The Creators: From Night City

Number of craftsman badges: 84

Jiang Bing was working hard at home. He was inspired by the complete intelligent defense system of Kangtao that he got from Christopher Miller's home some time ago.

He was very envious of the automatic search and firing capabilities of intelligent robots and intelligent drones.

Although the work was quite heavy, but with the parts of the two drones and some rubbing, Jiang Bing could at least build a flying one.

Although the weapon system was completely damaged, it did not affect Jiang Bing's plan at all.

He plans to convert the drone into a suicide electromagnetic pulse bomb.

The chip taken out from Kangtao's intelligent robot's head has been modified to ensure that the drone can automatically judge the battlefield situation after startup and dive towards the area with the most enemy armor. After reaching the position, what awaits the enemy is a devastating electromagnetic storm.

But it's easier said than done.

After all, drones are flying units with very sophisticated structures. After adding a large number of new components, they need to be debugged repeatedly to ensure flight stability.

There was a sudden knock on the door.

Jiang Bing was only wearing a small vest, revealing his muscles as strong as copper and iron. He put down the tools in his hand, turned his head and glanced at the screen.

David was standing at the door with a bag in his arms, looking depressed.

With doubts, Jiang Bing opened the door.

"Boss Sabul, do you desire power?"

David's first sentence almost made Jiang Bing fall down.

'No, I long for NZ,' Jiang Bing thought to himself.

Under the light, Jiang Bing discovered that David's face was covered with bruises, so severe that half of his face was swollen.

"Why do you ask."

David put down what he was holding.

In the bag was the Sian Westin that Gloria had previously taken from the cyberpsycho.

Gloria hasn't given this thing to Mann's team yet.

"I crave power now."

Jiang Bing signaled David to calm down.

"I kept thinking that if I just graduated from Arasaka, I would be able to make it in life. So I endured it in school and studied hard. I ignored my mother who was busy all day to pay for my tuition and was getting thinner and thinner."

David suddenly looked downcast. "Boss, do you think I'm not qualified to think about this now? After all, I have no money, no status, and I can't even fight. I have to suck my mother's blood every day just to attend that shitty Arasaka Academy."

Jiang Bing patted David's shoulder to comfort him.

"Knowledge is always useful, but there's really no chance of getting ahead by passing Arasaka Academy."

With Jiang Bing's affirmation, David suddenly gained a lot of courage and told Jiang Bing about his thoughts that had been suppressed for a long time.

"I want to work with you, Boss, and be a marginal walker. I don't want to stay in that school and be bullied by those brainless rich kids every day. I also don't want to see my mom wake up every night because of the pain of that low-quality prosthesis in her stomach."

"Sometimes I regret studying so hard. The more I learn, the more hopeless I become about the world."

"I understand. The top of Arasaka Tower is too high. Even if my mother's flesh and blood were burned to ashes, there would be no way to get me to the top of Arasaka Tower."

"There's no place for me up there!"

After saying this, David breathed a sigh of relief, as if releasing all the pressure he had been holding for a long time. He stared straight at Jiang Bing and said, "Boss, did you know that my mother has been secretly coughing up blood these past two days?"

Jiang Bing's expression turned serious. "It seems that there's something wrong with that second-hand prosthesis. I'll take her to the clinic for a detailed examination tomorrow."

"It's useless. You and I both know that this situation will always happen again unless a good prosthesis is replaced." David uttered these words in a flat tone.

"And good prosthetics require money, a lot of money."

"I want to work with you, Boss. I want to be an edgewalker. I want to make money."

Jiang Bing sat upright and said, "Do you know that becoming an edgewalker means that bloodshed and death may occur at any time?"

"I understand, I understand. If this cruel world requires bloodshed to survive, then let it bleed! Those high-ranking corporate dogs, those evil gang members, those politicians and wealthy people who sit in office and eat for nothing—they're fat and strong, and it's time to bleed."

David looked determined. He reached out and picked up the Sian Westin, saying, "Or, shed my blood! But don't hurt my mother anymore. She's already bled enough."

