Even while crawling through the darkness, the outside never stopped shaking with thunder.
타타타탕-! 콰앙-!
It was the merciless gunfire of a sudden attack, followed by the roar of massive explosions.
Whether it was another hostile force targeting the Raffen Shiv or just another frenzy from rampaging raiders, Ji-hwan couldn’t tell. All he knew was that a bad feeling had clenched around him, and he moved his arms and legs even more desperately.
His wrists, forced back into place beyond their limits, and the torn muscle fibers in his arms screamed with searing pain as they stitched themselves together, like his nerves were being scraped raw. But he ground his teeth through it and kept crawling toward the end of the tunnel.
"Haa... haa..."
The moment he emerged, the air that stabbed into his nose was the Badlands’ thick, familiar stench of smoke and blood, along with the acrid gunpowder smell of sparks drifting through the wind.
And the first thing that hit Ji-hwan’s bloodshot eyes was the countless bodies strewn across the ground.
He instinctively tightened his grip on the heavy Overture in his hand, lowered his body, and carefully approached the corpses one by one. Then a faint sense of relief flickered across his hardened face.
Their clothes had all been torn to shreds, their bodies reduced to chunks of meat scattered everywhere, but the black-and-cyan outfits and the eerie skull-ghost decorations made it obvious they were Raffen Shiv.
"They got wiped out. Then what about the people?"
Now that he’d confirmed the bastards who had kidnapped him were dead, Ji-hwan felt a little more at ease. Still, he needed to find Rachel and Amy, so he used wrecked vehicles and collapsed concrete as cover and carefully checked the situation outside.
Before long, he spotted silhouettes of people gathered in the middle of an open lot where dust was still rippling through the air. Holding his breath, he hid behind the ruined debris and watched them in secret.
At the center of the group were the gaunt survivors who had escaped the hellish camp, trembling as they clustered together. And in the middle of them, Ji-hwan saw Rachel and Amy hugging each other tightly, both of them safe at last.
"Thank God. They’re alive."
Ji-hwan let out a breath of relief, one hand going to his chest.
But then his gaze shifted to the "new armed group" surrounding the mother and daughter.
They were nothing like the Raffen Shiv’s grotesque, vicious gear.
Thick leather armor built to withstand brutal sandstorms. Rugged nomad combat vehicles modified for wasteland warfare, all of them radiating a fierce, battle-hardened energy. And the distinctive markings painted on their rides.
"Aldecaldos...?"
The mutter slipped out between Ji-hwan’s split lips.
The huge nomad family of the Badlands, a group he had seen hundreds of times in the game on his monitor back in his room, and one he’d secretly admired for their rough but unbreakable loyalty. The fact that they were standing right in front of him in this brutal, lawless year of 2067, a full ten years before the game’s timeline, left Ji-hwan stunned.
If it was the Aldecaldos who had turned the Raffen Shiv camp into a wasteland and secured the survivors, then the story changed.
At the very least, they weren’t cannibals who butchered the people they robbed and sold them off as body parts to corporations.
Ji-hwan pushed himself up from behind the rubble and started to head toward them.
Now that he’d confirmed the mother and daughter were safe, he needed to get out of this horrible camp and join them.
But just as he was about to take a step, he looked down at himself and froze solid like a statue.
"Shit..."
Right now, he looked like something that had long since stopped being human. The clothes he’d been nearly stripped of when he was kidnapped had been reduced to rags by the brutal fight with Buck, and his whole body was smeared from head to toe in a black-red paste of his own blood and the enemy’s.
On top of that, the wounds across his body, including both arms that had been crushed past their limit by Buck’s chrome arm, still hadn’t fully healed. Between the shredded muscle fibers, they kept exhaling a faint, eerie red vapor as they stitched themselves back together in real time.
Even the heavy-caliber Overture in his right hand, with the wrist he’d forcibly set hanging loose, was still gripped viciously, the same gun that had just blown Buck’s skull apart.
Anyone looking at him would think he was a murderer, or some horrifying cyberpsycho consumed by chrome.
