"Has it finally all burned to ash...?"
"My head..."
Kai clutched his forehead and forced his eyes open.
A moment ago, he had still been standing in the middle of a nuclear blast zone.
Now all the slaughter and carnage around him had been swallowed by a blinding white light and vanished without a trace.
The air, the sound, even the world itself seemed to freeze.
"That bastard Johnny..."
"He really pulled it off."
"In the end, he actually used a nuke to blow up Arasaka Tower."
"Huh?!"
Kai immediately realized something was wrong.
He threw both hands up in front of his face and checked them over and over.
The Ballistic Coprocessor and Smart Link he had installed were both gone.
In their place was an ordinary pair of clean, pale hands.
He quickly undid the cuffs of his shirt and rolled up both sleeves.
No matter how he moved, the legendary Mantis Blades would not spring from his arms.
Frowning, he glanced around.
At some point, he had ended up sitting inside an executive sedan speeding down the highway.
Soon, Kai lifted his gaze.
On the display screen embedded in the seat ahead of him, he saw a symbol he would never forget.
One line branching upward into three more.
Three round nodes at the tip of each branch.
Arasaka.
The moment Kai saw that logo, he snapped fully awake.
He immediately turned to look out the window.
The vehicle was gliding steadily along an elevated expressway.
Skyscrapers of every shape and size stood on both sides.
Countless neon projections and glowing ad boards clung to their surfaces.
He could even see AVs darting between the towers.
It all looked unreal, dreamlike.
Familiar, yet strangely distant.
This prosperous vision of Night City existed only in the deepest corners of his memory now.
Because he had once joined forces with Yorinobu.
He had helped him place Hanako under house arrest and suppress his rivals in Arasaka's succession struggle.
After Saburo's death, Yorinobu had seized the highest authority within Arasaka.
Using Saburo's death as the spark, he had launched the Fifth Corporate War.
In a single night, he had dragged Militech, Kang Tao, and every other major corporate power in Night City into the swamp of war.
That world-shaking conflict had burned more than half of Night City to ash.
And yet, even after the city burned, Arasaka Tower still stood.
Saburo had returned to the world through his engram.
Together with Hanako, he had seized control of the Arasaka empire once more.
Yorinobu, Saburo's only surviving son, became the vessel for Saburo's return.
So Kai had no choice but to gather Johnny Silverhand, Rogue, and the other legends of Night City once again and storm Arasaka Tower a second time.
In the end, he used a nuke to bring that entire legend to a close.
The moment he thought back on everything that had happened, on the companions who had fought beside him and struggled alongside him, only to be buried in the ashes of Night City in the end...
The bitterness in his chest became impossible to suppress.
Kai took a deep breath, straightened his cuffs, and pulled a portable comm unit from the inner pocket of his jacket, clipping it over his left eye.
The device looked like a cross between a monocle lens and an earpiece.
It was an Arasaka prototype communication unit designed specifically for employees who had not yet undergone cyberware implantation.
Kai leaned back into the leather seat and began checking the relevant information.
[Kai]
[Date/Time: 2076/6/14 11:42]
[Employee ID: NC770416]
[Employee Rank: M9]
[Department Position: Deputy Director, Counterintel Division]
[Message Alert: Arthur is waiting for you in the office // Report to Arasaka Tower immediately after completing your border assignment]
2076?
Kai understood at once.
"So I really got sent back."
"Right now, I'm still just another corpo rat working for Arasaka."
"If I remember right, I just got back from a mission at the border and was about to undergo a full cyberware conversion."
"That was also when I met Jackie, back when he was still working as a merc."
"He saved my life."
"But I still couldn't..."
Kai's brows drew together, his fists clenching tightly.
The scene of attending Jackie's funeral was still vivid in his mind.
Even if he had been reborn, Night City's vortex would still drag everyone into it.
The future still looked grim.
Because by next year, Arthur, his boss and the head of Arasaka Counterintel, would be taken out by Susan, Arasaka's Director of Special Operations.
And Kai himself would be thrown out of Arasaka.
Jobless and with nowhere to go, he and Jackie would become edgerunners together.
They would break into Arasaka Tower, steal the Relic biochip, and release Johnny Silverhand.
He would meet the female V roaming the streets.
He would win over Judy, who had never been meant to fall for a guy.
He would race across the Badlands with Panam in a life-and-death relationship full of love and conflict.
And in the end, that legendary stretch of life in Night City would be cut short by the outbreak of the Fifth Corporate War.
Saburo's engram would descend into the world once again.
Yorinobu would become Saburo's new vessel.
Even at the final moment, even when Johnny blew up Arasaka Tower with a nuke, all the regret and unwillingness in Kai's heart still remained, jammed in his chest with nowhere to go.
An engram?
Mikoshi?
The thought hit him like a flash.
Right now, Kai could not be completely sure he had truly been reborn.
If Arasaka had used Soulkiller on him at some point, if his consciousness had been uploaded into Mikoshi and digitized, then this so-called rebirth might very well be nothing more than a trap Arasaka had built for him.
There was only one reliable piece of evidence that could prove whether this was real.
The system panel he had brought with him when he first transmigrated.
Kai was a transmigrator from Earth.
That had always been his deepest secret.
No one else knew.
And that was also the true reason he had been able to become a legend in Night City within just a few short years.
Kai forced himself to calm down and not let anyone notice anything strange.
Then, in his mind, he called up the system panel.
[Attribute Panel]
[Name: Kai]
[Level: 1]
[Body: 3]
[Reflexes: 3]
[Intelligence: 3]
[Technical Ability: 3]
[Cool: 3]
[Attribute Points: 7]
"The system panel really is still here."
"Then this really is a genuine rebirth."
"The attribute setup is exactly the same as when I first transmigrated."
At that moment, Kai saw the system panel suddenly begin updating on its own.
[Ding! Host rebirth detected]
[Ding! Host has not yet undergone cyberware implantation or full-body conversion]
[Ding! The system panel has been automatically updated]
[Attribute Panel]
[Name: Kai]
[Life Points: 0] (Details)
[Fusion Ability: None] (Details)
Kai had not expected the system to update.
Back in his previous life, when he had first arrived in Night City, the panel he carried with him had been the same attribute system from Cyberpunk 2077.
Level fifty had been the absolute cap.
At the time, he had chosen the safer route and gone all in on a netrunner build.
More than anyone, he understood the chaos of Night City and the darkness inside Arasaka.
He had wanted to become a top-tier netrunner hiding behind the curtain, controlling everything from the shadows.
He had wanted to dismantle Arasaka and its enemies through cyberspace.
But things had not gone the way he wanted.
Arasaka had launched a savage counterattack.
And for the sake of his last sliver of hope, Kai had no choice but to join hands with Yorinobu and ignite the Fifth Corporate War.
Even so, he had still underestimated just how absolute the corps' grip on this world really was.
The Fifth Corporate War had failed to bring Arasaka down for good.
And the rebuilt Johnny had chosen to nuke Arasaka Tower once again.
In the end, Kai too had been buried in the ashes of Night City.
"What an absurdly cyberpunk ending."
His gaze drifted out the window.
Steel forests rose layer upon layer, while neon lights stretched all the way to the horizon.
It was as if every corner of the city was telling him the same thing.
"Welcome to Night City."
(End of Chapter)
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