"Whoa—fuck!"
Li Pan curled himself into a ball as he plummeted from the sky. Luckily, this was in the rich districts of Kiyosu, where the ground wasn't steel and concrete but instead a private park filled with towering trees.
He crashed headlong into the forest, tumbling and smashing through trunks, branches whipping and battering him the whole way down. Even with his Grade-4 body, second-transformation cultivation, and a reinforced formal suit, the impact left him dizzy and broken, blood streaming from his nose and mouth. For a moment, he couldn't even get up.
"Dammit—Rama! Pull back! Eighteen! …Eighteen!"
No response. The Fuxi implant showed total disconnection. Clearly, someone had deployed large-scale ECM across the area, blanketing all network signals. With the public safety net down these past few days, anyone could pull full-spectrum jamming now.
"Huff… huff…"
Crack!
"Aaagh! Fuck—huff… huff…"
The pain was excruciating—but pain meant he was alive. He forced his twisted limbs and fractured ribs back into place, mashed torn muscle together with his hands, and activated his Nine Yin internal arts for self-repair.
Against all odds, the fall hadn't killed him. With Nine Yin Body Refinement burning through his reserves, he clawed his way back from death's edge. His qi converted rapidly into blood, fueling flesh regeneration and knitting bone. For every drop of blood he'd lost, his body forced out more. Every broken rib grew back stronger.
But the price was hunger. A gnawing, bottomless hunger. At that moment, even a plate of writhing maggots would've looked like a feast. Damn—if he'd known today was going to be like this, he wouldn't have burned so much protein last night…
The red-robed woman stood silently by throughout his ordeal, face obscured by hair. Watching—or maybe just standing with her back turned. Hard to tell.
Half an hour later, Li Pan finally staggered upright, drenched in sweat, stomach clawing at him with hunger pangs.
This looked like a private park. In the distance, his company hovercar lay in flames, wreckage scattered across acres of ruined trees. Just the compensation for the damage here could bankrupt him.
The red woman suddenly lifted a hand, pointing toward the wreckage.
Li Pan wiped blood from his face, scaled a tree, and scanned in that direction. Whoever ambushed him would be searching the crash site too.
Was it the Hashiba Clan?
It didn't feel like something Tōdō orchestrated—if not for the cursed "Hairband" incident, they'd probably still be sipping tea in the pavilion. By normal corporate-hosting routine, he'd have been offered dinner, sake, maybe a bath and "special services" after negotiations. Standard business courtesy.
But the attackers had used optical laser sights and concentrated beam cannons—silent, no warning. Which meant their hackers hadn't breached Orochi.18's ICE or found the hovercar's signal. They hadn't even known who was aboard. More likely, it was a dedicated anti-air infantry squad keeping visual watch. Saw a target, fired on it.
Could it really be just bad luck—stumbling into Akainu's anti-air zone?
No matter. He hadn't grabbed the compensation from Tōdō, and the sealed case holding the Hairband was still on the ship. The containers were blast-resistant; the contents should be intact. First recover the cargo, then get out of the ECM zone.
He drew the Black Kite and slipped into the forest. His old special-ops training came back—night terrain exercises, survival drills, ambush evasion. He might have been just another debt-bound military student back then, cannon fodder for the fleet, but he'd learned how not to die.
At least the enemy's overzealous jamming disabled drones and auto-turrets. That left infantry mines as the only concern.
And he had a cheat—the red-robed woman.
She flickered to a treetop, pointing at an empty patch of woods.
Li Pan shifted, circled, and peeked carefully. To the naked eye: nothing. But the trampled undergrowth told another story. Optical camouflage.
From the tracks, the bulk was clear: a four-meter Muramasa Type-3 Space Mobile Suit.
SMS—Space Mobile Suits. Old war relics, once the pride of the battlefield. Now outdated by SBS exo-combat armor and SAS personal arsenals. Still, plenty survived as surplus, repurposed for engineering or smuggled into black markets.
The Type-3 was a mass-production workhorse, easily modded with interchangeable parts. This one carried a boxy heavy cannon—an electromagnetic rapid-fire anti-air gun. Against drones, deadly. Against Li Pan? Less so.
He checked his magazine. Three Level-5 breaching rounds—souvenirs from Warrenstein. He took aim.
Bang!Boom!
The shell punched straight through, blowing the cockpit apart. Optical camo dropped, revealing the hulking mech sprawled with its pilot's guts sprayed across the dashboard.
Li Pan eyed the headgear—standard Academy issue. He grimaced. "Figures. Engineering school cadet."
The corpse's ID chip confirmed it: Private First Class Nagata, Student Council member. His armor bore a butterfly emblem—white wings unfurled.
The Moth-Butterfly Society.
So it was them.
Once, they'd hounded him relentlessly. Now here they were again.
The Moth-Butterfly Society—an extremist officer's fraternity, funded by Takamagahara, recruiting ambitious young East Asian cadets. Their creed: like moths drawn to blossoms, sacrifice to serve the Oda Clan. Their dream: break Worldline 0791 free of the multiverse, build a military empire under Takamagahara's banner.
Cannon fodder fanatics. Neo-Confucian lunatics.
And of course, half their graduates slid straight into Akainu's ranks after leaving the service.
Rage surged. His ruined datapack flashed in his mind. His lost career. His shattered ship.
"Die!"
Bang!Boom!
One SMS after another went up in flames, the red woman guiding his aim like a phantom spotter. The Society panicked, opening wild suppressive fire, torching the forest around them. Amateur hour.
Three shots. Three mechs down.
Li Pan looped around toward the wreckage, slipping into the hovercar's remains. He found two intact cases—the encrypted data cards and the Hairband. He strapped the Hairband to his wrist, grabbed his discarded blade—Onikiri—and tested a swing. Azure fire licked down its edge.
Left hand clutching Nagata's severed head, right hand brandishing Onikiri, he stormed into the burning woods.
The first enemy he met was a comms trooper, lugging a backpack ECCM unit. Li Pan hurled Nagata's head into him, stunning him, then cleaved down with a single stroke, shearing the helmet—and the skull beneath—clean off.
Time to kill.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
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