Cyberpunk: From Dogville to Legend

Chapter 525 The Long Road Home (Part 2) [5.5K]

Dark clouds gathered, a blizzard was imminent.

As soon as the hovercar appeared in the gloomy sky, Sasha's high-precision prosthetic eye immediately locked onto the person standing in the open cabin above.

As expected, Sasha's eyes were filled with a dense array of question marks, because all the prosthetic models on that guy's body were unrecognizable, which meant that the heavy hammer in Vladimir's mouth had appeared?
Sasha looked at Lucy, who was calmly smoking and gazing at the sky, with a hint of fear in her eyes.

"It happened!"

Lucy shrugged, while Vladimir beside her was completely unaware of the formidable enemy approaching.

“Arasaka probably already knew about this when we were chasing him… Sasha, get ready, that guy is strong.”

Sasha frowned, and the material, seemingly brought to life, instantly covered her face.

With almost no communication, they immediately chose to split up, as if they had a tacit understanding built over many years.

"call!"

Before they even got close to the Arasaka Tower, the guy whose name and prosthetic body model couldn't be identified by his artificial eyes suddenly jumped off the floating vehicle!

"Damn it!"

Sasha's pupils immediately shrank to pinpoints. The guy was pointing his arms and legs downwards, clearly intending to use gravity and impact to turn Sasha into a meat patty.

"How pitiful."

The strange humanoid machine in mid-air inexplicably uttered this sentence, perhaps thinking that such power was enough to turn the ACPA covered by Arasaka's research on the space station into dust.

Sasha showed absolutely no intention of dodging, which undoubtedly gave Heavy Hammer even more confidence, and that bloodthirsty mentality excited his nerves.

"I hope you don't have any damn thrust system in you that could change your trajectory—"

Sasha wanted to use a perfect dodge to launch a counterattack against this arrogant guy.

only…

Sasha was startled when the terrifying face of the heavy hammer came into view.

Has the Heavy Hammer really been resurrected?!
With its blood-red prosthetic eye, a head whitened from being soaked in formalin, and a suit of prosthetic armor unlike the one on the wasteland of Night City, this guy had clearly been transformed into a complete killing machine in the hands of Hanako Arasaka and her group of tech bureaucrats!
This moment of shock left Sasha with very little time to react!
Heavy Hammer grinned maliciously, hoping to feel the incredible sensation of steel mixed with soft flesh under his feet, but this time he was disappointed.

Sasha was selected by scientists from Lin Yue's team as the most suitable person to drive this small ACPA. His decision-making and composure in critical moments are not those of a simple mercenary.

In addition, Sasha's approach is very much like gambling with a small stake for a big win; her confidence in extreme situations surpasses that of normal people.

Ok…

The moment Hammer and Sasha parted ways, he was also stunned to see Sasha dodge past him. At that moment, Lucy and Vladimir had already run dozens of meters away. All of this happened in just a few seconds.

Boom! ! !
The deafening slamming sound caused the asphalt road beneath the snow to ripple in circles. Finally, unable to withstand the terrifying force, it broke and bounced back. Even small bombs are not enough to describe the impact of this hammer blow!

Sasha, who had sidestepped to Hammer's side, was clearly not expecting the guy to bring such violent power. The blade she had just drawn was now blocked by gravel and broken pavement. She had no choice but to create distance and, in the process, opened the intrusion screen of the network access pod.

What is this? !

Sasha was taken aback when she saw the rapid, densely packed deciphering process in her eyes come to a standstill.

[Cyber ​​Psychosis] [Required RAM: 112]

[Prosthetic prosthesis obstructed] [Required RAM: 89]

When Sasha looked at the RAM index in the middle of her hacking interface, her heart sank to the bottom.

Currently, 50 MB of RAM remains...

In other words, even if she activated brain-computer interface overclocking, the prosthetic components on this thing, including its weapon parts, were an impenetrable fortress.

"I go!"

It's quite remarkable that Sasha could still let out that exclamation at this point...

With a heavy hammer, he fell into the underground parking facility beneath the asphalt road, amidst the cracked floorboards. Dust was everywhere as he forcefully crushed the nearly ten-meter-thick layer of soil between the asphalt road and the underground facility.

