Dozens of meters above the ground, merciless gravity bore down on Ji-hwan and dragged him violently toward the earth.
In the few seconds it took to reach the ground, Ji-hwan let out a dry, absurd laugh as his blurred vision drifted back to the first time he had come here.
It felt like watching the cutscene right before a bad ending in some game he used to love.
Maybe it was a kind of déjà vu from that first day in this damn Badlands, but the Ji-hwan of then and the Ji-hwan of now were worlds apart.
The backlash from forcing his way outside the AV, where he had no proper footing and had to ride the wind, was brutal.
The price of prying open a gap in that monstrous AV was that his recovering body was torn apart from the inside all over again.
His body, which should have been smooth and scar-free, was covered in cracks of open wounds, and blood welled up over them in thick beads.
Those wounds would be carved into him as scars that would never leave him for the rest of his life.
"This time, I’m really going to die."
The despair brought on by that cold, certain intuition.
That was Ji-hwan’s last thought.
His head lolled weakly, and as he plummeted through the harsh air over the Badlands, his consciousness was sucked into pitch-black darkness.
At the same time, on the ground.
Falco, the Nomad driver who had just pulled off the insane job of robbing a megacorp logistics warehouse blind, was racing across the outskirts of the Badlands with loot piled high in the cargo bed of his old, rugged six-wheeled off-road truck, the Thornton Colby Emperor, a machine that boasted absurd durability.
"Man... there’s nothing sweeter than the Badlands air after a clean run."
That was when the freshly successful Falco was stroking his mustache and savoring the rush of victory as he passed near a Biotechnica facility.
Kwaang!
With a blast that sounded just like a bomb going off, the Emperor’s massive body lurched violently, and the monster suspension meant for off-road use sank so low it looked like it would scrape the ground, screaming in protest.
"Aaagh! Shit! What the hell?!"
"Did those Orbital Air bastards get a lock on me?"
Pale-faced, Falco slammed the brakes reflexively and fought to steady the shaking truck before bringing it to a stop. Despite the way he was screaming in panic, his driving skill proved itself beautifully even in a situation like this.
Once the vehicle stopped, he carefully swung the external camera around to check the crushed roof, but what came into view was neither a dud bomb nor an Orbital Air agent.
It was a human shape, curled up and still bleeding, drenched in blood, with the expensive bulletproof leather jacket Dakota Smith had given him torn to ribbons. It was Ji-hwan.
"Wh... what, a corpse fell out of the sky...? Huh...?"
Only then did Falco recognize that the owner of that blood-soaked face was Ji-hwan. He shoved the pistol he had been gripping stiffly into his pocket and let out a dry laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all.
"This guy is seriously..."
Falco clicked his tongue and went on, sounding completely dumbfounded.
"Why is it that every time I see him, he’s bleeding all over the place? And now he’s fallen out of the sky?"
Grunting with effort, Falco hauled the unconscious Ji-hwan into the Emperor’s rear cargo area and carefully shoved him in with the loot.
They were right near a major corporate facility, after all. If he wasted even a little time, he’d be dragged straight into that insane pursuit himself.
The Emperor tore away like a madman before the corporate slaughter drones could swarm in, its exhaust rumbling as it vanished into the Badlands’ deep darkness.
How much time passed after that? In the Emperor’s dark back seat, tearing through the rough sandstorms, Ji-hwan’s eyelids twitched faintly before finally opening with great effort.
"Kgh... wh... where..."
The moment he opened his mouth, a mouthful of blood spilled out.
What hit him first was the horrific pain, as if his whole body had been dumped into a blender, followed by the heavy, rhythmic jolt of the tires.
Ji-hwan forced his blurry focus into place and instinctively looked around.
The smell of acrid sand dust and the metallic stench of his own blood. And what met his eyes was not some unfamiliar warehouse ceiling or a morgue, but the inside of a moving vehicle, with cargo crates stamped with the Orbital Air logo stacked around him.
"...What the hell is this place?"
At that moment, the last memory of him crashing through bulletproof glass from dozens of meters up flashed through his mind like shattered fragments.
He should have smashed into the ground and blown his brains out, but instead he was being transported in the back of someone’s vehicle.
Ji-hwan clenched his teeth against the pain in his broken spine and ribs, then slowly turned his gaze toward the driver’s seat, his eyes sharp with suspicion as he tried to figure out whether he had been kidnapped or rescued.
