The system was the core source of his absolute confidence in his own combat strength.
An intelligence attribute of +5 had already brought him close to the limits of an ordinary person.
Combined with the attribute points he had accumulated over the years, his current status panel was quite impressive.
[body: 11, intelligence: 10, reflexes: 12, Tech: 8, cool: 10]
And this was without accounting for cyberware.
When paired with the perks he had acquired, his actual combat capability and hacking skills were terrifying.
In the words of Smasher, Rain was a real meat grinder.
While body and reflexes at 11 and 12 might not seem world-shaking, these were base stats.
With cyberware, his body could reach 16 to 18, and his reflexes hit a solid 17.
To put that in perspective, Smasher’s body was only 18, even with all his cyberware.
He had two perks in the body category: [Crushing Might] and [Valiant Body].
He had only one perk in intelligence, but that single perk gave him enough confidence to face attacks from rogue AIs and ensure he remained undefeated on the net.
[No Place to Stand]
The effect was simple and brutal, just like its name.
Upon receiving a fatal attack, it would immediately sever the network connection, bypassing all obstacles regardless of the conditions.
In a flash, he would leave Cyberspace and vanish from every layer of the digital world.
Unless he chose to reconnect, no one could find his presence on the net.
In other words, he was pulling the plug—and pulling it on every networked device on his body.
Want to paralyze or attack him?
You’d have to find his network interface first!
He hadn’t acquired any perks or skills in Tech yet, but Rain wasn’t in a hurry.
Tech here was a bit different from the 2077 game; it didn’t involve cyberware capacity or installation, but focused more on crafting and manufacturing.
In the cool category, he had activated the perk [Unshakable Countenance].
Once active, it kept his mood stable and calm for long periods.
He had obtained it during a purge operation, and the process of acquiring it had been far from pleasant.
The two body perks were straightforward.
[Crushing Might] increased all close-quarters physical damage by 20% and granted a higher chance to stun enemies.
[Valiant Body] ensured that wounds did not affect his performance.
Furthermore, for every 10% drop in health, his attack power increased by 5% and his health regeneration rate increased by 3%.
He had three perks in reflexes: [Sword Master], [Speed Demon], and [Neural Pressure].
The effects were simple.
In practice, Rain found it also gave him an intuitive grasp of swordsmanship, making him a true master of the blade.
The second boosted his movement speed by 30%, with an additional 5% temporary increase for every enemy he took down.
The last one was the simplest and usually went unused: it triggered a [Time Dilation] state during moments of life-threatening crisis.
This was the perk Rain had been trying to master.
He hoped to turn this passive ability into an active one.
Perks could indeed be upgraded, but the system didn’t explicitly state how, nor did it show a progress bar.
He only discovered this hidden mechanic because the prolonged high pressure, combined with the corporate intrigue and brutal missions, had caused [Unshakable Countenance] to level up.
The original effect of that perk had merely been to keep his facial expressions from changing.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t achieved that feat with his other perks yet, and there was no telling when he would.
Honestly, he was curious to see what would happen if [Neural Pressure] was combined with a Sandevistan.
He currently had 4,653 points remaining.
A significant portion of those had been provided by rogue AIs, as he would occasionally venture into the Old Net to mine data.
Mining was a major part of the current net landscape.
Corporations usually trained specialized employees for these operations—typically orphans or the offspring of Arasaka Corporation employees who volunteered them.
Usually, these children were just there to gain experience before being transferred to the Network Security Division for promotion.
But there was one exception…
Lucy.
However, Lucy’s real name wasn’t Lucy, but Lucyna.
Her parents were both Arasaka employees of Polish and Japanese descent.
Upon discovering their daughter’s talent for hacking and sensing her dissatisfaction with Arasaka, they had—out of pure loyalty to the company—sent Lucy straight into the Mining Department…
Regarding such behavior, Rain could only say that the corporation’s brainwashing was far too effective.
At the very least, he could never do such a thing.
As for rogue AIs…
he couldn’t beat them on his own.
But with Arasaka’s massive computing power and cutting-edge equipment backing him, he was essentially a ‘pay-to-win’ player.
After returning home, Rain didn’t look for more work.
Instead, he went straight to his netrunning room.
After changing into his netrunning suit and connecting to the chair, he lay down and put on his braindance headset.
After a hard day’s work, it was time for some personal leisure.
For one, they lacked privacy and security; for another, he didn’t just use braindances for relaxation.
As for braindances…
they were undeniably a good thing, serving as spiritual solace for many in the cyberpunk world.
A braindance recorded every emotion and sensation of the original participant.
The user only had to load it to experience a different life with almost total realism; the brain would even perceive it as a personal memory.
However, this often led to mental illness.
The massive disparity between reality and the virtual world was hard for many to accept, especially those living at the bottom of society.
But for Rain, it didn’t have much of an impact; it was just a spice of life.
The braindances he occasionally watched were…
well, those who know, know.
He hadn’t avoided the Blackwall braindances of cyberpsychotics either.
After watching a few, he chose to discard them unless he was certain the content had been edited to remove the parts that transmitted cyberpsychotic ideation.
As for those unedited raw tapes sought out for extreme stimulation…
they were indeed thrilling, but they could easily worsen cyberpsychosis symptoms or even induce them in those who were previously healthy.
As someone who valued his life, Rain had no intention of doing that.
Two hours after finishing his braindance, Rain used the time to enter Cyberspace.
Cyberspace, the region netrunners enter during deep dives, was a world composed entirely of data.
One could see the massive nodes of various corporations and some custom-built network nodes.
But there was no longer a single, super-massive network server connecting everything.
The reason for this…
was the god of netrunners from decades ago, Bartmoss.
That legendary figure had an intelligence stat of 20 in the lore.
To put that in perspective, even with Smasher’s level of modification, his body only reached 18.
One could imagine how terrifying Bartmoss was.
What he did…
was drag the whole world down with him that year, releasing a massive virus that spread across the entire net, directly causing the collapse of the Old Net and the rebellion of the AIs.
It was in the aftermath that the Blackwall was born, and Netwatch was successfully established, growing stronger by the day.
As for Rain’s purpose here…
it was naturally to train his hacking skills.
In this world, he couldn’t feel safe leaving his network security to others; otherwise, he wouldn’t even know when he’d been compromised.