The outer front of the abandoned shopping mall.
Beyond the barricades under the heavy dark, a ragtag coalition of low-rent mercs and rival gang members from the bottom of Night City were buzzing and scheming together.
"Look, we’re never getting all the way inside and wiping out every last Animal in there. But with our numbers, if we punch through the front, we can at least grab that five-hundred-thousand-eddie bounty bastard’s head and get out!"
"Heh-heh, five hundred grand, huh? So how are we splitting that between us? My cut’s way too small if we divide it by headcount."
Drunk on greasy greed, they snickered and started counting their money before they’d even made it. Through their vulgar chatter, one merc tugged the charging handle on his rifle and spat in annoyance.
"Damn it, you idiots. Worry about how to split the bounty after we’ve taken that bastard’s head first."
"No need."
Before the merc could even finish, a low voice drifted out from somewhere nearby.
"...Huh?"
Realizing at once that it wasn’t one of their own, the mercs and gang members all snapped their heads around in alarm. In the thick darkness their eyes landed on a man walking out.
A man with faint red smoke rising from his entire body like heat haze.
It was Ji-hwan, wearing a tiger-fang mask.
"Th-that’s him! That’s the bastard we were looking for!!"
"He walked out on his own? Has he lost his mind...!"
Just as they were about to spit out every curse they had at the target standing right in front of them, Ji-hwan ignored them and spoke instead.
"Anyone with family, anyone with a lover, anyone with someone precious to them."
The mercs’ mouths froze for a split second at those strange words.
"If you value your life, go back. This is your last chance."
It was Ji-hwan’s final mercy and final sentence before the slaughter to come.
But there was no way that warning would reach the bottom-feeding mercs blinded by eddies.
"Fuck! Who the hell are you to run your mouth, you slab of meat!!"
The merc at the very front bared his veins, raised his military rifle, and lined up Ji-hwan’s forehead dead center in his sights.
But even with the muzzle aimed right at his face, Ji-hwan didn’t so much as twitch an eyebrow. He only stared back at them with cold eyes.
"Here’s my answer, you son of a bitch!!"
Tatatatang!!
The merc slammed the trigger with a furious shout.
The muzzle flashed, gunfire roared, and at the same time the tense curtain of battle was ripped open.
But the Ji-hwan who should have been pierced by those bullets was already gone.
The merc who had fired blinked.
The man who had been standing right in front of him had vanished from sight faster than a finger snap.
'...Huh?'
In an instant, the merc’s vision began to spin grotesquely.
The moonlight of the clear night and the asphalt below crossed and twisted together before his body hit the rain-soaked ground with a dull thud.
At the edge of his fallen gaze, he saw a familiar body standing there holding a smoking rifle.
It was his own body, with its neck cleanly severed and blood spraying like a fountain.
'Why... is my body...'
Without even realizing his head had been cut off and dropped to the ground, the merc sank into eternal darkness with that empty question as his last thought.
"...H-huh?!"
As his comrade’s corpse collapsed, the remaining mercs’ eyes widened so far in shock they looked ready to split open.
Before they knew it, Ji-hwan was standing in the middle of their formation, having taken the other man’s head.
The faint haze rising from his body had thickened into pale red smoke, and in his hand a broken katana gleamed coldly, dripping a red trail.
"A, a Sandevistan!! That bastard activated a military Sandevistan!!"
Seeing that overwhelming speed, the gang members were convinced Ji-hwan had used a machine’s high-speed acceleration implant, a [Sandevistan], and started vomiting curses in panic.
"C-circle him! Turn on your gear!"
"Rip him apart!!!"
Terrified, the surviving mercs and gang members screamed like they were having seizures and all at once activated their combat implants, red optical lenses flaring to life.
Smart-gun targeting reticles tangled red in the air, and melee weapons spat blue-white sparks.
On the rain-slick asphalt, the merc called Rick was panting rough, ragged breaths behind his gas mask.
"Fuck, calm down. Calm down... Why, why the hell is my heart pounding like crazy!!!!"
He clawed at his chest, trying to force his racing heart back under control, but his body had already slipped far beyond his control in the grip of sheer terror.
From the moment the man had vanished into the air with a faint red haze, the front yard of Pacifica’s old abandoned shopping mall had turned into a slaughterhouse.
Tatatatang!!
Kak!
Searrrk-!
Relentless gunfire echoed from all directions between the darkness and the walls, but every burst of gunfire was being cut short one by one by a red afterimage flashing past, followed by a chilling slicing sound and the wet crack of bones breaking.