"If I walk out there looking like this... they’ll 100 percent mistake me for a Raffen survivor or a lunatic and turn me into Swiss cheese."
The Aldecaldos’ crossfire from moments ago flashed through his mind, the one that had ground the entire Raffen camp into dust with merciless firepower.
If he suddenly appeared with a gun in his hand in front of those battle-hardened troops, who were still riding high on combat adrenaline, there was no way they’d try talking first. They’d fill him with lead before he could say a word.
Ji-hwan swallowed hard and fiddled with the heavy grip of the pistol in his hand.
If he wanted to join Rachel and Amy, he had to make them lower their guard and approach safely.
But there was no way to hide this grotesquely overheated body or the disgusting bloodstains right now.
Saul Bright frowned deeply, gripping his weapon as he exhaled a rough breath.
For the past few days, his insides had been burning red-hot. Family members and survivors who were practically his own kin had been kidnapped by those filthy Raffen Shiv bastards.
While he searched every corner and kept up the grueling pursuit, he managed to get the hideout’s location and the building’s layout from Dakota Smith, a fixer he’d had ties with for years, though he had no idea how she’d dug it up.
After that, the plan was simple.
The main force would roll in with modified armored vehicles and pour fire into the camp from the front, drawing all the Raffen’s attention, while Saul, Mitch Anderson, and the rest of the elite team would quietly circle around to the back of the building.
According to Dakota’s intel, there was an old auxiliary pipe passage connected directly to the camp at the rear of the building, and they planned to use it to catch the enemy off guard and rescue the people trapped inside.
They had already silently taken out the guards waiting at the back and reached the target point. Mitch was just setting up cutting gear at the exit to prepare for infiltration when it happened.
Kreeeek-! Clank!
Before Saul and Mitch could even make a move, the pipe exit was yanked open from the inside, and people covered in dust started scrambling out in a panic.
"...Huh?"
Saul lowered his rifle, completely stunned in place.
The people crawling out of the narrow passage and hugging each other in relief were unmistakably the kidnapped survivors they had been desperately searching for.
Deep relief and joy spread across Saul’s hardened face.
His people had made it back alive.
But that joy lasted only a moment before a thick, impossible question rose in Saul’s mind.
"What the hell happened here?"
Saul knew from the layout he’d studied in advance that the iron door inside the camp had been welded shut with thick industrial-grade metal, sealed tight. And with the weak strength of the malnourished elderly and women inside, there was no way they could have opened it from within on their own.
So the idea that these frail people had somehow ripped off that thick steel door and escaped before the outside assault team even broke in made no physical sense.
Mitch, equally bewildered, scratched the back of his head with his rough metal prosthetic and exchanged a look with Saul.
To get to the bottom of it, Saul moved toward the group of survivors and spotted Rachel in the middle of the crowd, clutching her young daughter Amy tightly while trying to catch her breath.
The sound of fierce gunfire and explosions had gradually faded through the rough Badlands wind. Pushing through the drifting smoke, Saul hurried over when he saw Rachel holding little Amy close and breathing hard.
"Rachel, I’m glad you’re safe. Really glad."
When Rachel recognized Saul’s familiar old leather jacket and voice, tears burst from her bloodless face.
She stepped toward him and greeted him with a voice full of deep relief.
"Saul...! You really came."
"Of course. We’d never abandon our own."
Saul shared a short, firm hug with Rachel and savored the joy of having found his people.
Then his gaze fell on the young blond child clinging tightly to Rachel’s leg.
A small life that had somehow survived even inside that horrible camp. A gentle smile spread across Saul’s scarred face.
He let his old leather jacket flare as he crouched down to meet the child at eye level, then used his rough, callused hand to gently stroke Amy’s messy blond hair.
"Looks like our little Amy made it too. You did really well holding out in a place like that. You’re safe now."
When Amy gave him a bright little smile, Saul let out a relieved breath and stood back up.
But the relief didn’t last long. The same impossible question that had been circling his mind finally spilled out.
Saul frowned slightly and asked Rachel in a serious voice.