Even if it's the special high-strength aerospace material that Arasaka claims to use in the prosthetic body Kong, so what?
The ACPA, which is based on the concept of non-Newtonian fluids, is the one on Sasha's body. Even if it can withstand this force, it will collapse due to the transmission force, and Sasha will be wrapped in the ACPA and become a rotten meat can.

"Roar--"

An angry roar came from the heavy hammer's throat, the electronic sound accompanied by a low whistling wind, causing Sasha, who was still adjusting her posture and charging towards this place, to involuntarily speed up.

Sasha's incompletely repaired ACPA in the channel may have had its communication module affected by the impact, and it just kept sending messages to Lucy and the running Vladimir using a cat avatar.

"Hurry! It's a heavy hammer; only Rin's quick cracking can break through it."

far away.

Vladimir, who was still trying to look back, was suddenly grabbed by Lucy—

"Still watching?!"

Vladimir sprinted forward, shouting, "What the hell did I say? This is a real heavy hammer, and a plus version at that! How on earth did Arasaka manage to recreate this thing?"

Lucy said in a low, steady voice, "It's not surprising that there are Soul Killers."

At this moment, Vladimir was still asking, "Soul what?"

Lucy stopped answering and, at a T-junction, shoved Vladimir, whom Rin had asked them to keep an eye on.

Lucy didn't know what a good person was or what a bad person was.

But Vladimir cannot die here—

"Split up and run!"

Lucy shoved him away abruptly, then stopped abruptly on the snow. She looked at the guy seriously and said, "Don't look back. Whether you're from Gilafa or not, you should work with my boss... That's all I have to say."

Vladimir stared in astonishment at the girl. He watched as she nimbly climbed into a race car, his expression freezing before he yelled, "What the hell! You can drive?"

No one will answer him anymore.

After a beautiful drift, Vladimir could no longer see the taillights of his car in two seconds. Of course, the sound of the car crashing to the ground, which was no different from a bomb, was also urging him to escape as soon as possible. In less than a minute, another deafening explosion came from the other end of the street.

Vladimir didn't dare to waste a second. He jumped into the car and started accelerating hard. He kept looking in the rearview mirror, wanting to grit his teeth and turn his head to look at the girl who was covered in mecha armor and looked like a cat.

But Lucy's voice kept echoing in my mind.

Is that guy (Rin) really that strong?

Upon discovering that his communications had been restored immediately after being released by the two hackers, Vladimir quickly began contacting the nearest platoon—

Behind the brightly colored avatar appeared a flamboyantly dressed, kitschy-looking man. He stared wide-eyed and exclaimed, "You're not fucking dead?"

Vladimir had no time for idle chatter or jokes. He asked in a deep voice, "Are there still people in the East Warsaw area? That guy has already shown up—"

"Damn! It's too complicated to explain. Anyway, I met some awesome guys in Warsaw who can take down Arasaka. We need to give them some support!"

After I said that, the other person suddenly fell silent.

After a long silence, the person opposite him said with a bitter expression, "Where the hell are there any people left? I don't know what that thing in Arasaka Tower is. Our reinforcements didn't arrive, and the rest of us are all rotten to pieces. Damn it!"

"That's a fucking heavy hammer!"

Vladimir's eyes widened. "Holy crap! Of course I know. What I'm asking you now is, is there anyone else? Really—these are the same guys from the power plant last time. Do you remember that cyber ninja who slit Daito's throat? They're from Arasaka too!"

"Holy crap!?"

The man opposite was dumbfounded. "What about Da Dong?"

These days, even if someone dies, everyone goes on with their lives and lives as usual. So Vladimir cursed, "We'll all be killed by medicine sooner or later, we'll all die eventually... save people first, damn it!"

He gritted his teeth and said, "Wait, I still have more than a dozen people here. The East District has been completely taken over by Arasaka. I really can't guarantee that we can get that guy out."

"Our hackers are in the high-rise building on Fulian Street in the East District, that unfinished building, the place where we rescued Da Dong. There is a network blocking area up there, you can wait for us there."

As he spoke, Vladimir quickly looked down at the windshield and saw a dilapidated building covered in neon lights in the distance. In fact, it was the office building of a local company that Arasaka had built before he moved into Warsaw.

However, when this company faced the Arasaka takeover, the boss injected cyanide into the entire building's ventilation system, which can be considered another form of mutual destruction.

