NOVEL NEXT Chapter 82 - Hardline Prep
The rest of the session was surprisingly interesting—not to say that Kill Joy’s usual netrunning lessons weren’t usually interesting, of course; for all his faults, he was still a scarily efficient teacher.
But no, today’s session was special in that Kill Joy had decided to go over our excursion step-by-step and give me a rundown of each situation, what I could have done differently and how Cyberspace interactions could evolve and play out as a whole.
It was very intriguing to be able to pick the mind of someone like him about what was essentially his area of expertise, and I couldn’t deny that, no matter how annoying he had been during our excursion, he had been paying exceedingly close attention—or maybe the AI had simply analysed the recording after-the-fact.
One of the most interesting aspects he had talked about, was alternate ways of traversing the Cyberspace, if one was experienced enough and/or had the right tools at hand.
One of the quick-hacks he had shown off had simply opened something akin to a teleportation gate from one end of the hallway to another, completely bypassing any and all security inside of it.
Another had allowed him to simply copy his digital avatar, like a clone of sorts, and allowed it to give himself a boost to reach a window higher up in the building—an odd sight to see, to say the least.
Naturally, he had added that all the quick-hacks he showed off in this session were far too advanced for me just yet, but knowing that they existed, in and of itself, was already a massive revelation—after all, [Programming] was part of my ever-growing and improving skill set, so all I really needed to do was figure out how to code them myself in the future.
There was also one more strange interaction with the AI, towards the end of the reviewing session.
I had no real memory of how I managed to get out of Cyberspace, only really remembering being in excruciating pain from having my digital hand and arm blown off by the netrunner, but going through the recordings had made it obvious: Kill Joy had interposed himself between the netrunner and myself to block the final fireball.
Naturally, the Kill Joy in the recording had played it off as an accident, but there was absolutely zero chance that this was true.
Kill Joy was to Cyberspace like a fish to water.
There were no accidents to his movements within the digital realm, especially not since he was the AI that governed the entire thing. He knew the fireball would fly in exactly that trajectory, before the netrunner had even conceived of throwing it.
When questioned today, however, the AI repeated once again that no such thing had happened, stating that the governing AI could not interfere in such a way and that it had not done so at any point.
This one was a bit more puzzling than the issue with the disconnect, but after another round of diagnostics returned the exact same signature and style of “breach”, I simply filed it away as some sort of System-caused anomaly.
It couldn’t be good for any AI to suddenly be invaded and lose access to core functions, so slight malfunctions like this weren’t entirely out of the realm of possibility in my mind.
Ultimately, however, the session ended with Kill Joy congratulating me on my first successful Cyberspace outing—personally, I didn’t feel particularly successful considering that the AI literally had to break in order for me to make it out, but I’d take what I could get; I needed all the advantages I could grab before meeting the Operator in just a few days time.
Returning to the real world and slotting out the SPG-01 shard after roughly two hours of intense netrunning reviews, I stretched briefly before heading toward the living room. As expected, I found Gabriel lounging on the sofa, watching one of his terrible future-shows on TV. How he managed to stomach that absolute slop, I would probably never understand, but who was I to deny my brother a few hours of enjoyment on his double-shift days?
I plopped down next to him, feeling like I hadn’t really spent any time with Gabe lately—it was about time for some sibling bonding, even if just to make sure he didn’t feel like I was cutting him out again.
“So, what’s this one about?” I asked casually, my voice seemingly startling him as his head snapped toward me.
Settling back into a more comfortable position after his surprise, Gabriel gave me a lazy smile. “Honestly, it’s kind of garbage. It’s a sci-fi series, but the first season just doesn’t seem to end. Usually a good thing, more to watch, right? But it just feels like it’s dragging on forever… I don’t even really remember what’s going on in the story anymore, except that they’re always fighting.”
He shrugged and added, “But hey, what can I say? I still enjoy it. The action scenes are amazing, so who really cares if the story gets lost in the weeds. Mark, one of my coworkers at the store, says the story is amazing if you actually pay attention—I call bullshit, but whatever. How have you been doing recently, Sera? You good?”
