Victor lay flat inside the duct running along the ceiling of the Black Bio plant, keeping his body low.
His eyes narrowed sharply at the scene unfolding below through the cracks in the duct.
“Titan Tech exoskeletons...”
The Low-Tech Street Gang was fully equipped with exoskeletons, acting as if they were real soldiers.
Across the corridor, Titan Tech employees strolled around with smug expressions.
Victor recorded it all through his visual implant.
These were hard proof of Titan Tech’s involvent, which until now had only been rumors.
The proxy war between Titan Tech and Hexa Core Armory, long whispered about among rcenaries, had finally been confird.
“But... why aren’t they really fighting?”
Contrary to expectations of an intense proxy war, the conflict at the Black Bio plant was dragging on, sluggish and indecisive.
That was why Victor had been dispatched in the first place.
The pizza supply disruption, which had seed like it would be resolved quickly, had already lasted ten days.
“First, I need to target one of Titan Tech’s terminals...”
Victor crawled slowly through the cramped interior of the duct, heading toward a Titan Tech terminal.
Every ti the acrid steam drifting through the duct brushed against his face, cold sweat ran down his spine.
“If I hadn’t replaced my lungs, I’d be screwed right now...”
Victor crawled forward through the duct, a tinge of regret creeping in.
“Why the hell did I take on this insane job?”
Sure, unlike last ti, he had taken the request with a generous danger bonus—but now that he was in the middle of it, the difficulty was beyond imagination.
The security systems of a gacorp couldn’t even be compared to those of a normal company.
If it hadn’t been for the intel Amber had handed over on Titan Tech’s security system, he would’ve probably been caught by now.
“Co to think of it... where did Amber even get that kind of information?”
That small question lingered faintly in the back of Victor’s mind.
After crawling through the ducts for a full four hours, Victor finally arrived at the designated point.
A central terminal.
Six holographic screens.
And three technicians.
Below the duct was Titan Tech’s temporary information center.
Victor carefully pulled out the device Amber had prepared.
At a glance, it looked like an ordinary mini drone, but inside was a special program capable of hacking into Titan Tech’s security systems.
When Victor activated the drone, it slipped silently through a crack in the duct.
And just like a speck of dust in the air, it gently landed behind the terminal.
At that mont, a connection success ssage popped up on Victor’s transparent display.
Three progress bars began to fill up slowly.
Victor bit his lip, suppressing the anxiety rising in his chest.
First bar—complete.
Second bar—also complete.
And when the third bar hit 90%—
BEEEEP.
An alarm blared from the terminal, echoing in all directions.
“Shit!”
Victor felt like his heart was about to # Nоvеlight # explode out of his mouth.
As the technicians frantically clung to the terminal, manipulating sothing in a panic, the data extraction completed.
The drone returned to the duct, mission accomplished.
Victor quickly retrieved it.
Lines of the stolen data began scrolling across his display.
It was the negotiation content between Hexa Core Armory and Titan Tech.
The two gacorps, having confird that each had developed new technologies, had made a secret pact—pretending to be enemies while directly testing each other’s new tech through Black Bio and the Low-Tech Street Gang.
Victor had obtained the intel he ca for—but escape wouldn’t be easy.
All exits were sealed, and Titan Tech’s security personnel prowled the area with tense expressions.
To make matters worse, spider robots crept along the ceiling and walls, crawling silently through the cracks.
Even moving through the ducts was no longer safe.
“Knew it would co to this.”
As soon as he confird there was no one below, Victor dropped out of the duct and sprinted toward the nearest escape route.
Thanks to watching the patrols from inside the ducts, he managed to move farther than expected without getting caught...
But in the end, Titan Tech’s security forces spotted him.
Gunshots rang out, and a sharp pain ripped through Victor’s left thigh.
“Ugh.”
Blood began to soak his pants, but he couldn’t afford to stop.
Another bullet grazed his right calf.
“Damn it, my leg...”
Gritting his teeth, he kept running.
Twenty ters to the waste disposal chute. Ten ters...
And five.
Victor hurled himself through the chute.
As the hatch slamd shut behind him, bullets thudded into the tal door.
After tumbling through the long chute, Victor—his leg wounded—failed to land properly and rolled hard onto the floor.
“I’ve gotta keep moving...”
Victor wanted to get up and run, but the pain in his leg made it impossible to put any strength into it.
“If only my legs were just a little better...”
He resolved right then that once this mission was over, he’d replace both legs with implants.
If he could run a bit faster, move a bit more quietly, he wouldn’t have ended up injured like this.
