"Whoa! Mano! This place is so cool!"
Ever since he came in, Jackie had hardly stopped exclaiming in admiration.
Whether it was the new living quarters built by the Aldecaldos or the work area piled high with all sorts of equipment.
The extremely well-hidden underground area, server room, and workspace that Mercer had shown him and Sasha also left Jackie feeling incredibly excited.
When had he ever seen stuff like this back in his gang? Even the best turf would quickly become a dirty, chaotic mess in the hands of a bunch of street punks who did nothing but drink and get high.
He was especially thrilled when he saw the dedicated garage and a complete set of professional tools for modifying and repairing cars. He laughed heartily, saying he had to save up money quickly to buy a motorcycle he liked and then chrome the hell out of it.
This excitement became even more difficult to contain after the above-ground area was expanded and everyone got their own spacious, 35-square-meter single dorm room.
Jackie, who had always lived at his family's home, finally had a room of his own for the first time; that's right, the Jackie from the game at least had a garage to live in after his hard work with V.
But now, in 2072, Jackie had never even moved out to live on his own. He couldn't help it; being in a gang just didn't pay, and he would occasionally get arrested by the NCPD and locked up for a few months.
If he rented a place on his own, his mattress would probably be sold for cash by the time the NCPD let him out.
Sasha, on the other hand, appeared much calmer. It just seemed to be her first time living with so many people. Moreover, Mercer's team had many netrunners, and they were all girls.
This allowed her to easily join in on conversations. Having rarely found girls her own age she could hang out with, the smile never left her face.
She had a particularly high opinion of Kyoko, this choom with a strong anime style and a cute, kind demeanor. Sasha was also very interested in a cute little girl like her.
The two quickly became very close, even sticking together at the dinner table.
And Mercer was in an excellent mood as well.
Watching Maine, Dorio, Jackie, Lucy, Kyoko, Kiwi, Sasha, V, Pilar and Rebecca all sitting together, laughing and chatting over a meal, gave him a sense of satisfaction, as if he were filling up a "character collection."
Er... it would be even better if V wasn't scowling.
"Didn't I tell you earlier? That Jackie and Sasha were coming this afternoon, and that you should tidy up a bit beforehand and come out to welcome them. But you? You made everyone wait for you for several minutes."
In the kitchen, V took advantage of the moment Mercer came to help carry out the dishes to stare at him fiercely and whisper her complaints.
Mercer chuckled softly and whispered back beside her, "Alright, alright, my bad."
"You and your ways..." V shot him a glare, handing him the drinks to take to the table while grumbling, "My mom used to say when she was alive, if a family doesn't even gather together for meals, it's bound to fall apart sooner or later. It's not like I ask you to be on time every day, but at least don't be late for a proper get-together."
"Alright, alright, I'll be on time next time. Thanks for all your hard work, V." Mercer quickly grabbed the items and made a run for it, not giving V any time to nag him.
V rolled her eyes and muttered behind his back, "Just you wait. I'll deal with you after we're done eating."
She always felt that he was so unreliable in his daily life, a complete contrast to when he was busy with serious business. It was like he was two different people.
And V would get angry whenever she saw his unreliability, though she couldn't say why. It wasn't as if the others were any better, but she always singled him out to pick on.
Things like not changing his clothes on time, sometimes wearing the same outfit for two days straight, not sleeping or eating on schedule, and drinking nothing but soda all day. Whenever she had a spare moment, she would nag Mercer about it, just like his mother.
The scariest part was that Rebecca had the same personality. She would always buy him a couple of new outfits and shoes when she had free time, and if she saw him working for too long, she would nag him to go out and have fun.
Ugh, it felt like he had gained two mothers with different personalities.
And Mercer's choice, like that of many helpless middle-aged husbands, was to use work as an excuse and make a quick escape whenever they started nagging.
After placing the food on the dining table, he quickly started laughing and chatting with the others. Now, he wasn't even helping bring out the dishes, acting like a total lord of the manor.
V watched this scene and shook her head, but she never spoke ill of him in front of others. After setting the table with the other girls, she sat down beside him, deciding to lecture him when they were alone.
On the table, there were Mexican-style dishes, American-style home cooking, and also a few stir-fries and Japanese dishes that V had made according to the different preferences of Mercer, Lucy, and the others.
