Ch.4040. Watch Your Back in Cyberpunk

The hospital is the place closest to death.

Ironically, despite being a space meant to save lives, it’s where the most people die.

Naturally, the smell of death dominates such spaces.

The scent of death differs from place to place.

Sometimes it’s the cold, fishy odor of cooling corpses, or the acrid smell of excrement from those slowly awaiting death.

And the Clinic Center was a hospital filled with the stench of blood.

The smell of death that one could only experience in places where humans are slaughtered like beasts—a scent that should never be encountered in a normal civilized society.

Patients closed their eyes praying for survival, only to never open them again.

In operating rooms, treatment rooms, and hospital wards.

The smell of blood was everywhere.

The only people free from this bloody stench were the high-package customers.

Even those with mid-tier packages weren’t exempt from this malice.

But that day, the owners of the blood filling the hospital weren’t patients.

“Fuck! What is that?!”

At the top floor of the hospital.

From the floor marked with large “Authorized Personnel Only” signs, unusual shouts and screams echoed.

“Intruder! What are the guys downstairs doing?!”

Amon didn’t answer.

Most of them were dead anyway.

Cleanly eliminated before they could report upstairs.

He had focused on stealth and assassination until reaching the top floor, but now that only the top remained, there was no need for such tactics anymore.

Besides, since only authorized personnel were on the top floor, he didn’t need to worry about innocent casualties.

“Amen.”

Amon rushed down the corridor with a bone saw in one hand and a bundle of scalpels in the other.

Every time he swung the bone saw imbued with mysterious energy, it served its purpose by cutting through human bones.

The scalpels he threw hit the guards’ necks with precision.

The guards didn’t just stand there taking it.

They fired guns and swung swords to stop Amon’s charge.

But Amon slaughtered the guards in an instant with movements that seemed impossible for a human.

He would run in a straight line, then slide sideways as if gliding, or close several meters in a single step.

“What kind of implant is that?!”

It was completely different from neural acceleration device movements.

Amon’s movements were barely trackable by eye, yet he seemed free from inertia and gravity.

Faced with movements they’d never seen before, the guards couldn’t even guess what ability it was.

‘They wouldn’t have known this usage.’

Amon thought as he severed the neck bone of an astonished guard, his legs working tirelessly.

Sky Step might seem simple—an ability that enables triple jumps—but the applications of these triple jumps were endless.

With sufficient leg strength, one could accelerate three times per step, or change direction without touching the ground.

It could even implement movement akin to teleportation, something normally seen only in comics.

This setting was reflected in games too, where obtaining the essence unlocked application abilities like double dash or flash step.

It wasn’t a Tier 0 essence in games for nothing.

Major corporations knew these applications, which is why <Sky Step> was practically mandatory for combat personnel at security director level and above.

Amon traversed the corridor in all directions, piling up the bodies of guards.

He felt not the slightest guilt.

Considering what he had seen on his way up here, rather than guilt, his killing intent naturally surged.

‘Is that truly something humans should do?’

Just the reports from the experiments being conducted in the ward rooms on the fourth floor contained content one could hardly imagine humans doing.

——————————–

Room 401.

Experiment on whether gaslighting conditioning is possible when installing a device that transmits waves to the limbic system responsible for human emotions.

Conclusion: Failure. Subject entered a coma state and organs will be extracted and disposed of tomorrow.

Room 403.

Antibiotic administration to the mother completed. Checking fetal development status. Confirmed miscarriage of one twin.

Room 407….

——————————–

Similar contents appeared in reports from floors 5, 6, and 7.

They were all experiments that made one nauseous just reading about them.

Throughout this process, the guards not only condoned the experiments but actively assisted.

When necessary, they would shock patients with electric batons, or point guns to induce stress responses.

Sometimes they would deliberately shoot limbs.

Therefore, it was impossible to feel any guilt toward the guards.

“Kill that bastard!!”

At first, the roars to kill Amon

“Fuck! Where did a monster like that come from?!”

turned to astonishment,

“Save me!!”

“Open the door! Open it!!”

and as time passed, transformed into terror.

By now, only three guards remained.

Amon’s shadow fell over the three guards pathetically pounding on the door.

With flickering lights behind him, Amon, covered in blood, looked down at the mercenaries.

