"Phew… just as planned."
Luo Qi wiped the cold sweat from his brow and let out a cheerful whistle, feigning ease.
Were all MaxTac officers this terrifying?
No wonder getting to four stars meant instant death.
He rolled his aching shoulders and thought sourly to himself.
That fight had happened far too suddenly, and the enemy had been absurdly difficult to deal with. He had almost capsized completely.
Still, luckily none of that would be a prob—
Crack.
The sound behind him made every hair on his body stand on end.
He spun around in a flash, just in time for a streak of cold light to blaze toward him.
Clang!
It felt as if he had been hit by a truck. For one instant, flesh and bone seemed ready to come apart under the force, and he was flung skidding across the rough, freezing ground.
His katana flew from his hand, clattering away five or six meters.
Smashing the back of your head against unforgiving pavement was not a pleasant experience.
What was even worse was the feeling that every bone in his body had started groaning and creaking, as though he were about to fall apart entirely.
Through his blurred vision, a figure trailing black smoke slowly walked up beside him.
Luo Qi narrowed his eyes with effort.
The helmet had been blown off. More than half the woman's hair was scorched away. Her armor plates had been blasted to fragments, and her MaxTac uniform was hanging off her in tatters.
She looked like someone had thrown her into a popcorn machine, spun her around, and dumped her back out. Her appearance was beyond miserable.
Even with danger pressing down on him, Luo Qi nearly burst out laughing.
"Hah…"
All right, he really had laughed out loud.
Then he saw her blank face harden into hostility, tinged with a bit of embarrassment and fury.
Boom!
The concrete road shattered beneath her foot, rubble spraying outward.
She had stomped down hard enough to crack the ground where he had been lying just a second earlier.
Luo Qi scrambled awkwardly to his feet.
Clearly, she had no intention of wasting words. From the start, every move she made was meant to kill.
"You want to kill me, I want to kill you. I'd say that makes us even." Luo Qi flexed his wrist and picked up Satori. "So come on. Looks like one of us is ending up on the ground tonight."
Clang!
Her actions answered him.
Luo Qi met her head-on, blade flashing in a fearless counterattack.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Sparks burst from every clash of steel, like shooting stars flickering briefly through the sky.
In just a few seconds, they had already exchanged more than a dozen blows, every one of them a full-force attempt to kill.
To any bystander, the two had dissolved into a blur of steel and fire.
One moment he barely parried a slash aimed straight at his throat, the next he struck at the opening she had revealed. This was no simple back-and-forth exchange. If either side failed to build enough advantage, the fight would snowball instantly; once your defense cracked, you would be shredded beneath a storm of merciless attacks.
Her mantis blades were slick and deadly sharp.
They were like venomous snakes lying in wait in the dark, patient for prey to pass by. In the jungle, there was never any shortage of animals that died because they had been careless.
A skilled hunter might avoid such a fate. But what if the predator you faced was not just a snake, but a leopard—swift, lethal, and poisonous all at once?
She did not just want to land one killing blow. She wanted to tear his throat out and rip him to pieces.
Luo Qi had never faced an opponent like this.
"Troublesome" did not begin to describe it. This was danger, danger so extreme that one mistake would cost him his head.
She tore away the half-destroyed external eye unit, ripped off the armor vest that was only hindering her, gave a harsh cry, and charged in without even trying to evade.
Clang!
Luo Qi swung with both hands and only just managed to batter away the slash coming for him.
Every time their weapons met head-on, it felt like colliding with a machine. His arms had already begun trembling from the strain.
No good. If this went on, she would keep rampaging without tiring, and he would collapse first…
Shhk.
The willow-slim katana spun through the air, its blade flashing light and shadow, before crashing to the ground.
Luo Qi's hands still held the shape of gripping the hilt. His fingertips trembled.
He opened his mouth, lips moving as though he wanted to say something, but in the end only a thin line of blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
A shard of ice had been driven into his abdomen—so cold it made his whole body go numb.
Shhk!
She withdrew the mantis blade, red with blood.
His blood scattered like maple leaves caught in the wind, staining the ground.
Luo Qi hunched over, sank slowly to his knees, and then crashed flat onto the road.
"Do you feel it?" she asked, retracting her blades, not caring in the slightest that they were still wet with blood. "Can you feel your life leaving your body? Your blood is still flowing, but your life is already going out."
The night was long, as long as the rain that had been falling steadily from dusk into midnight.