You could say there was a bit of everything, covering the entire table. Every single dish looked authentic, earning Jackie's endless praise.
"I'm telling you, V, your cooking skills are seriously amazing! And Mercer, why didn't you tell me there'd be so much good food? I would've been here way earlier!"
Jackie praised V's culinary skills.
V, meanwhile, sat next to Mercer, leaning back in her chair to catch her breath, cooking such a large spread was truly exhausting. If Dorio, Kiwi, and Lucy hadn't been helping, she would have been busy all day.
Fortunately, the upstairs dining room had been doubled in size, and the kitchen area had been expanded accordingly.
"I'm glad you like it. Sasha, Jackie, if there's anything you like to eat, or any flavors you prefer, you can tell me in the future. The menu at our base changes every week, so you never know what we'll be having."
V said with a cheerful smile, showing none of the ferocity from when she was secretly glaring at Mercer in the kitchen. She looked gentle and virtuous.
"Here, here, try this. It probably can't compare to Mamá Welles's cooking, but I followed the recipe, so it shouldn't be too far off."
She took care of everyone at the table with meticulous attention, while Mercer just buried his head in his food and shot the breeze with the big guys like Jackie, Maine, and Pilar.
None of these men had any proper diplomas, but when they chatted, they could jump from gang stories and sporting events to the international situation, and each one of them spoke as if they were an expert. The meal took over an hour to finish. After the table was cleared, Jackie pulled Mercer over to play pool; there was a pool table in the first-floor living room. The men kept score, betting beer money on the games. Whoever lost had to buy the drinks.
Mercer displayed what could only be described as invincible pool skills, crushing everyone. In the end, a frustrated Jackie waved his hands dismissively, declaring he would never play pool with him again in his life, and ended up covering Mercer's NiCola money for the month along with Pilar and Maine.
It couldn't be helped. For Mercer as he was now, a simple game of controlling power and angles was like playing a real-life version of an online pool game. Once he aimed, it was as if he could see an aiming line. Who could possibly beat him at that?
After a brief discussion, the others kicked Mercer out of the competition. He hummed and chuckled smugly, intending to head down to the basement to get back to work.
However, he was ambushed by V, who had been lying in wait for him.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? That's great, right? Come on, you're with me!" she said, hooking an arm around his neck and dragging him toward the gym without taking no for an answer.
"The hell! What for!" The hairs on the back of Mercer's neck stood on end as he recalled his first training session with V; that woman really didn't hold back!
"You just lie around in the basement every day. Look at you, you're all skin and bones! With your personality, always looking for trouble and rushing to the front lines, how can you not train up your skills?"
V was full of righteous indignation, giving him no chance to retort as she half-pulled, half-dragged him into the gym. She tossed him a pair of fingerless gloves and said peremptorily:
"Last time I taught you boxing, you said you'd get it after practicing once on your own. Come on, let's see if your body still remembers."
Mercer rolled his eyes. "You just want to beat me up!"
"I'm not even using my full strength! If you don't want to train, fine. Just stay in the back on missions from now on. Even Lucy and Kiwi come to train together every day. Kyoko comes too. You're the only one acting like a shut-in. How is that acceptable?"
V had her own reasoning. She put on her gloves with a serious expression. "Strictly speaking, when you activate your Synaptic Accelerator, you can even react to bullets. You can't install a Sandevistan, so you have to rely on your own training to get your body to keep up with your mind. You don't want to just watch helplessly as a bullet flies toward you one day, not even knowing how to dodge a fatal shot, do you?"
Mercer sighed and put on the gloves. It was just the two of them in the gym, so he wasn't afraid of losing face if V beat him up. He could only mutter, "Then can't I just research an operating system that I can use? With my natural physical talent, even if I trained to death, I wouldn't be half as effective as you. I'd be better off with tech."
V knew he was just being stubborn. She scoffed and took a boxing stance. "Combat awareness isn't something you can get from tech, especially not instinctual reactions. I know you've had some professional training before, but that stuff isn't always effective against street moves."
Mercer decided to get into a boxing stance as well. "Let's get this straight first. Only one hour. Any longer will affect my concentration."
"I think you're just getting soft!" V said, and how could Mercer stand for that?
