid could be seen...
Premium, very premium.
Especially that green liquid, she vaguely rembered Jack was injected with a small tube of that stuff by Lille before he started to devour everything relentlessly.
The Wild Man King’s eyes shifted: "Still want to cut my leeks? I want it for free!"
Lille feigned an angry laugh and said, "This thing costs hundreds of thousands in production alone! This is company laboratory stuff! We risked our lives to steal just this little!"
The Wild Man King smirked, stood up, her towering height over two ters indeed very imposing, especially with a large group of strongn behind her.
Jack and V also stood up, and the atmosphere seed to get tense...
With the atmosphere drawn tight, Lille, slightly feigning anger, waved her hand and walked up to the Wild Man King—
The scene was a bit awkward, Lille was even shorter than V, standing in front of the Wild Man King was really...
So he stepped back again: "Fine, but I want to employ you long-term, about ten days or so, and, I might need to go to Dog Town, so consider this your salary."
The Wild Man King was delighted: Ten days to earn high-tech worth hundreds of thousands!
Jackpot.
So fucking smart, so fucking good at bargaining.
Keeping her composure, the Wild Man King smirked victoriously: "That’s more like it, a boss should always drop gold coins."
Lille shook her head and returned to the communications van...
Almost laughed out loud.
[Munemasa: Is she an idiot? She doesn’t want salary but a bunch of handcrafted... artefacts?]
Actually, it wanted to say junk.
That "black technology implant," except for a bit of Lizard Serum, the rest was just scrap Lille had picked up along the road and cobbled together to look like the real thing.
Lille, closing the van door, finally couldn’t help laughing out loud—
Too clever, Wild Man King.
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