The Creators: From Night City

There are many large barrels here, all of which are used to store fresh water, and half of them are empty.

After unloading the car, Falco picked up a bucket of fresh water, went next door, and poured it into the refrigerator used to freeze ice cubes.

In the desert, this thing is the most popular, beer, drinks with ice cubes are undoubtedly a treat.

David also came into the room, skillfully took out two trays of ice, filled the ice bucket in his hand, and prepared to go out.

Even though Falco was old and past the stage of romance, he couldn't help but want to tease him.

"David, helping Lucy with her work again."

After a month of thick-skinned training, David was already accustomed to this level of ridicule.

"Yeah, she's on her day off today, so she happened to be going into cyberspace to do some work. I happened to be free, so I decided to help her out."

In addition to the need for ice for beer and other beverages, hackers have a higher demand for ice cubes.

When they conduct deep dives into the Internet, in order to avoid organ failure caused by excessive data exchange and increased body temperature, hackers have to soak in ice water to cool down during the dive.

Of course, there are better and more professional hacker deep dive warehouses.

This device filled with special coolant not only has better heat dissipation effect, but also will not melt after a period of time like ice cubes, requiring constant addition of ice cubes.

However, something so useful is naturally very expensive.

Therefore, bathtub with ice cubes is the first choice of most hackers.

David carried the ice bucket all the way deeper into the tunnel, pushed open the door next to the network monitoring room, and walked in.

A large number of cables extended from the next room to here. There was a bathtub in the corner of the room, and Lucy was half leaning and half lying in the bathtub.

Lucy was holding the network access line at this moment, but she didn't connect it. Instead, her artificial eyes flashed as she processed the information.

David will step forward and empty the last bucket of ice into the bathtub.

Lucy's snow-white body was faintly visible in the rippling water.

From a certain perspective, the world's sexual concepts cannot be described as open.

After ending the half-leaning, half-lying position, Lucy took a deep breath and immersed her entire upper body outside the water into the ice water.

Of course, I wasn't wearing anything.

Completely ignoring David standing beside him, he took in the beautiful scenery.

Or maybe it was intentional.

To deflect the awkwardness, David brought up the topic and asked, "Were you looking at tickets to the moon again?"

No matter how many times she tried it, Lucy would never get used to the ice water.

She tilted her head back, trying to keep the icy water away from her chin as much as possible, even though this exposed a large area of ​​white, with two round and plump hills right in the middle of the water line.

Hide half, reveal half.

David felt a little thirsty.

“I’m almost there.”

Lucy's answer made David feel a little insincere. "Then your wish will come true. Congratulations, Lucy."

"Hmm~"

Lucy plugged in the access cable and seemed to have entered the cybernet, which caused her response to be tainted with a hint of vague uncertainty.

Coming out of the room, the young man, who was just beginning to fall in love, felt inexplicably lost.

Rebecca led Haley and ran hurriedly, stopping when they passed David.

"David, have you seen Mann?"

Hayley followed up, "Mr. Sable wants to see him."

David forced a smile. "Mann should be on duty at the tunnel entrance."

The two people, one big and one small, ran towards the tunnel entrance in a hurry.

David walked silently deeper into the tunnel. He knew that the boss should not be working at this time, so he wanted to consult some questions from the boss who he thought was omnipotent.

About the moon, and life advice.

Passing the lounge area and restaurant, David stopped in front of a door, waiting for the camera to scan.

This door was built on the original landslide site. Nearly half of the rocks and reinforced concrete had been removed, and a large amount of scaffolding and steel structures had been reinforced to form a fairly spacious passage.

David knew that there were eight embedded automatic machine gun bunkers surrounding the passage, as well as a large number of unactivated induction mines. In the dark corners, there were also a large number of combat robots produced by the boss.

This robot has a simple appearance, is only half a person's height, is shaped like a round trash can, and moves on four wheels. Its firepower is extremely insane.

David watched Jiang Bing stuff four guns into the robot's round body.

So even though he had entered the permissions, he still didn't dare to rush in and waited patiently for the scan to be completed.

Walking through the corridor, I found that the originally dim space had been installed with a large number of lighting fixtures, and the entire space was as bright as day.

Despite having seen it many times, David was still captivated by the device in the distance.

