Honestly, it wasn't as disgusting as Li Pan had imagined. The moment he lay inside the coffin, those silvery tapeworms shhhh—burrowed through every pore, blood vessel, and his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth to plug into his nerve endings, like being thrown into an iron maiden and run through with spikes.
But it didn't hurt much—well, relatively speaking. Compared to getting roasted and boiled, his flesh sloughing off, and blood gouting everywhere, this was a breeze. It even felt cool, almost gentle—kinda… comfortable, actually. Maybe getting abused too often really does become a habit, ahem…
In an instant the link was complete. Pharaoh—Li Pan, start-up!
Then he saw a planet he'd never seen before.
Steel towers, neon signs, soaring skyscrapers—vanished in a blink. In their place: a pitch-black forest, mounds of charcoal piled over the land, or a field of dead trunks stabbing into the clouds.
Within those black trunks, white beams lanced upward—searchlights spearing the sky, javelins of flame. They shot toward the heavens and then, midway, struck an endless mirror—something like a mirror plane hanging in low orbit, blocking the path to deep space and reflecting the ground below.
The beams broke against that mirror, linked, collided, and formed a honeycomb lattice—bright fires weaving irregular polygons that stretched to the horizon.
What is this…
Li Pan willed himself over, his body gliding soundlessly to one of the white "javelins" firing skyward.
0113's voice sounded in his head:
"This is the spirit realm—the shadow your mind casts upon the Dirac Sea. In other words, what you call the QVN network."
QVN?
Li Pan brushed the blazing beam with his hand. It went dark instantly.
0113 explained, "You just destroyed a psionic hub. Mm… you burned down a neighborhood network server."
"Oh, so this mech is a hacker build?"
0113: "No, no—this is a psionic frame. The Veil, QVN, the Abyss, the Aether, the Astral—different faces of the same thing. What you can see depends on how deep you descend.
"Pharaoh/Unit-01 can throw you straight off the material plane—down into the abyss of the Abyss, the inner side of the seams, the between of worlds, where nothing exists and never has. From there you can cut the mind-links on the Dirac Sea at the source…"
Li Pan: "So… pulling the plug."
0113 paused. "Pulling the— You just killed at least a hundred thousand people."
Li Pan jolted. "What! A hundred thousand!? Why is it always a hundred thousand with you people—don't you have other units of measure!?"
0113: "Kidding. Who's going to count one by one? Point is: now you know my Unit-01 is impressive."
Li Pan: "…"
0113: "You destroyed a local QVN node. Anyone online through that link will suffer shock to the psyche—light to severe amnesia, mental collapse. A small percentage may have fragments of soul flushed into the void.
"So no, probably not a hundred thousand. If it's casual browsing, they get a headache and a forced logout—at worst, vegetative. Deep-link users—hackers, company dogs, off-worlders—take lethal trauma."
Li Pan: "Oh… so, Three—are you saying I can pinch a line and selectively wipe ten thousand company dogs who are online?"
He pinched another one to steady his nerves.
0113: "Don't you have business to attend to?"
Li Pan: "Right, right—gotta go wipe out House Fabius. Hey Three, this should work on vampires too, yeah? How do I find their links?"
0113: "Simple. Open your eyes first."
Li Pan remembered—and did.
Pharaoh—Li Pan opened his eyes and looked down on the ants of Night City, a god walking among men—
Uh, not that he was getting cocky—Pharaoh-Li Pan was literally floating.
The coffin had unfolded arms and legs into its full form—maybe just over three meters, not even four. Smaller than the four-meter werewolf armor. More like a heavy-duty cosplay suit than a true SMS.
But the tech? Off the charts. Compared to that spinal implant he'd used before, now his entire body was wrapped in counter-gravity fields. Acceleration was silent—no sound, no wake. Think "go there," and he was already there. Blink and he'd punch through a glass curtain wall. Speed at least on par with Handkerchief Knight—and better: no sonic boom, no drag. Just shff! over there—shff! back here.
0113: "You're phase-slipping through the seams, slipping between spirit and matter. Psionic engine and drive look nominal—try the other systems."
The real monster wasn't flight. It was the eyes.
The Eye of the Pharaoh—psionic sight.
Close his eyes: that same astral tableau—the spirit realm, Dirac Sea. Open them: omniscient citywide surveillance, patching into security cams, every angle on demand, auto-locking every target. Literal, letter-for-letter god mode. Think of a thing—know it at once: House Fabius member logs and positions. Fix a gaze—down to trash, poop, roaches, vibrating toys… uh… focus, focus…
Pharaoh—Li Pan pointed, turned into a meteor, ripped the night, and in a blink hovered over House Fabius's seat of power.
