Ji-hwan’s days of pushing himself mercilessly were brutal.
In the mornings, he forced his body to bear impossible strain.
He would brace his shoulder against a heavy mass of crushed cars and scrap metal, then shove it across the sand with sheer force. Unable to withstand the pressure, the muscle fibers in his back and thighs would snap with sharp pops, and blood would seep through his skin.
When red steam rose through the gaps in the wounds and stitched the torn muscle back together, he would immediately drive the iron block forward again the moment recovery finished.
Once his muscles hit their limit and he collapsed, a short rest would follow.
After a quick meal of meat and water that Panam and Mitch had brought him, he would resume his striking drills as always.
He threw punches and kicked his shins without pause. Skin peeled away and blood sprayed, but the bones he had broken and regenerated thousands of times, increasing their density each time, no longer even showed a crack.
And so the days of training passed without mercy.
Then came the long-awaited final day.
Standing against the barren sandstorm, Ji-hwan’s gaze fell on the massive boulder where he had first thrown a punch on the very first day of training.
Staring quietly at the rock’s surface, blackened with dried blood, Ji-hwan recalled the days he had spent training.
The first time he had struck the boulder with his bare fist, his bones had shattered helplessly, and he had inhaled toxic fumes raw, vomiting blood dozens of times a day and rolling on the ground in agony.
There had been countless moments when he wanted to give up, clutching a body that could not accept a single piece of [chrome].
But Ji-hwan never broke.
He slowly clenched and unclenched both fists, the thick scabs on his hands cracking as he looked down at them.
Pure organic hands, untouched by a single machine part. And yet this body, forged by cutting away bone and tearing flesh to break through its limits, now held a destructive force so dense that even a massive rock would not be able to withstand it.
'Can I break this rock?'
Ji-hwan looked up at the boulder in silence.
For a moment, doubt flickered through him, but he quickly shook his head.
'I have to.'
If he could not even smash a stone like this in this world, then he was nothing more than a helpless human who would be swept away and crushed by the great wave of fate.
Ji-hwan stood before the rock with burning eyes, lowered his stance, and set his fists.
'Start light.'
Tap. Thunk. Thud.
With every punch, Ji-hwan subtly adjusted the position of his feet and the angle of his waist.
Then the strikes gradually grew heavier. He was not simply increasing speed at random.
It was precise work, like driving a pickaxe into the veins of an ore seam, finding the exact point of impact and hammering his force into it.
Thwack. Boom. Kwaang—!
Each blow became a heavy, hollow impact that made the entire boulder tremble.
"Huuup—!"
Ji-hwan drew in a deep breath and pulled his fist back.
In that instant, he did not notice it himself, but a faint red steam began to rise hazily over his broad shoulders.
Kwaang—!
His iron fist, wrapped in the red haze, slammed squarely into the rock. But Ji-hwan did not stop.
As the red steam thickened around his back and shoulders, the weight of each punch doubled.
Boom!Boom!Kwaang—!
Tens, then hundreds of merciless strikes poured into a single trajectory. And finally.
Crack—!
A deep, massive fissure split across the once-sturdy surface of the rock.
As the impact sounds ceased and heavy silence settled over the scrapyard, the red steam that had wrapped his shoulders had vanished without a trace.
Soaked in sweat and blood, Ji-hwan panted hard and stared blankly at the boulder, now split as if it might break in two at any moment.
Then his lips began to tremble, and a beastlike roar of joy tore through the barren fumes.
"Waaaah!!"
After catching his breath, Ji-hwan shook off the blood crusted on his fists and turned back toward camp.
His steps across the sand suddenly faltered.
A cold sense of wrongness brushed past him. He had been so absorbed in training that he had lost track of time, but no one from the Aldecaldos had come to find him for days.
Not even Panam, who usually came grumbling to toss him food, and not a trace of Saul or Mitch either.
'No way.'
With a bad feeling tightening in his chest, Ji-hwan kicked off the ground and sprinted without hesitation.
Kwaang—!
The moment he blasted off the sand, the scenery on both sides of his vision was sucked backward at a terrifying speed.
It was an abnormal pace, even to Ji-hwan himself.