"Oh, you’re awake? Romantic friend. You dead or what?"
Over the rearview mirror, a familiar mustache came into view. It was the face of Falco, the grinning Nomad driver.
Only then did the tension in Ji-hwan’s body ease a little.
Ji-hwan clutched his shattered ribs and spat blood as he spoke.
"Fal... co...? Long... time... no... see..."
As Ji-hwan muttered through the blood in his mouth, Falco’s expression hardened in the mirror.
"Listen, Ji-hwan. I don’t know what the hell happened, but there’s a massive bounty on your head right now. Three stars. You’re not going to be buying street noodles on that face of yours for a while."
At that hopeless news, Ji-hwan steadied his churning stomach and leaned back against the blood-soaked seat, letting out a dry laugh.
"Heh... really? Cough... Then I guess that bastard is definitely dead."
Even in the outskirts of the Badlands, an executive was still an executive. Falco, who had a hazy memory of Ji-hwan driving a knife into some megacorp suit’s head, looked disgusted and shook his head in disbelief.
"...What kind of insane stunt did you pull? Don’t drag me into it."
Falco grumbled at Ji-hwan’s condition, then studied his body again in the mirror and frowned.
He remembered that when he first saw Ji-hwan at the power plant, his whole body had been covered in horrible wounds, but they had healed before long.
"But... you’re not healing like last time? I thought you were recovering in the blink of an eye before... Did something go wrong?"
At Falco’s question, Ji-hwan looked down at the faint red smoke slowly rising from his body and answered in a hoarse voice.
"...Yeah. I burned through the fuel a little too damn hard. Right now I’m just barely hanging on."
He said it calmly, admitting that he had drained his fundamental life force down to the bottom.
Then, after a moment of silence, Ji-hwan seemed to think of something and spoke to Falco again.
"Falco... sorry, but I think I need to lie low for a while."
"Well, yeah, obviously. What are you planning to do?"
Falco asked, glancing at him in the mirror, and Ji-hwan answered in a subdued voice.
"If I go back to Dakota like this, she’ll get dragged into it too."
"Hah. And I’m fine, then?"
Falco snorted in disbelief. Even through the pain of broken bones, a faint smile spread across Ji-hwan’s lips.
"Haha, aren’t you supposed to keep your head down for a while too?"
He had hit the bull’s-eye. Falco had just robbed a Biotechnica logistics warehouse clean and was hauling the loot in his cargo bed.
Falco fell silent and looked away with a cough.
"Well... yeah, I guess that’s true. Tch. So where are you planning to go?"
"...In Night City, where’s the lawless zone that corporate authority can’t touch at all?"
At Ji-hwan’s pointed question, Falco was about to think it over when he suddenly realized what he meant and shouted in alarm.
"Ah, come on... wait, what?! You’re not seriously planning to go to Pacifica, are you?!"
In the rearview mirror, the blood-soaked Ji-hwan answered with a cold grin instead of words.
Pacifica. The most dangerous and isolated district in Night City, the perfect place to hide from the corporate hounds. Falco let out a long sigh and shook his head in disbelief.
"Haa, fine. Who am I to talk you out of that stubborn streak? I’ll just let Dakota know."
With that, Falco stomped on the gas, the Emperor roaring as he drove on, carrying a man with a massive bounty on his head through the darkest depths of Night City.
He cut across the dark Badlands toward Pacifica.
At the same time.
In the center of Night City, where acid rain hammered the windows without pause, was the top-tier crisis room of Biotechnica’s headquarters high up in Corpo Plaza.
On the massive wall of holographic screens, a live feed showed the research center on the edge of the Badlands engulfed in red-hot flames.
Dozens of tactical recon drones dispatched in an emergency from the Night City headquarters were sweeping over the burned-out facility and the ten-kilometer radius around it like a swarm of bees, scanning like mad for traces of the one intruder who had turned the place into a living hell: Ji-hwan.
"Report. What’s the status of the search?"
The senior executive standing in the center of the room, a vice president-level suit, ground his cigar out irritably and growled low at the netrunners controlling the drones.
"W-we’re deploying all available forces and searching the entire area, but... we haven’t found even a speck of dust from the target. It’s as if he evaporated into thin air. We can’t track him at all."
Sweat beaded on the netrunner’s forehead as he reported.
The elite private force, Manticore Squad, had been annihilated, and the core Chimera project lab had been blown to pieces.
As far as the executive was concerned, he couldn’t believe that the man who had caused all this disaster had simply vanished so casually.