This place is no longer as empty as it was before.

The ground not far away was paved with some kind of steel, forming a circle. In the center was a cylindrical platform with a diameter of about three meters. Two rotatable circular tracks, one horizontal and one vertical, were intertwined and embedded on the platform serving as the base. A large amount of unknown metal wire was wrapped around the two tracks.

The outermost edge of the platform was filled with metal pillars as thick as arms, like a roofless cage, imprisoning the two circular tracks inside.

Dense cables extended from this strange device and spread in all directions, but the other ends of the cables were not connected to any device and were just placed casually on the ground.

The whole installation gives people a feeling of science fiction and mystery.

Although it has not been started yet, it just lies there silently, and its unique shape exudes an endless sense of presence.

"I really can't guess what the boss built this thing for."

When David found Jiang Bing in his workshop, he was examining Dolio.

In Jiang Bing's opinion, such behavior can be considered as a rest.

Dolio does not have too many prosthetics installed. Her unusually strong physique is entirely due to the large amount of hormone injections she received over a long period of time. This is also the main reason why her face tends to be masculine.

This situation is not very common among athletes. Most athletes are trained from a young age and take large amounts of hormone drugs during their developmental period to accelerate their body growth.

Most of the time, special prosthetic modifications are required in conjunction with arduous training.

No matter what sport an athlete plays, reaching the top is a matter of both talent and financial resources.

This has led to the fact that the top sports stars are basically controlled by the sports club consortiums they belong to. Only consortiums of a certain size can train the world's top athletes, and the high training costs make this no exception.

However, many children from poor families still pin their hopes on this to change their destiny. They take large amounts of various cheap hormone drugs from a very young age, try every means to raise money to install the corresponding primary prostheses, and then go to various underground competitions or club trials, hoping that one day they will be selected, become a professional athlete in one step, and step onto the official field.

Ironically, the effects of these modifications and hormonal drugs on the body are permanent.

This is just like in the feudal dynasty when poor families wanted to enter the palace to become eunuchs and seek wealth and status, but the prior step of castration also required a considerable amount of money, so many poor families would choose to castrate themselves.

However, only a small number of people can enter the palace, and the rest can only continue to live a more difficult life with their crippled bodies.

However, this is not the case for Dolio. She was born into a sports family. Her parents are both famous athletes. They have given her strict and scientific training since she was a child.

The good family atmosphere and conditions ensure that as long as she wants, she can definitely follow her parents' path and at least become an excellent athlete.

But Dolio chose to give up.

Her father brought her mother and her to Night City for a sports meet held there. After the sports meet, her father discovered by chance that he could earn much more prize money by boxing in the Animal Gang's underground boxing match than from the competition, so he decided to join the underground boxing match.

As a top athlete, he was basically invincible in this kind of competition, and the family lived a comfortable life for a period of time.

The good times didn't last long. After a boxing match, her father was accidentally killed in a fight between the Voodoo Gang and the Animal Gang.

Hatred drove her to seek revenge against them, which was also the trigger for her to become an Edgewalker.

Gloria told Jiang Bing all these things, but Jiang Bing was not surprised, and even felt a little numb about it.

This kind of thing happens all the time in Night City, and Dolio's tragic experience is just a microcosm of thousands of tragedies.

This is not a simple problem that can be avoided by simply eliminating the Animal Gang or the Voodoo Gang. There is only one way to completely prevent such incidents, and Jiang Bing knows this very well.

Gloria knew so much because she was determined to become an excellent middleman in Night City.

Therefore, she has been actively building good relationships with the members of Mann's team. After all, excellent middlemen have several regular cooperative edgewalker teams under their command.

It's just that the new middleman who has just started her career doesn't have that much business yet and can't afford to support a team as large as Mann's, but that doesn't stop her from laying the groundwork first.

Perhaps it was because Gloria's experience was very similar to Dolio's father's, perhaps it was because they both played the role of "mother", or perhaps it was because their personalities were very similar. In Mann's team, their relationship developed the fastest. A month of spending time together made them talk about almost everything, and Dolio's sad past mentioned above was proof of this.

Chapter 27: A middleman looking for work

Although Mrs. Martinez's work as a go-between has not been very successful, she is making rapid progress.