He threw a simple one-two combo, a feint with a stepping jab, followed by a dipping straight punch to the body. V's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but she simply took a small, easy step back and countered with a cross left hook. Mercer's right hand, having missed its mark, quickly pulled back to guard his face. But V's hand suddenly stopped, and then, without warning, her front foot snapped upward in a kick.
Mercer instinctively activated his Synaptic Accelerator. In the instant the world slowed down, he hurriedly reached down to parry the blow. However, V's immense strength kicked his blocking arm aside and went straight for his chin.
Mercer barely managed to lean back and dodge, but he lost his balance in the process. V retracted her leg with extreme speed, stepped in with a combination of punches that thudded against his arms, and made both his limbs feel numb and useless.
Then, she threw another punch from Mercer's blind spot, a hook aimed at his abdomen.
This time, Mercer could only brace himself by tensing his abs. The blow ignited his temper, and he instinctively threw an elbow at her face.
"Stay calm!" V's voice came from beside his ear. The next moment, she ducked down like the wind, wrapped her arms around his stomach, and threw him to the ground. She flipped over to mount his waist and delivered a few light, controlled punches before standing up triumphantly.
"I thought we agreed on boxing?" Mercer glared at her, slapping the ground in frustration as he got to his feet.
V just laughed. "Didn't I tell you? The stuff you're training for won't work on people on the street. That upward kick just now? Normally, that would've been aimed at your crotch. Think about it, could you have dodged that?"
However, V did offer a word of affirmation first. "But your talent really isn't bad. You still remember all the boxing I taught you last time."
"Hah." Mercer got up and beckoned to her with his fingers. "So we're not playing by the rules, huh? Come on, I'm getting serious this time!"
V pursed her lips and said confidently, "If this were a real fight, I could take you on with one hand!"
"You talk too much," Mercer said, then suddenly shot out a kick.
V parried his front kick with one hand. Just as she was about to step forward, Mercer immediately followed up with a right roundhouse kick.
Trying to control the distance? His arm reach isn't that much longer than mine, is it?
While V was still pondering this, a line of text suddenly appeared before her eyes.
[Invasion detected.]
The red notification box and the Self-ICE installed in her Frontal Cortex began to operate. V's face instantly darkened. "You're fucking hacking me!"
Mercer just laughed, fully focused as he activated his Overclock and Synaptic Accelerator. The heat sinks on his back began to whir.
V's eyes narrowed. Sandevistan, activate!
In an instant, her speed more than doubled.
Mercer had no time to reply. He could only rely on his own accelerated thoughts to try and stall for time.
V's figure appeared behind Mercer like a phantom, attempting to shut down his neural link. But while Mercer's body couldn't keep up, his reaction speed was flawless. Relying purely on calculating V's trajectory, he threw an elbow backward with predictive timing.
As if she were a lagging video frame, V's whole body seemed to twitch on the spot, completing the process of retreating and then advancing again.
But then, a black data cable whipped out from Mercer's wrist.
V threw herself back in a sharp arch, almost performing a perfect bridge. She still had the spare breath to curse, "And you're using a fucking monowire!"
To be precise, Mercer was using a monowire with its attack mode disabled, which could be considered an extremely tough but not sharp data cable. But in a simulated combat scenario, V definitely had to dodge as if it were real.
Mercer had no time to talk to her now; he was truly breaking out in a sweat. V's Frontal Cortex Self-ICE could almost be considered military-grade.
You could even say it was stronger than military-grade, because Mercer had written the programs and algorithms himself. Breaching the ICE's defenses was no simple task.
Trying to use his own spear to pierce a shield of his own making?
After dodging the monowire, V found a flaw in Mercer's swing in a flash. The moment she slipped through, she triumphantly grabbed his wrist.
With a simple leg sweep and a shoulder throw, she slammed him onto the soft mat, then followed up with a standard NCPD takedown, kneeling on his back to pin him.
"Give up or not! You're cheating..." V's words were cut short as her whole body started to twitch. Pressing down on Mercer's back, she went completely limp.
Mercer had seized control of her cyberware. Her arms wouldn't obey her, and the data from her neural link was being disrupted, preventing her from giving her body precise commands.
Mercer flipped over, pinning her beneath him with a grimace. He glared at her and said, "So you like to bully people, huh! Who could possibly beat you when you use your Sandevistan!"
"Let go! Now!" Aside from the humiliation of being pinned, seeing Mercer on top of her stirred an inexplicable panic in her heart.
