Ch.299Work Record No. 042 – The God Wearing the Beast’s Hide (3)

Until now, “Los Soñadores,” the Dreamers, had been merely their name, but now it had become their essence. They were dreamers—people who harbored futile dreams that didn’t fit the rules of the wasteland.

That’s how it should be. That’s how it must be. But now, the game was changing. A single figure called El Sueño had suddenly appeared in the wasteland and changed everything. Their dreams were beginning to gain power.

No. The house always wins. The house must always win. Jimena Castello, senior gang hunter of the Las Vegas Strip, gritted her teeth. Her hatred and disgust had their own rationality.

Who in the world gets a second chance so easily? The sight of drug dealers from the wasteland suddenly meeting a man who claimed to be God and then going around preaching about salvation was absurd.

To secure her place in the Las Vegas Strip, Jimena had made every effort—not crying out for a second chance like some people, but grinding her bones, replacing her body, and stuffing herself with implants all with just her first chance.

She wasn’t arrogant enough to claim that second chances were only fitting for people like her, but she was confident enough to say that the word “second chance” was a luxury for those people.

Killing the dreamers would be proof. Proof that a god descending from machinery couldn’t save trash overnight, proof that only those who work hard can reap the rewards.

But her team wasn’t as enthusiastic as she was. For them, the fact that El Sueño had torn apart other gang hunters with his bare hands was far more important than all that ideological talk.

It didn’t matter. Jimena raised her body, which had undergone every modification available in the Las Vegas Strip, where connections with military contractors and MediTechs were scarce. She stood a head taller than other gang hunters.

The modification technology available wasn’t particularly advanced since the Las Vegas Strip wasn’t friendly with military contractors or MediTechs, but she wasn’t someone who obsessed over what she couldn’t have.

She was someone who protected what she had. Though her body had been replaced over a decade ago and was about 40cm taller than her original height, it still caused motion sickness, which she forcibly ignored.

Jimena’s body appeared to have human flesh remaining up to her collarbone, but it was merely artificial skin attached to a metal skeleton, modeled after her original face. She was a perfect machine.

She slammed her titanium alloy fist against the wall of the locker room filled with sighs and worries. Without giving time to look at the clearly dented mark left on the wall, her voice echoed.

“Are you afraid of El Sueño?”

Her voice was filled with deep hatred, making it cold despite being passionate and hot-blooded. Her team members couldn’t answer.

Jimena snorted at their reaction. There’s only one way to give confidence to those who lack it: knock on the closet door where fear hides, coax it, bully it, and drag it out.

“He revived dying dreamers, tore apart gang hunters, yes, it’s frightening. Now he thinks he’s really a god and has started a holy war in the wasteland?”

The machinery comprising her entire body growled like a beast. She was deliberately overcharging the power to make noise. Small deceptions help.

Jimena didn’t realize how similar what she was doing was to El Sueño’s faith. If she had known, she would have laughed until she rolled on the floor. The only difference between El Sueño and her was skill.

It was time to turn the atmosphere around. She slammed the titanium steel fist against the wall again, showing off her power. A similar dent formed, and her mechanically tinged voice echoed again.

“But the truth is… he fears us too. That’s why he’s splitting and scattering his already small forces. Because he doesn’t know where we’ll go. Because if he’s not confident when we arrive, he can’t protect them.”

She had quite sharp judgment. El Sueño not revealing his location only meant that he wanted to appear as if he could be anywhere.

An accurate conclusion drawn from sharp judgment provides a basis—a reason to fight, a reason to try, a reason not to be afraid… it fits perfectly wherever a reason is needed.

“El Sueño is not everywhere! He doesn’t know where we’ll arrive, and he’s probably worried right now. Let’s go! I’ll show you how he’s at our mercy!”

Despite saying this, Jimena knew that El Sueño’s chosen method was correct.

According to information from wasteland surveillance, El Sueño’s holy war was successful. Despite being a holy war, no gunshots were heard.