At the very least, she has learned a trait that successful middlemen possess.

Organize and plan the resources around you and make full use of them.

With her understanding of Jiang Bing, Mrs. Martinez successfully facilitated a happy ending for everyone.

The members of Mann's team received regular prosthetic maintenance and low-cost prosthetic modification benefits, while Jiang Bing got a rare opportunity to relax during the boring casting process.

Mrs. Martinez received praise from everyone.

At this moment, Mrs. Martinez’s “benevolent policy” is being implemented.

Dolio's body does not have too many prosthetic implants. Apart from basic subcutaneous armor and combat components such as ballistic co-processors, the extent of her body modification is not significant.

Influenced by her parents, she is also more conservative when it comes to installing prosthetics.

On the contrary, her physical strength is far beyond that of ordinary people. It can be seen that the strict physical training since childhood has laid a good foundation for her.

However, when she encounters a prosthetic body that is highly compatible with her and can significantly enhance her overall combat effectiveness, she certainly won't just stand by and watch indifferently.

When Jiang Bing was sorting out the prosthetic bodies he had saved earlier, he found a blood circulation pump produced by a body quality company that was very suitable for Dolio.

This type of prosthesis, which is implanted in the internal circulatory system and has a medical orientation, can significantly enhance blood circulation and blood oxygen exchange during combat, thereby improving overall physical fitness.

When injured, it can also regulate blood flow rate and reduce blood loss. There is a preset space inside the pump body, which can be used to inject stimulants or therapeutic drugs in advance, and they will be directly injected into the blood after active stimulation.

Compared with in vitro injection, it is more concealed, timely and efficient.

Faced with this prosthetic implant that could significantly increase combat power (mainly life-saving ability), Dolio didn't think much about it and nodded in agreement on the spot.

This time, the purpose was to conduct routine operation checks on the implanted blood circulation pump, and at the same time, to perform some simple maintenance on the rest of her body.

As an entertainment activity during breaks, Jiang Bing basically doesn't charge for it, and sometimes he even adds some small accessories.

Of course, Jiang Bing also took advantage of this opportunity to exploit Team Mann's weaknesses, gaining a wealth of new prosthetic knowledge he hadn't previously encountered. Most of this knowledge involved hacker-related prosthetic devices, generously contributed by Qiwei and Lucy.

After all, black clinics can’t even attract fringe walkers, let alone the even rarer hackers.

As for the scavengers, those who can do this job are already poor enough, so don't make things difficult for them.

When David approached, the maintenance was already completed. Dolio and Gloria were chatting, and Jiang Bing was packing up his tools.

His mother was present, so David didn't dare to ask openly. He could only sneak up on Jiang Bing and try to pull him into a dark place to negotiate.

But before he could open his mouth, Mann's signature deep voice sounded from behind him.

"Mr. Sabul, I heard from Rebecca that you have something to ask me."

After a month of eating sand in the desert, Mann remained energetic.

"It's really not me this time. It's Gloria who wants to see you about something." Jiang Bing replied.

Mrs. Martinez didn't need to speak. Dolio, who was familiar with the matter, spoke first: "Gloria wants us to go back to Night City and talk to her old friends at City Hall to discuss some matters in person."

Mrs. Martinez tried hard to imitate the middleman's style in a video she found online.

"Here's the situation, Mann. When I was working on the City Hall Medical Team, I knew a high-ranking NCPD official. He has stolen goods from the City Hall warehouse, and I want you to inspect them on-site."

Hiring edgewalkers to inspect the goods in person, of course, usually stolen goods that cannot be seen in the light of day, is a very common thing in Night City.

"The cargo is a batch of smuggled generators confiscated from customs, the Petrochemical Vortex 400. The pay for this job is 5000 Euros, but the commission will still be paid."

Gloria gave a very normal market price.

Mann agreed after a brief consideration. He had done this many times before. Since it did not involve any transactions and he was only responsible for inspecting the goods, this kind of task was basically not dangerous.

Sometimes sellers will even secretly give marginal walkers some benefits in order to get them to say a few good words to their employers!

After providing the contact information, meeting time and address, and arranging everything related to the task, Gloria finally took the first step towards becoming a successful middleman.

This time, the work was organized by her alone, and Jiang Bing only provided a little help.