WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Cyberpunk Chivalry ◈
Chapter 2: AFTERLIFE 2
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The busy girl left, and the head, now alone, sank into thought.
'What in the world is going on?'
Adapting to something was harder than one might think.
All the more so when it was something one had never seen or experienced before.
In a makeshift workshop in a corner of a waste disposal facility, a humanoid hung with nothing left but its head. This harsh rule applied to it just as much as anyone else.
The optical sensors on the head moved from side to side.
Everywhere he looked was dark and damp.
Machines stained with waste oil and rust lay scattered about, and tools whose purpose he could not guess were piled in a jumble.
His own condition was just as strange.
Like those machines, he too hung on the wall. He was quite high up, making him feel like a disembodied soul (魂魄) floating in the air.
He could see and hear, yet could do nothing.
What was that if not a ghost?
Suddenly, a small realization stirred in his mind.
'...A ghost?'
That thought naturally brought him back to his final memories.
The silent, snow-covered mountain.
The snow that had continued to fall.
The Heavenly Demon collapsing, coughing up blood.
And after that?
He had looked up at the sky.
Closed his eyes and fallen.
That was how the Kunlun Blood Immortal had met his end.
'Yes.'
He had died.
Then he had awakened again in this bizarre place.
A ghostlike existence, reduced to a head.
A mind awakened against his will.
The strange girl who had welcomed him.
The dark, bleak surroundings.
Death, and the unfamiliar sights that followed it.
The scattered pieces of information came together.
And from them emerged one chilling possibility.
'...Could this be the Underworld (冥界)?'
The Underworld.
The place one reached after death.
The place where the dead gathered.
It might have been a ridiculous guess, but he needed even a ridiculous guess to make sense of his situation.
Strangely enough, once he thought of this place as the Underworld, all its oddities began to seem plausible.
With that thought, everything looked a little different.
The data pad projecting a faint hologram into the air.
The complicated tools of unknown purpose.
The machine parts piled carelessly about, soaked in oil and rust.
These strange objects must have been tools of the afterlife. Or perhaps they were the remains of other beings who had fallen into the Underworld, just like him.
Then why had he alone awakened in this form, with his memories of the living world intact?
The answer came surprisingly quickly.
'Karma.'
In his pursuit of revenge, the Kunlun Blood Immortal had taken countless lives. Even if his victims had been members of the Demonic Cult, he had clearly intended to kill them. He had abandoned even the Way (道) to exact his bloody revenge. The weight of that karma could hardly be light.
Was the Underworld not said to be a place where the sins of the living were judged, their weight measured, and fitting punishments given?
Perhaps his sins were being brought before the court of judgment at this very moment. Perhaps that was why he had been roused from the eternal rest of death.
He could not know the answer.
For now, all he could do was accept this mysterious place and his own existence, then wait for whatever came next.
'O Heavenly Lord of the Primordial Beginning...'
The humanoid, reduced to a head, sank into thought once more.
* * *
Fifteen days.
That much time had passed since he opened his eyes in this unfamiliar place.
Fifteen days was by no means a short time.
Much had changed.
He was no longer just a head.
A dull, dark torso had been attached beneath it, along with a left leg that lacked not only a steel covering but even a coat of paint.
Thanks to that, he no longer had to hang in the air. Though still incomplete, he could at least support himself on one leg.
His ability to make sounds was also worth noting.
The old voice module produced a rough voice full of electronic noise, but it was enough to make himself understood.
Yet something else mattered more than any of those changes: his relationship with the girl.
"Mister!"
Just then, the workshop door opened and the girl came in, carrying a heavy-looking mechanical arm over her shoulder.
"Mr. Ash! Look at this!"
Akina called him Ash.
There was no grand reason for it. His humanoid head simply had [ASH] painted on it, a marking for waste meant to be incinerated.
Ash.
What remained after something burned.
Ash saw no need to correct the name. Now that he had come to the Underworld, should he not follow its customs?
He raised his head from his thoughts and spoke to the girl.
"Miss A, have you returned?"
Despite the electronic noise in his voice, his manner of speaking was remarkably old-fashioned and formal. Perhaps that was why Akina had begun speaking to him more politely at some point. Being too casual made her feel as though she were doing something wrong, she said.
"Everything's been all right?"
"Quite peaceful."
Akina grinned and lowered the mechanical arm onto the workbench. Judging by the Thud! it made, it was fairly heavy.
Ash's optical sensors shifted between Akina and the arm before he quietly activated his voice module.
"You have gone to a great deal of trouble for me, Miss A."
"Oh, this is nothing. Shall I get started?"
"As you wish."
With another grin, Akina gathered her tools and approached Ash. She examined his left shoulder, or more precisely, the disconnected artificial neural matrix at the shoulder.
Then she immediately looked puzzled.
"Huh? The slot doesn't fit. That's weird. I'm sure I brought the same Type C. Is it because he's an older model? Why is this the wrong way around...?"
Ash, who had been watching, suddenly called to her.
"Miss A."
"Just a moment. I'm thinking. Later."
"...Miss A?"
"Oh, come on. What is it?"
Grumbling, the girl looked up and met Ash's blue-green optical sensors.
Ash gazed into her blue eyes for a moment, then calmly explained.
"That is not the correct side."
"What isn't?"
"The arm you brought is a right arm."
At his words, Akina turned her head. The mechanical arm she had just set down came into view.
She compared it with each of her own arms, then finally realized that it was indeed a right arm.
