Chapter 171 - 155: New Home

Evil Land.

A car accident scene.

Burning vehicles were sticking out of the ground, and a few unfortunate souls were wailing on the ground, clearly the main victims of this catastrophic crash.

The Night Wandering Ghosts were holding their guns, with the muzzles uniformly aimed at two guys clutching their heads on the ground.

Mitch and Scorpion.

Mitch wore a set of green Armored Soldier gear, while Scorpion’s combat suit was topped with an orange leather jacket; both had quite impressive prosthetic arms on their left hands.

Kneeling on the ground, Mitch, sweat trailing down his forehead, forced a smile and said, "Well, we’re screwed..."

"Do I even need to say it—you guys get a bit of new dog food and suddenly you’re all so bold, huh?"

The leading Night Wandering Ghost gave Scorpion a kick!

Bang!

The kick sent Scorpion reeling, and he sprawled on the ground, long unable to stand up.

Seeing his state, the Night Wandering Ghosts laughed loudly:

"Haha—eat dirt, stray dogs!"

The one who had kicked laughed the loudest, his grey-black prosthetic gorilla arms swinging with his laughter, evidently made of quite advanced synthetic fibers.

Mitch, worried, looked at Scorpion, but that guy grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up with one hand!

"You two, carrying such badass prosthetics and still mixing with those idiots. You ended up like this today because you chose the wrong side.

But now, the situation is unique, and it’s your choice: either be dismantled by me and thrown in the trash,

or kill the other guy and join me."

Bang.

Mitch was thrown to the ground, still gasping for air.

The two brothers on the ground took a moment, then looked at each other as they raised their heads.

Clutching his throat, Mitch made a half-laughing, breathy sound: "Ha... ha... idiots..."

"Exactly, idiots—"

The two unwittingly cursed one another, propping themselves up to look at the sky.

The leading Night Wandering Ghost frowned, "What are you saying..."

"Saying you’re an idiot! Ptui!"

The pair spat in unison, the large man sneering darkly, "So you want to die—"

Boom!

Suddenly the car behind exploded!

A powerful bullet pierced through the car, electromagnetic bullets penetrating the fuel tank, igniting ethanol and fuel, and violently bursting open!

Almost simultaneously, the bodies of two Night Wandering Ghosts in front of Mitch and Scorpion twisted weirdly—

They were hit!

The two sitting on the ground immediately reacted, stabilized themselves, grabbed rifles, and targeted the big Night Wandering Ghost!

The impact made him stagger, but he also saw their actions!

So he grabbed the two unlucky ones next to him and harshly dragged them in front of him!

Pup pup pup!

"Retreat!"

The large Night Wandering Ghost pulled the human shields and ran towards another car—

In such open terrain, and with such fierce sniper fire, staying even a second longer was disregarding his own life!

Bullets hit the human shields as his strong hands smashed the guy who reached the car door before him, and he swiftly dove in.

The car started, but instead of immediately fleeing, he floored the accelerator and drove straight towards Mitch and Scorpion on the ground!

In the chaos, Scorpion was hit and flung out, flying several meters away!

Mitch, seeing this scene, was furious but didn’t notice another Night Wandering Ghost’s pistol aimed at him from behind!

Bang!

The sound of the gun mixed with the explosions, and Mitch, clutching his waist, knelt to the ground!

In his haze, he heard a strong engine sound beside him, and one of them distinctly belonged to Pan’an’s car...

"Mitch! Scorpion! No no no... V, help me get them back!"

Upon hearing Pan’an’s voice, Mitch fainted right there.

...

The people were rescued, but it wasn’t looking too good.

Scorpion, hit by the collision, suffered massive bone fractures and severe internal bleeding, with extensive internal organ rupture. If it wasn’t for West Tuan getting there quickly and Wanderers having a couple of extra cans of plasma, he really would have been left behind in Evil Land.

Mitch’s condition was better. The bullet had entered his waist near his spine, fortunately not damaging the spine.

By evening, he had mostly regained consciousness.

The first thing he saw upon waking up were Pan’an, Sol, and many clan members around him.

Seeing him awake, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"...Scorpion?"

With lingering fear, Pan’an said: "He’s out of danger for now, but he hasn’t woken up—just barely, it was really too dangerous this time."

"Yeah— but what place in Evil Land isn’t dangerous? This time we owe a lot to you..."

Sol breathed a sigh of relief as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders, not saying much more as he exited the makeshift hospital they had just set up.

The camp had relocated, and everything needed to be rebuilt, but the spirits of his people were not high.

Today had been too dangerous—he suddenly remembered the words he had used to convince his people to come to Night City:

He had said he wanted to change Adkaduo, to build a paradise for living here.

But now everything was gone, even the campsite they had previously found had to be abandoned.

