Cyberpunk: Starting in 2071

Chapter 26 The First Head-on Confrontation!
The members of the Chaotic Blade Society stopped about ten meters away and used their cars as cover.

At this point, the pickup truck, which was the main target of attention, had been riddled with holes by the three-round bursts of armor-piercing bullets from the genuine rifles in the hands of Anzu and Lucy.

But apart from the member of the Chaotic Knife Gang who was controlling the machine gun in the back of the pickup truck, the only other person was the driver of the pickup truck, who was injured and took refuge in the back of the vehicle.

Everyone else is still unharmed.

Because the grenade Mercer threw was blown back a long distance by the strong wind, it only flew four or five meters before exploding, and he almost blew himself up.

The old cowboy fared better; his unexpectedly strong arm allowed him to throw a grenade in front of a car, but it was blocked by the bulletproof vehicle, and the fragmentation grenade failed to penetrate the car and cause effective damage.

"Fire! Fire!"

The members of the Chaotic Blade Society roared and quickly organized a counterattack, firing their submachine guns, kinetic assault rifles, and even shotguns at a distance.

Chaos reigned outside, with gunfire flashing in the dim dust. Fortunately, Kyoko had already spotted the other side through her telescope.

The prosthetic eye locked onto the opponent's signal and outlined the opponent's body, allowing even a group of shooting novices to determine the opponent's location under such circumstances.

Mercer did not use the Masamune, but instead chose to use his own Humble Pistol.

As it turned out, his choice was correct.

Although the Kenshin pistol could not provide suppressive fire, the tungsten-tipped bullet, after a second of charging, pierced through two bulletproof car windows with a sharp crack and struck a member of the Chaotic Blade Society directly in the head.

"Damn! I've been shot!"

"Damn, he survived a bullet to the head?"

Mercer cursed. The dust storm not only affected visibility, but also caused damned radioactive dust to interfere with network signals in the air.

He had been trying to hack in from the beginning, but failed several times due to network fluctuations that caused him to lose connection.

"Most of these lunatics have modified their bones with metal parts. The skull is the easiest to thicken. If you're not confident, try aiming at the body!"
They don't have the money for heavy armor and biological organs!

Cassidy said loudly.

[Lucy: They have bulletproof vests, watch out! Mercer, I see them starting to surround the houses! Someone's cocking a grenade!]

[Apricot: I'm suppressing it!]

[Lucy: Earth! How much longer?!]

[ Tetsuya Daichi: Here we come! ! 】

"Watch out! A pickup truck is coming from the other side!"

Amidst the chaos, someone was shouting, while behind the house, a pickup truck sped out of the sandstorm, with the earth seemingly driving the vehicle.

Lyon, in the truck bed, strained to keep his eyes open and held onto the light machine gun, providing full flank fire support—this time he had done a great job!

Because all the members of the Chaotic Blade Society were hiding behind the car, facing the gun line from the front of the building, and Tetsuya Daichi drove out from the side, they had nowhere to hide.

If you move to the side, you'll expose your position to Mercer and the others in front of you. If you don't change position, you'll face the light machine gun fire head-on!
"Damn it! Take care of that pickup truck! Hurry up!"

Someone shouted in a chaotic manner, but it was to no avail for the time being.

In the game, the enemies are armed with all sorts of high-end weapons, such as the S.A.W.S ...

But in the real world, these scumbags who make money by robbing and kidnapping in the wild don't have such good prosthetic bodies to use.

However, they are not without heavy firepower.

"Damn it, I'm going to give him a good thrashing!"

A member of the Chaotic Blade Society, cursing and swearing, climbed into the car and actually pulled out a single-soldier rocket launcher from the back!

During the brief reload of the light machine gun, he climbed out of the car, picked up the rocket launcher, and aimed it at the pickup truck on the ground.

However, before he could fire, two spinning tungsten-tipped bullets pierced his neck—Mercer's humility still gleamed with an electromagnetic glow.

The tungsten-tipped bullet struck the man's neck, and after passing through, it even caused the man's whole body to tremble from the electric shock. The rocket launcher was accidentally triggered and shot directly into the air, exploding in some unknown open space.

"Well done, Mercer!"

Lyon roared, but his movements as he reloaded the light machine gun were still not very skillful.

"No way! We'll be worn down outside! Charge into the room! Charge in and fight!"

Members of the Chaotic Blade Society shouted and tried to rush in. Mercer tried to stop them, but several grenades spun and landed near the door, blasting him so badly that he couldn't even lift his head.

