WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
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◈ Cyberpunk Chivalry ◈
Chapter 24: TRICK OR TREAT? 2
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This expedition differed from their last in many ways.
Their only goal was the Nexus Port, and they had to compete with countless other Pathfinder groups seeking it.
Naturally, they paid no attention to minor relics or data shards. They focused only on moving faster through the ruins.
Reach the Nexus Port before Halloween's other idol teams. With that single thought in mind, Ash and the others pressed on without rest.
Ratatat...
Gunfire echoed from far away, traveling down the gloomy passages. It was an audible reminder that they weren't alone in these ruins.
Perhaps that sound had fed her growing impatience, because Ifrit almost shouted.
"A little faster!"
Everyone picked up the pace.
As they did, Akina's breathing grew heavier.
"Young lady, are you all right? If this is too much for you..."
"Don't worry, mister!"
Though soaked in sweat and gasping for breath, Akina gave him a bright smile as if to prove her point.
"I'm fine!"
The girl knew.
She was the only one in their group with a fragile human body. The team's pace depended entirely on her two legs.
That was why she ran so desperately.
She forced herself to act cheerful, struggling not to become a burden.
Faced with that young yet determined spirit, Ash could find nothing to say.
He had meant to carry her on his back if she was struggling, but the girl had refused his kindness with a bright smile.
'This isn't the time to act spoiled. Run on your own, Akina!'
Clinging to an Assault's back just because running was hard? What would she do if a battle suddenly broke out?
Even if she was a Technomancer with a fragile body, giving up on walking on her own would make her unworthy of being a Pathfinder.
'I'm not a burden!'
She didn't want to be a burden.
She had chosen to enter this hell, so she would endure to the end on her own two feet. That was what Akina thought.
After studying her face for a moment, Ash turned away. It was his way of respecting her wishes.
Then he, too, decided to do his utmost to fulfill his assigned duty.
An Assault's role was to protect the Technomancer from the dangers of the ruins. That was a far greater responsibility than a small act of kindness.
Ash opened his qi sense wide and swept through the dusty ruins once more.
The gunfire continued even now.
Greed and murderous intent hung like dust in the damp, gloomy air.
A bullet might fly out of those pitch-black passages at any moment.
Then Ash suddenly realized something.
These ruins resembled Gamma-7, the site of his first expedition, yet something about them felt strangely different.
Gamma-7 had been filled with machinery and steel structures, built entirely around practicality and function. This place felt fundamentally different.
How should he describe it?
If he had to choose, it was something like a temple.
Stone pillars stood at regular intervals. Even damaged and broken, the patterns on the walls had an inexplicable elegance. The passages were unusually wide, and the ceilings stretched far into the distance.
It felt as though the place belonged to an entirely different culture.
The others didn't seem particularly interested. Akina was no exception.
To them, this was simply a ruin hiding relics worth money. Nothing more, nothing less.
But not to Ash.
His experience from his previous life made it easy to recognize that this place was more than a simple ruin.
His brief thoughts broke off when they reached a three-way junction.
"Tsk."
Facing the junction, Ifrit clicked her tongue and jerked her chin toward Dullahan.
"Give it a scan."
[ok]
Dullahan stepped forward.
Dozens of tiny panels that had been invisible before appeared across the smooth front of his helmet. Arranged like a honeycomb, they began to glow faintly.
Just then, Jack O'Lantern spoke from the rear.
"Akina."
"Yes?"
When she turned around, Jack O'Lantern made an exaggerated show of covering his ears.
"Huh? You want me to cover my ears?"
Not knowing why, Akina raised both hands and covered her ears. At that moment, a strange, resonating sound burst from Dullahan's helmet.
Screeeeeech!
"Whoa!"
The noise felt like a blade digging into her ears.
The mysterious high-pitched sound continued for quite some time.
"Ow! What is this?!"
Her face twisted in discomfort, Akina shouted and looked around. Yet no one else seemed to be in pain.
Then she understood.
She was the only person here with natural hearing and no noise-canceling function.
A little later, the noise vanished without a trace.
"Well?"
At Ifrit's question, a flood of information swept across Dullahan's visor.
A 3D wireframe rendered in real time from the echoes of the sound waves.
Small obstacles scattered along the routes were marked in red, while structurally weak points flashed yellow.
ROA.
As a group formed for a special purpose, they had cyberware designed for transport and rescue rather than straightforward combat.
This remarkable sonic resonance device was clearly another piece of cyberware specialized for searches.
After finishing the complex calculations, Dullahan displayed a message on his visor.
[left is faster yep]
"Okay. Shall we move, then?"
The five Pathfinders headed down the left passage. The darkness filling it swallowed their outlines.
* * *
Dullahan's "faster yep" hadn't meant that the route was safe. It was simply faster, exactly as stated.
Boom! Boom! Booom!
Ifrit's Dragon's Breath spat fire, melting the armor of a Sentinel that had emerged from the wall.
Jack O'Lantern seized the opening, detonating his small bombs all at once.
The chain of explosions and bursts of flame sent tremors through the ruins. Amid those vibrations, the Sentinel that had been disguised as a decoration was reduced to a half-destroyed heap of scrap.
It was an excellent combined attack.
Ifrit and the two ROA idols seemed to have worked together for quite some time.
"Okay! That's one down! Next..."
Jack O'Lantern turned quickly, only to stop before finishing his sentence. Ash stood tall among the cleanly sliced remains of an automated turret.
With a casual flick, he shook the machine lubricant off his blade.
There were no signs of an explosion.