"But Rachel, what exactly happened in there? I can accept that the outside entrance you just came out of was opened somehow, but from what we knew beforehand, the iron door to the inner camp where you were trapped should’ve been completely welded shut with industrial metal. Before we even got in with our gear, how on earth did you open that thick welded door and get out here?"
"Ah... well..."
Rachel couldn’t answer right away. She only moved her lips in hesitation, unable to speak.
It was a miracle beyond common sense, something that couldn’t be explained normally, so she didn’t know where to begin.
Then little Amy, still wrapped around Rachel’s leg, poked her head out and shouted in a clear voice.
"Ji-hwan! Mister Ji-hwan saved Mom and me!"
At the unfamiliar name that burst from the innocent child’s mouth, Saul’s thick brows twitched.
"Amy!"
Rachel panicked and hurriedly tried to stop her, gripping the child’s shoulders, but the words were already out and couldn’t be taken back.
Under Saul’s puzzled stare, she was just about to explain the situation herself when the brutal scene from a few minutes ago flashed through her mind like lightning.
The blood-soaked man hanging off Buck’s massive back, strangling him like a beast to save them. Ji-hwan, enduring the horrifying agony of his own bones breaking and flesh tearing, never letting go of his grip, vomiting blood as he was crushed against the steel wall.
Rachel had no idea that Ji-hwan’s body possessed a [regenerative ability] that could heal itself.
To her, Ji-hwan was a man who had willingly bet his life on saving her and Amy, enduring the pain of torn flesh and shattered bones with his whole body.
"Get out!! Hurry!!"
His desperate scream, eyes bloodshot as he shouted like a final act of defiance toward her, seemed to ring vividly in her ears.
Thinking of that sacrifice made Rachel’s chest tighten as if it were being torn apart.
She barely managed to hold back the tears about to spill, but the tip of her nose quickly turned red and her eyes grew pitifully bloodshot and unsteady.
"Kim Ji-hwan... His name is Ji-hwan."
With a voice thick with tears, Rachel forced the words out at last.
"We weren’t the ones who opened it. That man tore the welded iron door open with his bare hands, even while letting both his arms be ripped apart in that horrible camp. And then... when that vicious Raffen bastard came charging in after him, he threw himself at that monster with nothing but his body and held the line so we could get out."
Rachel clasped her trembling hands together and bowed her head deeply toward Saul, the leader of the Aldecaldos.
"Please... please save him. If it hadn’t been for him, Amy, me, and everyone here would all be dead. He’s still inside. Please, I’m begging you!"
At her desperate plea, Saul Bright, standing guard in front of the ruined debris, stiffened in place beneath his old leather jacket.
Nomad families living in the harsh Badlands generally took terrible care of their own people, but they were extremely closed off and wary toward outsiders.
Rachel, who had been terrified inside that horrible camp, was no different in her suspicion of outsiders.
And yet she was now bowing her head, holding back tears, and begging the family leader to rescue a stranger she had never even met before.
It was a powerful shock that overturned everything Saul knew about Rachel and nomad common sense.
What exactly had this strange man done inside that dark, blood-soaked building to light a fire in the heart of this cold nomad woman?
Saul silently looked down at Rachel, who was staring up at him with bloodshot eyes, then closed his mouth firmly and slowly turned his gaze toward the pitch-black building where the man called Ji-hwan was still trapped.
Meanwhile, Ji-hwan was hiding behind the collapsed concrete debris, staring down at his own miserable state and thinking hard.
Both of his shattered arms were stitching themselves back together, exhaling faint red vapor between torn muscle fibers, and in his right hand, where he’d forcibly reset a dislocated wrist, he was still holding the heavy Overture that had just sent Buck’s head flying.
With the black-red blood smeared all over him, he looked exactly like a mad killer or a cannibal cyberpsycho who’d have bullets put into him before anyone even tried talking.
Meanwhile, after hearing Rachel’s desperate plea in front of the survivors, Saul Bright was filled with deep confusion and curiosity.