The water streaming along the street washed away the grime and blood from her body.
Beneath her ruined clothing, what showed through looked less like flesh than battle-scarred armor.
She leaned against the roadside and stared at the lights in countless homes and at the rows of glittering towers. In the moment after the heat of frenzy faded, life suddenly seemed pale and empty.
He had been a worthy opponent, if not a worthy enemy.
As she replayed that brief and strangely endless fight in her mind, a faint warmth stirred again in her chest.
Like an addict clutching at a drug.
Like a dying person sinking into a swamp and seizing a blade of grass no matter how meaningless.
Like a moth throwing itself again and again into fire.
In Night City, she had already lost everything.
She slowly walked back and stood over Luo Qi's motionless body. Something new glimmered in her eyes.
This was the first time she had ever seen someone still able to laugh after witnessing her anger—not mocking laughter, not bitter laughter, not even cold laughter. It had been pure, helpless amusement, the kind that slipped out naturally.
In Night City, he had still been able to laugh.
Under her blades, he had still had the mood to laugh.
What an utterly incomprehensible person.
Tap.
A pneumatic injector clinked onto the ground beside his ear.
"…Target lost. I repeat, target lost."
…
At last. At last. At fucking last, she was gone!
The pained, serene expression on Luo Qi's face collapsed instantly, and the peaceful "dying" act could no longer hold.
Because he wasn't dead at all!
Sure, that woman's blade had been big and hard and long and thick. Getting stabbed with it had absolutely not been fun…
But!
He was Luo Qi. There was no way he would croak that easily.
This was what one called sensing danger at the last second, improvising brilliantly, and employing the supreme hidden technique from Sun-style warfare, move number 1551: play dead.
What he had not expected was that MaxTac were all monsters. She had taken one look and known he was still alive.
But why had she thrown him a medicine injector?
Luo Qi slowly pushed himself upright from the ground, then slumped by the roadside, groaning in pain.
Was she insane?
Stab him once, then toss him medicine afterward?
Was this some ultimate upgraded Night City MaxTac version of "first the stick, then the candy"?
Luo Qi: …???
He looked at the green-glowing MaxDoc injector in his hand, thought for a moment, and finally stuffed it into his pocket.
Luckily V and the others had gotten away early. If they had run into that lunatic, even Maelstrom Mo'er probably would not have lasted long.
"Damn… the ground is freezing."
He was soaked through, splashed with blood in layers and shades, looking like the sole survivor who had crawled out of a mountain of corpses.
The wound across his abdomen still hurt like hell, but his constitution was absurd. A "little injury" like this did not even require a visit to Vik. If he just went home, rested, and slept, it would probably be mostly healed by morning. He had lain on the ground for a long time, but in truth he had not lost all that much blood.
That, right there, was the reason Luo Qi dared to fight and risk his life so recklessly in Night City.
Otherwise, without some proper protagonist-tier cheat, life in this city was just a matter of becoming someone else's loot drop. There was a reason the city's population growth sat at negative 29.24 percent.
When he had escaped Konpeki Plaza earlier, he had even considered a plan to block bullets for Jackie himself. Fortunately, it had not come to that. A happy ending all around.
As for what he should do now…
Luo Qi shifted carefully, trying to find a less painful position.
An innocent civilian car turned onto the road and into this "crime scene." Before Luo Qi could even get a look at the driver, the vehicle spun around and fled at top speed.
He sighed.
Sitting beside the burning exosuit, the broken rubble, the rain-thinned blood all over the street, and the mangled remains of Dexter, the whole city finally seemed quiet.
Compared to the daytime—always shrouded in grimy green haze, with the air quality bad enough to crack your lungs—he much preferred the lonely stillness of late night.
Suddenly, he really wanted a cola.
He really wanted a bowl of braised noodles.
He really wanted a shower, then a soft bed, and maybe a little reading before sleep.
"Hey, old Del." Luo Qi called Delamain.
"Hello. It is my pleasure to serve you, Mr. Erwin William. How may I assist you today?"
Delamain's pleasant voice sounded from the line.
Luo Qi fell silent for a moment, glanced at the wound in his stomach, recalled the appearance of the Delamain cab, and shuddered.
"No, no, forget it. I'll just walk home…"
"Fuck."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 119)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter79)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter125)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 73
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 55
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 66
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 63
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 55
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 31
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 31
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 31
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