Her face turned bright red. Against her naturally pale skin, the color stood out all the more.
"I-I knew that! I was just checking your left shoulder, too!"
"Were you?"
"...I really was!"
"It seems my needless concern led me to meddle. If I have upset you, I apologize."
His flawless apology only left Akina with nothing more to say.
In the slightly awkward silence, she edged around to Ash's right shoulder, muttering under her breath.
"...Are all old-generation humanoids like this? How's he so good with words? He couldn't even understand me at first."
Her voice was quiet, but the audio input device in Ash's head caught every word.
"It is thanks to the integrated language pack data card you gave me. I remain most grateful."
"...I was talking to myself."
"It sounded quite loud, so I could not tell. I am still unaccustomed to this."
Akina gave him a sidelong glare, then smiled sheepishly. Suddenly remembering something, she searched the pocket on her chest.
What she pulled out was another data card.
"A new book?"
"Book?"
Akina tilted her head.
"Ah, my mistake. A new data card?"
"That's right. Have you read everything on the last one?"
"I have."
Nodding at his answer, Akina inserted the new data card into the slot at the side of his head. It locked into place with a soft Click.
[EXTERNAL DATA-CARD DETECTED]
"I'll get to work now, so you can look through the data, Mr. Ash. Ask me if there's anything you want to know."
"I shall."
With a sensation that had become fairly familiar by now, Ash accessed his system. Clear green strings of text began to appear in a corner of his optical sensor view.
[DIRECT MEMORY INTERFACE ACTIVE]
[ACCESS PROTOCOL. . . ENGAGED]
[INITIATING DATA STREAM. . . DONE]
[DATA INDEXING. . . DONE]
[DATA: Akina's General Knowledge♥ Ver 1.3]
[RESEARCH. . . NOW<<<]
As the system messages flashed, information poured in.
The way knowledge was passed on in this world differed fundamentally from that of his former world. Vast amounts of knowledge, which might have taken a lifetime to acquire, were fed into him in an instant.
It was nothing short of an enormous storm of data.
The sensation was both baffling and overwhelming, as though hundreds of decades-old Taoist scriptures were pouring into his mind in the blink of an eye.
Akina's muttering, the sounds of her tools, and the crackle of welding sparks gradually faded into the distance.
Ash focused entirely on the flood of information.
It came from one girl's point of view, complete with highly subjective interpretations and comments. Even allowing for that, everything about this world was strange and cruel.
Amid the flood, Ash quickly sorted out what seemed to be the key terms.
Sanctum.
Outer.
Pathfinder.
Most of the information was connected to those three words. They must surely have been the central elements of the Underworld.
Within that sea of knowledge, Ash focused his search on those three entries.
Before long, he let out a quiet sigh.
'...This truly is hell.'
Humanity's only city and its final stronghold.
Sanctum.
Despite its dictionary meaning of a holy place, Sanctum was itself an arena of ruthless struggle for survival.
Under the strange name of "Personal Merit Assessment," every citizen had to hand over a huge sum of money, called credits, each month.
Akina had added a comment calling this the "price of breathing." Ash thought it a truly fitting comparison.
The problem was that the price of breathing was not the only cost.
Sanctum demanded credits at every turn, pushing ordinary people's lives to the edge of a cliff.
In the end, those driven all the way to the city's outskirts were forced to make one final choice.
They gave up their fragile flesh and rebuilt their entire bodies with cold metal parts, known as cyberware.
With those mechanized bodies, they headed for the Outer, the ruins of an ancient civilization, their last hope and a treasure trove of despair.
A handful of relics and ancient data recovered from that land of death, swept by ion storms, were their only chance to survive another day.
Those who risked their lives by entering the remains of the past in search of a future were all called Pathfinders...
'I suspected this world would be harsh, but never imagined it would be this bad. A life crushed by invisible pressure every single day. Could there be a worse hell? This is indeed the Underworld. There is not a shred of mercy here!'
His misunderstanding only deepened.
"All done!"
Akina had finished her work before he knew it. As she called out brightly, a stream of text appeared to confirm that the system connection was complete.
[R-ARM UNIT: CONNECTION STABLE]
[NEURAL MATRIX: SYNC OPTIMAL. . .]
[. . .]
"Want to try moving it?"
At her request, Ash slowly moved his new right arm. It moved far more smoothly and precisely than the left leg he had received earlier.
He clenched and opened his fist, then bent the joints. The sensation was foreign, and he could feel a faint tremor, but the arm clearly moved according to his will.
It was remarkable.
All she had done was attach a single arm, yet he felt an inexplicable sense of security and freedom. Perhaps it was because he had been a swordsman in life.
A new confidence rose within him. He felt ready to face even the laws of the Underworld that had horrified him just moments earlier.
With completely sincere respect, Ash said,
"You never cease to amaze me. Miss A, you are truly worthy of being called a genius."
Pleased by his praise, Akina burst into delighted laughter. Then she clapped her hands.
"Mr. Ash, could you try making this shape with your hand?"
She demonstrated a rather odd gesture, extending only her index and little fingers while folding the others.
Ash studied the strange gesture for a moment, then folded his steel fingers. His attempt was a little clumsy, but it was clearly the same shape.
Akina made the same gesture with both hands and shouted,
"Yeah! Rock and roll!"
Whatever she found so amusing, the girl's smile was bright and carefree.
That smile was something the data card did not contain.
Footnotes:
Ash's old-fashioned address, "Miss A," treats the first syllable of Akina's name as a family name.
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