Mercer chuckled. "Apologize! Say you'll never use your Sandevistan to bully me again!"
"Screw you! You're the one who used a hack on me first!" V craned her neck. "You're the one who's cheating!"
"You're the one who said it was a simulated street fight! Isn't it normal for a netrunner like me to use Quickhacks in a street fight!" Mercer didn't let go. Instead, he smugly grabbed both of her hands and pinned them above her head, immobilizing her.
This time, V's face truly flushed red. She fell silent, just glaring at Mercer, her expression an unreadable mix of shyness and anger, her face visibly heating up.
Mercer met her gaze and sensed the atmosphere had turned a little strange. He coughed, then released her hands. "Ow, I think you might've hurt my back when you threw me. I need to go check my heat sinks."
"Then at least undo the program!" she said, annoyed.
Mercer got off her first, then tried to bargain. "Okay, but you have to promise not to hit me after I release it!"
"You release it first!"
"You promise first!"
"Are you going to release it or not?"
"If you're going to hit me, I'm definitely not releasing it!"
After a few rounds of bickering, V, despite her cyberware controls being disabled, managed to force herself to her feet. She stared at him fiercely. "Fine! I promise I won't hit you! Now undo it! And delete the program!"
Mercer hesitated for a moment but obediently deleted the program. Unsurprisingly, the instant it was gone, she pounced on him like a tiger, tackling him to the ground. With a quick roll, she got on his back and locked him in a rear-naked choke.
"Cough..." Mercer quickly tapped the floor to surrender, but V whispered hatefully in his ear, "Even if it was unfair for me to use my Sandevistan, I had already won and stopped. Was it really appropriate for you to hack me after that?"
"Then I would've just taken a beating for nothing, right?" Mercer argued righteously, prying at her arm with both hands. With a flip, they immediately began to grapple on the ground. But V had also taught Mercer his jiu-jitsu; he couldn't break the moves of his own master!
After a brief struggle, he was pinned to the ground by V again. She twisted one of his arms into her embrace, pressed her legs against his chest, and executed a perfect armbar.
She held Mercer's arm, gripped his wrist, and kept applying pressure on his chest with her legs, immobilizing him. "You used your monowire! I was bare-handed!"
"Well, the Sandevistan is still cheaper!" Mercer retorted stubbornly. The two of them stared at each other, neither willing to concede, until Mercer realized the position of the hand she was holding against her chest felt a little... off.
How to put it... his palm was pinned by her in every sense of the word.
Mercer subconsciously wiggled his fingers.
"...The hell!" Only then did V belatedly realize the bastard seemed to be copping a feel. She let go of his hand, almost biting him in a fit of pique. Mortified, she clutched her chest, took a step back, and stood up to glare at him.
Mercer, however, just flexed his arm and wrist and flopped back down with a shameless look. "I'm injured."
"Injured my ass!" V was so exasperated she had to laugh.
"Don't you know your own strength? You gave me a shoulder throw with your Sandevistan on and then twisted my arm that hard."
Mercer, however, put on a pained expression, clutching his arm and refusing to get up.
V let out a "Ha!"; So he's playing the victim, is he?
She reached out a hand, her eyes narrowing. "Then let me rub it for you."
"That really won't be necessary." Mercer sat up with a crunch, flexing his arm. "It needs to be rested. You get me?"
"Go to hell!" V pulled off her glove and threw it in his face, staring at him indignantly. "Why are you always like this with me? You're not like this with Lucy and Rebecca."
"When have you ever seen Rebecca get rough with me?" Mercer had his own point to make.
"Bullshit! Didn't she hold you down with all her strength so you couldn't move?" V retorted.
Mercer just chuckled. "She was just trying to take advantage of me. It's hard to say who was rough with whom!"
"Oh, so you're saying that hand of yours just now got its feel and habits from practicing on her?" V said meaningfully.
Mercer, however, replied with a perfectly straight face, "What are you talking about? I don't understand."
The two stared at each other without a word. In the end, it was V who couldn't stand the shameless bastard any longer. She rolled her eyes and decided to drop the subject. "Oh, screw you! Bastard. I'm never training alone with you again."
"Come on, isn't it just because you want to beat me up whenever you're bored? Or are you just like Rebecca?" After saying this, Mercer even gave her a deliberately suggestive wink and raised his eyebrows.
