K vaulted onto the bridge and spun her longsword in a quick blossom of steel.
"If we're fighting, then show me your true—ugh, what's that smell? Are you eating in acid rain?"
"Uh, I knew it was getting sourer the more I drank—hang on, hang on…"
Li Pan slurped down the last of the mutton soup, tossed the rice-cooker aside, and wiped his mouth.
"K, are you here to compete for the Holy Grail too?"
K planted her sword, glanced at the blood-slicked piles of corpses, and stood silent in the rain.
Li Pan fished around, found the Grail half-filled with mud, acid rain, and blood, and handed it over casually.
"Here. If you want it, take it."
K arched a brow. "What?"
Li Pan spread his hands.
"If you say you want it, it's yours. It's worth something to your side, right? Honestly I'm exhausted—fooled by an idiot and run ragged—and I don't feel like playing this game. If you want it, take it back.
"It's up to fifteen billion now, yeah? We could split—oh wait? The water's turning clear in the rain! That's… actually kind of magical."
K narrowed her eyes and raised the blade. "Draw."
Li Pan took a sip. "Hey—try it! Not sour! It's really clear—"
"Draw!"
"I'm the champion knight of House Cornelius," K barked. "If I want something, I take it with my own sword. I don't need handouts. Draw!"
Li Pan shrugged, flipped the Grail over his shoulder, rolled his shoulders, and let his sword bloom.
"I figured as much. No one forces you to want anything. So, K—what do you want?"
K frowned. "What do I want?"
"Yeah. Your wish. The Grail? Honor, money, power? What do you want? You said revenge, right? But the werewolves in your world are extinct, aren't they? Can't you tell the 'wolves' in 0791 are pets bred by your elders? The ones who wronged you are already long dead, aren't they?"
He opened his hands.
"So what are you chasing, K? Say the word. I don't like owing favors—you've helped me more than once. Tell me what you want, I'll fetch it.
"And don't say it's for my blood. It helps you a little, sure, but that's not why you keep saving me.
Don't tell me you've fallen for my looks and want me, either.
"What do you want?"
K's willow brows lifted.
"Now is when you want to ask me that?"
"Isn't a stagey, operatic moment exactly when to ask?"
In the downpour, Li Pan reversed the sword to show the cross on the hilt.
"I read that vampire brief you gave me. This mithril sword—slaves once used it to fight your kind, right? There was a legend: the blood clan can't die; they get called back again and again. Only pure humans can send the undying to a final rest. That's it, yes?
"Look at your little gifts—silver awls, throwing spikes, silver bullets. You keep hunting wolves alone, walking into danger on purpose…
"What, are you sick of living and looking for a clean death?"
Rain soaked K's hair as she smiled that unhealthy smile and stabbed.
"Then try it—kill me with everything you've got."
Her blade broke the sound barrier, split the rainwall, and in one stroke chopped through a hill of corpses.
Li Pan sprang like a monkey, sheathing the blade in inner force to redirect the tornadoing strike. The clatter of steel came thick and fast as he turned and dodged, a bird wheeling in a squall.
Cold as she was, K was at least "leaving a hand"—in her way. She'd let him eat and catch his breath. Fully geared, a blood-knight K could have finished him with one burst while he was half-dead.
So while her swordwork howled like a storm and flashed like lightning—decapitation always a slip away—Li Pan, fed and at Fourth Turn, could barely keep up. He knew it too.
Essentially, K wasn't going all out—a clock-puncher's cadence. They understood each other; they "performed" together. Clang and clang, beat for beat, sparks and spray like a forge.
"Thunder—Smite!"
K shouted and hewed straight down in a mountain-cleaving chop.
Li Pan hooked and bled the force, crossing blades; K pressed in close.
"So who raised those werewolves?"
"You're still on that? House Julius."
"Impossible… no one else?" She twisted, whirlwinding twin blades, arrowing forward.
"How impossible? She admitted it herself."
K's face chilled; her speed spiked, her sword nearly took Li Pan's head.
"Emilius's knight-commander was your inside woman?!"
"It was her who approached me!"
"You sleep with anyone who shows up?"
"I didn't sleep with her! I just wanted some money—then got played!"
K snorted, then snapped, "No! Then why would Yuliya sign with you? She doesn't trust anyone!"
"Uh… how about we talk about Emiliya instead?"
K's swordwork ratcheted up another notch—speed and weight—three straight Thunder-Smite chops crashed down. If Li Pan hadn't wrapped inner power around his blade, it would have snapped.
His scalp tingled; he started to tell her to calm down—then every hair on his body rose.
K felt it too and tried to slip aside—but froze for a blink.
A lance of lightning raked the rain, drilled through K's chest, and scythed out Li Pan's flank, carving a hole between ribs and navel.
Another sniper. Does no one duel clean anymore?