Wheeeeeing-.
Just then.
"Vice President, the AV belonging to Director Lowell, the chief overseer who made the emergency departure from the research facility rooftop a moment ago, has just arrived at the headquarters helipad."
After hearing the report, the executive left the crisis room with a hardened face and walked toward the private helipad beyond the glass wall, where rain was pouring down in sheets.
The greedy Lowell had, right before the incident, suddenly sent a massive amount of classified data to the headquarters’ deep server.
He intended to grab Lowell by the collar the moment the man stepped out alive and demand the truth about that data.
Pshhhk-!
The heavy AV door opened.
"Lowell! You crazy bastard, what the hell did you do...!"
The executive’s furious shout froze in the air.
On the luxury leather seat, Director Lowell, who should have been alive and explaining himself, was slumped in the passenger seat with his pupils gone white.
And buried in the center of his forehead, all the way to the hilt, was a black combat knife in a truly gruesome sight.
As the pale-faced netrunners and guards rushed over to confirm the corpse, the executive’s eyes narrowed like a snake’s.
The fact that Lowell, who had always been a thorn in the side of headquarters and constantly stirred up factional infighting, was dead was something he would have welcomed with both hands in private.
One rival had dug his own grave, after all.
But... dying at this exact moment was terrible timing.
The executive clicked his tongue and turned back toward the crisis room.
On the screens inside, the horrifying combat footage of Ji-hwan that had been captured by the research facility’s CCTV was playing on repeat.
A pure human with no chrome lifting a Centaur shield and tearing apart Manticore operatives with his bare hands. The sight was enough to make anyone’s blood run cold.
Watching the video of that monstrous Asian man, the executive’s eyes glittered with murderous madness.
"Put pressure on the NCPD higher-ups right now! Issue an official three-star warrant for that damn Asian bastard as the source of this disaster, on charges of 'assassination of a Biotechnica executive and first-degree terrorism'! And put a bounty out to every fixer and bounty hunter in Night City too. Make sure there’s nowhere in this city he can hide!"
Right after delivering that death sentence, a verdict soaked in corporate greed and rage, the executive barked at his secretary and the netrunners like a thunderclap.
"And check the data Lowell sent to the deep server before he died!"
The so-called biological data Lowell had gotten through backroom dealings with Zetatech. The astronomically valuable material that would let them finish the Chimera project in one shot was sleeping on the server right now.
But the main netrunner receiving the order went pale as paper.
"I-it can’t be opened! When Director Lowell transmitted the data, he locked it with top-level multi-encryption that can only be unlocked with his retina and fingerprints!"
"So?!"
The netrunner trembled as he pointed at the red access-denied window on the monitor.
"You saw it just now, didn’t you? The assassin’s knife pierced Director Lowell’s forehead and completely destroyed his brain and retinal tissue! The only biometric key that could unlock the data is gone forever!"
"...What did you say?"
"It’s absolutely impossible right now! Even if we throw the entire headquarters netrunner team at it and brute-force the thing, it’ll take at least six months to crack this military-grade encryption completely!"
At that moment, the executive’s face twisted horribly with rage and frustration. His plan to shake down a living Lowell and piece everything together had been completely ruined by a single corpse.
"You useless bastards...!"
Kwaang!
Veins bulging in his neck, the executive kicked over the titanium-alloy desk in the crisis room.
"From tomorrow on, every department netrunner is to be locked in the server room and not allowed to sleep! Six months? If I hear one more weak excuse about how it can’t be done right now, I’ll burn every last one of your brains out! Find a way!"
As the executive’s furious roar shook the crisis room, Ji-hwan’s truck, with Falco behind the wheel, was slipping into the blackest depths of Pacifica, the deepest sewer in Night City, while the corporate manhunt and the six-month reprieve were left behind.
And three months later.
Kwaang!
The rough crack of a brutal fight that sounded like it could smash concrete.
Inside a damp, fishy underground octagon ring in Pacifica, the champion of the Animal gang, nearly three meters tall, finally hit the floor with the sound of air leaving a tire.
"Ghhk..."
The unnaturally swollen, toad-like mass of muscle convulsed as bright red blood gushed from his mouth and he slammed headfirst into the floor.
"Waaaaaah!!"
"K! K! K! K! That monster bastard! He won again!!"
The criminals and hedonists filling the arena roared with bloodshot eyes, cheering the name of the faceless fighter.