Small gangs of five or six people who were looking for somewhere to lean on began joining El Sueño’s crusader ranks as soon as they arrived.

Only Los Payasos could be compared to the Dreamers, who were rapidly growing in numbers and renewing their reputation with El Sueño’s appearance. Even Jimena would choose the Dreamers over the murder artists.

She had thought that someone arrogant enough to call himself a god would at least fail at civil affairs, but that wasn’t the case either. Jimena even believed that the claim of him calling himself a god was false.

He extended his hand in El Sueño’s name even to organizations that had once been hostile, and among the organizations that decided to join, he didn’t conscript anyone except volunteers. He was moving quickly with a small elite force.

Now El Sueño was becoming a definite threat to the Las Vegas Strip. Like the red mint flowers that began to spread across the wasteland after his arrival, he was eating away at the wasteland with terrible vitality and adaptability.

Jimena kicked open the outpost door and walked outside. The bright wasteland sunlight pierced down, automatically adjusting her visual sensors. And in her adjusted vision, she saw something other than the sun.

El Sueño stood before her, emitting a flash of light from the center of his face. When he opened his mouth, sensors all over Jimena’s body began to scream.

High and low frequencies mixed and resonated simultaneously. It was like a sonic weapon used for riot control. Not a divine power. It was probably actually that riot control sonic weapon. Jimena gathered her wits.

It wasn’t real pain. She was a modification addict who had replaced her entire body with machinery. But the numerous warning windows that appeared simultaneously were more than enough to make her cower.

“You’re a clever child, Jimena. Yes, I’m not omniscient, so I don’t know where you’ll arrive. In that respect, I worry whether my children will be hurt. But…”

In her adjusted visual sensors, El Sueño stood with the light of the sun rising behind his head like a halo, holding a high-frequency blade in one hand. Even his choice of weapon was unusual.

Normally, high-frequency blades are single-edged. They’re difficult to handle, and if the high-frequency vibration touches your body, even if it doesn’t cut you clean through, it would clearly cause great damage.

But El Sueño was holding a double-edged high-frequency blade. The silver high-frequency blade in El Sueño’s hand moved momentarily faster than Jimena’s processing speed, leaving a deep afterimage on her visual sensors.

He cut off half of her head from the corner of her mouth, and pushing back Jimena’s mechanical body that had lost its control system, he slowly walked into the Las Vegas Strip outpost.

With one hand holding Jimena’s split head—still alive due to emergency power—he enjoyed the performance of his reinforced suit, which couldn’t be neutralized by small arms, as he cut down the gang hunters.

Jimena wanted to scream, but she gritted her teeth, feeling only helplessness. No, she couldn’t grit them. She had an upper jaw now but no lower jaw.

Among her team members, those with quick hands and responses drew their guns and fired, but El Sueño didn’t even dodge and cut them down from the front. Helplessness seeped into those cut wounds.

However, unlike other gang hunters he had killed, El Sueño didn’t kill Jimena and her team. He cut off the head of the perfectly modified Jimena, but for the rest, he only cut off their hands and feet.

These were wounds that could be healed sufficiently by replacing the body or implanting parts. Jimena barely looked around at the surrounding scenery by moving her visual sensors. It was a scene from hell.

Severed hands and feet of people were scattered, and the people she knew and loved were rolling on the floor in pain. It was fortunate that the reinforced suit’s hemostasis system was working, but the blood-purple seemed unlikely to clear.

“I know where you depart from. Then, to alleviate my worry for my beloved children… I can do this much with the mindset of handling household chores.”

Those words opened Jimena’s mouth, which she had kept tightly shut until now. It was as if he was digging into the reason why she hated El Sueño and the Dreamers.

She should have thought about whether El Sueño said those words by chance or if he had heard her words somewhere and was provoking her, but her hatred-filled heart knew no reason.