V ground her teeth, but in the end, she just snorted. "Can't you just think about the state you've been in these past few days? You don't eat, you don't sleep. Every day you wake up and plug a data cable into your computer, all dazed and stupefied. Normally, on a day like today, you definitely wouldn't have been late, but look at you, you even forgot about it. If you ask me, you should be getting some exercise every day. What kind of life is it to be cooped up underground all the time, like you're in a dungeon?"
"Sigh, this is what happens when you're completely absorbed in your work. You probably wouldn't understand the work style of someone with 20+ Intelligence." His words made her throw a punch, slamming it into his shoulder and causing him to suck in a sharp breath of pain.
"Damn! I shouldn't have worried about you!" V huffed and turned to leave. She hadn't dragged him here to train just to beat him up; she simply couldn't stand seeing him work like a madman these past few days.
Mercer, rubbing his arm, caught up to her in a few smiling steps. He casually slung an arm around her neck, looking at her fuming expression. "Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing you. But you should really work on this habit of yours. If you're worried about me, just say you're worried. What's with the need to beat me up first?"
V would never admit that she did, in fact, want to beat him up. The guy spent all day just pissing people off with his words. She was usually more direct with her insults and could never quite master his brand of sarcastic, passive-aggressive remarks. Since she was clumsy with words, she had to let her fists do the talking.
But after a moment's thought, her tone softened. She just pushed his arm away. "It's not like I wanted to beat you up. If I really wanted to, do you think you'd still be standing? I could've wrecked your netrunning suit."
"Hey, it still hurts. I've got delicate skin, you know. Look, see? It's already red." He pulled down the zipper of his netrunning suit a little to show her the red mark on his arm.
V looked away, feeling a little guilty. "More sweat in training means less blood in battle. You're the one who told me that."
"I use my brain for sixteen hours a day. Can you train your muscles for sixteen hours a day?" Mercer retorted, punching her lightly on the shoulder.
V didn't say anything; to her, his punches felt more like a playful tap.
"Well, that was fast, wasn't it?" A sarcastic voice echoed from the hallway. Rebecca squinted at the two of them. Seeing V's slightly messy hair and Mercer's uneven breathing, alarm bells immediately went off in her head.
"She used her Sandevistan to bully me. I'm not training with her anymore," Mercer said. V shot him a glance, snorted, and quickened her pace to walk away.
Once V was far enough away, Rebecca leaped onto Mercer's back, wrapped her arms around his neck, and bit his ear, a real bite, but without any force.
"Damn it! I ask you to come work out and you play dead, but when she drags you, you go?" she grumbled indistinctly.
"You think I wanted to go? She's strong enough to rip my arm off." Mercer tilted his head away in exasperation, using one hand to push her head back. "Don't you go learning from her. The most she'd do is tear off one of my arms. You'd probably rip me in half."
"Bullshit! Every time we roughhouse, I turn the output on my Gorilla Arms down to zero!" Rebecca huffed, but she refused to get off his back.
"Hey~ Mercer~ Don't work today. I bought a VR game, but usually only Kyoko plays with me, and I don't feel right bullying a kid. Come play with me!"
Just then, she finally acted in a way that matched her youthful appearance, unlike her usual self, who was either brazenly swearing or acting like a little mother hen.
Mercer sighed, then finally nodded. He supported her thighs with both hands to help her lie more comfortably on his back and stop her from choking him. "Fine. You two win. I'll play with you. Happy? I'll play with you until bedtime today."
"Woohoo!" she cheered excitedly, nearly strangling him as she clung to him. Then, she leaned in with a grin and planted an unapologetic kiss on his cheek. "Here's a little reward in advance."
Mercer looked around furtively like a thief. Luckily, there was no one else in the hallway, so he quickly went with Rebecca to her new dorm room. After that, she pulled him into playing VR.
VR games in this world incorporated braindance technology, allowing for a fully immersive gaming experience like Sword Art Online, but without making one completely lose their sense of reality like a BD does.
Mercer had expected some gory shooter game, but when he started it up, he saw "Hyper-Realistic Country Story."
She cheerfully led Mercer to go fishing and plow fields with a tractor in the VR game. She even taught him which seeds yielded the highest harvest, and they raised a few big dogs together in their save file.