Training through destruction and regeneration that would have crushed the bones of an ordinary human to powder and killed them hundreds of times over.
His skeleton, evolved beyond its limits, and his thickened muscle fibers unleashed explosive propulsion in a full sprint after enduring that hell.
He was a pure organic body with no [chrome], yet his speed was like that of someone who had activated a military implant, [Sandevistan].
Feeling the gust of wind mixed with fumes slap his face, Ji-hwan tore across the wasteland.
Thanks to his overwhelming strength, the distance closed in an instant.
Soon, the outline of the Aldecaldos camp came into view through the dust.
Tatatatang—! Kwaang—!
The moment Ji-hwan confirmed the scene ahead, murderous intent flared in his pupils.
Red flames were shooting up from all over the camp that should have been peaceful, and ruthless gunfire was pouring down everywhere.
Someone was attacking the Aldecaldos base in earnest.
Tatatatang—! Kwaang—!
In the middle of the burning Aldecaldos camp, the cruel laughter of predators hunting human beings echoed through the air.
They were a vicious band of raiders who kidnapped living people in the barren Badlands and sold them off as organ packs or body parts to other gangs and corps, the Raffen Shiv, also known as the Raites.
At the center of that monstrous group stood a man in black armor decorated with a cyan skull-wraith emblem, his mouth stretched in a beastly grin.
He was the cruel boss of the Raffen Shiv, a vicious bastard who had once coldly cut off the arm of a subordinate named Buck for damaging merchandise, and who treated human lives as nothing more than eddies and slabs of meat.
"Burn it all! Kill them all! Load every useful thing—every person—onto the trucks before they get back!"
As the boss’s savage order rang out, the Raffen Shiv members all at once doused the camp with fuel and hurled torches into it.
Unarmed, fragile nomad civilians screamed as they were bound like cargo and dragged toward armored vehicles.
Yet the Aldecaldos’ camp was strangely helpless, when it would normally have fought back fiercely.
Saul, Panam, Mitch, Scorpion, and the family’s main combat force were nowhere to be seen in the camp.
"Keh-heh-heh. Very nice."
The boss bared his teeth and patted the shoulder of the subordinate standing beside him.
"Thanks to you spreading that fake intel that the nomads were trapped in another sector, that idiot Saul dragged his whole main force out. There’s nothing sweeter than raiding an empty nest."
"Hehe. Thank you."
It had been a bait operation, meticulously planned from the start to lure Saul’s troops out.
The boss swept a satisfied gaze over the burning camp and grinned.
"Kahahaha! By the time that bastard Saul comes running back, all that’ll be left are tents burned to ash!"
Just as he was howling with mad laughter, certain of victory, one of his men suddenly flinched and pointed toward the smoke-choked horizon beyond the wasteland.
"Boss, look over there."
Far off, a violent cloud of dust was exploding upward as it rushed straight toward the camp.
"What is it? Did the Aldecaldos already catch on and come back?"
The boss snapped his head around irritably, and the moment he looked, his lips stiffened.
What was coming was not an armored vehicle or an army. It was a single man. A bare-bodied man with dark red scabs on his skin was kicking off the ground and charging like a madman.
It was not ordinary running. The movement tearing through the sandstorm was a grotesque, destructive speed that looked like something only a military [Sandevistan] could produce, matching a vehicle stride for stride.
"What the hell is that guy?!"
The boss’s pupils shrank in confusion.
It was not a physical speed a human with no [chrome] should have been able to produce.
But his surprise lasted only a moment before murderous intent flooded back in.
"I don’t know what lunatic crawled out of where, but shoot him now! Turn that bastard into a beehive!!"
The instant the order fell, several Raffen Shiv thugs waiting in front raised vicious rifles with harsh clacks of loading mechanisms and stepped forward.
Clack—! Tatatatang—!!
Tens of merciless bullets began raining toward Ji-hwan’s path as he tore through the dust.
Even as lead rounds poured down with the rough curses of the men blocking his way, Ji-hwan did not dodge. Instead, he lowered his upper body and charged straight ahead.
Bullets slammed into his broad chest, shoulders, and thighs in rapid succession.
