In this world, if a person wants something, they must pay a price.
But it's a cruel world: even if you pay, even if you sacrifice everything, you might not get what you want.
Pay too much, and you'll draw others' envy—and lose everything instead.
Huang Dahe learned that simple truth early.
So, though he was born in Night City, Huang Dahe never blamed heaven or others.
Because his luck had been good. Really good.
He had a sharp mind, a good family, and he seized every chance to climb.
So even when someone kicked him off the ladder and woke him from that life, he didn't wallow in self-pity or collapse.
He didn't consider the simplest way out, either.
He understood that even a flicker of despair or regret would betray the hardship and effort of his whole path.
Besides, he hadn't done anything wrong.
He hadn't done anything wrong.
In this whole affair, he was the only one without fault.
So why should he pay the price?
Huang Dahe understood his situation. He knew empty pep talks and powerless rage were useless now.
His life was over.
On the eve of graduation, the school expelled him; his file landed on the system's blacklist.
He'd never become a citizen.
He'd never be accepted by the celestial order under the Security Committee.
Unless a company at the Committee's level reached down to pull him up and erase the penalty, restore his credit.
But in all the worlds, what corporate dog has that kind of time—to pull up a poor kid who had nothing, and then lost even that?
In fact, no one pulled him up. Someone ran him over.
Carrying his mother's ashes across a crosswalk, he was hit by some rando corporate dog whose face he never saw.
Probably drunk or high. They didn't dare call the cops or pay damages—just stuffed him in the trunk and dumped him at a landfill.
He didn't die because he'd been a STEM student—he had a basic university prosthetic. The functions were shut off, but the frame strength remained.
But the urn was gone—who knew where it flew.
That day, lying on the trash heap, staring at the stars, having lost everything, Huang Dahe woke up.
If he did nothing now, the story would write itself.
You won't let me live.
But I don't want to die like this.
Then the Security Committee has to go.
So Huang Dahe joined Akaten.
No recruiter coaxed him.
He crawled out of the garbage, found an Akaten cell, walked in, and asked to join.
It wasn't as hard as the Security Bureau or NCPA imagined.
Akaten was the fruit of Takamagahara's rotten tree.
The tree was felled, but the fruit fell to the roots and rotted there. It didn't vanish or fly to the heavens.
Its roots were in Night City.
So yes—personnel, funds, ammo, supplies, gear—everything Akaten needed came from Night City's giant dump.
They left a thousand threads to follow.
If the Security Bureau couldn't find them with eyes open, it was because they were corrupt—they preferred the easiest, most brutal method: scheduled purges of "rebels."
If the NCPA couldn't find them, it was because they were stupid—terminally so.
Huang Dahe joined Akaten. He barely had to forge a resume or prove he wasn't a plant.
He just gave his name and let them search him online.
The recruiter said if a guy like him didn't revolt, that would be injustice.
In short, to topple the Security Committee that ruled the heavens, to build a home where he could stand tall—
Huang Dahe joined Akaten and trained in a sealed base.
As always, he finished top of his class. Then came his first Akaten strike.
Their goal: amidst Night City's chaos, raid Neo-Tokyo University's Pacific Campus and destroy the weapons system the SEC was calibrating in its labs.
Intel said the imported system was a new product from a top interworld arms vendor—tech level undetermined—brought to 0791 to equip Cerberus and test it on Akaten. The plan stalled under interference from TheM Company, and the intel leaked.
Akaten wouldn't sit and wait for a superweapon to aim at their heads. They'd die trying to break it.
Huang Dahe's job wasn't the most dangerous. As one of the few technical specialists Akaten could recruit, he was protected—retired vets and merc-commandos led the way. He followed with a support team to hack doors, disarm defenses, and kill automated turrets.
With insiders on campus—from professors to students to janitors—the op went smoothly. They rolled past security and drones into the lab.
And with a nuke blooming downtown, neither NCPA nor corporate troops had time for campus alarms. Huang Dahe pushed into the hangar—and saw the weapon system…
"Huh? SMS?"
Four large SMS—carrier-borne space mobile suits—unpainted prototypes, crouched like silver knights on heavy transport dollies. Under the cold lights, alloy pinions gleamed.
The Akaten captain barked on the encrypted channel: "Kawa Team plant charges! Yama Team seed golems! Ten minutes—blow everything and withdraw!"