Jiang Bing fell silent. He stared at the bruised and battered boy in front of him, as if he had gotten to know this boy from Night City all over again.

After a long while, he finally said: "Welcome to the adult world."

Chapter 17: Added Sian Westin

The adult world is often not as beautiful as it seems to our underage selves, and it is basically not easy at all.

David lay on the prosthetic transformation operating table with his limbs hanging down, like a flattened toad.

The miniature bone saw roared and crawled madly on the spine, cutting out a groove suitable for the installation of the Swanwestin.

Even if you inhale an appropriate amount of anesthetic, the pain will only be relieved and will still be transmitted to the brain nerves.

In order to ensure the quality of the operation, David's nerves must remain active, so he is currently in a state of semi-anesthesia and semi-awakeness.

After all, Sian Westin needs to connect to the human nerves in order to simultaneously send microcurrents around the body, thereby achieving an acceleration effect.

However, the level of a prosthetic surgeon and the perfection of the prosthetic installation lies in the subsequent nerve connection.

This process requires a great deal of observation and patience from the prosthetic doctor. Fortunately, Jiang Bing possesses all these qualities, which are different from ordinary people.

The Sian Westin that David brought had been carefully tuned and disinfected, and was ready to be installed at any time.

Strictly speaking, Sianwestin is a complete system, consisting of a hardware prosthesis attached to the spine and a chip that stores the operating system.

It is true that it can achieve the effect of stopping time, but that is just an illusion caused by the accelerated overall reaction speed of the human body. Without a large number of supporting prosthetic modifications, it is difficult for weak limbs to keep up with the faster thinking. In addition, this state will also cause great pressure on the body.

Being in this kind of oppression for a long time will lead to a sense of disconnection between the mind and the body, which is also one of the causes of cyberpsychosis.

The centipede-shaped prosthesis was placed precisely where it should be, with the nano-fixation devices penetrating the flesh and blood, firmly nailed to the spine and ribs extending from above.

David subconsciously groaned in pain.

Fortunately, he has a good physique and high tolerance, which complements the machine carefully adjusted by Jiang Bing. All indicators displayed on the instrument are very good.

Jiang Bing looked at the boy who wanted to protect his mother at the risk of his life, thought it over again and again, and decided to help him.

After confirming that David was in a semi-comatose state, Jiang Bing did not start the nerve connection procedure, but took the scalpel beside him.

He wants to add some stuff to this prosthesis.

The scalpel slid across the palm of the hand with difficulty, and a stream of blood, bright red and as thick as mercury, oozed out from the flesh of the wound.

The air seemed to suddenly become hot, as if this was not blood, but burning magma and burning oil.

The number of craftsman badges in the system list is rapidly declining. These badges, which are essentially made of refined ether elements, are the currency issued by the Creator's Database.

That is to say, to a certain extent, it can really achieve "general equivalence".

As the cornerstone element of the world, this refined and extracted pure ether can basically be used by Jiang Bing at this stage.

Realize any of his ideas.

It might also be called the "Philosopher's Stone".

What Jiang Bing didn't know was that for machines, the blood from the "craftsman" was far more important than ether.

Blood, whether it is its symbolic meaning in mysticism or its practical significance to biological existence, has carried many concepts since its birth.

What's more, he has the blood of a "craftsman". Even though Jiang Bing's status is not that powerful now, the essence of existence is slightly different, and the manifestation of things is a world apart.

With it, machines are no longer ordinary, but are imbued with high-dimensional power, which is equivalent to obtaining the key to promotion.

Jiang Bing didn't understand any of this now. He was just following his intuition and carrying out the forging ritual that he had started on a whim.

Under the pressure, the blood mixed with ether dripped from the edge of the palm and fell on the Swanwestin on David's back, like a drop in the ocean, instantly blending into it.

Following his mysterious feeling, Jiang Bing suddenly got an epiphany: along with the blood, other things were also lost.

The second drop of blood fell, and intuition once again told me that the amount was enough.

Jiang Bing relaxed his palm, and the wound cut by the scalpel quickly stopped bleeding and gradually closed. He believed that it would recover as before soon.

