Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

“We did it!” Luna shouted as soon as our deep dive into the net ended. It was the loudest I’d ever heard the girl, and that was saying something considering how many times I’d heard her sobbing recently.

The mechanical clamp released my neck, and needles that’d been plugged into my body slowly started to withdraw. My blood, which had been pumped out and ran through a coolant system to keep me cool, was forcibly sent back into my body one pulse after another.

A shiver went through my body as the refrigerant from the runner chair did its job. I wasn’t as cold as I was expecting, though. My body had been putting up some serious heat. Not to mention all the stress of being hit by hacks. It was like an insanely high temperature fever, though the viruses were netrunner hacks and my white blood cells were Luna’s ICE and the safety measures of the chair.

Luna rolled out of her chair as the important bits automatically disconnected from her body. She staggered on her first step as she charged over to me for a hug. “We did it, Shiro!”

“Yeah, we did.” I smiled weakly at her, and tried to move my arms. The movements were sluggish and broken. My tech to full dive without the right cybernetics had some nasty side effects. I was probably the only one in the world that could use it without fear thanks to Quick Healing.

”… are you okay?” Luna stood over me, and checked the neural port. It was detached, but the damage from my method of diving lingered. Who would’ve thought, but clamping the spine hard enough for the machine to get access to my nervous system wasn’t good for my health.

“Just a bit of nerve damage. It’ll go away soon.” Already I could feel my body starting to respond once more. I’d probably have to sleep to get totally back to normal, though that shouldn’t be an issue.

”Oh, it’s just a bit of nerve—Shiro!” Luna’s eyes popped open wide, and she grabbed my hand. Her hands felt like ice upon my own. The refrigerant running through our net chairs wasn’t anything to sneeze at. “That’s serious!”

”I mean, I guess? It’s no different than last time.” Better, actually. At least I retained some mobility in my body this time around. I slowly curled my fingers around her. Not that I didn’t want to move quicker—I just couldn’t. “I’ll be fine after a nap.”

”Still…” She pulled away, and nervously wrung her hands together. Colors flashed over her pale face from all the RGB lights I’d set up around the room. ”Anything I can do?”

“I’ve got this terrible itch on my shoulder.” I flopped to the side, and nearly fell out of the runner chair. “Can’t quite get it like this.”

“I got it.” Luna pushed me back into place, and started to rub at my shoulders. Heh, sucker.

“A bit higher.” While I got a nice massage from my runner, the interface popped into my eyes. The bright light of it made my already sore head ache harshly.

| Request - Winner winner - Received

-Win the battle-royale (1/1)

-Place high in the competition (1/250)

-Kill contestants (53/250)

-Kill Red Furry-13 (1/1)

-Complete side-objectives(3)

-Steal kills(1)

-Pull off successful ambushes(6)

-Kill with a sniper rifle(3) |

I hadn’t done too bad, honestly. I thought I’d have, like, one kill or something by the time the DNBR ended. 53 was pretty good. I single-handedly wiped out a fifth of the lobby.

“What’s the highest kill count recorded?” I asked Luna. It couldn’t have been much more than 53, right? I mean, it wasn’t exactly feasible to kill everyone in the lobby.

”Um…” Luna looked up at me from where she was back slaving away to rub my shoulders. “249, I think. Blue Death wiped the entire lobby with black ICE before the match even started.”

“Damn.” I let out a low whistle. That was one way to win, I guess. I felt kinda bad about the few people we sacrificed to the rogue AI. Can’t imagine how I’d feel about outright icing 249 other people like that. “They counted that?”

“Yeah…” Luna hesitantly pulled her hands away. “Did I get it?”

“Chek.” Another note for Future Shiro—make a massage robot. I didn’t have the time or patience to go to an actual masseuse, so a bot wouldn’t be a bad idea.

| Reward: 250 EF, Sentinel Mk.7 Spider Tank |

250 EF! That put me almost at a thousand. A little more saving, and I could get a Free Perk Point. The spider tank was also cool. I’d probably find a use for it somewhere. Even if I didn’t, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to rip out its code if I ever made an eight-legged robot of some kind. Half the work would already be done for me that way.

Still, I imagine the Spider Tank could be quite useful with some modifications. Maybe strap some specialty rounds to it, and it’d turn into something quite fierce. I had all those vehicle modifications I stole from the Neo-Jokers a long time ago that I never did anything with, so it wouldn’t be that hard to adjust them to work for the spider tank.

It would've been nice if they gave me the Warhost’s Unstoppable Blade, or the Graviton Bolt. No dice on that side, though. To be fair, the eidolons probably didn’t have either one of those experimental weapons stashed away. The Panther’s Fang would have to be enough for me.

| Melee Weapons - 10>11 |

| Intimidation - 9>10 |

| Influence - 2>3 |

| Evasion - 9>10 |

Melee weapons could only be expected. Intimidation was nice. I used Fear the Reaper on a constant low throughout the event. Influence… I still wasn’t quite sure what that would be used for. I’d figure it out eventually, though. It was only a matter of time till it hit four. And Evasion was probably thanks to all that dodging around with the ThunderGod Greaves.

