Charles Bucks felt a cold sweat break out.
Was this guy suicidal?
Didn’t he know there were dozens of armed thugs in the basement?
That was a major Scavenger crew.
Their boss’s cyberware was high-end enough to get him a VIP seat at the Afterlife.
“Uh, brother, I only work with my established suppliers.
I’m not looking to branch out to other gangs right now…
but hey, since we met, it’s fate.
Down in Jig-Jig Street, there’s a guy named Fingers.
He buys absolutely anything.
Why don’t you try your luck there?” Charles didn’t want to offend a dangerous lunatic.
After all, you only live once, and this guy looked like he had a massive body count.
“Ha, fair enough.
I’ve always liked giving people a second chance—giving them another option in life.
Wait here.
We’ll be seeing each other again very soon, and we can talk then.” Arthur didn’t want to waste more words on Charles.
He turned around and walked out of the small clinic.
“Fucking hell, who do you think you are?
Demanding a supplier change the moment you walk in.
What a dumbass.” Once Arthur was gone, Charles muttered under his breath.
What kind of power could a guy walking around all by himself possibly have?
The crew in the basement even partnered with Maelstrom.
They regularly grabbed factory workers and nomads from the Northside Industrial District to chop them up.
Their supply chain was rock-solid.
Who did this guy think he was, trying to cut in?
As soon as Arthur stepped outside, he began taking inventory of his arsenal.
Raid-looting the Maelstrom warehouse had been a highly lucrative venture.
The guard had been a major lieutenant, so while other items were scarce, they had plenty of ammo, guns, and grenades.
According to his lore, Arthur was a master marksman.
But with Ruan Xian’s current stats of 2 Reflexes and 3 Cool, he was far from a deadshot.
To prepare for digesting the Sequence 6 Literature Enthusiast potion in the future, Ruan Xian decided to pull off a spectacular stunt.
In Cyberpunk, there was a special category of firearms that didn’t require manual aiming to hit their targets: smart weapons.
The best of them were probably the Yinglong and the Ba Xing Chong, both Kang Tao products.
They locked onto targets using Kiroshi optical scanners and smart link cyberware.
If you were a top-tier netrunner, your lock-on speed would be even faster.
The Yinglong used pistol ammo, while the Ba Xing Chong fired micro-missiles—officially called self-guided micro-projectiles.
In other words, if a netrunner was powerful enough, the gun didn’t matter, and the cyberware didn’t matter.
Only the bullet did.
The weapon components and cyberware were only there so non-netrunners could use their optical scanners to lock onto targets, and so netrunners could do it faster and more accurately.
Theoretically, if a netrunner’s computing power was high enough, they could guide the bullets to hit the target themselves without any assistance from weapon components or cyberware.
Of course, nobody normally did that.
Why waste precious RAM and processing power on guiding bullets when you could upload another quickhack instead?
Besides, cyberware and smart guns didn’t consume cyberdeck RAM.
But for Ruan Xian, none of this was an issue.
Within his territory, his computing power was limitless.
Pulling off a spectacular stunt to impress the High-Dimensional Observers was his top priority.
It would also help him digest his potion ahead of time and fulfill his dream of never missing a shot.
If the caliber matched, the bullet holes would look exactly the same.
Who cares what kind of bullet he fired? This story is hosted at g.com.
He just liked using a revolver to shoot smart bullets.
Who cares if people said that without smart-link cyberware and gun components, the fired bullets couldn’t track?
Who cares if they said smart bullets were too expensive?
It was none of their business.
In the game, cowboys with retro preferences still loved using revolvers.
Notably, there were no smart revolvers in the game.
“Holy shit, this gun doesn’t match Maelstrom’s aesthetic at all, but damn is it beautiful.” While sorting through the weapons, Ruan Xian found a gun with a completely different style.
It was kept carefully inside a gun case, looking like an antique collectible.
A Colt Python.
A handsome, rugged classic among revolvers.
First introduced in 1990, right around the divergence point of this world’s history, it was indeed a highly collectible piece.
It was beautifully maintained, looking brand new.
Its aesthetic was a perfect match for Arthur.
It seemed some gun collector’s prized possession had been hijacked by Maelstrom, but now that it was in Ruan Xian’s hands, it was his.
Consider this a little donation he “salvaged” from Maelstrom.
“.45 caliber.
Let’s see if we can fit these in.” Ruan Xian casually pulled a handful of Kang Tao Dian smart SMG rounds from the Spirit World.
To accommodate the miniaturized smart guidance components, these pistol-grade SMG rounds were slightly wider than standard pistol ammunition.
But they fit perfectly.
Arthur’s marksman persona was safe.
“Five Kang Tao Dians, ten boxes of ammo.
Looks like they looted a Kang Tao convoy and split the spoils.
The ammo is plenty for me.
I’ll find a shop to sell the guns.” Ruan Xian had zero interest in the cyberware and other raw goods in the warehouse.