This kind of simulation game was the best at killing time. Mercer felt like he had just gotten the hang of fishing when Morning Star popped an "anti-addiction rest reminder" into his head, forcing him to reluctantly end the game.
Rebecca was grinning from ear to ear, her face full of joy, right up until she took off the headset. "Wasn't that fun?"
"It was," Mercer said honestly. The joyful gaming experience gave him a long-lost feeling of returning to the past.
Rebecca could tell he wasn't just humoring her or trying to be nice, which seemed to make her even happier. She smiled and wrapped her arms around him, pushing him down onto the bed. "Then don't work today. Just rest, okay?"
"Even if I'm resting, I should go back to my own room. What are you doing?" Mercer looked at her helplessly, but a thought crossed his mind. No, I really need to talk to Vik. How can every girl pin me down so I can't get up?
Right now, they could only immobilize him at most. Who knew what they'd be pinning him down for in the future? It seemed he needed to get his body enhanced, and fast.
"Just rest here. Look, I picked out a double bed on purpose," she said, sidling up to Mercer. Her breath carried a cloying sweetness, like candy. "I only take up a little bit of space when I sleep~"
"Don't touch me there!" Mercer warned her mischievous little hands. You're forcing me to make a disciplinary mistake.
But Rebecca just widened her eyes with a grin. "Wow~"
Wow my ass.
Mercer was losing his self-control. He flipped over and pinned her down. She didn't use any strength to resist, so Mercer gave her a couple of firm smacks before sitting up. "You just wait. In a year or two, I'll show you what's what."
Rebecca, however, simply struck a seductive pose with her petite body on the bed, blew him a kiss, and winked playfully.
"Coward~ When Pilar was your age, he wanted to fuck a car's exhaust pipe. I don't even know what you're repressing."
Damn, that's honestly a bit messed up.
Mercer sighed and turned to leave. If he stayed any longer, a scene of him disciplining a bratty girl might actually play out.
Back in his own room, he tossed and turned for a while. V and Rebecca spun around in his head, and occasionally Lucy would pop up out of nowhere. Finally, he stealthily sent Kiwi a message.
[Mercer: You up?]
Kiwi didn't say a word. She just sent him a selfie, dressed in somewhat transparent black sleepwear, lazily hugging her blanket with a smile. And so, late at night, he snuck into her room like a thief. It was only after more than two hours that he finally found the sage-like composure needed for sleep, returning to his room to fall peacefully asleep.
However, both V and Rebecca had served as a reminder for him.
What the crew actually needed from him was sometimes not just material stability, but also a certain emotional reliance.
So, for a period of time after that, he compressed his work hours to twelve hours a day and scheduled four hours for recreation, relaxation, and exercise, spending time with everyone and spreading the love equally.
Sometimes he would go for a jog with Lucy, sometimes he would watch movies with Kyoko, or train his hand-to-hand combat skills with V, or play games with Rebecca.
And the rest of the crew wasn't idle either.
As the Kindling Squad's fame grew, gigs from various fixers came pouring in, and Mercer accepted them all without refusal.
As long as it paid well and the danger was negligible in Mercer's eyes, he handed it all over to V to lead. Now, his team had V, Maine, Dorio, Jackie, and Rebecca on the front lines.
Pilar provided cover as a tech specialist and sniper, with netrunner support from Lucy, Kiwi, and Sasha.
Finally, Morning Star and Mercer provided remote support and mission planning, while Polaris was in charge of driving.
It could be said that at this moment, the Kindling Squad's strength, even without Mercer, was absolutely a top-tier merc team, a rarity in Night City.
Over the next six months, the crew easily completed two gigs almost every month, raking in hundreds of thousands of eurodollars each time.
They even took on smaller jobs worth a hundred thousand or a few tens of thousands of eurodollars.
These jobs were passed to Mercer through fixers, and he would post them on the team's comms program's gig board, letting them take them as side jobs. They would form small squads to go out, earn some pocket money, and buy things they liked.
Hansen and Slider also paid their share honestly. Combined, their monthly contributions added up to about a million eurodollars, which went into the team's funds, providing interest-free loans to new members like Maine and Jackie for upgrading their gear and cyberware.
Of course, Mercer had to put in some corresponding effort in return.
For instance, after paying him his due for two straight months, Hansen couldn't resist starting to assign him new projects, such as breaching the software locks on certain Militech equipment, or having Mercer upgrade Barghest's existing gear.