His eyes carefully studied me, looking for any signs that I wasn’t having a good time—big-brother eyes, I coined them.
“Yeah, I’m doing great! Been working through the shard you got me. I haven’t forgotten about paying you back for that, so just you wait!” I replied enthusiastically, playing it up for him to put his mind at ease.
Grimacing at the memory, I added, “Had a bit of a run-in with netrunning burnout recently, as you were probably able to… well, smell.”
I wanted to make sure to include some of my failures and explain some of the odd things surrounding me recently—there was no way Gabriel hadn’t noticed something was off yesterday; he might be a bit of a blank, but he wasn’t that much of one.
“So that’s what that was… I was wondering, you know? But didn’t wanna pry. Thanks for sharing. Stay safe with that, alright? Netrunning burnout can literally kill you, but I guess the shard should prevent that anyway—I’m glad to hear you’re making progress, Sera,” Gabriel replied with a mixture of worry and warmth that sent tingles down my spine.
It felt odd to have someone genuinely care about me; I hadn’t had much of that in my past life, so it was nice to be on the receiving end of this kind of affection for once.
“And don’t worry about paying it back, I—”
“Nuh-uh! I’m paying it all back! With interest!” I interrupted him forcefully.
This was definitely something I wouldn’t budge on.
I might be broke as all hell right now, but that would change the moment I could get my hands on the Operator licence.
Operators made bank, after all.
Gabriel sighed heavily and then chuckled, shaking his head. “Alright, alright. I’ll hold you to that then. But seriously, take it easy. Burnout’s no joke.”
I nodded, appreciating his concern. “I will. I’ve got a lot to learn still, but I’ll be careful, I promise.”
We settled into a comfortable silence, the TV show’s explosions and laser beams filling the room. It felt good to just sit there with my brother, even if the show was terrible.
For a moment, I could forget about the chaos of netrunning, the wild corporate politics I had somehow stumbled into with the dojo crew, and the looming threat of tomorrow’s data collection mission.
Here, on the couch with Gabe, things were simple.
And that was more than good enough for me today.
Finishing up slightly earlier than usual at Mr. Shori’s the next day, I made my way back home to prepare for the third data collection mission.
I had definitely learned my lesson from the debacle that had been the second one, so I wasn’t going to leave anything up to chance this time around—the full-on prep phase had started way earlier in the day already, so I just had to put everything together at home now.
On my way up the elevator, I quickly checked the day’s gains; for they were more than plentiful and would likely come in handy for the job as well.
[System]: Rest completed. Time rested: 08:00:00
[System]: 600 rested XP added to available Bonus XP.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Contortion] Skill.
[System]: 200xp gained for Reflex Attribute.
[System]: Reflex Attribute has reached 5.
[System]: 200xp gained for Body Attribute.
[System]: 300xp gained for [Athletics] Skill.
[System]: 0xp gained for [Stealth] Skill. Edge Attribute requirements not met to increase Level.
[System]: 400xp (+200xp Bonus) gained for Edge Attribute.
[System]: Edge Attribute has reached 4.
[System]: [Stealth] Skill has reached Level 4.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Stealth] Skill.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Acrobatics] Skill.
[System]: 100xp gained for Body Attribute.
[System]: 100xp gained for Reflex Attribute.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Martial Arts] Skill.
[System]: 300xp gained for [CQC] Skill.
[System]: [CQC] Skill has reached Level 1.
[System]: 100xp gained for Reflex Attribute.
[System]: 0xp gained for [Cooking] Skill. Tech Attribute requirements not met to increase Level.
[System]: 800xp (+400xp Bonus) gained for Tech Attribute.
[System]: Tech Attribute has reached 3.
[System]: [Cooking] Skill has reached Level 3. Gained one [Cooking] Perk Point.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Cooking] Skill.
[System]: 300xp gained for [Negotiation] Skill.
[System]: [Negotiation] Skill has reached Level 2.
[System]: 100xp gained for Ego Attribute.
[System]: 300xp gained for Intuition Attribute.
I had ranked up in three different Attributes—Reflex, Edge, and Tech—as well as four different Skills—[Stealth], [CQC], [Cooking] and [Negotiation]. The amount of knowledge and muscle memory I had gained in the first half of the day was downright staggering.