Summoning the last of his strength, he reached his destination.
There, waiting for him, was the vehicle Amber had prepared.
The car sped away from the Black Bio plant zone with Victor onboard.
Inside the vehicle, heading toward the Seoul Office, Victor finally let out a long, relieved sigh.
****
I pushed open Amber’s shop door with my body slumped.
Jingle.
The familiar chi of the bell rang through the space, announcing my presence.
Amber looked up from behind the counter where she’d been wiping a glass and greeted with a smile.
“You finally made it.”
I’d spent ten full days without a single slice of Black Bio pizza. My body was drained.
I barely managed to climb up onto the high stool in front of the counter—then just collapsed onto it.
“...”
The blue circuits running through my arm flickered weakly.
Amber imdiately took one look at and offered a soft smile.
She reached out and gently patted my head, then slid a special drink in front of with her other hand.
“Cheer up. Try this.”
Inside the clear glass, a swirl of blue and violet liquid spiraled together.
Droplets ford on the cool surface and slowly rolled down.
I took a sip and raised my head.
A sweet taste with a slight bitterness lingered on my tongue.
It was good—but it didn’t taste like pizza.
Why isn’t there a pizza-flavored drink?
“Victor brought back so important intel from the Black Bio plant.”
When I showed no signs of perking up, Amber got straight to the point.
“Victor?”
He was the rcenary we rescued from the Corruption Zone with Aria—the one who had a thick bandage around his neck.
He looked pretty ssed up, but he’d recovered enough to pull off an infiltration op?
Amber moved her fingers through the air, as if slicing through it, and a blue holographic screen lit up between us.
Countless data scrolled rapidly across it.
Blueprints, numbers, scanned contracts, ssage logs...
“Titan Tech and Hexa Core Armory have no intention of ending the fight.”
Amber’s voice dropped low.
“They’re pretending to be enemies, but they’ve actually made a secret agreent.”
She swiped the screen sideways to open another file.
It was a photo of a secret eting between executives from both corporations.
“They agreed to test their new weapons in real combat using Black Bio employees and the Low-Tech Street Gang. Like experinting on lab rats.”
At that, I raised my head, eyes shining.
“Then all we have to do is destroy the prototypes, right?”
Amber smiled.
She’d clearly expected this reaction.
“Normally I’d say, ‘That’s not the solution’...”
She nodded.
“But this ti, you’re right. The weapons being tested are all prototypes. They’ve had significant investnts and ti poured into them.”
Amber manipulated the hologram again.
This ti, glitchy, patchy data appeared on the screen.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t recover the full specs. But if we destroy them, it’ll take at least a month to rebuild everything.”
Which ant the testing would stop—and the pizza supply could resu.
I shot up from my seat.
The chronic fatigue pressing down on my shoulders evaporated instantly.
“I need to go. Right now!”
As I moved toward the door, Amber grabbed my shoulder firmly.
“Wait, A. You can’t just go in and smash everything.”
Her eyes were serious.
“This involves two gacorps. If your identity gets exposed, we’re both screwed.”
Amber muttered that if things went sideways, she might have to flee to the outermost district, and pulled out a large case from under the table.
Inside was a full-body suit in a mix of black and gray.
A multi-purpose corporate-grade exosuit.
“Wear this. At least it’ll help keep your identity hidden.”
The mont I saw the stuffy-looking suit, I grimaced.
Shaking my head, I made it crystal clear I had no intention of wearing it.
“Don’t need it.”
With that, I raised my coat sleeve toward Amber.
I allocated a portion of my processing power, and the coat glowed with a sharp blue light.
Then the coat’s shape began to shift.
The sleeves clung tightly to my arms, the collar rose up to engulf my neck and face, and the hem extended downward to wrap around my legs.
In an instant, my black coat transford into a seamless full-body suit.
Amber stared at , eyes wide in astonishnt.
“You had more features hidden in there...? Well, yeah, it did seem kind of underpowered for a full-body cybernetic.”
She looked genuinely surprised that I could morph the coat.
“But that design... it’s unusual. Where did you even see sothing like that?”
I stared off into the distance and muttered,
“A long ti ago, back ho.”
On the chest of the suit I’d ford from my coat, a tiny MK Corp logo was engraved.
The look I’d copied was from an old MK Corp promotional comic character.
What was it—MK Girl, I think?
Of course, after so internal etings, the character had never been made public. An unfortunate, forgotten mascot.
Now here I was, 100 years later, a gacorp’s mascot heading out to smash actual gacorp property...
Heh.
It was kind of funny, honestly.
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