Perhaps due to the high cost of demolition, this building has remained standing twenty kilometers away from Arasaka Tower.

"Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to witness the battle?"

Without saying a word, Vladimir immediately moved toward the building after hanging up the phone. During the short three-minute walk, he prayed that the cat-headed girl covered in the special substance ACPA would not get into trouble.

However, by the time Vladimir arrived at the building and still hadn't found any equipment to observe remotely, Sasha, who was now officially fighting the Hammer, was in her worst condition.

It's unclear whether it was from a weapon strike or a powerful punch.

The black substance above ACPA seemed to vibrate rapidly with a frequency, to the point that in some places, Sasha's black and pink striped customer service logo was even beginning to show through.

Sasha coughed up blood repeatedly and crashed onto the snow like a falling flower. The glaring crimson blood stained the trail of her retreating steps. She had barely managed to avoid landing on her back and suffering a head-on collision with her spine.

However, her desperately maintained posture eventually crumbled under the immense force. She knelt on one knee, a sharp pain shooting through her chest. Looking at the dent in ACPA's chest, a helpless smile appeared on her face…

"Heavy Hammer, it really is like a cockroach, the longer it lives, the more tenacious it becomes."

However, at this moment, Heavy Hammer stopped his punching stance and instead slowly walked around Sasha, saying, "This thing seems rather interesting..."

In Hammer's memory, the Arasaka ninjas who arrived on the ground wearing these ACPAs were all a bunch of weaklings and good-for-nothings when they were on the space station.

"I hate sentimentality the most. If you let them run away first, you'll become a disgusting piece of meat."

The dull sound of machinery is a characteristic of a heavy hammer.

However, the hammer's seemingly inquisitive pacing, like a predator surveying its prey, did not elicit fear from its opponent; instead, it earned a resounding slap in mockery.

"Rotten Meat, aren't you the one who deserves that name?"

Sasha knew that this guy's chasing ability was too strong, and she had to slow down the killing machine in front of her as much as possible so that Lucy could run a greater distance and at the same time get Rin's support.

But this guy was too strong; he disabled Sasha's ACPA in just a few minutes, and his hacking methods were completely useless.

Keep in mind that even before Hammer used any of those weapon types on his body that appeared to be completely ??? when scanned…

S. A.S., this heavy hammer thing caused Sasha a lot of trouble.

too fast…

Sasha was sent flying by a single punch before he could even mount a proper defense. If he had another smart weapon, it would have been a fatal blow.

Therefore, verbally provoking someone like Hammer, who's not much different from a cyber madman, is better than fighting, even if Hammer might become even more ruthless after the verbal provocation ends...

"... "

Heavy Hammer looked at the girl with a ghostly gaze and suddenly said, "There aren't many things that disgust me, but I feel like I've seen you before."

Sasha sneered, "I'm curious, does this lump of rotten flesh remember how you died in your past life, being used as a—ugh!"

It was almost the blink of an eye.

The hammer was completely embedded in the surrounding scenery, and the scene quickly shifted to Sasa's side like the next picture. A powerful straight punch caused the ACPA on Sasa's mask to be unable to withstand the force, and she began to focus her energy on the side that was being hit by the hammer.

ACPA, already missing an arm, was inherently flawed in its thickness, and in order to neutralize the force, Sasha's face appeared in the beast-like eyes of the hammer.

The memories implanted by the soul killers, Hanako Arasaka and Michiko, immediately turned Hammer's eyes bloodshot.

"cough--"

Sasha crashed through the building's walls as if it had fallen off, scraping along the ground all the way to the depths.

The heavy hammer opened its mouth, its jaws gleaming with a cold light, resembling the metallic fasteners of a space-age zombie, and let out a roar that was almost enough to shatter one's liver and gallbladder, "You deserve to die!"

Sasha, amidst the clutter, had her head bowed, half her face swollen, and she looked extremely disheveled. Unable to move, she could only listen to the roar.

"Ah...you remember now, you remember who killed you, thinking you were a monster..."

At that moment, Takeshi Takeda was roaring through the heavy hammer's headset.

"Adam! What are you doing?!"

"Kill that woman, and capture Lucy. If anything goes wrong, I'll have the space station find someone to replace you. Don't do anything stupid!"

The heavy hammer paused for a moment.