My [Stealth] and [Cooking] levels had been a long time coming, held back only by missing Attribute requirements. But thanks to my new Bonus Experience auto-application policy, I was finally rectifying that issue.
[CQC], on the other hand, was quite new.
I had just started including Miss K’s home-training regimen into my usual workout routine this very morning, but it was paying dividends already. The first level of the Skill brought a significant amount of baseline muscle memory that I was thrilled to have before heading out for the data collection.
First and foremost, my basic punch had gained some serious heft behind it—the one Miss K had wanted me to master. Surprisingly enough, levelling up [CQC] and the accompanying muscle memory download had been quite different from the usual.
Normally, the System rammed the information into my brain and body, essentially creating every synapse, muscle, and nerve connection from scratch.
But with the first level of [CQC], it had been a lot gentler.
It merely refined the existing connections and memory I had started to build thanks to Miss K’s training, instead of overwriting them entirely.
I wondered if this had some other side effects, like maybe the muscle memory download was more substantial because it had pre-existing things to work off of—a kind of percentage buff or something.
In the game, there hadn’t been any such feature, but that made sense since the player characters didn’t have real muscles or brains to work with—they were just video game characters, after all.
Nevertheless, my upgrades in both Edge, Reflex, and [Stealth] were undoubtedly going to come in handy for this next part. Edge always offered a wide variety of inconspicuous movement upgrades, while Reflex helped keep me agile and sure-footed.
Together, they were an unbeatable team for enhancing my natural stealthiness.
Not to mention the actual [Stealth] Skill upgrade, which had drastically increased my ability to remain hidden. I was almost at the point where I felt confident in my ability to stay out of sight if I wanted to.
I still doubted I could fool Vega or any of the more experienced operatives he had, but I was now fairly confident I could at least make someone like Jade think I knew what I was doing—an important part of today’s plans.
As the elevator dinged and opened on the 43rd floor, I continued to make my way home and pulled up another System Interface. I had some additional Skill-shuffling to do before I forgot about it again with today’s busy schedule.
Pulling up the [Skill Selection] Interface, I checked out the overflow pool of Skills I had unlocked but didn’t have the necessary Skill Slots to equip immediately.
Since the System's first forced refactoring, any additional Skills I unlocked along the way had gone straight into this pool, waiting for me to throw something out and equip them instead at my own leisure—a way more elegant solution than the horrifying experience of my body being locked by an outside force; that much was a given.
[----- Skill Selection -----]
Replace any of your existing Skills with available options from the pool.
Available Skills in Pool:
- [Drawing]
- [Intimidation]
- [Sword & Shield]
- [Boxing]
The list wasn’t exhaustive so far, but it was bound to continue to grow, given that I was already maxed out on my Skill slots and was quite far from unlocking any additional ones.
With a quick selection and mental confirmation, I switched out one of my Skills that I hadn’t really found much use for yet—I was going to need the new one a lot more in the coming days and weeks.
[System]: [Tracking] Skill has been discarded and added to the [Skill Selection] interface for later retrieval.
[System]: [Intimidation] Skill has been unlocked.
[System]: 100xp gained for [Intimidation] Skill.
I had initially considered dropping [Lip-Reading] instead, but I figured it had more applications than [Tracking] did inside the city; you never knew when you would end up a window away from some important conversation or another, after all.
Regardless, having [Intimidation] available to level up now was going to be quite important.
While I had initially wanted to stay away from getting into any trouble that might require something like this, I wasn’t naive enough to believe I could do the job of an Operator without at least some level of unscrupulous behaviour. And anyway, as long as [Intimidation] kept me from gaining further experience in the [Murder] Skill, or one of its siblings, I was more than happy to pour my heart and soul into it.
With that in mind, I also added the Skill to my automatic bonus experience policy as well.
I needed it as high as I could manage as fast as possible if I was going to interact with Vega and his crew more often in the near future—I was under no illusion that the man wouldn’t reach out to me at some stage again.
