Gachapunk 2076 3 (Patreon)

Gachapunk 2076

Chapter 3

-VB-

[Achievement! Scare the Main Cast before you even meet them!

+1 Silver Ticket]

“... huh,” I muttered to myself as I stared at the message in front of me. “Roll it.”

The screen changed to show a CS:GO like side roll wheel, and it spun. It spun quickly then slowly and finally…

There was a quiet fanfare complete with poppers and flares. 

[Material Swim]

Uncommon Ability

You can go through physical objects as if they have the consistency of water. This does not affect the state or structural integrity of the object you are swimming in.

“Huh.”

It was … actually a very useful ability despite the fact it was just an uncommon ability. Most walls were less than a foot thick. Jumping through a foot of water was nothing even if I would be doing it sideways most of the time. And if need be, I can drop down into the ground and “swim” out of any trouble I might encounter. 

This was a very good ability on its own. With any kind of speed ability or trait (hell, a stealth trait, too), it would be a monstrous foundational ability. 

But I was currently stuck more as a Tinker. I had a base, an “income” source, and even active tech.

Still, I should be getting a little worried about what I was reading. Because I apparently scared the shit out of the main cast. 

This had to mean Maine’s Crew, David, and whoever else that played a big role in Cyberpunk 2077.

Which meant my spiders weren’t as stealthy as I would have liked them to be. 

And considering that they were not good at being subtle either, they would all know that they have been watched, followed, or a combination of both. Their paranoia would be through the roof. 

Ugh. 

That wasn’t what I meant to do… but it will have to do. 

Until the drones returned, there was nothing I could do.

I went back to working. Programming, after all, didn’t cost me any material to do. 

-VB-

When the first of my Spider drones returned to me, I was pleasantly surprised by what it had in its storage guts. 

It was a bunch of bloody cyberware. From optics to a … foot. 

A quick review of the spider’s memories showed me that it had run into a dead body and had scavenged it before anyone else could; there had been some kind of gang fight. 

I quickly gave it an alcohol bath, and then dismantled the cyberwares for their delicious internal components. 

While I began dismantling, other spiders began to trickle in one at a time. And as they unloaded their gains and loaded themselves into their charge ports 

I began my work at the start of the day and when I finally dismantled the last cyberware, night had fallen.

Of course, Night City bustled and rustled without regard for the time of the day. In fact, there were more people in the streets right now at dusk than at noon.

I stopped thinking about the world outside and focused on my ill-gotten gains. 

There were a lot of biomonitors. I supposed that made sense. They were small and easy to rip out for my spiders, and I had reinforced the spiders’ salvage algorithm to go after things they could salvage very quickly. 

I accessed the megabuilding’s local net and looked for any mention of biomonitors. 

There were ads for fresh installments and more, and I eventually found a reference to an Arasaka biomonitor model that I had which cost around 1,000 eurodollars used. 

Which, well, great. 

I had seven biomonitors, so using that as a base, I could say that I earned close to 10,000 eurodollars. 

… Yeah, I was never going to be able to sell this on my own. 

I grabbed my phone and gave my Pablo a call. 

---

“Shit, man. I didn’t know you did cyberware work on the side!” Pablo grinned as he stared at the biomonitors that I had neatly packaged into plastic bags individually. He whistled when he found a rather expensive model among them. “Where did you even get these?”

“It’s better if you didn’t know,” I told him instead. 

He gave me a side eye but didn’t gainsay my advice. 

“Alright. Alright. So you want to sell these to me on the cheap?” 

“Yeah. I already scrubbed them clean, so they should be good to sell as is. But it’s best if you had your own netrunner check them out individually before you do. How about … eleven hundred each.”

He glared at me. “That’s the retail price for used. Which these fuckers are, gonk. Five hundred.”

“There are good models in there that go upward to three thousand used. Nine hundred fifty each.”

“Settle for seven hundred fifty?”

“No. Nine hundred and no lower.”

Almost instantly, I got a quick transfer of cash. 

He grinned. “Good business.”

I grunted and he left after that. 

I closed the door and paused. 

… The Chaos Gacha wasn’t giving me an achievement for selling cyberware or earning a regular Night City resident’s annual income in one transaction.

I sniffed. 

Whatever. 

I now had more stuff to make more drones with. I was satisfied with that and the money. 

… And then I had an idea. 

-VB-

Just as I thought, Megabuilding H6 did have some underground levels but not a lot. There was a parking lot at sublevel 1 and utilities at sublevel 2. But below that was nothing. Just a shit ton of concrete. 

I was more than happy to try something. 

Using the components I salvaged from the cyberwares, I modified one of my Spider drones for digging. Then I let it loose with a loose schematic of the room I wanted it to dig out. 

It quickly scurried out of my room, made it down to sublevel 2 mostly undetected, and began to dig down and to the side away from H6. 

And once it became clear that no one noticed the spider and its work, I made more spiders to do that while sending out the rest to salvage more cyberwares. 

Operation Underground Base was a go! 

Oh, and I noticed a lot of improvement from using components of basic cyberware in my drones.

The cyberware components made it easier to create drones that were more reactive and flexible. They were no longer stiff. The volume they made by walking fell by half. Their climbing took less energy. 

And people noticed. 

---

David stared at the spider thing.

It was back in the same alley. 

It stared at him.

He stared at it. 

It looked different now. 

There were less edges and more roundness to it. 

It was still scurrying around trash and the like before it found a body among the trash. 

It crittered before ripping into the dead body and pulling out every piece of cyberware whoever had killed the bastard had missed or forgot to check. 

David watched as it tossed those cyberware, usually chips and the like, into its belly. 

It looked at him one more time before scurrying away. 

He shuddered before quickly making his way toward the Academy. 

He wasn’t sure if he was lucky that the spider thing didn’t decide to attack him or he was unlucky for having encountered it twice now. 

But whatever it was, it was better now. Bigger. Stronger. More flexible. 

He’d suspected that he might have been able to beat the other one from the day before but this one? 

No.

If that thing got its claws on him, then it was over. 

He was going to avoid this street starting today.