The super skyscraper stood in Night City's Watson District. With only a little recollection, information about Watson District surfaced in Carl's mind.
Watson District: Once an Industrial Park, Watson District had skyscrapers, nightclubs, corporate buildings, top-tier medical centers, and bustling food streets. It should have been the heart of Night City, until the financial crisis destroyed everything. Today, Watson District was the poorest district in all of Night City, with the two most vicious gangs, the Tiger Claws and Maelstrom, entrenched in its impoverished streets and alleys.
NCPD Hazard Assessment: Extremely Dangerous.
NCPD stood for "Night City Police Department." Clearly, where Carl was now was an extraordinarily dangerous place, even for the police.
Getting dropped into a place like this the moment she transmigrated... all in all, was that actually lucky?
After all, Carl was a little hungry now, and the moment she stepped outside, several food stalls were right in front of her. Judging by their signs, they even served East Asian food she recognized.
Thinking about it, that was only natural. After all, Carl was currently in Little China.
Little China had once been an extension of City Center. During Night City's reconstruction, it had been planned as a second City Center, and corporations had once developed the area. In the 2040s, a large number of East Asian immigrants, primarily Chinese, had poured into the district, earning it the name "Little China." But when Watson District was abandoned, it too became one of Night City's poor areas.
Walking up to the stall owner, Carl glanced at the damaged cushions with yellow-brown foam exposed through them. Her gaze swept across their greasy surfaces, where scraps of food still lingered. After looking around a little, she finally found a relatively clean seat and sat down.
There were other customers seated on the other side of the stall. The owner was busy preparing their food, but still found time to tell Carl, "The menu's on the screen, customer. Just let me know once you've decided."
Following the greasy finger the owner pointed out in passing, Carl discovered that what should have been a tabletop had been replaced by a glowing display. All kinds of food were laid out on the screen alongside their prices.
Judging from the pictures, Carl had to admit that the food looked quite appetizing.
Unfortunately, she happened to know a little too much. The moment she saw the food, she understood certain things.
In this day and age, truly fresh organic food was extremely scarce and supplied only to the upper class. The ingredients used by street stalls like this came from protein farms and All Foods Factory. Artificial meat, hydroponic vegetables, and synthetic seasonings were the staple foods entering the mouths of Night City's people. As for their raw materials, they were often wriggling white worms and algae.
Of course, some unregulated food-processing plants might add some more familiar ingredients, but don't expect rats. In this era, even contaminated rat meat was rare real meat, the kind whose flavor you could brag about to others. Modern rats were even rarer than Corpo Dogs wandering the streets.
Images of insects like worms and locusts flashed through her mind. Carl felt there was no need to accept something so extreme right from the start, so she turned her attention to vegetarian food.
Eating algae wasn't so bad either.
She spotted Chinese Cold Noodles. Judging from the picture, it looked like the most vegetarian option, even though authentic cold noodles were usually made with chicken or beef broth.
The ingredients for the noodles were reassuring enough: wheat. Of course, the reason it was wheat rather than some other bizarre substance was simply because wheat was more cost-effective than the alternatives.
In America, Petrochem was the only company authorized to commercially grow genetically modified wheat. The GMO wheat they cultivated was a high-sugar grain that could produce CHOOH2 through catalysis and fermentation. CHOOH2 was a synthetic alcohol and the standard combustible fuel in the modern world. Petrochem and its subsidiaries had millions of acres of farmland across America growing genetically modified wheat. During bountiful harvests, this wheat often ended up in surplus. Some of that excess wheat was sold to food factories, while a small portion was donated to impoverished countries in the name of "humanitarianism" for public relations purposes.
Petrochem had land right beside Night City, so the city had a steady supply of noodle products made from normal wheat.
She had heard this genetically modified wheat was supposedly delicious, though she had no idea whether that was true.
Carl checked the price of the dish, which was called Chinese but was actually a traditional ethnic Korean folk noodle dish, and found that it cost three Eurodollars.
Considering that this stall was in a poor district, and that this was vegetarian noodles, the price should have been a bargain for the poor compared to other places. Yet one meal still cost three Eurodollars. It seemed that Eurodollars in this world were different from the euros of her previous life; inflation had been going on for years.
Three euros used to be worth around twenty-three units of the currency from Carl's former country, but now the two seemed to hold roughly equal value.
With more knowledge and information stored in her mind, Carl adapted to the city a little more.
"Boss, give me a bowl of Chinese cold—"
But just as Carl took out her money and prepared to have the owner make her a bowl of cold noodles to try, an accident—or rather, a daily occurrence in Night City—happened.
Bang.
Amid the explosive crack of a Kinetic Pistol firing, the stall owner's head exploded right in front of Carl.
That was not some exaggerated figure of speech. It literally exploded, red and white matter bursting out as even the skull failed to contain it.
Unidentifiable fluid splashed across Carl's face along with fragments of skull. When she blinked away the blood blocking her vision and saw clearly again, the headless corpse in front of her, which had only half-turned around upon hearing the shout, had already collapsed to the ground.
"Fuck you, Sixth Street Gang! You dare come into Maelstrom territory? Let Grandpa open your eyes to what's between your legs!"
Amid the frantic shouting in the distance, Carl saw that the people who had been sitting opposite her had already ducked beneath the stall's counter. Their movements were so practiced and their reactions so quick that it was astonishing.
Listening to the shouting and gunfire continuing a hundred meters away, Carl took a second to understand what had happened.
Two gangs had started exchanging fire, and the stall owner had accidentally been hit by a stray bullet.
If that stray bullet had hit her instead, her head would have burst too.
This really was...
"How was anyone supposed to adapt to this?"
Wiping the blood from her face, Carl had already gripped her pistol.
I can't even eat a meal in peace. Fuck your whole family!
Before you continue