They showed their intent to surrender, having lost the will to resist.

“Please! I don’t know anything!”

“Is it money? If money’s the issue, I’ll give you as much as you want!”

“Was it about family? If that’s the case, I can be a witness for you! So—”

Slash

Amon showed no mercy even to those gripped by fear.

Three more skulls were added to the corridor.

Pushing aside the headless bodies, Amon looked at the door they had been desperately pounding on.

<Director’s Office>

Click click

The thick metal door wouldn’t open.

It seemed locked from the inside.

‘In that case, I have my own ideas.’

Amon leaped out through the nearest window.

Then, stepping on thin air, he twisted his body toward the window right next to the one he had just jumped from.

Through that window, he could see the director anxiously staring at the metal door.

‘Found you.’

As he kicked off the air, he threw the bone saw.

Crash!

As the window shattered, the director’s head turned toward Amon.

But by the time he reacted to the sound, the bone saw was already lodged in his shoulder.

“Huurgh!!”

The director, who had been sitting in his chair, collapsed to the floor.

While the director couldn’t even scream properly from the pain, Amon entered through the broken window.

And before the director could regain his senses, Amon pierced his chest with a Japanese sword he had taken from a guard.

“Krrp…”

The scream escaped through the hole in his lung without making much sound.

The director looked at Amon, trembling.

“How…”

Before the director could speak,

Amon pulled the bone saw from his shoulder and struck his neck.

The director’s head rolled on the floor.

Amon pushed aside the torso with the sword still embedded in it and set the fallen chair upright again.

He immediately began operating the computer.

‘She said evidence was needed.’

The reason Amon could rampage through the center was because the broker’s boss had promised to cover for him.

However, there was a condition.

To secure as much evidence as possible proving that the medical staff of this hospital were bastards too vile to even spit on.

Only then could she use that material for blackmail or negotiation to cover for Amon.

This was why Amon needed the materials the director possessed.

He examined the contents one by one and transferred the files to a USB.

[Transfer Complete]

When the notification appeared, he rose from his seat.

“Consider it karma.”

Shing.

He pulled out the sword embedded in the director and sheathed it again.

Stepping through the pool of the director’s blood that soaked the floor, he walked out of the director’s office.

A corridor full of corpses stretched before him.

Unlike when he entered, the path out of the center was quiet.

Only in that quietness, as his head cooled down, did Amon begin to think clearly.

Initially, he had gone on a rampage because he saw his and Sonia’s names on the list of test subjects.

But only after the rampage did he realize something strange.

‘Why were they acquaintances?’

No matter how scarce the samples were, was there any reason to use the police to kidnap acquaintances?

Thinking rationally, family would have been much more convenient.

Like using Humps through his younger sibling, using guardians as test subjects would have been much simpler.

Acquaintances seemed too…

‘Awkward. And the range is too broad.’

Acquaintances could include neighbors, familiar shop owners.

So why specifically mention party members?

Just before exiting through the hospital’s back door, Amon’s steps halted.

He stood there, lost in thought.

‘I’m missing something.’

Perhaps the premise was wrong.

Amon’s mind raced furiously.

Suddenly, he recalled the report format he had seen on the doctor’s computer at the very beginning.

Amon Perfumerose, Sonia Perfumerose,

Orc Tank, Elf Mage…

“Huh?”

Amon’s shoulders twitched.

There was only one hypothesis that could explain the current situation.

“Could it be…”

Amon hurriedly grabbed the doorknob of the back door to verify his hypothesis.

That’s when it happened.

The moment he grabbed the doorknob, his instinct sounded an alarm.

It wasn’t an unfounded instinct.

The other side of the door… was too quiet.

Even if the back door opened to a back alley, it couldn’t be this quiet.

Amon released the doorknob.

Then he went back up to the second floor and cautiously poked his head out of a window.

Beastmen were aiming their guns at the back door.

And in the middle of the beastmen was a familiar face.

‘Paul…!’

The F-tier party’s F-tier machine gunner.

It was Paul, the bear beastman.

***

In the back alley of the Clinic Center.

Amidst numerous beastmen aiming at the back door, a cat beastman whispered to Paul.

“Boss. Shouldn’t we just go in?”

