Chapter 122: One Thousand Euro Per Person!
In Night City, being scammed and walking away with nothing to your name is almost a happy ending. Because at least, you're still breathing.
Getting sold off to scavengers to be stripped like pigs at a meat market—that's the real standard for "rock bottom." And if you checked your inbox, you'd see that reality play out every day.
Half the emails a Night City resident gets come from scavs—offering black-market chrome for a "limited-time discount," or some shady ad for "barely used" neuralware that "may occasionally spark." The rest? Mostly overdue rent notices. Because unless you've got a company badge or blackmail material on a board member, nobody's sending you a happy birthday message in Night City.
Arthur leaned back in the driver's seat and lit a cigarette, glancing at Saul beside him with amusement.
"You saying I look like a little girl now?" Saul grumbled. "You always crack these jokes. We're at the age where we should be settling down. Starting companies, building legacies. Just like you did with Umbrella."
Arthur just shrugged and puffed a cloud of smoke out the window. He didn't say anything.
Because between the two of them, only one had a cheat code.
Arthur knew the truth—his Umbrella Company wasn't built on long hours and luck. It was built on a system that handed him blueprints for tech twenty years ahead of its time. He just had to pick which future he wanted first. If he felt like it, he could release the Mengdie System tomorrow and become richer than the Arasakas overnight. CEOs would line up to plug it into their skulls like kids waiting for candy.
But he wasn't in any rush. Let the corps think they were still kings.
Sol, on the other hand, had no such system. No cheat code. No golden parachute. Just a tribe, a truck, and dreams that the corps would toss into the incinerator the second they got inconvenient.
The sands of the Badlands stretched wide around them, dust dancing in the wind like golden smoke. Sol sighed and looked out the window, eyes scanning the dead landscape.