A closed-off nomad woman, fiercely wary of outsiders, was begging for the rescue of a stranger with tears in her eyes.
The unknown man called Ji-hwan, who had torn open a steel door while risking his own broken bones and then blocked the path of a vicious Raffen bastard with nothing but his body.
Saul turned his hardened face toward the dark exit Rachel had pointed at.
That was when it happened.
Through the gaps in the drifting smoke and rubble, Saul’s sharp eyes caught sight of a figure half-hidden in the shadows, secretly watching them.
"Who’s there!!"
Saul’s thunderous shout tore through the silence of the Badlands.
At the same time, he raised his old rifle, and the trained Aldecaldos fighters waiting with him all lifted their own weapons in unison like a single massive organism.
Clack-! Click!
Terrifying sounds of weapons being chambered rang out one after another, and dozens of cold gun barrels locked precisely onto the concrete rubble where Ji-hwan was hiding.
The battle force was on a knife’s edge, tension stretched to the limit. If the armored vehicle’s machine guns and rifles were fired now, he’d be turned into Swiss cheese in an instant.
Just as Ji-hwan froze at the awful realization that he’d been spotted and swallowed hard,
"Mister!!"
little Amy suddenly darted out in front of the group, ignoring the vicious barrels of the Aldecaldos guns all aimed at her.
"Amy!!"
Rachel screamed in panic, going pale as she reached out desperately, but she couldn’t stop the child’s quick little steps in time.
As Amy crossed the line of fire and ran toward the rubble, Saul’s face was overtaken by deep shock.
No matter how dangerous the unknown silhouette looked, there was no way they could pour bullets into the direction of the child they had come to rescue.
"Wait! Don’t shoot!"
Saul hurriedly raised one hand, signaling the family to cease fire.
The Aldecaldos immediately took their fingers off the triggers at their leader’s command, but the tension remained razor-thin, and no one lowered their weapon as they kept their sights fixed on the rubble.
With everyone holding their breath, Amy reached the smoking concrete debris and, without hesitation, stretched her tiny hands into the darkness.
Then she carefully, but firmly, took hold of something.
What she grabbed was Ji-hwan’s blood-soaked hand, the same hand that had been hiding in fear of getting shot.
Ji-hwan jerked in surprise and almost reflexively tried to pull his hand back.
After all, the sight of himself after blowing Buck’s head apart was far too horrible and filthy for an innocent child to touch.
But Amy gripped that rough, vicious hand with both of hers and refused to let go.
Her strength as an undernourished little girl shouldn’t have been enough to matter physically, but Ji-hwan couldn’t bring himself to pull away. His heart had been strongly drawn to the pure, spotless innocence in that child.
Ji-hwan bit down hard on his bloodied lip and, in the end, let the child’s small hand guide him. He lowered the heavy Overture in his grip, pointing the barrel toward the ground.
Thud.
With the heavy sound of boots on the ground, Ji-hwan finally stepped through the drifting dust and smoke beyond the concrete wreckage and slowly revealed himself to the Aldecaldos family.
Black-red blood soaking his entire body, eerie red haze spilling from his wounds, muscles hanging loose after being torn to their limit. And in the middle of it all, a tiny blond child with a bright face, holding his hand tightly.
At that utterly mismatched sight, Saul and the armed Aldecaldos fighters who had been holding their breath with guns trained on him fell into a deathly silence.
The Aldecaldos combat troops kept their fingers on the triggers, hesitant and still unable to lower their guard against Ji-hwan’s ghastly blood-soaked appearance.
But the family leader, Saul Bright, reacted differently.
Saul, in his old leather jacket, slowly lowered the barrel of the rifle he’d raised and stared straight into Ji-hwan’s eyes.
The intuition of a veteran nomad who had crossed countless kill zones was working fast.
"Clear."
Though dulled a little by exhaustion and pain, there was no madness in Ji-hwan’s eyes, no murderous intent. Only the will to protect the child holding his hand could be seen there.
Then Saul’s gaze shifted to Ji-hwan, who was smeared in black-red blood.
