Chapter 131 - 122: Good Night, Company Square

"You—"

Rory didn’t even have time to say more words!

This shouldn’t have happened at all!

According to her calculations, V’s Si Anweisitan was supposed to offer only 20% of the Time Stop Effect, while the experimental model used by the Terrorist Mobile Team could provide up to 80%!

During the previous combat, she hadn’t even pushed the power to its limits!

But now, even at full power, she was just barely keeping up with that speed!

Cyber-psychosis can overclock prosthetics, but this level of overclocking seemed inexplicable!

V moved incredibly fast, and the two Mantis Blades were immediately in front of Rory’s eyes!

She instinctively blocked, but V’s strength had also increased significantly!

Not just fast, but ruthless!

V didn’t continue swinging the blades after the first strike; instead, she shifted her force, kicked off with her foot, and sent Rory flying!

Ordinary people require a moment to gather strength after exerting force, which is why experienced fighters don’t go all out—

But V was different now! She had lost her sanity!

Even after knocking Rory away, she didn’t stop her movements!

The Bionic Joint deformed under this inhuman action, but still supported the attack, closely following Rory who was sent flying!

The two of them fought in a field where to others it seemed like time had stopped!

They swept past #0054, who activated his Si Anweisitan passively but couldn’t catch up to V!

V’s inhuman movements twisted her knee, but Rory still couldn’t block those Mantis Blades!

Rory felt a chill in her heart as the Mantis Blades slashed into her body!

It’s over!

This was her thought.

But reality often proves to be quite cruel—

In her cyber-psychosis state, V exhibited superhuman reflexes and speed, but her blades still had to obey the laws of physics.

After numerous strikes from the heated Mantis Blades, the pressure and high temperature had brought the blade to the point of snapping.

When the blade struck Rory’s shoulder, or rather, when it made contact with her Subdermal Armor.

The Mantis Blade snapped.

V’s speed fluctuated and began to slow, allowing #0054 to catch up and punch V in the back—

Rory felt a sense of having narrowly escaped death—

Then she saw an unbelievable sight!

V dodged #0054’s punch by turning around, and the half-broken blade floating in the air suddenly flew into V’s hands, held tightly in her self-made gloves—

The blade pierced through #0054’s abdomen and then slashed upwards, eventually getting stuck near #0054’s collarbone!

To Jack, the whole process took just one or two seconds.

He saw V disappear from her original position and rush toward Rory, then #0054 also vanished, and the three of them reappeared synchronously outside the door—

#0054 was stabbed through, and the Mantis Blade wasn’t extending from V’s forearm but was being held in her hand.

Splurt!

Blood gushed out like a fountain, splattering on the wall.

#0054 fell to his knees, his spinal prosthetics instinctively maintaining his upright position—but it was clear he couldn’t move anymore.

It was then that Rory reacted, utterly shocked—

How could this be?

But after doing all this, V also fell to her knees—

It was evident she had reached her limit.

Rory looked at the now-motionless V with an expression of disbelief—that killing machine from a moment ago now appeared so vulnerable.

Her lips seemed to be murmuring something, but even with Rory’s exceptionally sharp hearing, she couldn’t make out what she was saying.

"...Simply—unbelievable, headquarters, you won’t believe what I just went through...

This woman—the suspect A, you will definitely like her."

V had lost her ability to move—Rory was quite familiar with this state because she herself had been in this exact state when captured by the Terrorist Mobile Team years ago.

When she went cyber-psycho that year, the first one she took down was the Terrorist Mobile Team’s hacker. She had been beaten to the point where her body’s power supply failed, and her prosthetics shut down completely before she was apprehended.

Of course, the details of the fight no longer remained in her memory and were said to be part of cyber-psychosis treatment.

Headquarters would likely do the same to V.

She began contacting the Military Technology backup team—there was still a mystery unsolved, why had Military Technology suddenly gone silent?

No, it wasn’t just Military Technology, the NCPD channel also seemed to have gone silent.

"Military Technology, respond."

"Ghost!"

"Mama—"

"Lizard Man! It’s a Lizard Man!"

"Monster!"

Listening to the chaotic communications on the channel, Rory frowned—

"Military Technology, what the hell are you doing? Military Technology Major #3389, what are you doing?"

No response.

However, her keen auditory system seemed to catch sounds from elsewhere on the floor? Something like...glass breaking and screams?

...

Jack looked at the unmoving V, a sudden sense of melancholy filled his heart.

But no one cared about her feelings, or her thoughts.

Jack glanced at the large man standing next to him, who also appeared to be in a daze.

"Sigh...we’re done for, but at least it’s at the hands of the Terrorist Mobile Team..."

Splurt!

A splash of blood spurted out, and Jack was stunned.

He saw...a white...claw? pierce through the large man’s chest?

Weighing over 300 kilograms, the large man was pierced through by the claw, which squeezed tightly, spraying blood everywhere.

Then slowly lifted—

Looking past the large man, Jack was utterly dumbfounded—

A...creature with green scales, terrifying claws, and black vertical pupils...

Ghost!

"Mierda!"

Jack was scared witless, disregarding his own fractures, he turned and crawled away, but an icy claw grabbed his leg!

Outside the room, Rory’s frown deepened—

Just now it was the Military Technology team shouting, now it was the enemy shouting?

"#0034, what are you..."

Rory saw a monster charging at her!

