"Damn it… ah… hurk… hurk—!"
Li Pan braced himself against the elevator wall, doubled over and vomiting blood—literal blood leaking from all seven orifices.
His skull didn't just feel like it was full of needles; it was a pan of hot oil, bubbling. His whole brain seemed to be melting, grey matter ready to gush out through eyes, nose, and ears.
Yeah, he'd just flexed way too hard—and paid for it.
Cheating is intoxicating, sure. But power that isn't yours always charges a price.
And the "Monster" kit's price tags were obvious. Even with Nine Yin (third cycle) propping up his body, one Handkerchief transform cost him three to five days of recovery. Tossing the sword-pellet meant twenty-four hours of skull-splitting agony, barely able to move.
He'd been "at work" only a couple of hours and had already cycled the whole monster loadout. He knew his body was done—well past any limit. Not even meds could push it down now. Tissue, bone, muscle: every cell teetered on collapse. He was bleeding everywhere. If not for qi shielding his organs he'd already be gone.
If he didn't hit the archive cabinet and reset, he wouldn't last till 8 a.m. tomorrow. Honestly, he might not even make it out of the building…
Panting, he slid down the elevator wall and sat, mopping the blood off his face with the handkerchief.
He'd lost it and used force in front of the princess. Yatsu's lot—clueless about the situation—wouldn't let that slide.
And he really didn't have any fight left. He wiped at his face again; his skin had turned to soft wax, sloughing off in clumps. At this rate they wouldn't need an elder blood-beast—any random knight could drag him off in cuffs.
But he'd run out of options.
He'd done everything he could. Letting a world's survival hinge on how stupid its ruling class chose to be… that was the real absurdity.
He was tired. Let it all burn. Whatever. He could always yank the cord, go back to Shangzhen Temple and the pill furnace.
Ding.
The doors opened.
He lay there with eyes closed a while longer, waiting for a squad of armored Night Knights to storm in and bag him.
"Sir? Sir? Are you okay? Were you exposed to gamma rays? Your DNA strands look snapped…"
He forced an eye open. A bearded old guy in a white coat stood in the doorway, pushing up his glasses, scanner in hand.
Li Pan glanced at the badge:
Science Ethics Committee
SEC
Why was SEC up here… Oh, right—Ethics had an office in the Night Tower…
"I'm… fine. Can I get a cab from this floor?"
He could barely stand; biting down, he fired the anti-grav spine and floated up—felt like someone was yanking him up by the vertebrae, peeling skin and muscle from his back.
The old man, apparently bored, waved over a floor bot to mop and had a synth help Li to his feet.
"Left, all the way—helipad there. City's under comms control, but if you've got medical insurance you can ping an EMT team."
"Thanks… Don't linger dirtside. Twenty hours left before Correction executes."
The old man blinked, then nodded gravely. "Appreciate the heads-up. I'll file and return to Europa."
They parted. Plugging the bleeding nostrils with the handkerchief, Li flicked through his chip contacts, found a three-month trial policy from Paradise Group and hit Emergency.
Even with Yatsu's QVN lockdown on public networks, medical SOS rode the public-safety base layer; if there was a signal, it connected.
By the time the synth helped him totter to the pad, an EMT squad was already there.
Orange SBS suits sprinted the final stretch, scooped him up, dunked him into an LCL-filled med pod, jammed in lines and started pumping artificial plasma, antibiotics, boosters, immunosuppressants—enough to stabilize him and dim the migraine.
Upstairs, Yatsu didn't send a grab team. Maybe they still honored the inter-company custom: don't target med-insurance EMTs. Or maybe the way he'd insta-deleted a dozen elders and split the duchess in half had actually spooked the entire parliament.
He tried to stay awake, but body and brain didn't care what he wanted.
He blinked—and six hours had gone by.
Oh, hell.
He ripped the lines and pushed up out of the red-tinged LCL.
The EMTs had delivered him to Paradise.
Not that Paradise—a Paradise Group hotel. He was floating in the suite's pool; the LCL was crimson with seeped blood.
Emergency treatment had strung him on the edge, enough to wake without total dissolution—stitched together, barely humanoid.
They'd already issued the critical condition notice. The hotel had oh-so-thoughtfully pre-arranged a funeral package, a family trust, estate lawyers—even bespoke cross-world reincarnation scripts. Just pay and you too can start life anew!
Li Pan squinted.
Wow. A hundred billion to isekai? Who can afford to die?
He figured he could still be salvaged. He called for a disability assist frame, stood up with the exoskeleton's help, and pinged Eighteen.