Paul waved his palm marked with six-nine, admonishing the cat beastman.

“Shut it. That guy’s a close-combat warrior. I shot him in the back of the head once, and he reacted to the bullet. His equipment is good too—if I had aimed directly, I would have died on the spot.”

“So he’s different from the weaklings we usually deliver?”

“Hey, hey, different doesn’t begin to describe it. If we give him distance, all our heads will fly off.”

“Boss… isn’t this dangerous then? Wouldn’t it have been better to just naturally target those idiots who got taken down by the slime last time?”

The rabbit beastman next to the anxious cat beastman perked up his ears and agreed.

“That’s right, boss. Besides, they say that guy took care of the Scavengers too. Even though there’s a huge difference between Scavengers and us, it could still be dangerous.”

Starting with the rabbit beastman, the other beastmen present began to fall into anxiety.

“It seems like the hospital guys called us for backup but died first.”

“There’s no need to honor loyalty to dead guys anyway.”

“Is it worth taking the risk?”

Before the fight even began, the group collectively started losing their fighting spirit.

The gun barrels that had been aimed at the back door gradually lowered.

That’s when Paul addressed the group.

“If we sell just that bastard’s equipment, we’re done with this miserable life. I can guarantee it.”

“What?”

“Whether we sell his equipment or keep it for ourselves, as long as we kill him, we can grow from a crew to a gang-level organization.”

“But it’s too dangerous.”

“Of course it is. But only if he’s in perfect condition.”

“What?”

“I never expected those clinic guys to be able to kill him in the first place. What I hoped for was that the clinic would strip his equipment and weaken him as much as possible in the hospital.”

“You mean…”

“Think about it logically. After facing the guards of that hospital, there’s no way his body is unscathed.”

Hearing Paul’s words, the group’s gun barrels began to point upward again.

Hope began to spread among them.

Before long, they each began to infuse their actions with justification and logic in their own ways.

“Well, it’s about time we stopped dealing with those hospital guys anyway.”

“They’ve been showing signs of wanting to cut ties with us lately.”

“Honestly, they were probably planning to pin everything on us. This is clean.”

Paul’s lips curled up slightly as he listened to the crew members’ conversation.

Swept up in the atmosphere, the cat beastman praised Paul’s strategy.

“The basics of hunting is to drain the prey’s strength! Right?!”

“That’s right.”

The crew regained their spirit.

Confidence grew among them that they could take down an injured Amon.

Some were already discussing what equipment they would get with the spoils from this hunt and what kind of life they would lead.

Paul viewed this atmosphere very positively.

Having confidence before a hunt was a good thing.

Hunters filled with confidence had a much higher success rate than those inhibited by fear.

Riding this momentum, Paul shared new information to keep their motivation high.

“I found out from the cop’s database that the bastard has a wife too. Sonia Rose or something? He’s an orphan too, so it’ll be easy to work on her. If we use Amon as bait, it’ll be simple.”

“Then shouldn’t we keep Amon alive?”

“Just leave the head. They seem to be newlyweds. If we take a picture and send it, she’ll come running.”

“Is she pretty?”

“Big tits.”

“Oh yeah.”

The rabbit beastman swelled his crotch.

The beastmen covered their fears with their own desires and refocused on the back door where Amon would emerge.

Their attention was fixed on the bomb attached to the door handle.

“Come on, little rabbit.”

The wolf beastman licked his lips.

“Did you call me?”

The rabbit beastman looked at the wolf beastman as if he were strange.

“Not you.”

The wolf beastman grimaced.

The group let out a shallow laugh at the two’s banter and refocused on the door.

Growing bored in the wait, the tiger beastman also muttered.

“When is the rabbit coming?”

That’s when it happened.

“Did you call me?”

“I didn’t—”

Slash

Before the tiger beastman could answer, his head flew into the air.

The heads of the two beastmen on either side of the tiger beastman were a bonus.

“Huh?”

A dagger pierced the neck of the wolf beastman who let out a stupid sound,

“When?!”

The rabbit beastman was split vertically from the groin.

Blood spurted from five beastmen.

Standing next to the corpses, bathed in the blood raining from the sky, Amon spoke.

“Hello. I’m Amon. I’m behind you right now.”