When the screams and gunshots started dying down, it was the horrifying proof that their comrades were being turned into minced meat at terrifying speed.
"This is insane... how can he keep moving at that speed?!"
"Rick!! Shit... we’re screwed!!"
As his comrade’s desperate scream rang in his ears, Rick’s artificial eye lenses shook wildly.
The path the bastard carved through the air was unmistakably the movement of a high-speed acceleration implant, a [Sandevistan].
But no matter how good a military Sandevistan was, once it was activated it should have had a cooldown period to prevent overload on the nervous system.
Yet the man in the dark showed no sign of stopping or tiring.
In truth, Ji-hwan’s body had become so absurdly enhanced through extreme training and regeneration that the mercs were mistaking his fluid movement at minimum output for a Sandevistan, when it wasn’t even full acceleration.
If Rick had known that horrifying truth, he would have run for his life instead of getting greedy in the first place.
Puh-uk!
"Fuck, I should’ve run! This is hell!"
"No! Please, spare me! Aaaagh!"
"I’m sorry, I was wrong! I’ll never come here again... Guhk!"
The screams of the mercs and gang members as their bodies were ripped apart echoed miserably through the rain.
The price for ignoring Ji-hwan’s final warning to "go back" because they were blinded by the five-hundred-thousand-eddie bounty was this brutal.
Before long, the armed force that had numbered around thirty had been slaughtered without a trace, leaving only five people, including Rick, trembling like leaves with their backs pressed together.
Strangely enough, the five who survived to the end were the ones who had, just before the fight started, hastily stopped the comrade who had stepped forward with his gun and backed away after sensing something was off.
That moment of hesitation and instinct had miraculously prolonged their lives in this blood-soaked hell.
Ssshhk-
Then, Ji-hwan, covered in red blood, appeared silently right in front of the remaining five muzzles.
Beyond his torn old coat, Ji-hwan’s solid upper body was marked by a huge tiger-striped scar, permanently carved there as the price of once burning through his life force as fuel. With the dark red blood of the enemies he had just slaughtered clinging to it and running down the deep grooves of the scar, it gave the grotesque illusion that the beast pattern etched into his skin was pulsing and alive.
Added to that were the faint red haze rising from every pore of his body and the tiger-fang pattern roughly carved into the black special anti-blade mask covering his face, all gleaming blood-red beneath the deep darkness and pale moonlight.
He looked like a massive black tiger soaked in blood, walking out of the night itself.
"Black Tiger...?"
"H-hiiik...!"
One of the five, staring at the perfect form of a predator that had crossed the line of death, muttered in a hoarse, dazed voice.
To their dull lenses, Ji-hwan looked exactly like a giant black tiger drenched in blood, having finished the hunt and strolling leisurely out of the pitch-black darkness.
They tried to raise their guns at him somehow, but bizarrely enough, the way they trembled with weapons in hand didn’t look like people preparing for battle. It was only the last frantic struggle of men trying to save their own lives against an irresistible force.
Ji-hwan looked at the five guns pointed at him, then after a brief silence—brief for him, but for the five facing him it was an experience that swung between heaven and hell—he lost interest in them. He flicked blood off the blade once and turned his back. At that moment, something began to crawl through the heads of the few who were too terrified to even breathe properly.
'Wait... that monster just cut down dozens of people in an instant. Maybe... he’s tired now?'
'If we pull the trigger now...?'
The moment three mercs, including the greed-blinded Rick, forced trembling fingers to tighten and slowly started to lift their muzzles from the ground toward Ji-hwan’s back,
Ji-hwan stopped.
At the same time, the others, sensing it instinctively, froze like statues.
Then came the slightest turn of his eyes.
"...!"
It was overwhelming, pure [killing intent] pouring out from behind that blood-soaked tiger-fang mask.
In that instant, the minds of the ones raising their guns were struck by vivid hallucinations of different horrific forms of death the moment they met Ji-hwan’s pitch-black eyes.
Merc Rick gasped as if his throat had been sliced open by an invisible red line, trapped in a horrifying illusion of his head spinning through the air. The merc beside him, who had been about to raise a shotgun, clutched his chest as if his heart had been pierced clean through by a sharp hand blade, writhing in stabbing pain.
Another one heard, right beside his ear, the vivid crack of his skull being crushed like a watermelon by immense crushing force, and he let out a shriek before collapsing to the ground.
Clang.Thud.
And so, unable to control their trembling hands in the face of those visions of death, the mercs dropped their rifles and smart guns onto the rain-filled asphalt all at once. Seeing that, Ji-hwan opened his mouth.