Both dove for cover—corpses and dumpsters be damned.
Li Pan clutched the gut-hole, watching the bloody handprints on his raincloak fly out to "grab" the shooter. Useless. So if they don't aim directly at him—if they "hit through cover"—the Reincarnating Soul-Chasers don't trigger. Garbage.
At least he wouldn't die on that hit. The soup had topped him up; blood and qi were high, and his last blood-cash coin had already leapt to the wound, weaving a crystalline web of capillaries that regrew before his eyes.
Fine. Manageable—
"K, you okay—K?"
K was not okay.
The blood clan's weak points are obvious: head, heart, spine. That shot had taken her right through the back, punching out her heart.
Her SBS armor had attempted triage—secondary heart online, injectors in the neck—but it backfired. Fangs lengthened; lenses went chalk-bright; skin blanched and went translucent, all veins on display; the muscles ballooned under combat drugs. Beauty to beast in seconds.
Blood Hunger.
That guillotine hangs over every blood-knight's head, and in a battle-high, a fatal wound sends them berserk.
Money is power; tech is power. Your tens-of-millions frame will simply lose to their billion-credit bodies—and bring along a dozen bugs and curses too. That's the gulf between first- and second-tier syndicates.
"K! Wake up! Hey—control yourself! Ptuh!"
Li Pan slapped her; she punched him like a fired shell, spinning him like a top.
Okay—she's gone. He dove into the cadavers for the Grail.
No problem—Blood Hunger can be purged with the Grail… Huh? The Grail? The very large cup I tossed right here?
"Lit—tle—bro! Where's my cup?!"
The blood infant popped out of the flooring and pointed.
"A woman stole it."
"What—why didn't you stop her?!"
"Eh? She smelled like you. I thought she was with you."
Why does everyone "smell like me"… is it that strong—
"Raaagh!"
K smashed him again, punching him clear off the bridge.
"Big—bro—! How dare you, monster!" the blood infant cried.
"I'm fine—don't hurt her—urk—"
He spat blood, crawled up, and found a rank of blood-knights standing in the rain—skeletal in armor, eyes glowing red—staring at him.
He swallowed. "What's their deal? And why aren't you slapping them flat?"
"Rest easy," said the blood infant. "I've drained these little imps' essence."
The armored "corpses" jerked forward like spring-launched tanks.
"Their plate moves on its own—some kind of automaton puppetry. I'm only a single thought-projection here. My strength is limited; I don't know your local mechanism-arts. I can't help."
"Oh, so you sent your real body home to cultivate, didn't you? Can you be reliable for once—"
"Raaagh!"
K hurled a streetlight like a javelin; it nearly pinned Li Pan to the wall.
"Okay, okay—no more sightseeing! Where did the Grail go?"
"This way!"
The blood infant counted on his fingers and led. Li Pan sprinted, bleeding hard, while blood-beast K and a phalanx of skeletal knights thundered after him like a dead legion.
And the herd grew—punks, gangsters, NCPA, mercs, robots, drones, float-cars, shuttles—everyone braved the rain and joined the parade, blazing away as they ran.
They all stormed across the district toward—
Huh. Chiyoda Prison.
The fresh nuke-crater was… distinctive. A circular plain like a meteor impact, radiation tape still up, surrounding towers abandoned. A scene from the end of the world.
By now the pit had filled into a wide lake with the pounding rain.
The blood infant led; Li Pan didn't hesitate—he dove like a snake into the radioactive soup.
The hunters balked.
Sure, fifteen hundred billion is worth dying for—but you still need to live to spend it.
This was acid rain and fallout.
Geigers were screaming.
Most stopped at the shore, cursing and shelling the water with rockets.
The blood-knights' SBS suits died one by one under corrosion and radiation. They stumbled to a halt.
Only blood-beast K howled and leapt after him, splashing into the lake.
Good—Cornelius-line restrictions. In water, the beast lagged Li Pan and fell behind, howling in helpless fury.
Li Pan soon caught up to the thief—Shiranui Kiriko.
Well, of course. Someone who "smells like him," water-escapes in a downpour, filches the Grail from his side—how many in Night City could that be?
And now he sensed her "qi"—impressive. Whether it was sealing the great tengu or frequent dual cultivation with Li Pan, her power had grown a hundredfold—finally worthy of a Sealing Upper Ninja.
He watched her dive to a sunken shipping container, pull out a dive suit, and snap a portable thruster onto her back, then jet into the scoured under-works of the prison.
So… cached gear?
The container could have held several kits—meaning she wasn't alone. Which implied—
The thought clicked.
Kōga sealing ninja. They wanted the Grail?
No—perhaps not the Grail.
But something beneath Chiyoda Prison… something sealed in the New Tokyo Great Spirit Axis.
.
.
.
⚠️ 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."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
🔗 patreon.com/DrManhattanEN