Finally, I locked in my newest two Perk choices for both [Acrobatics] and the newly unlocked [Cooking] Perk as well—I wanted to be as prepared as I could be, even if the [Cooking] one was unlikely to make a huge difference.
[System]: [Resourceful Chef] (Cooking) Perk acquired.
[Resourceful Chef] (Cooking)
Waste not, want not! You gain the ability to elevate the quality of cooking materials, treating them as if they were one grade higher for crafting purposes.
[System]: [Parkour Mastery] (Acrobatics) Perk acquired.
[Parkour Mastery] (Acrobatics)
Over and Under! You gain the ability to navigate the environment more fluidly, chaining moves like wall-runs, vaults, and jumps without losing speed. Knowledge and muscle-memory is determined by the knowledge-level of the Skill.
Locking in the [Cooking] Perk first, as it felt like an easy choice to make the most out of the few materials I could reliably get my hands on at the moment, I felt a light tingle spread over my body—nothing crazy, nothing too fancy, but a vast number of recipes and cooking procedures immediately sprang to mind whenever I thought of one of the ingredients inside Mr. Shori’s stall. A giddy chuckle escaped me as I thought about trying out different recipes and surprising Mr. Shori with my new creations.
But that would have to wait until tomorrow.
The [Acrobatics] Perk, however, was a different story altogether.
The moment I locked in the Perk, I felt like a truck had been slammed right down onto my body from above and I skidded across the hallway’s floor as I lost my balance immediately.
A flood of information surged through me, making my head spin as I absorbed the new knowledge and muscle memory associated with the [Parkour Mastery] Perk. My muscles twitched involuntarily as the System rewired my neural pathways to incorporate the advanced techniques and principles of parkour.
Images and sensations flashed through my mind in rapid succession: The feeling of my feet landing perfectly on narrow ledges, the sensation of vaulting over obstacles with ease, the instinctual timing required to execute a flawless wall run. It was like I had spent years practising, honing my skills to perfection, all condensed into a few intense moments of download.
I could almost feel the texture of rock-crete walls beneath my fingertips, the rough surface of rooftops under my feet, and the rush of wind against my face as I leaped from one building to another.
My body instantly felt lighter, more responsive, as if it had been fine-tuned for maximum agility and precision.
As the initial shock subsided, I slowly pushed myself up from the floor, testing my newfound abilities with a few experimental movements. I bounced on the balls of my feet, feeling the explosive power in my legs, then executed a series of quick, fluid motions—vaulting over a non-existent, low barrier, rolling smoothly upon landing, and springing back to my feet with effortless grace.
The movements felt natural, like I had been doing this all my life.
The knowledge aspect was similarly comprehensive, giving me an understanding of not just the physical techniques but also the mental strategies required to navigate urban environments efficiently. I instinctively knew how to plan routes, identify the best surfaces to push off from, and maintain my momentum through a series of complex movement chains and manoeuvres.
A grin spread across my face as I realised just how much potential this Perk truly unlocked.
[Parkour Mastery] had always been a must-have Perk in Cyberpunk games, due to their penchant for being set in urban environments, but now, that this was my actual life and I didn’t just gain the ability to hold down a button at specific points in the world to traverse obstacles, but instead actually gained the whole slew of knowledge and muscle memory to make use of it, whenever I wanted?
This was an absolutely game-changing Perk.
It might very well be the most powerful one I had unlocked so far, alongside [Ambidexterity].
Downright giddy from the tremendous power-ups I had gotten over the past few hours, I rushed home even faster than I had initially intended, my feet practically flying through the hallways of the 43rd floor. Arriving home, I quickly jumped into the shower to get rid of the food stall smell before slipping into my Operator outfit—combat knife and throwing knives naturally tucked into their respective holsters for easy retrieval. I also put the Hypercoagulin Injector into one of the pockets on my right hip; just in case things ended up going tits up more than expected—better to be over-prepared than end up in a situation like last time and nearly bleed out.
Finally, there was only one last part that needed preparing. Calling up my Cerebral Interface, I went into my contact list and started a call.
A brief moment of waiting later, the other side picked up.
“Huh? Who the fuck’s this? Where did you get this ID?”