Huang Dahe and the engineers moved. Powered exos helped them hop up the frames. He slid into the cockpit of unit X10A.
"ICE is HT Tech—no way we crack it in under two hours." "Damn, this is carrier-grade alloy—needs ship guns to breach!" "The hangar's reinforced against bombardment—rebar concrete; even a concrete saw needs thirty minutes to reach load-bearing." "Plant the charges in the cockpit?" "It's modular—swap the bay and they're back up…"
Listening to the chatter, Huang Dahe cut in:
"No need to break ICE. No need to destroy them. These are unauthorized prototypes and already powered—we can just steal them."
Silence. Then the captain snapped:
"Yama-04! What nonsense? We don't have clearance—"
Huang Dahe's fingers flew.
"Bypass the security firewall and fleet auth, spin up an engineering test OS—Pilotrun—and we just drive them out. I'll write it. Ten minutes. I'll push the OS to the channel; you just load it. If you can pilot a Mark-III, you can handle this."
"Bull—"
The captain switched to his camera—and froze as code poured like rain.
"Why are you so… good at this?"
Huang Dahe gritted his teeth. "Because I wrote this low-level framework and action modules—for the fleet."
The Akaten squad hesitated, debated, then split forces: one team followed the original plan—plant charges to cripple the systems no matter what; the other…
Huang Dahe: "Done. Load. Ignite."
The silver knights' eyes flashed blue. They stepped off their carriers.
Captain: "Whoa… gorgeous…"
Huang Dahe: "Hiss… zero-point reactor… full-domain ECCM, EMP-hard… high-energy particle deflection field… full-effect antigrav… ultra-wide grav-wave radar… micro-WARP drive… WARP 200??
"You're kidding—how did they pack warship-class systems into an SMS?"
"Scout alarm! Army inbound! Takamagahara armored division!"
"What! Weren't they told to stand down!"
"Direct order from the Committee—they're coming for us!"
Huang Dahe: "I'll hold them—get in the suits!"
Captain: "Good! Yama-04, it's yours! And leave one for me!"
Huang Dahe: "X10A—YAMA—LAUNCH!"
BOOM—
The silver mecha knight ripped into the night, wings unfurling in powder-blue plasma like an angel's pinions, casting M particles into the sky.
Huang Dahe skimmed system pages while rewriting the weapons OS.
This was an engineering prototype—an SMS platform without final weapons fit.
But any SMS—especially a large carrier unit for space war—must mount an M-CUP, a compressed M-particle energy canister. It produces and stores M particles, sets I/O specs, and controls dispersion range and density.
SMS used to dive into an enemy fleet's envelope, flood M particles to jam radars and gun-directors, and slash in close. But with ship-gun range and accuracy beyond battlefield norms, modern doctrine became "first spotted, first dead." The "mecha knight spraying M particles at the bridge" shot is a relic.
Huang Dahe hadn't handled a military M-CUP before, but ground Mark-III suits had compatible slots and ports. At the tech university's festivals—anniversary, repairs, decor—he'd often drive a Mark-III, sometimes needing spray paint or fireworks. He'd even rigged paint cans into the M-CUP slot. So the hands-on mapped over; no big hurdle.
All he had to do was retune the output band, compress M particles into high-energy beams, and use grav-radar to settle the firing solutions—
The soaring X10A spread its wings and fired twelve lances of light.
With onboard compute assisting, the beams precisely struck ammo trucks and fuelers.
Honestly, Huang Dahe barely had to do anything. The assist suite was absurd—instant full Pacific District scan and lock, automatic prioritization of military targets. The only limit was M-CUP nozzle count and a ~10-second charge per ion packet.
It was enough.
BIU-BIU-BIU, BIU-BIU-BIU—
X10A hovered like an angel of death, scattering a skyful of kill-light.
Takamagahara ground forces—late to receive orders, converging from all directions to suppress the riots—were devastated almost instantly. Some were stuck in barracks, some at junctions, many still idling at depots when high-energy beams popped fuel, ammo, and control systems.
Explosions climbed to the clouds, mushrooms flowered, flames rolled, the city burned.
"Everyone in this place is truly insane…"
A man in a suit, badge reading 0213007, sat with a sniper rifle atop the abandoned Pacific Tower, the world ending under his scope. Optical cloaking melted him into the night.
An anonymous ping hit his comms.
"Hey, Canister—QVN's cut. Who's calling?"