The blood-stained Sian Westin looked normal on the outside, but inside it was undergoing earth-shaking changes.

Electricity flickered and ran in the cold circuits, the hard metal subtly deformed, the machine whispered, it was no longer cold, and began to gradually couple with David's body.

The temperature did not rise at all, but David, who was half awake, felt as if the prosthesis on his back had been forged red in a furnace, and then pressed against his spine and struck with an invisible hammer. The burning sensation almost penetrated his chest.

Then, Sian Westin seemed to suddenly come to life, like a centipede revived, stretching out its thousand legs and piercing deep into his flesh, piercing every nerve of his. The pain came suddenly, mixed with the burning sensation, as if directly casting Sian Westin into him.

The neural connection proceeded rapidly without any activation program. At the nanometer scale, the space between flesh and metal was filled with bright red color, like dripping blood.

After making sure there were no other problems, Jiang Bing encapsulated the spine with Swanwestin's signature external armor and completed the entire surgical procedure.

System prompt: Due to this forging behavior, your existence strength and composition strength have decreased slightly.

System prompt: [Apprentice Craftsman] Jiang Bing, you performed an extraordinary polishing. As a result of this action, your structural strength increased by 0.1. Please enter the system to view the specific value.

Jiang Bing had expected this. There was nothing commendable about this primitive, crude, and wasteful behavior. It was just a pile of materials. It was good enough to get positive feedback.

This was the first time Jiang Bing took the initiative to perform magic side forging, and it felt very magical.

Different from the previous technology side, which emphasizes rationality and precision, logic and materiality, the forging process of the magic side emphasizes intuition and imagination.

Emotions and symbols, one focusing on the objective and the other on the subjective, are indeed very novel.

Jiang Bing guessed that the magic side paid more attention to its own structural strength, while the technological side focused on the strength of existence. These two indicators indeed reflected one external and one internal.

With the experience just now, the goal of collecting 100 badges, passing through the "door" device, and opening up the magic side world has a greater weight in Jiang Bing's mind.

After all, for a qualified "craftsman", it is not a good thing to be biased in one subject.

The personal attribute panel is being listed for you.

Name: Jiang Bing

Qualification: [Apprentice Craftsman]

Class Level: 2 (57%)

Domicile: B33 plane origin planet (Earth)

Location: Earth, numbered HXXD-C2W33

Presence Strength: 2.2

Composition strength: 2.7

Creator Database Access Level: 1 (48%)

Number of craftsman badges: 73

Sure enough, as something flowed out along with the blood, Jiang Bing's own existence strength decreased by 0.1, and the composition strength should have also decreased by 0.1, but taking into account the feedback from this casting, in the end it neither increased nor decreased.

However, 11 craftsman badges were consumed. I hope that the performance of Sian Westin and David after being "polished" will be worthy of these sacrifices.

Half an hour later.

David finally regained control of his body from the chaos.

"Sigh~"

When he looked up, David could clearly feel the device attached to his spine.

Unlike the basic prosthetic modifications I had done before, this time there was no cold metallic sensation, nor was there any swelling caused by the spontaneous rejection of the flesh.

"woke up."

Jiang Bing put down the data board in his hand and greeted.

David stretched his body gently. "Boss, your skills are really amazing. Apart from a little pain at the beginning, I didn't feel any discomfort at all. It's like it grew directly from my back."

He threw the yellow Edgewalker jacket to David and motioned him to put it on.

After Gloria got Jinguji's clothes, she finally passed this coat, which had no other advantages except for its durability, to David.

"I added some stuff to the stuff you're carrying. It's definitely going to have benefits and no harm. Just to be on the safe side, if you feel okay, let's go test it."

David was like he had gotten a new toy and couldn't wait to try it.

In the open space outside the clinic, the two stood facing each other, dozens of meters apart.

"When you first start using this, you might not be used to it. Don't move too vigorously, and be careful not to bend your arms or legs. After the effect wears off, you might feel a strong sense of pressure in your body, which is normal."

Jiang Bing weighed the dirty tennis ball in his hand, with half a basket still at his feet.