Still, even for a fifteen-man warehouse crew, they had managed to hoard some good stuff, having killed and robbed plenty of people.
In Night City, the poor were merely renewable resources to be exploited by gangs, corporations, and the government alike.
As a future Sequence 0, Ruan Xian was highly displeased by this.
These were prime anchors; how could they be slaughtered so carelessly?
Ruan Xian tried teleporting bullets from the Spirit World directly into the cylinder.
It was difficult to do while moving, but when stationary, it was easy.
The bullets were small and teleported incredibly fast.
Using his Data Fortress to keep time, it took 0.15 seconds to teleport the spent casings away, and 0.15 seconds to teleport new bullets into the cylinder.
He could complete a reload and fire again in just 0.3 seconds.
Ruan Xian then tried teleporting fragmentation grenades.
Maelstrom didn’t have many of these—only two boxes, about twenty-four in total.
But it didn’t matter; if he ran out, he would just go “salvage” some more from Maelstrom.
It took about 0.2 seconds for a grenade to appear in his hand.
If he had to pull the pin and throw it, the detonation would be too slow.
If his opponent had a Sandevistan, they could easily throw it back at him.
Ruan Xian planned to throw them directly and detonate them using hacking methods, or simply shoot them out of the air.
If the enemy wanted to throw them back, they could go ahead—the pin hadn’t been pulled anyway.
This made throwing them much faster.
“All combat preparations are complete.
Witness the slaughter.” The Black Shaman, Arthur, was online.
Who was the one lurking in the dark now?
About a hundred meters behind the small clinic, down another alleyway, stood a shop with a “Open 24 Hours” sign.
Ordinary people knew better than to enter this hellhole.
Arthur (Ruan Xian) walked straight through the front door.
He immediately uploaded a Ping to the first Scavenger he saw.
Perhaps because it had been too long since anyone had simply walked in, the Scavenger grunt looked a bit confused.
“Hey, this shop looks pretty decent,” Arthur greeted him, his voice deep and magnetic.
“Huh?
Yeah, I guess,” the Scavenger replied with a thick Eastern European accent, though his hand instinctively drifted toward his cheap, practical Copperhead assault rifle.
He was still paying off the gang loan for that gun.
“Glad to see an idiot from the countryside.
You remind me of the last horse’s ass I met, ha,” Arthur said, finding the idiot somewhat amusing and deciding to toy with him first.
“Fuck you!
You think you’re funny, motherfucker?
I’m gonna flatline you!” Well, the Scavenger had finally caught on.
He drew his gun, aiming to turn this loudmouthed bastard into a sieve.
“Son, I’ve met mushrooms with more brains than you,” Arthur said, dropping into a classic cowboy quick-draw stance.
“I’ll fucking…” The Scavenger didn’t want to lose the verbal sparring match.
Arthur cut him off.
“And they didn’t smell as bad.”
The Scavenger stopped thinking and pulled the trigger, determined to empty his entire magazine and blow this arrogant prick to pieces, even if he didn’t make a single Eddie off his corpse today.
*BANG.*
Arthur struck a classic cowboy shooting pose.
The bullet struck the Scavenger dead center between his eyes.
Striking such a cool pose was mainly for show.
Under the perfect lock-on of the Data Fortress, the bullet had guided itself into the Scavenger’s forehead.
Theoretically, Arthur could have shot backward and still hit him right between the eyes.
Gun Fu!
“Holy shit, Micah is dead!
Everyone, get over here!
Grab your guns!” The Scavenger named Micah was connected to the gang’s local subnet, and his death instantly alerted everyone in the basement.
Normally, if he were going for a stealth assassination, Ruan Xian could have uploaded Synapse Burnout to everyone on the subnet simultaneously, wiping out the connected idiots in an instant without firing a single shot or making a sound.
It would have been the perfect stealth run—zero witnesses.
But the Arthur Morgan alter ego was meant to be wild, aggressive, and supernatural.
He needed to rapidly build his Street Cred and wait for corporations or fixers looking for trouble to knock on his door.
Commander Shepard’s experiences had proven that Paragon and Renegade options were equally effective at persuasion, and they both farmed reputation just the same.
“What the fuck?
I only see one guy.”
“Me too.
Is he crazy?
Coming here alone to cause trouble.”
“Shut the fuck up!
Micah is dead!
Kill him, quick!”
The Scavengers rushing out were stunned.
A tall, handsome man wearing a cowboy hat stood right at the main entrance, not even attempting to take cover.
“Damn, must be a brain-dead cyberpsycho playing vigilante cowboy.” The Scavengers didn’t understand, but they respected his death wish.
They prepared to shoot this arrogant bastard for ten straight minutes to ensure his corpse was stuffed with lead.
“You boys…
chose the wrong opponent.” Arthur tipped his cowboy hat with the barrel of his Colt Python.
He uploaded his Kiroshi ocular recordings to his Data Fortress, planning to edit them into a braindance.
He also wanted to see if he could make some money off this; a 600,000-Eddie debt was a lot of pressure.