The campsite looked desolate, but with swathes of abandoned wind turbines and signal towers that only needed some repairs, they would at least have electricity.

But now, their new home had almost no advantages except for its seclusion!

Attacked and then moving again, with many people injured or even in critical condition, morale hit rock bottom.

The drone attack wasn’t the last bad thing that happened that day, nor was the sorrow of moving; who would have expected more troubles to happen after the attack when Scorpion fell into a coma, and Mitch was injured.

Where was their future?

He looked toward the trio led by Lille, who had just set up his own tent not far away—

During the day, it was Lille who convinced him, and he had mostly accepted the persuasion.

Now, he was the one who was a bit urgent.

...

V hammered a nail into the stone with a swing, "...those Chaotic Blade Association folks really do things craftily; if it weren’t for the injured, I swear I could have taken them down."

Lille unfolded a retractable bed, made the bed, and said, "That’s why, knowing how to fight is useless by itself, crafty people always manage to target what you care about, disturb you, impact you, even defeat you."

"How did you start lecturing me again? Jack, are you done over there?"

Jack gave a thumbs up from behind the tent.

Having taken care of everything, V lay down on the bed and looked up at the night sky through the tent’s transparent window.

Here, the stars were much brighter, though occasionally one could see spotlights shooting over from Night City.

"It seems like you never used the alias ’King’? I heard Pan’an calling you V."

Lille also sat down on his own bed.

The tent was large, with their beds placed in three different corners, with their weapons, gear, and clothes arranged in the middle.

"Alias’s alias is too silly. Since my name overlaps with yours anyway, I might as well just go by V."

"Trying to be special? I think you don’t want to blend in."

"Get lost," V threw a pillow beside him, "Speaking of which, I’ve thought of so many cool names in the past, just waiting for a day to become famous and use them."

Lille caught the pillow and threw it back, "That day when you were asked for a code name, you couldn’t even fart. Now you’re telling me you thought of a lot of names?"

"...I don’t know why, but every time it comes to the crunch, I can’t remember anything. See, I’m still just called V?

Maybe it’s a thing from my childhood, not much cared about as one grows up..."

Looking at the starry sky overhead, V’s voice gradually faded a lot, then glanced at Lille again.

"What about you? Did you ever think of any exceptionally lame names when you were young?"

"Actually, no," Lille said slowly, "But I did like to pretend... with a stick or something, swinging it around."

"Haha, that’s not lame, that’s stupid!"

True, in Night City, if you really wanted to swing something cool, you could swing real blades, or go to a small shop and buy a plastic... real gun for a few Euros.

The whooshing and banging wasn’t as exciting as the real whooshing and banging.

Lille realized that this hobby really did seem a bit stupid in Night City.

So he quickly changed the subject, "What about you, Jack?"

Jack put the hammer back in the center of the tent and sat down with a squeak on his folding bed.

"Well... gang members don’t need aliases, but I’ve been tricked with a tattoo."

Jack rolled up his sleeve, showing the tattoo on his arm, "I planned to get a somewhat recognizable tattoo here, so I went to a tattoo artist on Japan Street, who was said to understand mysterious Eastern characters.

The tattoo looked pretty cool after it was done, and even the gang’s translator couldn’t tell what it said.

Then one day, they caught a martial artist and I was in charge of watching him—turns out, he told me that it wasn’t any mysterious Eastern script, but their dialect!

The meaning translated to chicken... forget it, I changed it anyway later on, and he also told me a lot of similar stuff."

V listened, bewildered, while Lille wore a meaningful expression, "Don’t tell me it was that..."

"Err... about the same, but anyway, I changed it—if not for that man, I’m afraid I’d have that nonsense tattooed forever on my arm..."

"What happened to that guy?"

"In the end, I gave him a quick dispatch—hey, I tried to go back to that tattoo parlor for retribution, but... but when I saw what he had tattooed on himself, I thought better of it."

Jack also lay down, looking up at the stars, "It seems we all did lots of dumb stuff for the sake of seeming cool... I thought I was the only fool."

Lille commented, "It’s more like a norm for people to do foolish things. Those without such feelings probably haven’t moved on to the next phase."

V nodded in agreement—without meeting Lille, she wouldn’t have known the world could be played this way.

"And... what one thought was stupid in the past might not seem so foolish now to the present self."

"You make it sound like the monologue of a company dog who swore at corporations as a kid, grew up joining one, and endlessly slammed others for the dirty work of a corporation."

"Can’t you think of something more positive?" V threw the pillow again.

What she thought was: If it had been her former self, she definitely would not have run to Evil Land to live in a tent like this.

But now, it seemed not too bad.

The conversation ended, and silence fell over the inside of the tent, Lille turned to look outside: Suo was walking over.

He couldn’t sit still anymore.