"Nicely done, Lier. Melissa's daughter can finally rest in peace. The money's been transferred. This job is closed."
Huh?
Lier froze for a moment at the news, then noticed unread messages in his inbox-
They were from Padre. He had been so focused on studying at the time that he hadn't checked them.
The messages contained the details of the job: Sixth Street wanted to take over The Glen, so they had people set up a shooting range along the district boundary to shoot for fun and scare the locals.
They had accidentally shot a girl passing by. Apparently, she technically counted as having died on Sixth Street's turf-
Because most of her body had fallen on the side before the bridge.
This turf wasn't just some arbitrarily drawn boundary. Night City had passed specific legislation governing Sixth Street's territory, so as long as they didn't cross the line, the NCPD turned a blind eye.
But her mother disagreed. The middle-aged woman who ran a food stall had sold everything she could to scrape together the fee, asking Padre to get justice for her.
After reading the messages, Lier fell silent...
I actually made such a serious mistake. I opened fire without even reading the job details. Good thing this guy wasn't anyone important.
As for the final payout, it was about what Lier had expected: 2,000 eddies, casually split among the three of them.
It was an easy job. Pritchard had already crossed the line anyway, so his death was no big deal. They had even done the NCPD a favor. It didn't even count as murder.
Looked at that way, Padre was pretty fair... Or maybe he couldn't get a read on Lier yet and wanted to get on his good side.
As these thoughts ran through his head, his hands never slowed.
The three unlucky Sixth Street guys... criminals, rather, were being taken apart and put back together under Lier's hands.
Their cyberware was fairly basic: Bionic Prostheses, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and secondhand Cyber-Eyes from the black market. Plenty of it was of unknown origin.
Cyberware was everywhere in the cyberpunk world, yes-but most of it was made by small companies, or even cobbled together by the gangs themselves.
Take Cyber-Eyes, for example. The biggest manufacturer was Kiroshi Optics, but there were plenty of other manufacturers catering specifically to the poor.
The one Lier had just removed, for instance, came from some obscure black-market workshop.
Even the most basic features of Lier's Kiroshi Model 2 included 30x optical zoom, along with cutting-edge AI recognition and scanning.
To Lier, it was cheap stuff, costing only a few thousand eddies.
To the guy lying on the operating table... he would have had to work for two months without spending anything on food or drink to afford it.
Not to mention that some rich people even fitted their pets with cyberware-Lier had no idea what the point was, but pet cyberware generally cost far more than this shoddy stuff.
"Sometimes people aren't even worth as much as dogs... But you brought this on yourself."
The guy in front of him wasn't dead yet. Once a person died, their cyberware locked up and became completely inoperable.
So he couldn't die yet. Lier needed to take their cyberware apart to get some hands-on practice with what he had learned today.
Besides that, he had downloaded a Demon programming tutorial from a hacker website and planned to use the cyberware overheating Demon as a reference to write a few commonly used Demons.
Such as Cyberware Malfunction and Cyber-Eye Reboot.
The Sixth Street thug's face was filled with terror-Lier had removed his vocal system and severed his central nerves, but hadn't killed him!
All he could do was feel his body being cut open inch by inch, then have strange Demons installed and activated before everything was put back!
His Cyber-Eyes shut down and restarted, while his body was constantly wracked with sickening nausea...
It was torture on both a physical and mental level!
Before long, the brainwave monitor beside Lier began beeping-this meant the subject's mind had descended into chaos!
He had developed Cyberpsychosis!
His cyberware went berserk across the board, but... it didn't do a damn thing.
Cyberpsychosis was still fundamentally an illness, after all. It didn't mean every sufferer could go on an unstoppable killing spree.
"All right, I'll make it quick..." Lier picked up the Tamakage beside him and shot the guy.
"Next. Huh, you're the target. I can tell you really were a small-time boss. A homemade palm module...
Nice. Pretty fascinating."
Pritchard sank into despair-this lunatic couldn't even remember his name!
[First completion of a practical Demon: Cyberware Malfunction] [First completion of a practical Demon: Cyber-Eye Reboot] [First cyberware removal surgery performed] [First cyberware implantation surgery performed] [You have mastered a practical technology: Cyberware Technology (proficient)] [Note: You have learned to modify the programming of common cyberware to alter its functions, but you are still only a beginner] [You have mastered a practical technology: Network Hacking (proficient)] [Note: You have learned to upload Demons proficiently and have attempted to write some simple Demons] [Tech points +700] [Current tech points: 2365]
A night of hard work had yielded a rich harvest. This was his biggest haul of points in quite some time.
Among Lier's newly installed cyberware, the lungs and Synthetic Lung Lobes weighed a combined 1,700 g, while the Second Heart weighed 125 g.
The network access port and the Smart Link in his palm weighed a total of 60 g.
Besides those, to avoid having to wear thick clothes all the time, Lier had asked Vic to install concealing skin cyberware called "Like-Skin."
It was much like skin in appearance, texture, and even thermal conductivity, and was used to conceal the appearance of cyberware.
It had originally been invented in the early days of the cyberware boom to reduce recipients' aversion to implants.
But these days, cyber-perverts would even let their big steel cannons dangle outside their pants, so aversion wasn't much of an issue anymore.
The artificial skin mainly covered his spine, concealing the exposed Sandevistan, and weighed 100 g.
Converted into tech points, the total came to 1,985. Lier immediately chose to transfer it to his self in the other world, lest he suddenly drop dead.
[Cross-dimensional binding of implanted cyberware completed. Tech points -1985] [Current tech points: 350]
Lier checked the time. Six in the morning. Still pretty early.
By now, the murderers in front of him had been separated into man and machine. On one side was the cleaned cyberware, which could still be sold to a back-alley doctor, and on the other were the corpses.
Elsewhere, disposing of bodies would have been a hassle, but this was Night City. Night City's sanitation workers had plenty of experience handling situations like this.
After all, all three had bounties listed in the NCPD database.
Lier stuffed the three guys into black plastic bags and tossed them onto a garbage heap. Everything was perfectly natural and normal. Nobody asked him, "Why do those black trash bags look a little red?"
"Could he be a serial killer?"
Or any other strange questions like that.
Living in Night City meant learning not to go looking for trouble. Otherwise, some random lunatic taking a piss nearby might pull a gun and blow you away...
Lier lay on his bed, quietly waiting for progress in the other world.
[Notice: Detailed, involved thinking and communication require spending tech points for on-site communication] [10 points per hour. Any period shorter than one hour will be charged as one hour.]
Stingy, Lier thought. But there was no helping it. Without finding out how far Connors's research had progressed, he couldn't even begin to plan his next move.
[The car stopped outside Empire State University. Students came and went, brimming with youthful energy] [This is the best university in New York City, and also the place most likely to cure your body] [Enable on-site communication?] [On-site communication channel established. Tech points -10]
Lier chose on-site communication and sat down at his computer, ready to look up information on this side at any moment.
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