Hearing her voice for the first time in several days, I had to admit I was getting cold feet, but we were already connected, so there was no turning back now.
“I got a mission to run. I need you to come with me, watch my back,” I replied with as much conviction as I could muster. “Vega would undoubtedly want to have eyes on me for this, so as the liaison between us, you’re up, Jade.”
A brief moment of heavy silence followed before the girl on the other side spoke up again, “What’s the mission? Where do we meet?”
I had thought about this whole plan for quite a few days now, practically ever since I had left Vega’s office and requested to meet with an Operator.
With his surveillance being thrown into the open and me essentially forcing a concession of Jade being my in-between, I knew I’d have to throw Vega a bone here and there—give them something to report on and brood over while I reaped the benefits on the down low.
Since it was Jade that was coming with me, I was hoping that Vega wouldn’t resort to any additional heavy-hitters to put on me, leaving me in this strange twilight zone of “I don’t know what they think I am, but I really don’t want them to think otherwise” that I had somehow managed to find myself in.
By inviting Jade to the gig directly, I was very much hoping to circumvent any potential issues of her or any other operatives of Vega’s, fucking up my data collection—again.
Not to mention, I was essentially walking on their enemy’s turf with this one, so having a member of the Clawed Beasts with direct ties to Vega accompany me could only end up being beneficial.
If we got caught, Vega would undoubtedly move heaven and earth to get Jade back—and I’d be right beside her.
Sure, I also ran the risk of numerous things going wrong, such as the two of us getting killed as a result of gang-politics or whatever, but at the end of the day, I was going into a dangerous situation one way or another.
I had chosen to go in guns blazing for once, instead of simply hoping that things would end up fine if I just stayed quiet enough.
“Mission’s none of your business, Jade. Suffice it to say we’re picking something up,” I replied hard, channelling some of my Edge to make my voice seem cooler and more calculated than I really was. “Meet me at public elevator I-X56 on the 38th.”
I waited half a second, timing my addendum to interrupt her attempt at protesting. “And yes, it’s a floor owned by the Red Snakes and Golden Phoenix crew; so be on your best behaviour. You’re here to watch my back, not cause undue trouble. I trust we understand each other? I’m not going to princess-carry you out of danger if you mess this up for me; not again. You can handle a bit of gang-espionage, right?”
I was being a lot harder on Jade than might have been necessary, but there were two reasons for my choice of words.
First and foremost, I wanted to portray the exact image that I thought they had of me—some kind of experienced Operator. I still hadn’t quite figured out how they had come to this conclusion, or what exactly that conclusion really was, but it was obvious to me that Vega and the rest of his crew had somehow pegged me for somebody far more capable than I was—I was going to have to play the part if I wanted to keep my leverage.
The other reason, and that one might honestly be the more prevalent of the two, was that I was still pretty damn pissed at Jade for playing with my heart—oh, and of course the nearly getting me killed part.
“Yeah… Yeah, I can do that,” Jade replied, her voice filling with more conviction the second time around. “See you on the 38th then, Ela.”
With that, she dropped the call and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
‘That went better than I thought… I had expected a bit more of a fight,’ I thought to myself, but was positively surprised when I noticed a pending System Notification from the brief conversation.
[System]: 200xp gained for [Intimidation] Skill.
‘Huh…? That seems excessive for such a short call. Not to mention… I didn’t exactly say anything that should count as intimidating, did I…? What the hell is the experience calculation based on here?!’
I mulled over that thought for a moment, but ultimately decided to let it slide for now.
There were more pressing matters at hand.
Heading back to the mirror, I double-checked my gear one last time. Everything was in place. I could almost feel the adrenaline beginning to pump through my veins as I steeled myself for the mission ahead.
‘Alright, Sera, you’ve got this,’ I thought, giving myself a mental pep talk. ‘Just play it cool, stay focused, and remember the plan. Get in, pick up the data, get out. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. No trouble at all...’
With one last look around my room to make sure I didn’t leave any crucial items behind, I headed out the apartment door, the beep of it electronically locking behind me resonating like a countdown to the mission that lay ahead…