Mercer controlled the pace, doing one job for him a month at most. If it was a difficult one, he would drag it out for two months. Although Hansen was annoyed at being fleeced by him like this, the results of the work Mercer did for him were beautiful every single time.
Since Hansen couldn't find any other top-tier tech experts, he could only grit his teeth and pay to keep this great Buddha, Mercer, around. He had to give Mercer whatever he asked for; otherwise, Mercer guaranteed the next job would take even longer.
You get what you pay for, as they say. After half a year, Hansen had figured out the key to working with Mercer.
The bastard was the epitome of "you get as much work as you pay for." Even when Hansen tried his best to be friendly, Mercer would just smile and call him "Colonel" on the surface. Hansen's assessment was: an ungrateful wolf that can't be tamed. Mercer's opinion of Hansen was quite similar; that bastard. He did every job Hansen gave him beautifully, but the bastard still assigned him work from time to time, always with the attitude of "no work, no pay."
Sooner or later, he was going to kill this shitty boss.
As for Slider, he was quite anxious in urging Mercer on.
It couldn't be helped. He had shared his quickhack market and even given Mercer a cut of his cyberware smuggling business, yet Mercer showed no intention of making a move on the Voodoo Boys in Pacifica. How could Slider accept that?
But Mercer remained set in his ways, busy with his own affairs.
After he breached the Soulkiller program, he couldn't make any further progress in the short term. So, he simply began studying the Soulkiller program while also diverting his attention to developing things like the Relic, cyberware, and other equipment.
And so, in October of 2072, the series of things he had been researching finally began to yield real, practical results, with complete, usable test versions of finished products appearing in clusters.
First was the Relic. Mercer had finally broken through the technological barrier of knowledge transfer. Using a program similar to Militech's "training chips" and the Relic as a carrier, he developed a complete "Super Learning System."
He named the "Super Learning System" loaded onto the Relic the "Oghma Infinium," its main feature being a simple and crude "Oghma Infinium, add points for me!"
Its purpose and goal were to achieve a miraculous operation similar to "System, add points to my XX skill" from the novels of his previous life by directly transferring all kinds of knowledge into the human brain via the Relic.
However, due to certain concerns, Mercer did not fully unleash its capabilities, instead using it purely as something akin to Doraemon's "memory bread."
The overall process could be simply understood as first finding the required learning materials online, then using the Soulkiller program to convert these materials into engrams that humans could download and understand, and finally uploading them to the human brain via the Relic.
After experimenting on some unlucky, or rather, deserving, Scavengers to determine the program's safety parameters, the Relic became the team's shared "super learning machine."
Each person could use the Relic once a week to directly transfer a million characters' worth of knowledge into their brain. For Rebecca and V, who had never been fond of studying, this was truly a godsend.
This was because the converted data of a million characters could be understood as directly memorizing as much textual knowledge as ten entire dictionaries of different languages.
In fact, the Relic was capable of directly adding skills to a person, which was why Mercer had named it Oghma Infinium.
But the prerequisite for adding skills was that Mercer first needed to find the skill data, and this skill data came from the engram of a human who had mastered that skill.
He was actually already capable of precisely identifying and stripping parts of memory from within a human engram, and converting it into downloadable skill data. However, Mercer was very worried that copying skills this way could lead to parts of the original owner's memories and thought patterns being transmitted along with them, mixing into the downloader's mind and affecting their personality and subconscious.
That was why he had only made a portion of its functions available to his own people.
But this made Mercer even more certain, as long as he could thoroughly understand the engrams created by Soulkiller, he would one day be able to precisely strip away only the skills, without taking a single shred of memory.
At that point, Mercer could use Soulkiller to copy, for example, V's melee combat skills and her techniques for using the Sandevistan, then directly transmit them into his own brain, freeloading her combat expertise.
He could also simply copy, say, Sasha's Russian language skills, using data replication and downloading to master a language in five minutes and become as fluent as a native speaker.
You can imagine just how powerful this technology would be once it was fully polished.
And it was through using "Oghma Infinium" that Mercer gained deeper confidence and certainty in his ability to master consciousness transfer technology.
If knowledge could be copied and downloaded, then human consciousness certainly could be too.