Skin tore and blood sprayed. But that was all. The rounds failed to fully penetrate the dense bones and steel-tough muscle fibers that had been compacted beyond their limits, and the bullets lodged grotesquely inside the muscle.
Ji-hwan kept charging in silence, shielding only his head—the one fatal target—with both hands and forearms.
Even through the searing pain of flesh being ripped apart, white smoke and thick red steam burst violently from the gaps in his wounds.
Countless bullets were embedded in his body, but his speed did not slow. If anything, it accelerated explosively.
The red haze pouring from every pore in his body split the Badlands fumes apart.
Ji-hwan’s charging path, moving at terrifying speed, painted the battlefield like one enormous red line.
Kwaang—!
Ji-hwan’s massive body slammed into the men firing from the front and sent them flying.
The thugs, struck head-on by overwhelming mass and speed, were flung into the air without even managing a scream before crashing to the ground.
He came to a dead stop right in front of the civilians who were screaming and trying to flee, and the bastards trying to bind them like cargo and drag them away.
Ji-hwan let out a rough breath and lowered the arms that had been shielding his face.
Hissss—.
With fierce heat, the muscle fibers repaired themselves in real time.
At the same time, the crumpled bullets lodged in his solid muscles were pushed out by the stubbornly growing fresh flesh, dropping to the ground with dull metallic clinks.
As he heard the sound of bullets spilling out of his own body, Ji-hwan’s cold gaze swept over the group in front of him.
Black armor with a bright cyan skull-wraith emblem painted over it. The vicious raiders who had once thrown him into a holding camp and treated people like meat parts—the Raffen Shiv.
In the dust where only the sound of casings hitting the ground echoed, Ji-hwan clenched both fists hard, the scabs on his hands stiffening, and settled into a striking stance once more.
A dry, heavy voice rumbled low through the fumes.
"You trash bastards."
The moment Ji-hwan’s cold mutter ended, the Raffen Shiv boss doubted his own eyes.
What he saw was unreal. Every time Ji-hwan moved one step like a beast, his armed men were toppling like leaves in the wind, screaming as they fell.
An overwhelming force that made no sense by any normal standard. Sensing that something had gone terribly wrong, the boss shouted with bloodshot eyes.
"What the hell! Nobody said there was a psycho like that!"
Unable to contain his rage, the boss grabbed a nearby subordinate by the collar and barked at him, but the man had gone pale and stammered in terror.
"Th-there was a rumor a few days ago that some Asian guy had joined the Aldecaldos..."
"Then why the hell are you telling me this now!!"
Unable to restrain his fury, the boss yanked the trigger on the shotgun he was holding.
Kwaang—!
With a merciless blast, the subordinate’s head burst like a watermelon.
Blood and bone fragments sprayed everywhere, and as the headless corpse crumpled to the ground, the boss finally clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"...Damn it."
He blew away the acrid smoke rising from the muzzle and smacked his lips.
"He was the one with the best head on his shoulders, too. Tch."
Regretting his impulsive murder only lightly, the boss let out a deep breath full of irritation.
"Huuuh."
But the damage was already done.
He spat harshly into the blood pooling on the ground and tightened his grip on the vicious shotgun again.
Then he strode forward and blocked Ji-hwan, who was crushing his men like toys with nothing but his bare hands.
"Hey, you rat."
The Raffen Shiv boss’s shotgun was trained on Ji-hwan.
He ground his teeth as he looked Ji-hwan up and down, the man who had just torn through his armed men barehanded.
"What the hell did you do to your body? What kind of absurdly expensive high-end implant did you jam in there to bounce bullets?"
At that vicious question, Ji-hwan let out a small, amused snort.
He wiped the red blood running down the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
Though his bones and muscles, trained to the extreme, had stopped the bullets from penetrating, the brutal kinetic force of the incoming rounds had still been transmitted into his body, dealing a heavy blow to his organs.
But even his ruptured organs were being stitched back together in real time.
"Nah, I only use stock."
"What? Fine, then, you piece of shit! I’ll find out once I rip that fancy body of yours open myself!"
The enraged boss yanked the trigger of the vicious shotgun.
Kwaaaang—!!