Their domain dwarfed House Cornelius's castle—an entire district as private property on the Pacific outlet. They'd netted off a marine bathing zone, terraformed a cushy environment like Hakone: not volcanoes and hot springs, but blue sea & green hills—massive golf links in the hills; oceanfront hotels, villas, beaches, a yacht marina; racetracks and pads galore.
Across the water: Night City's new Pacific Economic Zone. The next century's plan was obvious—Fabius would anchor a new metropolitan ring around the Pacific, with this pleasure-bunker as its money pit.
Li Pan had worried they'd bolted—he'd laid his cards on the table with the council, then raided the collectors' instance, and it was late. But when he arrived—ha! They'd just started moving. At a time like this, they were still… packing.
Fair. A zaibatsu can't amputate assets in a few hours. Booted from the council, they still had to bring a couple of "water ghosts" along or they'd starve later, right? And the Night Clan could buy cutting-edge toys. The vampires had spun up a planetary defense system—point-defense railguns, plasma deflection fields versus orbital strikes, thermal/nuclear shields. Even a Sanction-6 sweeping down could be… endured.
Inside the shield: swarms of drones, Night Riders, and security mechs screening the perimeter to "block" TheM Company units.
The bodyguards held the line while elders, nobles, and blood-thralls fled—bots hauling coffins and chests to shuttles, trucks, cruise ships, subs. And the loot—wow. The cargo and yachts brimmed with jewels, antiquities, "art." Quick scan said: millions, tens of billions by the crate. No wonder they were dragging their feet—too much cash to leave behind…
Pharaoh—Li Pan swept the grounds. As one of the ruling triads, slated to govern the next century, House Fabius had people—lots. No sign of the prince yet, but the nest alone held four or five elders, five to six hundred blood retainers—at least half in knight-grade combat frames—and a thousand or two fledglings and broodlings, not counting the ones already boxed in coffins.
Plus blood-slave families, guards, maids, bots—a teeming airport, shuttles queuing in and out, spiriting treasure to vacuum anchors or sea caches. Busier than a regional hub.
Looking at all this, Li Pan hesitated. How to crack it? Pull the plug? Drop down and headbutt them one by one? Call orbital fire? But… so much treasure—what a waste to blast it to bits…
"Three, this Unit-01 have weapons? Can it fire a wave? This crown is huge—can I shoot it?"
0113: "That's the noetic amplifier. Why would you shoot it… And by the way, are you calling me 'Three'?"
"Oh, a friendly localism. Don't mind it."
Li Pan eyed the two short scepters in Pharaoh's hands—a hooked one and a flail—gave them a test swing.
"Weapons? Ah, I get it—hook the neck with the crook, yank them in, smash the skull with the club?"
0113: "For a guy who 'doesn't kill,' you're a quick study. But no. I told you: experimental frame—you can't pass Gate with weapon systems.
"They're Heka Scepters, artifacts of noetic authority on 0113—regalia of the Pharaoh's right to command.
"Heka, the crook, can snag strands of noetic filament and impose absolute control—at the soul level—over beings tethered to a given psionic nexus.
"The flail is for destruction—fine, for beating. It can annihilate souls outright, or crush the will of resisters.
"But both require an awakened psionic to use effectively. To deal with vampires, hit the spirit realm and sever their links there…"
Li Pan: "So… still just pulling the plug."
0113: "…tsk."
Right, then.
Pharaoh—Li Pan closed his eyes, slipped into the spirit realm, and blink-ported into the Fabius nest.
The fortress and harbor vanished. Before him: pillars of light and fields of white glow—stars of the Milky Way, sand on a midnight beach. Signals, minds—souls.
The elders' "souls" did look strong—flames more substantial than ordinary folk—but compared to blood-servants and knights, the difference was in size, not essence.
The broodlings were the brittle ones. Their souls looked weaker than maids and guards—like something torn apart and clumsily glued back together.
Weakest were the blood-slaves—gutter flames ready to snuff out with a breeze, as if their essence had been sucked out with their plasma.
Li Pan flicked his wrist. Pharaoh snagged an elder's fire with the crook—amusingly, it pulled out in a head shape—then he swept it with the flail and shattered it. He opened his eyes to check.
On the floor: a headless lump of blood-meat. The room full of vampires stared, stunned—whatever the hell had phased in, hooked an elder by the neck, and caved his skull in with one swing had scared the unlife out of them.
Li Pan glanced around—yeah, barging into someone's home to decapitate an elder at hello… a touch impolite.