Orochi.18: "…Geo-IP, back-trace—confirmed BRW official 4S customer support."
0213007 frowned, old-man-reading-phone face:
"4S… store?"
With the company brain-can backing him, he wasn't afraid of hacks. He accepted. An elderly man in glasses appeared.
"Who?"
"Hello. Sorry to intrude. I'm Dr. Nimitz, SEC committee member."
"SEC? Ethics Committee? Not a 4S store?"
0213007 was thrown.
The man smiled.
"Apologies. I've got a small personal issue—some thieves are stealing my property. I'm at a BRW 4S shop loading a prosthetic weapons module and can't rush over.
"BRW's database shows you're nearby.
"As a fellow Security Committee member, could I ask your assistance? I'll pay handsomely."
The brain-can confirmed his identity. 0213007 shrugged.
"Doctor Nimitz, as Committee staff, aiding SEC is our duty. Unfortunately, we're mid-mission—I can't disengage."
Nimitz smiled. "No need to go in person. I'll send coordinates—just one shot. I'll pay five million."
0213007 arched a brow. In the parking lot altar, 0674007 and 0544007 were still inside the Collector's node. All green. He shrugged.
"Deal."
Nimitz nodded. "Thank you. Due to smart-lock alarms on the target, please adjust the shot parameters manually. Also, set your BRW-X5 to full performance—let's say 300% overclock."
Now he was interested.
"Doctor, my piece is a Rank-7 Achilles anode-focusing particle laser—that's warship-class firepower."
Nimitz: "I see your registry. A light frigate-class gun won't be enough. You'll want cruiser-class."
0213007 whistled, dropped the cloak, and dialed the scope. The BRW-X5 reactor over-revved; blue radiation bled off his frame; rays condensed along the gun.
"Mind telling me what I'm shooting?"
Nimitz shrugged. "A toy—for my grandson."
0213007 squeezed the trigger. "A toy that needs cruiser guns, huh—"
Orochi.18: "081007 confirmed KIA."
0213007: "Wha—!"
BIU—!
A bright blue line tore the sky, vanishing like a meteor.
Dr. Nimitz: "Mm. You missed."
0213007 scowled, popped the mag, vents hissing as he dumped heat and leapt buildings.
"Apologies, Doctor—mind wandered. Want a second shot?"
Nimitz: "No. Even offset, it neutralized the target. This may be better. I can handle the rest. Funds transferred—thanks again."
"My pleasure." He cut the line and vaulted to a new rooftop. "Hey, Canister! What are you doing—what happened to 081007!"
Orochi.18: "…081007 confirmed KIA."
"No—how did he die? The Collector!?"
Orochi.18: "…Cause unknown. Possibly within the nuke's damage radius."
"Bull. Nukes don't kill a Weiwu Trooper chassis. And the blast was ages ago—why report now? Useless tin can!"
Orochi.18: "…Reporting delayed by EM interference and QVN blocking…"
"Doesn't add up… Pull his last comms. There's got to be a cloud backup. Or is your brain full of water?"
Orochi.18: "…Archive retrieval requires General Manager authorization…"
"As a full employee and mission envoy I force-request access!
Damn it—what's wrong with you? Are you running an independent persona for that proxy? Dead weight!"
Orochi.18: "…081007 archive corrupted… attempting recovery…"
"Corrupted?"
0213007's frown deepened.
"How… data uploaded to QVN—How—shit. Security Bureau…"
He looked up just in time to see a flicker of white descend.
He knew it instantly: a warhead dumped from a near-earth platform—skipped hypersonically past defenses, slipped under radar.
"Using a nuke on a single trooper…"
BOOOOM—!!!
Everyone in this world was insane.
At Level Six and up, nine-figure prosthetic bodies can survive nuclear war.
But taking a tactical nuke to the face still hurts.
"Heh… heh… heh…"
Even with his suit blown away, 0213007 groaned in the rubble, charred to brittle coal.
He wasn't dead—007s don't die easy.
But he'd never seen this playbook.
"B-brain… can… rollback… rollback…"
Orochi.18: "Hello? Hello? Can't hear you—hanging up now."
"You… you… you'll—"
A shadow fell across his face.
"Wha—"
He looked up. His last sight: within the rolling, fiery mushroom cloud, a blood-red hand reached from the hot wind and closed over his face.
His vision fell into eternal void and chaos, never to rise from that darkness again.
.
.
.
⚠️ 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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