"I left you alive on purpose."
Ji-hwan’s cold voice cut through the rain and slammed into their eardrums like thunder.
"Tell them K is here."
With that short, heavy warning, K disappeared back into the darkness of Pacifica.
When morning finally came and Ji-hwan stepped heavily into the underground fight pit beneath the abandoned shopping mall in Pacifica, the Animal gang members guarding the entrance buzzed and made way for him as he returned from the battle outside.
If it had been any other day, they would have been cheering rough and loud while showing off their illegally steroid-pumped muscles, but the air greeting Ji-hwan today was very different.
Some of the gang members who had heard, directly or indirectly, of Ji-hwan’s overwhelming power had fear in their eyes.
As if they had been horrified by the true form of Ji-hwan, who had surpassed the violence they themselves worshipped, they flinched the moment their eyes met his, then lowered their heads and disappeared one by one into the dark corridor like rats.
"..."
Ji-hwan quietly watched their sticky, uneasy backs as they avoided him, gauging the situation in silence. That was when—
"Hey, K!!"
From the end of the corridor, with heavy footsteps that shook the ground, Mammoth appeared and strode toward him with terrifying momentum. Without warning, he grabbed Ji-hwan by the collar with one massive hand and yanked him up into the air.
"You just did something incredibly stupid!!"
The crude steel implant set into his crushed jaw rattled angrily as Mammoth roared, veins bulging in his neck.
"Do you have any idea what you just did out there?! You basically picked a fight with this whole city in broad daylight!"
"From now on, every merc and gang bastard in Night City could catch the scent of blood and come after you!!"
It was furious concern, disguised as rage, over the fact that the family he cared about had recklessly stepped out alone and drawn the whole city’s attention.
But even while hanging in the air and taking Mammoth’s savage shouting head-on, there was no emotion in Ji-hwan’s pitch-black eyes.
"Then what about you guys?"
At that plain, cutting line—asking whether the Animals were going to come after him too for the bounty on his head—Mammoth, who had been raging wildly, went silent.
"...!"
At a loss for words, Mammoth glared at Ji-hwan and ground his teeth, then swallowed a deep, beast-like groan.
In the end, unable to find a rebuttal, he clicked his tongue irritably and let go of Ji-hwan’s collar roughly.
After Ji-hwan landed lightly on the floor, Mammoth turned his back and stomped toward the corridor.
"You’re gonna regret this."
It was a grumble spoken even though he knew Ji-hwan had been trying to protect them.
Mammoth marched off, making a show of how furious he was, then waved his arm roughly at the Animal underlings blocking his way and watching his mood.
"All of you, move!! Get the hell out of the way!!"
Ji-hwan quietly watched the commotion as the gang members scrambled out of the way under Mammoth’s ferocious bark.
Then the guard stationed at the entrance, Bison, quietly came up beside him.
"Uh... Boss K. Mammoth’s only yelling like that because he’s worried about you. The boss doesn’t usually show his feelings that openly, you know."
At Bison’s careful defense, Ji-hwan straightened his coat collar and gave a light nod, as if he understood perfectly well.
"I know."
Ji-hwan tilted his chin toward the corridor where Mammoth had disappeared and asked Bison,
"More importantly... how’s it looking inside? Is everyone okay?"
At that question, Bison smiled warmly despite his size and thumped his chest.
"Oh, don’t worry! Thanks to you clearing everything out outside, everyone’s in great shape!!"
Watching Bison beam and pound his chest, Ji-hwan gave the faintest bitter smile.
Maybe Bison really was fine right in front of him, but Ji-hwan’s sharp senses were reading the eyes of the gang members hiding in the dark corners of the corridor and watching him.
It had only been a few days since he’d started going out every night, coming back covered in blood after cutting down the hounds swarming him. It was still the early stage of his first real battle, not even a week in, but the sticky bounty of five hundred thousand eddies hanging over Ji-hwan’s head had already poisoned the air inside the Animals.
'Rats blinded by money always end up aiming for your back sooner or later.'
Mammoth was stepping in to keep the peace and protect him by force as one of their own, but Ji-hwan could feel to the bone that other factions and internal dissenters, disgusted by Mammoth’s stance in the face of outside threats and a huge bounty, were hiding in the dark and quietly running their cheap little calculations.
Step.
Ji-hwan stopped in his tracks on the way to his pipe-room quarters.
"Bison. And..."
Ji-hwan’s low, heavy voice echoed through the cold corridor.
"I’ve got something to say to all of you."
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