All in all? Not bad for a day’s work. It’d been pretty easy, too. Maybe I should sign up for this kind of thing more often? Then again, I wouldn’t ever want to do something like that without Luna behind my back. I’d get fried in a second.

“You did great by the way.” In keeping us alive inside the final ring, that is. I couldn’t see the full extent of the battle she waged with the rogue AI to keep us safe. To me, it just looked like a sphere of blue code protecting me from the downright terrifying clouds of darkness.

”Thanks. Not the first time I’ve been on the DarkNet like that.” I sensed a story somewhere in her words. She didn’t tell it, though, and instead shifted subjects. “You did surprisingly well too. Where was all that negative talk about you being terrible at combat?”

“I got carried by the Warhost’s Unstoppable Blade.” It literally gave me the win in quite a few spots. Technique and skill didn’t matter when it’d cut through anything anyway. If it’d been a normal blade, I probably would’ve broken my wrist swinging it the way I did.

“Still, you used it pretty well.”

”That was my first time using a sword.” I played around with one in that holo battle field thingy I did with Mira, but that hardly counted. I’d never been actually trained.

I was actually pretty good with a sword, huh? Maybe I didn’t even need to go get training from the Jade Fang on how to use one. Then again, a saber was totally different from a katana like the Panther’s Fang. Probably for the best I went to do that sometime soon.

Luna backed away from me and unplugged her deck from the runner chair. She lifted it up, and spoke without looking back at me. “So… we only get one wish. You are okay with me using it for this, right?”

”Its the whole reason I dove into the DarkNet to begin with, Luna.” I sighed. I wouldn’t rip the wish away for some selfish reason. What would I even use it for? To find my parent’s killer? That guy was already dead and gone. “Oh, and Nael got back to me about that blood I scraped up.”

”Did you get a match?!” Her eyes lit up, and she leaned forward over me. Her soft white hair flowed down around her, and curled on my thighs. I needed to take her to get a haircut at some point.

“Not exactly.” I winced as the hope died in her eyes. “There was dirt mixed into the blood that Nael managed to pinpoint to somewhere around Latvin City.”

“Oh…” Her eyebrows narrowed, and she stared blankly at the floor. “Lathvin City? Really?”

”Could be mercs hired from there, or it could very well be where they took Kaynis.” I coughed lightly, and weakly brought my hand up to my face. Last time I dove like this. Next time, I’d get a Neural Link or something that could let me jack in the normal way. “Not too sure myself.”

”… if he is there, would you be comfortable leaving the country to help me?” Luna looked up and met my eyes. She looked so terribly fragile like a wrong word might break her. “I know you promised, but that’s a long way away.”

I didn’t answer right away. Honestly, I wasn’t too sure about it myself. I could appreciate her trying to give me an out though. After a few seconds, I slowly nodded my head. “I’ll need at least a month to prepare for the trip. Get an autotranslator, fix up my chrome, and the works.”

”Thank you!” She clasped her hands together, and ducked her head. The next moment, she flicked open her deck and got to work once more. “It’ll take about that long to get a reply from Monarch, anyway. They should be able to narrow down our search area quite a bit.”

“I’ll talk to Mira and Saint about it, too.” Mira would probably go, but I wasn’t sure about Saint. Even if he didn’t, he might have some connections.

Lathvin, though… that was the home of the Viento Cartel. Maybe I could drop by their headquarters here, and see if we couldn’t work something out? Oh! Wait, Torren had a high position in the cartel, didn’t he? I hadn’t contacted him in a really long time, but he’d totally be able to help me out.

Transportation should be easy enough. If not, I could build a long distance flyer no problem. The paperwork was a whole other matter. Probably best I left that to Luna and just focused on equipment. Maybe I could slap together a portable foundry? It wouldn’t be a bad idea. We’d have no resources down there except what we brought with us.

I had so much work between then and now, though. First and foremost, I had to take care of that Gravitic metal. Once that was done—maybe look into magic? I’d been meaning to for a while. I’d just been… busy. Yeah busy. Should probably get the rest of the Aether Imbuement stuff set up too while I was at it.

So it was the metal, making a few gadgets, chrome, Aether Imbuement, and the sword training? That’d eat up a lot of time. I didn’t have much before we’d be going down to Lathvin. I’d have to be smart with my scheduling and not get derailed by—

“Do you have a plan for Lathvin yet, Shiro?” Luna asked softly.

”Not yet.” I had the fragments of a plan, though. My first step was to go track down Torren and see what he could do for me. If he couldn’t do anything, I at least tried to use a connection. My counselor would be proud of me for that one. Being social and talking to people was one of the things he recommended. “We’ll need papers and stuff to get out of the country, though.”

”I’ll get it setup. It shouldn’t be too hard to hack the FSA and get us passports under false identities.” She shrugged. “I’ll get on that.”

”Yeah, that works.” It beat illegally flying over border control and all that. Entering Lathvin legally would probably be for the best.

I could think about all of that later. For now? Sleep. Sleep was what I needed. ‘Sides, I wouldn’t be doing much moving until the damage to my spine healed back up. “I’m going to take a nap, Luna. Don’t wake me.”

”Sweet dreams.” She looked up briefly from her deck, and flicked her hand to the side. In a moment, all the lights in the room went out. With the help of Lethargic Presence, I was soon off to dreamland.