They were hailing, with mad enthusiasm, the violence of a man who fought the Animal gang’s steroid-fueled monsters barehanded, with nothing but pure flesh and no chrome at all.
The one standing at the center of the cheers.
A black specialized anti-blade mask with the fierce pattern of a tiger’s fang carved across the face. A dark, muted short-sleeve shirt clinging tightly to pumped muscles. Across the skin of his body, the horrible side effects of the battle at the old research lab had left tiger-stripe scars all over him.
And around both his fists and forearms, the old bandages wrapped there were soaked through with dark red bloodstains and oil, the result of every night spent smashing the bodies of hulking men like iron with nothing but his bare hands.
Clatter.
Ji-hwan glanced once at the giant collapsed on the floor, foam at his mouth, then ignored the adoring crowd completely and opened the cage door without a shred of hesitation, walking straight into the dark passage.
In the deep, damp basement of a ruined building in Pacifica.
Cold, stale water poured down from a crude shower rigged together out of old pipes.
Three hellish months had passed in the Animal gang’s illegal underground pit.
Ji-hwan washed off the body caked in blood and the stench of illegal steroids, then roughly swept back his wet hair.
On the floor, the dark red blood and grime he had picked up by crushing fighters in the ring with his bare fists were washing away.
With his head lowered under the cold stream, Ji-hwan quietly looked down at his scar-riddled upper body and felt the changes of the past three months.
When he had fallen from dozens of meters in the air, he had burned through his life force once again, leaving his regeneration almost completely stalled, so his body had recovered slowly and painfully.
But now, three months later, clear and immense vitality was once again filling the hollow inside him.
The torn muscle fibers and crushed bones had regained their former overwhelming durability, and because he had broken through his limits to recover, the density of his muscles had become even greater than before.
But because his regeneration had slowed, the horrific slashes and scars that had covered his entire upper body had become an emblem that could never be erased, now or ever.
Those hideous, forcibly stitched-together wounds had settled over his body like the wave patterns carved into the hide of a great beast.
Ji-hwan touched the scars that would not disappear and carved deep into himself the past he had reached as a human being.
After roughly drying himself with a towel, Ji-hwan unwound the sweat-soaked bandages from both fists and reviewed the past three months in the pit.
To hide from the three-star warrant dropped across Night City and the corporate netrunners, he had to seal away the limiter on his signature [Thought Acceleration] and [Body Enhancement] while fighting in this arena.
The moment any mechanical afterimage showed up on the arena cameras, or his monstrous strength that could output tons of pressure was exposed, his identity would be blown wide open.
So he had to take the blows from Animal’s fighters using nothing but his dynamic vision and reflexes, and over those three months, that extreme restriction had paradoxically given Ji-hwan a miracle of growth.
Instead of dodging the enemy’s murderous trajectories or blocking them with brute force, he had engraved into his body a form of evasion that let attacks slide past by literally a hair’s breadth before they landed.
Above all, his greatest achievement was finally gaining control over [Instant Strike], a technique that had once been little more than a suicide move.
In the past, when he fought the corporate assassination squads, he had not been able to use it consciously. The moment he did, he had failed to concentrate all his power into the point of impact, and the backlash had spread through his entire body, shattering and collapsing him from within. It had been an unfinished art, the result of forcing out power by sheer will.
But in the arena, he could never bring out his regeneration or any of his other abilities, so Ji-hwan had, through grueling effort, awakened to the subtlety of releasing force.
When he thrust his fist toward an opponent’s abdomen, instead of tensing his shoulder and arm, he let the tension in his muscles melt away as smoothly as water.
With his body completely relaxed, he drew rotational force from the rebound of his toes against the ground and poured every ounce of technique into that single point of contact with his opponent.
The result was astonishing.
The unnecessary stiffness vanished from his muscles, and through those supple fibers, kinetic energy gathered into one point, producing no explosive shockwave at all, just a soft, gentle touch like a light tap on a sandbag.
The instant that light fist landed, it pierced beyond the opponent’s thick, hardened muscle and armor-like body and struck the inside perfectly.
Now [Instant Strike] was no longer an unfinished finisher that had to be forced out with both feet planted hard into the ground.
It had been sublimated into his bones and flesh, something he could use whenever he wanted, as naturally as breathing or walking.
Three months of retreat under limited conditions had, paradoxically, given Ji-hwan sharper claws and higher fangs.
And time rewound three months earlier.
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