Li Pan: "…knock knock?"
"AAAHHH—!"
The room erupted—silk-clad beasts popped like corn, becoming bat-faced fiends in a blink. Bioweapons swelled in bulk, went bestial, berserk—claws out, all pouncing at Pharaoh!!
Too slow. More floating than pouncing…
House Fabius's battle morphs were plenty dramatic—very werewolf: more attack, defense, regen; bone wings to fly. But apparently: no speed boost.
Any gamer knows: speed kills. If you can't hit or dodge, where's your DPS? Where's your defense? That's a free combo dummy.
By now Li Pan had the feel for Pharaoh/Unit-01.
No built-in armaments, but as an artificial apostle it was hand-to-hand monstrous—on par with Handkerchief Knight, Sake-Oni, and Great Tengu. Past the cap, flatly.
Just in reaction-time alone, Pharaoh's base stat outclassed anything a top-end implant stack could buy. Even bare-handed, treat it like a superman suit and it's a slaughter.
And when a superman kills, it isn't "murder." Ever seen photos from traffic fatalities? Exactly: a rolling pin through ground chuck.
So Li Pan raised the crook to guard, swung the flail in his right hand, and kept his word—popping Fabius skulls one after another, brains spraying, crowns flying, red everywhere, skulls pulped. While swinging, he blinked—back and forth between spirit and matter—to confirm the kill.
The Heka really did have "soul-kill" baked in. The elders and blood-knights he brained didn't crumble into dust; the bodies could still slowly regenerate. But the person was gone—what was left lay there like a brain-dead husk, staring at nothing.
So much for "immortal long-life frames." Not very impressive.
After seventy, eighty of those, Li Pan got bored. Unit-01's parameters were too high—blink, execute, blink, execute—nothing but walk-up beheadings. What fun is seal-clubbing? And going one by one through a thousand ghouls? Too damn tedious.
He scanned for munitions—ammo bunkers, a handy tac-nuke—when the castle's holo-map caught his eye. Then the golf course. He'd seen this course somewhere…
Pharaoh—Li Pan winked into the sky, crook hooked around a psionic hub.
"Everyone listen to me."
Heads turned—vampires and thralls staring up at the god in the night.
Pharaoh—Li Pan spread his arms. "Let's play Blast Ball!"
0113: "…what?"
Perfect. The 0791 slum sensation had apparently never reached these "world-destroying" executive lords.
Li Pan laid out the rules—simple version.
No vampire morphing.
No guns.
No flying.
He'd toss a bunch of sixty-second blast balls. Whoever held a ball, its timer counted on their tally.
After one hour, the one with the most seconds held—lives.
Everyone else—dies.
Right—he'd seen this terrain, then the balls, and remembered.
He'd watched it in Black Dream.
Yeah, this course is famous on the deep net. That tournament was held right here.
Not just golf—a private Blast Ball invitational.
The rules were nasty. Special explosive golf balls. A pack of buck-naked pretty boys and girls teeing off—more holes, more prize money.
These balls start a ten-second countdown the moment they're exposed to air. If the ball isn't holed when it hits zero, it explodes—and so does the player's head.
So: always sink it in one, or find another trick—just don't let it breathe before it drops.
Play until there's a winner. One winner takes the purse.
It got so gory Li Pan quit before the end.
No time for fancy variants tonight; he stuck with tag-the-bomb rules.
Because yeah—still gross.
"Begin. I'll keep killing; you keep grabbing. Save time—early death, early reincarnation."
Li Pan tossed the balls. Game on. Then he revved the flail and waded in.
Amid universal screaming and the constant BOOM of blasts, the match began.
Some knights tried to team up—drone swarms, a breakout.
But Pharaoh/Unit-01 could close his eyes and slip into the spirit realm at will—dodging all damage.
He also discovered Pharaoh's defense was absurd. EM weapons: useless. Focused defense-lasers: the crystal skin reflected them like a mirror. Even a direct hit from a mil-spec 5th-grade grenade launcher? Nothing. Not a scuff on the crystal glaze—and no shock to the pilot.
No wonder it's classed SMS, not SBS. To crack it you'd need a custom 6th-grade penetrator—or a straight naval gun to the face.
Reality set in fast. The Fabius crowd found religion, obeyed the rules, and grabbed balls.
It didn't even take half an hour.
Maybe Pharaoh/Unit-01 has some design quirk—back-scattering a radiation that drives nearby souls insane and to oblivion.
Maybe it was the Heka scepters—dominion and shattering, doing their work.
Either way—as the Pharaoh desired:
Inside this nest, every last member of House Fabius died.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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