He looked vicious enough to be a murderer, but Saul’s sharp eye saw right through the bloody shell to the truth beneath it.
A body that didn’t feel the slightest threat from any machine augmentation. No neural sockets running along the spine, no optical lenses replacing the eyes, not even subdermal armor beneath the skin.
Not a single implant. A pure human body, the kind even some random street punk in Night City would have at least one of.
"No chrome at all... What the hell is his story?"
Rachel’s earlier testimony came back to Saul again: this fragile bare body had gone up against Buck’s vicious chrome arm and, even while risking broken bones, ripped open a thick steel door.
Saul was certain this unknown man was no threat to them.
"Everyone, lower your guns."
Saul’s heavy command broke the silence.
As he began to put his rifle away and walk forward unarmed, Panam Palmer, standing behind him in a red leather jacket, grabbed his arm in alarm.
"Saul! Are you crazy? We don’t even know what kind of guy he is, and if you walk up to him now...!"
Just as Panam was urgently trying to stop him, a rough metal prosthetic arm settled heavily on her shoulder. It was Mitch Anderson.
"Let him go, Panam."
Mitch shook his head, his half-shaved scalp glinting in the light.
It was a signal to trust the leader’s judgment.
Panam bit her lip and reluctantly let go of Saul.
Stepping forward slowly over the dust, Saul finally stood right in front of Ji-hwan.
The gaze of the nomad leader who ruled the Badlands met the gaze of the wounded stranger head-on in the air.
"I’ll ask just one thing."
Saul drew his deep-set brows together and spoke in a serious voice.
"These people have nothing to do with you. So why did you save them, even if it meant your body getting torn apart?"
It was a perfectly natural question for Saul to ask.
In this horrible lawless land, where even kindness was measured in eddies, there was no reason for a fool to throw away his life for someone else.
Every Aldecaldos eye went still, fixed on Ji-hwan’s lips.
Everyone waited to hear what grand mission or purpose had driven him to perform such a miracle.
But the answer that slipped from Ji-hwan’s split lips after he caught his breath was absurdly simple.
"I just... wanted to, I guess."
"...Huh?"
At that bewilderingly straightforward answer, deep confusion spread across the faces of Panam, Mitch, and every other Aldecaldos member who had been on edge moments before.
For a reason that had risked his life, it was far too ridiculous and pure an answer.
Saul stared blankly down at Ji-hwan for a moment, then the corners of his lips twitched slightly.
"Heh... heh..."
At Saul’s suppressed laughter, the surrounding family members looked at him in confusion.
Then Saul suddenly threw his head back as if he couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst into hearty laughter toward the smoke-stained Badlands sky.
"Bwahahahaha!!"
It was the first real laugh the family leader had let out in a long time, after being crushed by the recent kidnappings and deaths of his people and the weight of responsibility on his shoulders.
"Hahaha! Just wanted to, huh? Damn... that’s disgustingly honest for an excuse."
With Saul’s booming laughter, the tightly wound air of the battlefield loosened all at once, and Mitch Anderson, who had been waiting quietly behind the leader, scratched his half-shaved head with his rough metal prosthetic and let out a snort of laughter too.
Now fully convinced that Ji-hwan was not a dangerous man, Mitch nudged Panam, who was still narrowing her eyes beside him, and whispered with easy familiarity,
"What, that guy seems pretty decent to me."
At Mitch’s friendly praise, Panam in her red leather jacket crossed her arms tightly and turned her head away.
"Hmph."
She huffed in a prim, annoyed way, as if she couldn’t be bothered. But even as she acted cold, the rifle in her hands had already lost its hostility, the barrel lowered obediently toward the ground.
Listening to the pointless grumbling from behind him, Saul finally finished laughing, ran a hand through his rough beard, and gave Ji-hwan a heavy nod.
In this calculated, corrupted city, it was the most human answer imaginable, with no hypocrisy or pretense at all. Saul liked the wounded man in front of him very much.
Saul’s old leather jacket flared as he thrust out a rough but steady hand toward the blood-soaked Ji-hwan.
"Saul Bright."
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