Yatsu's jamming was still up, net still down. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, swarms of shuttles punched up through cloud like a meteor shower—streaking for orbit.
The off-worlders and sky-folk of 0791 had clearly caught on and were running flat-out.
By now, "company wars reduce Earth to slag" wasn't exactly rare. Shuttle and starship manufacturers built full Doomsday Evac programs: at the trigger, your shuttle grabs the whole family plus the dog, punches atmo, points at the galaxy, and sets off your post-apocalypse survival arc.
Even if Earth goes, 0791 still had stations and colonies. Kill ten billion on the surface, and Mars farms and big orbital habitats still keep a few million alive.
And TerraCorp had turnkey habitable-planet kits; if locals spent time and money, Earth could be rebuilt from anything.
Which is to say—yeah, it sucked, but human life was cheap in this era.
Eighteen connected.
"Boss! One sec! Almost there—we're about to bag Tokugawa!"
Li Pan could only sigh.
"...I took a nap and you still aren't done??"
"Hey! The moment we said 'seppuku' they fought like demons! But we think we've found the prime target—pinned underground. Reinforcements are throwing bodies at us! All four Tokugawa 'Heavenly Kings' brought elites. Almost, almost!"
"They're still resisting? Hopeless… Any casualties on our side? Status of the other teams?"
"I'll check—oh: A-Qi is fine; Kotaro is about spent; Shigui can hold; no word from Shiranui; no word from Yamazaki. 01044's ready and in the Pacific zone—green to start anytime. Oh, Husky has diarrhea."
"...What?"
"Roadside motel food in the Trash District was sketch. Husky ate it and got the runs. Old Liu took him for an IV."
"Right… I'm heading to HQ to reset everyone. Hold."
"Please hurry! Another 'Heavenly King' just showed! Wait—why are there five of them if there are four?!"
He grabbed a hotel car to the company tower.
En route, he tore off the half-detached external spine with the skin, popped out his left aug along with the eyeball, set the two level-6 implants aside, then went straight to HR and ran the archive cabinet—full team reset.
Respawned on the spot at full.
He rolled his shoulders, eyed the cabinet with lingering dread.
It had actually restored him. No headache. Fresh eye grown in.
What was this "archive cabinet"? He'd been a puddle of meat, private insurance had filed the death notice—and now he was whole. With no price?
…Huh? Where'd they go?
The two level-6 mods he'd put on the desk—gone.
His orange-grade spine and aug—gone.
"How the hell does this cabinet work? I took them off beforehand!"
He searched everywhere. Nothing.
Great. Flexing just cost him two level-6 implants.
Orange gear! Give me back my orange gear!
And not just those—his subdermal plates, ballistic inserts, chipware—everything tech-side had been wiped.
Ah. So that's the cabinet's "price"…
Wait—what's this…
He looked at his hands, shoved up his sleeves. His skin had a faint grey, scale-like keratin layer, tips darkened.
The grey at the roots felt pliable, but the dark edges were hard—his whole dermis was mutating.
And there was a smell.
He sniffed. Damn—rank. Like post-workout man-musk times a hundred, thick with testosterone, heat rolling off him through the gaps in the scales.
He checked the mirror. Not just the skin—his eyes too.
His human dark irises were gone. In their place: gold slit pupils. A serpent's gaze.
Well—give and take. The tech implants were cleared, but the arcane side wasn't touched.
Maybe all the demon-killing had pushed Nine Yin body-refining toward the fourth turn.
He felt stronger—but… that odor. Would the girlfriends complain…?
He shook his head. Twelve hours to Doomsday—no time for nonsense.
Back to full power. Handkerchief and sword-pellet off cooldown. Time to hit again.
Tokugawa Nagamatsu: with refreshed Ashiya Shigui and Fuma Kotaro, plus Spider-18 and A-Qi, should be wrapped.
Still—just in case, he made a call.
"0113012? You there?"
"Entire fleet on standby."
"My team is under attack by Tokugawa forces. Can you support—no nukes, minimize friendly fire?"
"Targets confirmed. With your authorization, will engage with shipborne orbital point defense."
"Authorized. Annihilate Tokugawa's army."
"Authorization confirmed. Confirming fire units. Commencing sweep."
He set the receiver down. On the horizon, thunder started—sheets of blue lightning hammering down like rain.
Shipboard point-defense slugs, rail-accelerated, ripping ion trails through the air—God's own wrath, a storm of blue fire falling around Night City, the sky howling as if demons screamed with it.
