Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 791.1. Bait and Meat
After Carl started taking jobs again, his first job was a simple task to get back into the swing of things.

To be precise, this job was related to his work when he was hiding his identity, only from a completely opposite perspective.

When Hanako Arasaka was suddenly attacked and imprisoned during the Arasaka Tower meeting, a thorny problem was placed in front of Arasaka Sei-nobu.

Regardless, Hanako Arasaka's faction remains a massive and deeply entrenched entity within the Arasaka Group—even during Saburo Arasaka's lifetime, her influence had already quietly taken root in every key part of the group, and recently she has been constantly sending her confidants to North America, expanding her influence like a spider weaving a web.

Now that she is suddenly imprisoned, those loyal followers lurking in the shadows are bound to become restless, like a pack of jackals smelling blood. The urgent task is to uproot these poisonous sprouts before they even emerge.

To completely eradicate Arasaka Hanako's die-hard supporters, it is necessary to have someone who is both trustworthy and capable—someone who is as precise as a scalpel and as ruthless as a hammer.

So, who are the people that Arasaka Seigen considers trustworthy and capable?
"Actually, you don't necessarily have to come with me."

Sitting inside the metal cabin of the Lizard armored vehicle, Karl looked at the Adcardo personnel outside through the bulletproof glass and spoke to Thor.

The car was filled with the smell of engine oil and dust, and the low-frequency vibrations of the engine came through the armor plates like the breathing of a sleeping beast: "Just send someone to take me there, it's not a long way."

Thor grinned, tapping the console with his rough fingers, and the holographic map cast a pale blue halo in the air.

"You've come all this way to the Badlands, so we should at least show you some hospitality." His gaze swept over the weapons Karl was carrying, adding meaningfully, "And didn't you say the objective this time is to cripple a base's personnel and data—"

He deliberately dragged out his words, as if weighing a bargaining chip, "Everything else is going to rot there anyway, so we might as well take some back. That's the rule in the wasteland, if you don't pick it up, you're a fool."

Karl understood the ulterior motive in his words.

This meeting was initiated by Karl—he thought the Adcado tribe knew the terrain of the Badlands like the back of their hand, so he suggested that Thor send a guide to drive him there.

But when Thor learned that Karl was going to take down one of Aragaki's hidden strongholds in the Badlands, the shrewd tribal chief immediately changed his mind. He personally selected twenty skilled men, who, along with several modified vehicles and the Demon Lizard, joined the operation in a grand procession.

To say that Karl didn't expect Thor to do this would be absolutely false.

He didn't understand the survival rules of the Badlands, but he had heard V say that here, every bullet and every synthetic protein bar meant a chance to live another day.

When Carl suggested to Thor that "all we need to do is destroy the data and deal with the personnel," he had already left room for maneuver in his words. He deliberately emphasized that "other things are irrelevant," just like throwing a piece of fresh meat on a wasteland—how could it not attract hungry wolves?

However, Karl really didn't expect Thor to make such a big fuss.

Twenty fully armed tribal warriors, a magic lizard, and four vehicles loaded with weapon racks—this didn't look like they were going to pick up scraps; it looked more like they were going to take over a tribal camp.

But thinking about it, Carl realized he had been living the good life in the city for too long.

Even the defective products from Arasaka were seen by the inhabitants of Badlands as nothing more than the pretentious talk of city folks. Those devices and weapons marked as scrap were enough to cause a bloody fight between two tribes on Badlands, let alone the equipment in the secret base.

Anyone with a brain would know that anything placed in such a secret location must be cutting-edge. Military-grade equipment might even be common there. Faced with such complete, or even the latest and most advanced, equipment, it would be absolutely impossible for a tribal leader, even a somewhat wealthy one, not to be tempted.

After all, even the Adcado tribe's most prized armored vehicle, the Lizard Armored Vehicle, was just a transport armored vehicle model that had long been obsolete in military technology.

Carl inspected his equipment and felt that the current situation really resembled the tricks that the middlemen in Night City loved to play—layers of outsourcing and exchanges of benefits.

He took the job from Arakasaka Seigen and then used the 'undesirable equipment' in the base as payment to make the Adcado tribe willingly become his henchmen.

Think about it carefully, isn't this exactly the kind of trick those corporate employees are best at? Using other people's resources to do their own thing, and in the end, everyone feels like they've made a profit.

Predictably, with Adcardo's help, he might not even need to lift a finger. Adcardo's men would fill in any dangers and do all the work, while he could simply wait for the mission to be completed.
If Karl hadn't had a good relationship with Adcardo and hadn't planned to work together to avoid Adcardo's injury, he could have simply sat there. Adcardo's people would have been willing, and might even have been grateful.

"What are you thinking?"

Thor, piloting the Demon Lizard via the connection, noticed Karl's thoughtful expression beside him: "Are you worried about the job later? Don't worry, although this is the first time we've done this kind of mission to raid a secret base, my men are all from the Badlands, so there won't be any problems."

"No, I was just thinking about something else. I feel like the most important things for a middleman are skill and connections, and now I realize I have both. I'm definitely qualified to be a middleman, but if I really want to be a qualified middleman, my conscience might not be able to get over it."

Carl then shared what he had been thinking with Thor.

Thor heard Karl's words and laughed.

“You’re quite sentimental, Karl, or are you just too kind-hearted? You don’t seem like a city person at all, more like one of us from Adca. ‘The company’s methods work just as well on the Badlands.’ ‘Use what you want as payment to make you work for me willingly.’”
"You're actually worried about this? You feel you really can't be a middleman. If you were as hard-hearted as Roger, I think the Queen of the Dead, the king of middlemen, would have to step aside in the next moment."

"No need for the Queen."

Carl was somewhat speechless: "I just feel like this isn't quite right."

"What's wrong with you? Do you think we're being used by you? Do you think you lured us out with bait? Don't be ridiculous, Karl. Do you know why Adcardo has been able to survive in this treacherous land for so long? Because we can tell the difference between bait and meat. But you don't even know what it means to lure people with bait. You're undoubtedly a good friend who brings meat to our door. We're too happy to even entertain you."

"You make me sound like some kind of fisherman from the Air Force."

Karl looked at the sand dunes that were gradually approaching in the distance. According to the intelligence, the sand dunes were located at the secret base of Arasaka Hanako's faction.

(End of this chapter)