Lucy and Anzu on the second floor could still fire, but the members of the Chaotic Blade Society were suppressing them with fire as they ran, so they could only use their faith-based shooting to get a rough shot and couldn't guarantee accuracy at all.

Lyon finally reloaded his gun and opened fire again, while the members of the Chaotic Blade Society had already started driving their vehicles and were heading straight for the house.

"Old cowboy, back off!" Mercer remained extremely calm, showing no sign of panic. He flipped over and retreated directly towards the stairwell.

Cassidy retreated directly to the kitchen, using the bar counter as cover: "You can pinch a grenade."

"good idea!"

Mercer did as instructed. The moment the members of the Chaotic Blade Society kicked open the door, smashed the glass, and entered, their attention drawn to Cassidy in the kitchen, a grenade from the stairs rolled to the doorway.

"Grenade!"

The members of the Chaotic Blade Society screamed in terror, but Mercer had already pinched the grenade a second in advance, so it triggered much faster than he had imagined!
"boom!"

The two members of the Chaotic Blade Gang were blown to shreds by the fragmentation grenade, and although they weren't dead yet, they were still groaning in pain.

But the remaining three members of the Chaotic Blade Society charged in carrying Cassidy's bullets—and only these three remained.

"Damn it! I'm going to skin you alive!"

The leader of the Chaotic Blade gang roared and picked up a shotgun, spraying bullets wildly at Mercer's position, while the two behind him used their modified rifles, whose original designs were unrecognizable, to fire indiscriminately into the kitchen.

However, Mercer gave a cold laugh.

Enter the house?

Then you won't have that damn radioactive dust interfering with your network signal!
He squinted, and the moment he poked his head out, his prosthetic eye flashed with golden light, quickly capturing and locating the other party's subnet, and then sending the program.

The moment the fast-cracking program is sent to the target subnet, the program, which symbolizes certain death, begins loading.

The quick cracking program doesn't even require Mercer to hack into the target's subnet first; he only needs to locate the target's signal and then send the program.

The quick cracking program itself includes an "icebreaker" program to break into the target's subnet and ICE. The moment the target's subnet and ICE are breached by the program, it means that the virus has also been successfully uploaded.

Although it is much slower than hacking into the other party's subnet first and then uploading the virus, because the program has to handle the work of hacking into the subnet and uploading the virus itself first.

However, the advantage of this quick crack is that if the stored quick crack is used to deal with the enemy, Mercer does not need to do anything else.

Once the program is executed with a single thought, the rest is up to him to provide the brain's computing power for the program to run.

While simultaneously using his brainpower to run three programs to crack the other party's network, he even had the spare capacity to observe their situation.

The three members of the Chaotic Blade Society had already started shouting.

"There's a hacker!"

"Ah! Ahhh!"

"Disconnect from the internet! Disconnect now!"

Six rapid cracks were uploaded simultaneously, one after another. First, the prosthetic body malfunctioned, cutting off their mobility, and then the synapses melted and burned their heads.

Mercer let out a long sigh of relief, peered out for a moment, and after confirming that the heads of the members of the Chaotic Blade Society were completely roasted, he leaned out and raised his gun, aiming it directly at a member of the Chaotic Blade Society who had been blown to the ground by a grenade.

This time, Mercer didn't charge up; instead, he briefly pressed the trigger. The power of the two-shot tungsten-tipped bullets, fired without charging, was significantly reduced, but it was still enough to finish off an enemy at close range.

The tungsten-tipped bullet flew out, and the man screamed in agony before losing all life.

With such a strong network signal, are you still trying to play dead? Do you really think my prosthetic eye is just for show?

Mercer: A beautiful battle, cleaning up the battlefield.

[Lucy: You're not hurt, are you?]

[Earth: Lyon has been shot!]

[Leon: I'm fine. I was lucky; I took a bullet to the shoulder, but it went through and didn't hit the bone.]

Cassidy: I ​​just saw you were bleeding, Mercer. Check yourself.

Mercer looked down and only then did he feel the pain—his adrenaline had been so high that he hadn't felt any injury at all.

[Mercer: I don't see any serious injuries. He must have been hit by a grenade.]

[Apricot: We have a sewing kit and medicine in our individual survival kits. I'll go down and get them for you right away!]

[Tetsuya Daichi: No need, I have a bag in my pickup truck, I'll get it later.]

Mercer kicked a corpse with its head on fire, then bent down with disgust to grab its leg and move it outside: "If you're not injured, why don't you lend a hand? How did this bunch of thugs find their way here?"

He seemed to be just asking casually.

But his eyes, unintentionally, were carefully scrutinizing Cassidy.

(End of this chapter)