Tokugawa had armored divisions. The Company had a dreadnought.
Ground-force alloys don't stop starship guns.
That order would kill—what—hundreds of thousands?
What else could he say?
He'd gone as far as anyone could. He'd even slept six hours. Tokugawa wouldn't put down their guns. What outcome was left?
They were born to be house dogs and still flung themselves into the fire for their master. What was there to add?
Give the loyal hounds a like—and erase them.
He didn't linger. He boarded a company shuttle to the Pacific sector to meet 01044.
01044 stood in a derelict parking lot with a big duffel. She did a double take at his new look.
"You actually took Serpent's Fruit / Dragon's Blood?"
"'Serpent's Fruit / Dragon's Blood'?"
"Our name for it. If you recognize it, your local warehouse must have some.
"Blood tapped from Níðhöggr / Dragon. Packed with power. A single drop can raise a temp to an Avatar-class apostle."
"Oh… right…"
The console had mentioned it once—0791 called it Viper Wine / Dragon's Blood. The console even told him to take it before fighting A-Qi…
Dragon's blood, huh. Did 0791 have "dragons" too? Níðhöggr—similar to Candle-Dragon? Maybe cousins. Since his cultivation had already gone weird, might as well try some—could be a power spike…
He didn't want to discuss his trump cards, so he changed the subject.
"Where's Rama?"
"I set him to watch the altar—he's not quite there yet.
"Don't worry. Belial isn't that tough. Even if it descends, I can handle it solo; I just can't babysit him at the same time.
"But since you've prepared this much, we're bulletproof. Let's begin."
He nodded toward the ruined mall beyond the lot. "Start."
01044 unzipped the duffel and slipped on a ring—plain iron with a pigeon-egg-sized pink stone, like phosphorescent amber, a glow of qi burning inside.
"The Philosopher's Stone?"
"Not quite. We didn't have time to finish them—semi-refined, good for one night. Enough.
"Honestly, I think ACA will abandon this site now that the Company's serious—but better safe."
She handed him a hammer with its own stone set in the head.
"Land a hit and it will flood Belial's vessel with mana—enough to cripple it and drive it off this plane."
She flicked her wrist. The ring flashed. A door appeared in the parking lot.
"Magic boundary. Outside is the altar; inside is the Collector site. If we get split, use the silver key to exit."
Hands in her pockets, she strolled in like window-shopping.
Li Pan hefted the hammer and followed.
Stepping through, a western castle replaced the ruin. The dreadnought's shadow vanished; sunset bled across the sky.
"This is the inter-planar seam—a thaumaturgic space, Belial's workshop. We seal the seam first, then go out and destroy the altar."
01044 snapped her fingers. A giant eagle—four-meter wingspan—dropped out of the clouds and circled.
Her head turned; one eye had become an eagle's.
"My familiar will watch the outside. We go straight in and sweep the site."
Li Pan nodded and walked at her side. As they went, she snapped her fingers in an odd rhythm. Each snap lit the ring; a magic array bloomed ahead, absorbing and canceling hidden traps.
When the ring dimmed, she swapped in another alchemic trinket studded with a stone. Maybe she really could solo this. And she wasn't even department head—just a line officer. Reliable didn't begin to cover it.
"0791," she said suddenly, "you think 001 has been a bit… unreasonable this time, don't you?"
He shook his head violently.
"Nope! Not me! I respect 01 a lot! Don't frame me!"
She laughed and, generous with lessons, went on:
"Maybe you wonder if the Company's reacting too harshly to the Collectors. There's reason.
"From the Company's view, we must keep the monopoly—stay ahead on tech—so we crush competitors by any means.
"From operations, the worst is a rival who can actually interfere—ruin your plays, steal monsters in the net."
She set her palm to the castle gate. Light pulsed from her fingers, unraveled the glyph circuits, lit, and unlocked them, layer by layer.
"People have tried to challenge our monopoly before," she said, glancing back, "but this time is different."
"The truth is—before 0791, three subsidiaries were already purged or absorbed by the Collectors."
Li Pan stopped short.
"What—really? They're that strong… Wait. Absorbed?"
She nodded.
"You understand: the Company cannot be without a GM.
"Even if a branch's entire staff dies, the Company will choose a new manager.
"In theory, there can't be a plane with no Company, no manager.
"So we suspect the first Collector—the original—was a Company manager.
"Who'd have thought… someone found a way to break the Ark / Save-File…"
She murmured it, pushed the doors, and walked into the castle.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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