The main difficulty in this area was centered on how to completely upload a human engram. Mercer was still in the process of learning, but he optimistically estimated that it would probably only take a month or two to find a way.
After that, he could try to find a few guinea pigs, such as some of those "kindhearted" Scavengers who enjoyed kidnapping people.
Then he would use them to test consciousness data uploading and downloading, experimenting with the entire process of "uploading," "downloading," and "resurrection" directly on their bodies.
Once the experiments on the Scavengers succeeded, Mercer could boldly advance the plan to the next step.
Mercer had also made breakthrough achievements in the development of cyberware and equipment.
First, in cyberware development, Mercer successfully created his ideal first piece of "cyberarm," tailored to his own needs and inspired by ideas he had seen in games and movies in his past life.
This piece of cyberware was not meant to directly replace an arm. Instead, Mercer had developed it as a special type of cyberware, referencing Viktor's third arm, from the game League of Legends, and the mechanical tentacles of Doctor Octopus from the Spider-Man movies.
The overall design adopted a bionic octopus tentacle that was visually similar to Doctor Octopus's, but for the mechanical hand at the end, Mercer referenced Viktor's multifunctional mechanical hand from the game.
He designed and developed it as a multifunctional piece of cyberware that could assist with work in normal times and function as a Smart weapon in actual combat, firing electromagnetic projectiles.
Considering the operational logic of the entire bionic octopus arm, if it were controlled entirely by the human brain, it would mean the brain had to control an "alien limb" that a human was completely unfamiliar with. This would very easily lead to "phantom limb" syndrome and mental disorders.
So, Mercer simply designed it using a method similar to Doctor Octopus's in the movie.
He stuffed a low-level AI, personally designed by Morning Star, into the octopus arm. The sole function of this AI was to convert the user's thoughts for controlling an arm into commands for the octopus arm via a built-in algorithm. This allowed the user to command the octopus arm with precise control, just as they would their own.
The process wouldn't create any strange sensations in the user's brain, as if they had actually grown an octopus arm. Instead, the operational feel was similar to controlling a Basilisk with a neural link, greatly reducing any sense of incongruity.
When not in use, the AI would bear the full mental load of the cyberware. Theoretically, this cyberware could be considered "external mechanical armor," but Mercer had adopted the same neural link method as other cyberware, reducing the latency to almost zero.
A single arm, powered by bioelectricity, could exert one ton of force.
This design ensured that he could normally power it purely with bioelectricity, just like Rebecca's Gorilla Arms, without needing frequent recharging. The only price was needing to eat and drink more to replenish energy; this was another piece of tech from this world.
Who knew how so much of the powerful cyberware in the world could be powered directly by human bioelectricity?
Was it scientific?
Mercer felt it was highly unscientific, but that was just how this world was.
When high-intensity use was required, a single mechanical arm could exert a maximum force of up to three tons. In situations that primarily required strength and the firing of electromagnetic weapons, it could draw power and energy from the advanced miniature batteries built into the arm.
These miniature batteries were a selfless contribution from Colonel Hansen; when Mercer mentioned he wanted to research a high-intensity electromagnetic weapon, Hansen had gone off somewhere and procured several Militech super-batteries. Mercer had shamelessly swiped two of them.
These batteries could be considered a product of this world's electromagnetic weapon tech. Just one was enough to keep Mercer's mechanical arm operating at full power for over five hours, allowing him to fire wantonly with almost no concern for the power level.
His octopus arm could be loaded with 10-20 sniper-type tungsten-tipped rounds, as well as 200 smart bullets for an L-69 Zhuo shotgun.
When the bullets ran out, it could rely solely on its power supply to fire a close-range laser weapon, capable of the terrifying feat of burning through a five-millimeter steel plate in 0.5 seconds at a range of 20 meters.
Furthermore, for daily work, the nimble mechanical hand incorporated the functions of a Zetatech external mechanical hand, allowing it to perform nano-cyberware surgery with precision. It also had a conversion function similar to a multi-tool hand.
Mercer had already completed the AI testing for this arm. All that was left was to install it on himself and test it out.
Last but not least was the development of gear and weapons.
In terms of gear, Mercer had developed two different styles of individual combat armor, tailored to the distinct personalities and combat styles typified by Rebecca and V.
That's right, he had already developed individual combat armor ready for live combat testing; two sets of it, no less!
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7100words
Bonus chapter @1000powerstones