According to the cult that served him, this was a situation where the dog couldn’t be restrained by a leash, and the person was being dragged by the dog. Jimena had no idea that even this reaction of hers was written in El Sueño’s scripture.

“Why do you go so far for those wasteland trash? For trash that doesn’t deserve a second chance! They don’t deserve it!”

El Sueño placed one of his scriptures in front of her eyes. After tapping her half-cut head, covered with artificial skin but with a skeleton completely replaced by metal, a couple of times, he melted back into the background.

“If even such people have received salvation, how could the door of salvation be closed to you, Jimena? Find the rest of the answers by reading for yourself. I don’t need devotees who only carry my image until their backs break.”

When Los Soñadores drew in those who weren’t enemies, El Sueño’s name only had meaning as the gang’s overboss. But when drawing in enemies, they needed the name of the God of Pleasure.

This was a move no one else could make. To speak of mercy in this wasteland, one had to be at least a god, and El Sueño, regardless of what he actually was, was fulfilling that role of god sufficiently.

Not long after, thanks to the arrival of the Las Vegas Strip’s repair and medical departments, Jimena was able to recover quickly by removing her current head containing the brain storage and connecting a new head to her full-body prosthesis.

But not all injuries can heal. She knew that the Las Vegas Strip was a cesspool. It was literally a city of sin, filled with depravity and pleasure below and power struggles above.

She was born in such a place. And the only way to be recognized in such a city was this steel body. It was a city where you had to step on others’ heads to succeed.

It’s not that Jimena had never wanted a second chance. It’s that this city had never given her the word “second chance.” Surviving despite the outpost being attacked… she had never thought about it.

The reason God saved Judas and Devadatta was simple. If those worst betrayers and adversaries could be saved, who couldn’t be? That question dug into Jimena’s heart.

After all, the body is just clothing and a vessel, and the person is inside. In the consciousness contained in the gray matter. And in preventing rising doubts, a steel body was no more exceptional than a flesh body.

Jimena thought that perhaps El Sueño knew her. He might even know that she hated seeing people less deserving than herself receive a second chance because she desired a second chance more than anyone.

This was El Sueño’s infiltration strategy. Jimena shook her head, but she couldn’t stop reading the crude and incomplete scripture written by some wasteland trash called El Pastor or whatever.

She had always felt like she was barely hanging on the edge of a cliff. She had always feared the thousand-foot precipice she would plummet down if she failed. But this was the opposite.

From saving the Dreamers who were on the verge of annihilation to uniting them and waging a holy war—just ten days. They were in the same predicament of hanging from a cliff, but El Sueño wasn’t afraid; he spread his wings and flew away.

Jimena now decided to honestly admit it. She was jealous of Los Soñadores, who had received salvation and a second chance so easily. El Sueño’s words dug into that jealousy.

He wasn’t one who burst open springs but one who changed the course of water. There was no reason why this wasteland would have fewer talented people or useful humans than other places.

Then there was no need to burst open springs in the first place. Mojave had enough water to judge with water. This was merely an act of gathering water.

For a god, the most excellent missionaries were whipping masters and those who hurt others. God only needs to tend to the wounds. Truly, that was enough.

El Sueño didn’t return to his office. He successively raided other gang hunter outposts and killed no one. He left one copy of his scripture at each place. That was also enough.

The beginning of everything was fascination and deception. All that fascination and deception now had substance and became a specter wandering through Mojave. You might dream of killing El Sueño, but you can’t kill a specter.

Because that specter was older than El Sueño. It was merely the bare face of the specter of order in this wasteland, maintained by grinding people, which El Sueño had revealed by removing the tablecloth it wore.

This instability was why Fitz & Morrison could easily kill the Las Vegas Strip, and even though they hired contractors to do it instead, the approach was the same.

But only one person, who was both in and not in this wasteland, knew this. The wind blowing through the wasteland seems to be only El Sueño’s fanaticism. Perhaps it really was.