Not a single scorch mark.
There hadn't even been a sound.
Only pieces of scrap remained, separated by sharp sword strikes.
"...Uh, you finished already?"
At Jack O'Lantern's stammered question, Ash merely nodded and turned toward Akina.
Jack O'Lantern looked back and forth between the wreckage of his explosions and the silent, clean cuts Ash had left behind. Then he gave a breathy laugh of disbelief.
"Sis, where the hell did you find a monster like that?"
Reloading Dragon's Breath, Ifrit answered casually.
"He was hiding behind a rock."
"...What?"
"Eating a strawberry-flavored energy stick."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
Ignoring the confused Jack O'Lantern, Ifrit brought them back to the task at hand.
"We can chat when we're back in Sanctum. Right now, let's move. The Nexus Port's right ahead!"
At her shout, everyone put aside their thoughts and started moving again.
The mood, however, had changed a little.
Jack O'Lantern kept stealing glances at Ash as he walked ahead. Dullahan also looked back from time to time, displaying the message [ROA could use more fighters...].
Each time, Akina grabbed one of Ash's arms and glared. Faced with her fierce response, Dullahan turned forward again.
There was an oddly excited air about them.
The one who threw cold water over that mood was none other than Ash.
"Stop for a moment."
At his low electronic voice, Ifrit gave him a puzzled look.
"Hm? What's wrong?"
For a while, Ash said nothing. He simply stared down the wide passage.
After a little time had passed, he spoke.
"Up ahead... I believe someone is there."
At his words, everyone listened for sounds from farther into the ruins.
Even Akina, who had no cyberware to enhance her senses, held her breath and strained to hear something beyond the darkness.
But there was nothing except the occasional drip of water from the ceiling and the wind carrying the stale smell through the passages.
Eventually, Dullahan, who was in charge of the party's searches, displayed a message.
[want me to run a scan?]
"No. Don't."
Just as Dullahan's sonic resonance system was about to activate, Ifrit hurriedly raised a hand to stop him.
[??]
"If someone really is there, they might hear it. We'd only give away our position."
In truth, Ash's claim sounded absurd.
He was saying that he had sensed something even Dullahan, a search specialist, hadn't detected. Normally, it would have been dismissed as nonsense.
But this was Ash.
Since Ash had said it, there really might be someone up ahead.
Hadn't he also been the first to detect the REST-MANs' ambush before?
"Are you sure?"
At Ifrit's question, Ash focused again and spread his qi sense. This time, however, he didn't stop there.
He also employed the Neuro Mind Art, refining his qi sense so that it spread farther and more densely.
Microwaves carrying Ash's intent spread in every direction.
Electromagnetic qi sense (Electric-qi sense).
It was a special sense that only Ash could use.
In his previous life, he had learned to calm his mind and sense the keen energy of all things. That technique had adapted to his mechanical body and taken on an entirely new form.
His intent to perceive the world was amplified by the Neuro Mind Art. It became a faint electromagnetic field that spread all around him.
Weak echoes of microwaves returned after striking every corner of the ruins.
This was no longer some vague "feeling."
It was practically a high-resolution radar, perhaps far more precise and discreet than Dullahan's sound-based detection.
And that electromagnetic qi sense was definitely picking up something.
In the brief silence, Ash withdrew his electromagnetic qi sense.
"Someone is there. Without a doubt."
Those words froze the air around them.
Ifrit swallowed hard and whispered.
"Can you tell us more?"
"There are three I can identify for certain. I sense faint currents around them, but I cannot tell what those are."
He continued calmly.
"They are not Sentinels. Their movements are far more chaotic and dynamic. I suspect..."
"Idols. Right?"
Ash nodded at Ifrit's words.
"Correct."
"Okay. Gather around for a second."
At her words, they broke their long formation and gathered in a circle.
"Ash. You're certain there are three?"
"I am."
"Dullahan. If we give up this route, how long would the detour take?"
Dozens of system messages appeared on his visor as Dullahan calculated.
A moment later, a message appeared.
[over an hour]
"Fuck."
After swearing, Ifrit fell silent for a moment.
A troubled look crossed her face. But it soon vanished, replaced by resolve.
"We don't have a choice. We push straight through. If our routes overlap, we have to force our way past, don't we?"
No one objected.
"Let's see who we're up against."
The group moved on, watching their surroundings with far greater caution than before.
At last, they arrived.
A scene from hell lay before them.
"..."
It was a cavern.
Blood and corpses filled the wide, empty space.
There were too many dismembered bodies to count.
With all of them cut apart, it was difficult to work out an exact number, but there seemed to be more than ten.
Most had crude equipment and cyberware. Several unknown idol teams seemed to have joined forces in the hope of making a fortune.
They had all been slaughtered without even managing to make much noise.
In one sense, it could have been called an "ordinary" scene of slaughter in the ruins. Yet there was a clear difference.
Three women rested elegantly amid that field of corpses.
Under the lights of filming drones floating around them, each relaxed in her own way. They acted as though they had nothing to do with the terrible massacre.
One sat on a corpse, tending to her nails. Another brushed blood off her clothes.
But the most chilling was the woman standing at the center of the pile of bodies, drenched in more blood than anyone else.
Holding a bloodstained sword to her chest as though it were her lover, she hummed a song with a blissful expression.
Her voice was clear, pure, and very beautiful.
That very beauty made the horrific scene all the more strange and terrifying.
Her name.
It was a sight perfectly suited to the alias Siren, whose song was said to lead listeners to their doom.
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