[System Malfunction: Si Anweisitan Locked, Under Repair—]

Rory couldn’t activate her Si Anweisitan, and could only dodge to the side, but that monster—it had a tail!

Boom!

The tail whipped at Rory’s chest like a whip, and the immense force smashed her through the wall!

The terrifying impact deformed her Subdermal Armor in one blow, and her internal organs were damaged!

The world in front of her turned dark. Through the hole in the continuously crumbling wall, all she could see were a pair of eyes—

Black vertical pupils, golden sclera, faintly visible scales—

True cold-blooded animal eyes, predator’s eyes!

"Headquarters...unknown life form..."

Bang!

A large piece of wall crashed down on her head, completely burying her.

The Lizard Man was Lille—he didn’t care about Rory’s survival and immediately picked up V.

He carried V on his left shoulder and Jack on his right—Jack screamed like he had seen a ghost!

"Midera!"

"Stop screaming, it’s me!"

Lille’s voice was hoarse and low, impaired by his lizard tongue, he even swallowed some words.

Somehow, to Jack, it sounded like: "I’m going to eat you!"

Jack screamed even louder!

Lille, helpless, pulled Yinglong out of a nearby sack and thrust it into Jack’s hands—

Seeing the weapon, Jack paused, then tears welled up in his eyes—

"Lille...they’ve already eaten you..."

"Idiot!"

Concise and clear, the words snapped Jack back to reality—how familiar that felt.

He then scrutinized Lille, and also took a look aside—

There was a sack made of Military Technology bulletproof fabric—it looked like a sack and could even be strapped on.

Uh...why did it feel like they were here to steal something? Well, they were here to steal something.

Lille carried the two of them to the circuit breaker, inserting his personal link before his prosthetics could fail under the increasing pressure of his physical form.

The Lizard DNA caused his body to rapidly grow, evolving almost entirely into a Lizard Man, his entire form continuously swelling like an inflating balloon.

But Lille still retained most of his human shape—the reason being his cells were also continuously deteriorating.

Lille had anticipated this problem before injecting the Lizard Potion—the change in DNA was minor, the major issue was that it altered his body structure, which was lethal to his installed prosthetics.

A prosthetic doctor’s job is to adjust prosthetics according to the patient’s size and physique to fit the surgical target.

Lille’s changes were more than just an increase in size, his body density was also increasing dramatically, and his body structure, and even cell structure, were changing rapidly!

Sooner or later, all the prosthetics would fail!

But fortunately for him, he could self-destruct with high intensity.

The Si Anweisitan was running at full speed, burning a massive amount of nervous tissue every minute.

The Lizard Man gave him super-strong cell repair capabilities, but even that had limits. Most of it was now focused on repairing the damaged and burnt nerve cells.

So even though he had grown claws and a strong tail, he still looked more human overall.

With the computation power of his overclocked brain and the data exchange channel from hacking #0064, along with killing the Military Soldiers upon waking up, he had long hacked into Military Science’s communication network.

The Military Commander had been receiving false information the whole time, and Rory had mistaken sound signals for communication signals.

The last communication between them was that Lille was dead, with Jack and V pushed to their limits, everyone thought victory was assured.

Now, Lille was going for a big move.

The power supply on the 79th floor of the Biotechnology Building was quite abundant—enough to create an EMP blast that would paralyze the entire Company Square.

Rory was right—it takes considerable computing power and a skilled hacker to create such an EMP blast.

Lille had both, and he even had a cross-dimensional server specifically for running the Time Stop Magic Doll.

Watching the monstrous figure fiddle with the circuits, Jack weakly asked:

"Lille? My good brother?"

Lille coldly glanced at him and then nodded.

It wasn’t that he wanted to be cold, but the eyes of a cold-blooded creature just looked that way.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to message Jack; part of his brain-machine interface was damaged, and he had to abandon some functions.

Lille pulled the circuit breaker and meanwhile tore off a few metal plates and rods to form a cage.

The three of them were in that iron cage, and Lille raised the raccoon dog sniper rifle, aiming outside the window.

One eye observing the real world, the other eye, observing Cyberspace.

Cyberspace used a special protocol, effectively utilizing real-world resistors and other basic circuit information to create a visual and interactive space.

Theoretically, by manipulating the variable resistors within the space, it was possible to bypass some of the safety valves connected to this floor, allowing the current to flood into a specific circuit.

If this process was completed in an instant, it would trigger an EMP.

In Cyberspace, after resting for a while, the biotechnology hacker suddenly saw a horrifying scene:

The entire space trembled and twisted. He exerted all his effort to stabilize it, to counteract the instability in Cyberspace...

But compared to the varied and rapid attacks coming from Lille, it was just a drop in the bucket!

Outside the window, the Scorpion-tailed Lion Floating Car kept rising toward the window ledge—

"Time to turn off the lights—"

With a screech—

The volatile current under Lille’s meticulous control grew stronger, reaching unimaginable peaks within milliseconds. The intense current fluctuations generated a strong magnetic field, and the sudden surge of the magnetic field produced electromagnetic waves that burst into the surrounding space!

The jumping holographic goldfish in the center of the Square vanished first, followed by the streetlights, the building lights, and the sky-high holographic billboards—

Devices shut down, cables burned, communications severed!

The symbol of freedom and prosperity in Night City, Company Square, came to a halt—

Darkness descended.

The Scorpion-tailed Lion Floating Car rose, its cockpit aligned perfectly with the raccoon dog’s sniper scope.

"Goodnight, Company Square."