WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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◈ Cyberpunk Chivalry ◈
Chapter 21: UPGRADE COMPLETE! 2
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KERS.
Vortex Energy's new technology, which generated power in proportion to the user's activity.
To Ash's surprise, it was the very technology Ifrit had mentioned before.
His optical sensors glowed faintly.
"KERS, you say. I understand it is the latest technology recovered by Vortex."
"...Huh? You know quite a bit, don't you?"
"Only what I have heard."
Santa gave a knowing smile and blew out a long stream of smoke. Meanwhile, Akina hurried over and examined the ink-black torso from every angle.
"Hey. You'll get it dirty, you little brat. Hands off."
"...It really is from Vortex Energy. Where on earth did you get this?"
"Hah. What would you do if you knew? That's a trade secret. You think I'd tell you?"
"Some secret. You stole it, didn't you? It's stolen goods, right?"
"What was that, you brat?"
Santa rapped Akina on the head, stubbed out his cigarette, and folded his arms.
"Do I look like a thief to you? I got this through a perfectly fair deal! Though, admittedly, that deal took place somewhere a little... shady."
"So it is stolen!"
"Enough! Are you buying it or not?"
"How much?"
"Hmm. About six million?"
Akina hastily took her hands off the parts she had been touching.
Her blue eyes trembled faintly in disbelief.
Six million.
That was almost ten times all the money they had.
Despair crossed the girl's face.
Ash, however, showed little reaction. He calmly studied Santa's expression for a moment.
Santa knew exactly how much money they had. If he was asking a price they could never afford, he surely had something else in mind.
Having gathered his thoughts, Ash activated his voice module. His calm electronic voice filled the rest area.
"Elder San. This is a fine piece of equipment."
"Of course it is. Who do you think recommended it?"
"But is it not rather expensive?"
"Haha. Trying to bargain?"
"Indeed. So stop teasing the young lady and tell us what you want."
One of Santa's eyebrows rose at the direct question. Then he chuckled.
"You figured it out?"
Ash remained silent.
That silence was an answer in itself.
Santa burst into laughter.
"I knew you were no ordinary fellow. Are you really a humanoid? The more I see of you, the more curious I get."
"Would you lower the price if I answered your questions about my identity?"
"Oh? So there is something to tell?"
Santa paused as if watching for Ash's reaction. Ash stared back without moving.
A moment later, Santa held up two fingers.
"Two million. Paid in installments over five months. But there are conditions."
"What?! Really?"
"I'm not finished yet."
Santa calmed Akina down after her excited outburst and continued.
"First. You didn't buy this from me. You got it on your own. Understand?"
"...You mean we must not let the Vortex Society find out? And should they discover it, we are not to mention your name?"
"Correct."
Beside them, Akina cried, "It is stolen! I knew it!" Santa did his best to ignore her.
"Second. I need real-world usage data."
His eyes flashed behind his sunglasses.
"This thing's an extremely early model, even for a prototype. That means there's no way to predict how it'll behave under real conditions. So collect data. Then share it with me."
Akina frowned.
"Ugh. What? What are you going to use that data for? Sell it to Vortex?"
Santa snorted.
"Of course not."
"Then why?"
"Do I have to tell you that too?"
There was no need.
Ash nodded.
"I understand the second condition as well."
"Good. Then the third and final one."
Santa adjusted his sunglasses. At some point, his sly smile had disappeared, replaced by an unusual seriousness.
"Don't die. Either of you."
It was unexpected.
The request was so plain that it carried all the more weight.
Ash's optical sensors blinked.
Akina, too, stared at Santa in surprise.
In the strange silence, Santa cleared his throat awkwardly.
"...Otherwise, how are you going to come back and give me the data? And pay your installments! You know I never make a deal at a loss, right?"
Perhaps his first condition had been a warning, and his second an excuse.
Perhaps only the third had come from the heart.
Ash and Akina looked at each other for a moment, then nodded together.
"You have a deal."
"We'll take it!"
Watching them, Santa let the corners of his mouth rise.
"A pleasure doing business with you, dear customers."
* * *
Two million, paid over five months.
The amount due immediately was 400,000 credits.
Most of their money vanished into the first installment, but they had clearly gained far more than they had lost.
That left Ash and Akina with 260,000 credits.
It was no small sum, but it was not enough to choose the latest cyberware without worrying about the cost.
They needed to choose carefully and focus on what mattered.
After much thought, the two made their decision.
They would buy a right leg to correct Ash's lopsided stance and a bulletproof chest rig to improve Akina's chances of survival.
With that, they had chosen all the parts they needed.
Ash looked between his new components and Akina, who was busily organizing her tools beside them.
Then he lowered his head for a moment.
He could see his own body secured in the modification pit.
"Being here like this certainly brings back memories."
By memories, Ash meant the day he had first opened his eyes at the waste disposal site.
Akina blinked a couple of times, then smiled.
"It does."
A humanoid reduced to nothing but a head, and a girl searching through a dump. A strange sense of connection grew between them as they recalled the scene only they remembered.
"Now that I look at you, I believe you have grown a little taller."
"Huh? Have I?"
She certainly had.
Her jumpsuit seemed to have become too short, leaving her ankles slightly exposed.
