118. The Greatest Secret
Dogtown had a new king.
The news spread throughout Night City alongside New America's withdrawal and the Scavenger-cleansing operations carried out by Night City's gangs and mercenaries. It then spread across North America, and the world.
The new king was named KK.
Around the world, personnel responsible for weapons sales channels that traded with Dogtown boarded transportation bound for Night City.
They had to meet with KK as soon as possible and reconfirm with the new ruler how the interests that had once belonged to Dogtown in their previous arms trade would continue.
Dogtown was a good place. It would not have been an exaggeration to call it the finest weapons-trading hub on North America's west coast. They could not simply abandon those profits because the person in charge had changed.
At the same time, the upper echelons of The Corporation had also obtained the intelligence. They remained cautiously observant of the rapidly changing Dogtown. Aside from the few corporations that had already dispatched personnel, most were still calculating just how much new value this land could bring them.
To ensure that Dogtown remained his personal domain, Kurt Hansen had never been particularly keen on dealings with corporations. Apart from a few necessary ones, his methods of controlling Dogtown had been exceedingly conservative and cautious.
Now that the ruler had changed—and to KK, whom all the corporations knew well—no one could say whether KK would continue Hansen's practices. There was no need to rush.
It was not only the corporations that were watching. Even the fixers who had once been familiar with KK had quietly changed their attitudes.
KK was now the lord of Dogtown, so naturally he could no longer personally take on mercenary work. Thus, when dealing with him, they increasingly shifted their stance