Ch.312Side Story. Cyberpunk 2088 (2)

After that day, after wiping out the gang, David became a wanted man.

Even in Neo-LA, notorious for its terrible law enforcement, while the slums might be lawless, at least minimal laws were still observed in the general urban areas.

Only gangs with powerful backing would engage in street shootouts, confident their backers would absolve their crimes. For an ordinary person, murder was still considered a serious offense even by local standards.

Moreover, David’s situation was far worse.

He had been marked by the mega-corps after wiping out gangs sponsored by two of them, and then became a high-profile criminal by killing the Neo-LA security maintenance team that came to arrest him.

In the general urban areas, where one couldn’t purchase anything without identity verification, it was impossible to live a normal life—instead, he spent his days being hunted by security organizations.

Because of this, David Sterling ultimately made the decision to head toward the city slums.

The slums—called the cesspool or garbage dump—paradoxically boasted the largest area and population in Neo-LA, and were a perfect lawless zone where anything resembling public authority didn’t even exist.

Although some gangs backed by mega-corps or other corporations exerted influence, the slums—where laws and public authority didn’t apply—were the only place David could go.

Of course, the slums were still neighborhoods where people lived, and gangs roughly filled the role of public authority, so despite hundreds of people dying every day, it wasn’t as chaotic as one might expect.

‘…Sigh.’

And somehow, David managed to establish a cooperative relationship with a local gang in the slums.

It was a kind of contract where he would lend his name by joining them in exchange for substantial “cooperation,” leveraging his reputation as a notorious killer and human weapon in Neo-LA.

Fortunately, being a decent actor, he successfully deceived the gang by pretending he wanted a retirement lifestyle. Thanks to this, he obtained a reasonably good mixed-use building and set up a shop that functioned as both a junk dealer and an engineering workshop.

Having once worked at a mega-corp component factory, David had become quite skilled with machinery, whether he liked it or not. With amateur mechanic-level skills, he was considered an extremely talented asset in the slum gangs.

He could easily weld metal plates onto cars to create improvised armored vehicles, or make crude prosthetic arms and legs by mimicking robotic arm structures.

In this lawless zone filled with starved corpses never seen in mega-corp territories, David could accept his situation somewhat positively.

Meanwhile, David was puzzled by the dagger that had been the decisive factor in putting him in this situation.

‘What… is this?’

Yes. What on earth was this dagger?

After carrying it around for several days and conducting simple tests, David felt that this dagger was something like… a kind of occult item.

First, the material. As far as he knew, while the material composing this dagger might structurally resemble gold, it was definitely not an ordinary metal.

When he tested it by trying to cut abandoned rebar, it sliced through steel as easily as cutting tofu, yet the blade showed not even the slightest damage, demonstrating incredible durability.

Also, this dagger had… how should he put it? It had an inexplicable ability to stimulate the observer’s desire for possession, amplifying their craving for the dagger.

At first, he thought it might be emitting some kind of mental wave and tried scanning it with his devices, but the interior was just solidly packed with this unidentified metal.

But even this ability was nothing compared to what David had actually observed the dagger could do…

“…”

Somehow, this dagger possessed the power to take over its user’s body and kill nearby enemies when danger approached.

After obtaining and watching the CCTV footage of his first rampage, David saw that his unconscious self was… somehow different.

He beheaded a gang member who approached him without warning, withstood a barrage of bullets without flinching, tore people apart with superhuman strength far beyond what his meager implants could provide, and even wrapped blood around the dagger’s surface to create a giant blade.

‘Why is this happening to me…’

David shook his head at this horrific situation, involuntarily lamenting due to the indignation rising from within.

※ ※ ※

And about a year passed since then.

There were incidents like getting caught up in his affiliated gang’s conflicts, slicing up dozens more people and adding to his notoriety…

But for David, who had always thought fighting didn’t suit his temperament at all, the biggest change was that he had achieved considerable success as a back-alley engineer.

Although he couldn’t hire employees due to trauma from discovering a hired worker was actually a bounty hunter, his workshop had grown in size, and the quality of his products had improved thanks to David’s diligent study of human anatomy.

David’s most representative product was mechanical prosthetic arms, which he had worked on before, using industrial mechanical arms and neural-electronic interface sensors. Despite their rugged, construction equipment-like appearance, they were quite precise and powerful, making them popular.

He transformed his workshop to specialize in prosthetic arms, leveraging their affordability (less than 1/10 the price of similar mega-corp prosthetics), ease of modification, and compatibility.

Considering how frequently arm injuries occurred in this back-alley ecosystem, the demand for such mechanical prosthetics would only increase, never decrease.

His prosthetics, adapted from industrial mechanical arms with their distinctive rugged design and heavy cylinder structure, became extremely popular in the macho gang society. Now he was so busy making prosthetics all day that he sometimes had to be selective about which customers to accept.

Meanwhile, the changes didn’t stop there.

About six months after he settled in the slums, the back-alley ecosystem began to change significantly.

The biggest change was the rapid rise of a mysterious new gang within the slums that appeared to receive support from external forces rather than from Star-Galaxy Corporation or Ananas Technology.

Self-proclaimed as the Bloody Wolf, all members of this gang were giants exceeding 2.4 meters in height, as if they had undergone body modification, and their armaments were too abundant to believe they were just a gang.

They equipped all members with thick powered suits reminiscent of knights’ full plate armor, painted red, and most carried heavy weapons and field shields, engaging in combat that resembled extermination rather than conflict.

Particularly suspicious was their excellent training and continuous supply from somewhere, leading many to believe they were someone’s pawns. Nevertheless, they showed considerable flexibility and adaptability in managing their territory.

By absorbing existing gangs composed of locals and subcontracting to them, they were able to quickly assimilate into Neo-LA despite being an external force.

Well, there was also some red cross-like Christian cult spreading in the slums recently, but that was quite distant from David’s concerns.

*Bzzzzzzzzt!*

Back to the main story—that day, as always, David was welding while wearing his mechanical arm, an external implant for work.

While crafting a special steel prosthetic arm commissioned by a core member of a nearby gang, David noticed that the dagger on his waist had started vibrating slightly, as if warning of something.

“Damn it—”

*KABOOOOM!!!*

Just as David threw himself toward the safe room without hesitation, a small missile from outside blew away about half of his shop.