He seemed to have been thinking things through in his anger…

Heavy Hammer's consciousness was already a mess. He couldn't understand the fact that he wasn't the original body, but just an artificial monster. He was just relying on his memory to instinctively find the man and woman watching him from the tower in the wasteland of Night City.

That's a nightmare.

Two blinding glints flashed in the man's eyes. LIN, Rin... This name seemed to pierce his bones, causing him sleepless nights and days of agony in the incubation chamber.

And V…

That guy is one of Arasaka's men, a confidant of his enemy, that's right, it's Arasaka Yorinobu.

In some ways, Hammer seems more rational than ever before, but also more insane.

He disconnected the call from Takeda's grim face and walked over to the girl who was still struggling to look up at him. She barely managed to raise her arm to attack.

"I'll use you to find him, and I'll take that woman back with me."

“I think… it would be even more interesting if you guys started fighting.”

The crouching hammer was like grabbing a defenseless lamb, letting Sasha's light fists strike his breastplate.

Immediately afterward, he simply turned his head and appeared at the intersection where Lucy and Vladimir had parted ways a few minutes earlier. With a sinister grin, he immediately used the surrounding network infrastructure to pinpoint Lucy's location.

At that moment, a pair of eyes in cyberspace opened…

"Lucy, I hope you're right."

Lin Yue's patience had reached its limit.

At that moment, Vladimir, who was looking into the distance from the top of the building using a lookout instrument, had a very grim expression.

"this…"

Everyone who gradually arrived in East Warsaw was watching the battle unfold. Unfortunately, Heavy Hammer hadn't even used the weapon on his back to "kill" the cyber ninja from the factory complex, on whom they had placed such high hopes...

Just as Vladimir was stunned, the Freedom Front fighters who had come to his aid from all sides suddenly burst into whispers—

"Hold…"

Of course, it doesn't matter whether this woman is a cybernetic ninja or not; from this distance, she just looks like the corpse that Heavy Hammer is carrying.

They were looking at a girl smoking by the car at the corner.

"Damn, that woman's got guts!"

Vladimir's face darkened further. He now saw himself as a deserter. The man who had spoken to Vladimir in the earpiece had his prosthetic eye retract from its socket, looking utterly helpless.

"This is the awesome guy you were talking about? Holy crap... Vladimir, are you out of your mind?"

"I knew it... Damn it! That's a fucking heavy hammer, what were you thinking?"

Clearly, the man's roar drew the attention of the Freedom Front fighters watching the battle to the two men. They exchanged bewildered glances, and then someone tentatively asked—

"Can we... still move on?"

No one was in a good mood these past few days, especially everyone present, whose family members had died, to varying degrees, at the hands of Heavy Hammer and Arasaka's henchmen.

Seeing that Vladimir had disappeared, they said he had learned about a powerful squad in Sector D, so they came with the intention of revenge... but they didn't expect that Hammer would kill them like chickens.

"Why...don't you run?"

Vladimir clearly didn't seem to care about the reprimand, instead muttering to himself as if he were in a daze.

The young man's men at that bar were all extraordinary, and even the girls seemed to know nothing of fear. What were they doing there?
now.

Lucy, leaning against the car door, didn't even glance at Sasha and Hammer, but silently took a satisfying puff of her cigarette... Once inside the Arasaka Tower, there wouldn't be such free time to smoke.

"You... Lucy... why?"

Sasha struggled to lift her head, her swollen eyes filled with despair.

Why didn't she leave?

Meanwhile, inside the Arasaka Tower, Takeda and the kneeling Him behind him stared intently at the girl on the screen, their eyes filled with the utter disregard for any kinship, as if they were looking at a mortal enemy…

Inside the building, the Freedom Front members were in chaos. Vladimir was agitated and determined to rescue people, but everyone seemed to be waiting for instructions from the man who had spoken to him.

So, this sarcastic but optimistic man was now filled with despair; they were all watching—

We'll wait for the so-called strongest person Lucy mentioned to appear.

"Hey, remember... you said that we would always be each other's anchors in the cyber world."

Heavy Hammer looked at the white-haired girl. He hated this feeling because he couldn't smell his favorite fear in anyone else.

She gently raised her hand.

Heavy Hammer couldn't understand what this girl meant at all...

"Heavy Hammer, your enemy is coming soon."

……

……

(End of this chapter)