"Next time, let us buy you some clothes as well, young lady."
"Oh, come on. What do I need new clothes for? It's a waste of money."
Ash shook his head.
"It is no waste."
Akina started to say something, then pouted for a moment.
"...All right. Then after this expedition, you can pick them out for me. My clothes."
"Gladly."
That was the end of their brief chat.
Akina's bright smile soon gave way to the expression of a technomancer. She took a short, deep breath and checked her tools as she spoke.
"I'll be replacing your torso and battery pack at the same time. I'll have to disconnect the artificial neural matrix too. You'll need a full system reboot. It might take a while."
In other words, he would lose consciousness for a time.
Ash nodded.
"That is fine. Take your time, and do not worry about me."
Akina nodded seriously and connected cables to various points on Ash's body.
After a few taps on her data pad, she seemed to have finished her preparations. She looked into Ash's optical sensors.
"See you in a bit, Mister."
When she pressed something on the data pad, the system shutdown sequence began. Lines of green text scrolled up across Ash's field of view.
[SYSTEM OFF SEQUENCE]
[INITIATED. . .]
[PRIMARY POWER ROUTING. . .]
[NEURAL MATRIX DISCONNECTION]
[CORE SHUTDOWN. . . ENGAGED]
[. . .]
His vision gradually darkened, and all his senses faded with it. His consciousness seemed to sink somewhere far away.
His mind flickered briefly, as though he were falling asleep.
Then it happened.
[WARNING]
'...Hm?'
[ERROR CODE: 88X1_FRGMNT_RECALL]
[CORRUPTED DATA FOUND. . .]
[ANALYZING. . .]
[WARNING]
[UNABLE TO ISOLATE FRAGMENT]
[OVERRIDE ATTEMPT. . . FAILED]
[FORCED PLAYBACK OF 88X1_FRGMNT. . .]
[STREAMING UNKNOWN DATA. . .]
[. . .]
[PLAY. . . NOW<<<]
A video filled with static suddenly unfolded in the darkness of his consciousness.
It was from a first-person perspective.
The image, seemingly seen through "my" eyes, shook and distorted badly. Severe glitches appeared here and there, suggesting that the data was damaged.
Through it all, "I" was heading somewhere.
I seemed to be following the faint sound of a grass whistle.
It was a strange melody, clear and familiar, yet one I had never heard before.
At some point, the view ahead suddenly cleared.
An almost painfully blue sky spread out before me, above an endless field of pale pink royal azaleas.
The flowers in full bloom rippled gently in the breeze. Something about the scene felt unreal.
But the static and glitches that had been there from the start twisted the perfect landscape. At times, the azaleas turned green or blue.
"I" walked among them.
With each step, the sound of the grass whistle grew closer.
Had I finally reached my destination?
An old, low stone wall came into view, with a girl sitting on top of it. Judging by the blade of grass in her hand, she was indeed the source of the sound.
She sat there like part of a painting, though the persistent glitches sometimes caused the edges of her figure to break apart.
Then the girl turned her head.
The heavy distortion hid her face. Only her smiling lips, unusually red and full, remained clear.
"Mister!"
She waved.
'What is this?'
Strangely, Ash knew the girl.
At the same time, he did not.
It was a bizarre feeling.
How could he know her and yet not know her?
What mattered most was that the sight of the girl waving at him stirred an unknown emotion deep within his chest.
It felt very much like longing.
I waved back at the girl. As I did, the smile on her red lips grew wider.
'I... know who that girl is.'
I was certain.
Her name... That child's name was surely...
"...Nangnang?"
He could not tell whether the sound had come from his voice module or from the version of himself in the video.
One thing was certain: the moment he murmured that name, the video stopped. The frozen world began to collapse.
No.
Rather than collapsing, it would be more accurate to say it was covered in glitches.
The dreamlike landscape shattered and vanished, leaving only darkness.
Green text appeared within it.
[SYSTEM INTEGRITY CHECK. . .]
[LOADING CORE MODULES. . .]
[. . .]
[AWAKENING SEQUENCE. . . NOW<<<]
At some point, Ash's optical sensors flashed back to life.
"Mister!"
The first thing he saw was a girl waving at him. Akina.
"Huh? Why aren't you saying anything? Did something go wrong?"
After waving her hand in front of Ash a couple of times, Akina picked up her data pad. Then she perched on the tool table and stared at the pad, her lips pushed out in a pout.
Her pose was very much like that of the girl with the grass whistle in the video.
Still caught in that strange lingering feeling, Ash watched Akina and spoke in a low electronic voice.
"Is it finished?"
Akina looked up.
Then she broke into a smile.
"Oh, come on! I thought I'd forgotten to connect something!"
The girl tossed the data pad aside and stepped closer.
"Ta-da! Upgrade complete! Take a look!"
Ash lowered his head.
He saw his ink-black torso and newly attached leg.
Every component they had chosen after so much thought was connected neatly and precisely.
"What do you think? Do you like it? Does anything feel uncomfortable?"
Akina's voice was excited, but Ash could not answer right away.
His main core was filled with other thoughts.
With the mysterious video he had just seen.
With the girl named Nangnang.
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