'Crazy. Don’t tell me that’s...'
As he identified the path of the buckshot tearing through the air with a scream-sharp blast, Ji-hwan instantly recognized the shotgun for what it was and reflexively ducked low.
The moment he moved, the thick concrete wall behind him was gouged out like tofu, exposing the weapon’s absurd power in brutal clarity.
It was not some cheap gun used by back-alley punks.
It was clearly a power shotgun, [Carnage], the kind of weapon that could crumple armored vehicle plating at close range.
Firepower that could rip flesh clean off if it even grazed him. Ji-hwan’s body was already gone from that spot.
He sprinted sideways, slipped into the shotgun’s line of fire, and immediately grabbed the backs of the necks of the dazed Raffen thugs, using them as meat shields.
"Ghh...?!"
"Wha... what the hell...!!"
Boom
As his own men took the shotgun’s fragments in his place and screamed, reduced to shields, the boss glared with bloodshot eyes at the remaining thugs who were only watching.
"You idiots! I’ll take care of this bastard myself, so you lot hurry up and load the cargo—the civilians—onto the trucks!!"
At the boss’s furious order, the frozen thugs hurriedly turned and tried to drag the terrified civilians away like cargo.
Ji-hwan saw it and kicked off the ground to save them, but—
"Where do you think you’re going!"
Clack— Kwaaaang—!!
"You’re playing with me, you little bastard, remember?"
The boss once again blocked his path and unleashed another storm of shotgun fire. Ji-hwan instantly sensed that if he took that barrage head-on with his bare body, he would be torn to ribbons, nothing more than a shredded rag.
In the end, he had no choice but to throw himself sideways and roll behind a nearby collapsed heap of scrap for deep cover.
Crunch, crash, crack!
Beyond his hiding place, the enemy was brutally trampling the resisting people and shoving them into armored vehicles.
He wanted nothing more than to leap out and snap the necks of those trash bastards right then and there, but with the power shotgun’s firepower flooding the area and blocking his view, he could not move recklessly.
'No way around it?'
Ji-hwan bit down hard on his bloodied lip and turned his brain cold.
Even if his body had become incomparably stronger through bone-grinding training, there was still a clear physical limit to what an organic body could do against the monstrous heavy weapons of Night City, weapons that could even smash armored vehicles.
He had thought he was strong now, but the frustration of being unable to do anything against such overwhelming firepower washed over him.
Charging straight through was suicide. Ji-hwan bit his bleeding lip and scanned his surroundings.
What caught his eye was a heavy chunk of concrete lying on the ground. He bulged his thick forearm muscles and drove his fingers deep into the several-hundred-kilo wreckage.
With a shout, he hurled the massive slab like a cannonball straight at the Raffen boss’s face.
The boss reflexively pulled the trigger on the vicious shotgun.
The enormous buckshot detonating at point-blank range shattered the flying debris into pieces in midair.
In that brief instant, with the view swallowed by gray dust, the boss racked the shotgun with a harsh metallic sound to load the next shell.
Ji-hwan did not miss that gap, not even for a second, and kicked off the ground.
He burst through the dust and closed to point-blank range, grabbing the shotgun barrel roughly before the boss could even reset his aim.
Under the force of his terrifying grip, the Carnage shotgun’s thick steel plate warped grotesquely like a strip of taffy, and the weapon that had been vomiting out absurd firepower was neutralized. Just as Ji-hwan let out a breath of relief and moved to cut the enemy’s throat—
"Looks like you’ve got muscles in your skull."
The boss’s lips twisted upward in a grotesque grin, and a chilling mechanical sound zzzt echoed.
The armor plate on the boss’s left prosthetic forearm opened, and a razor-sharp hidden blade shot out like lightning.
Thud—!
The cold blade brutally pierced Ji-hwan’s abdomen and burst out through his back. A horrifying pain, as if his organs had been ripped apart whole, slammed into his head, and a gush of dark red blood spilled from his mouth.
"Kh, huh..."
As the blade was yanked out roughly, Ji-hwan lost his balance and collapsed heavily onto the muddy ground stained with blood.
Looking down at him as he clutched his punctured stomach and gasped for breath, the boss let out a greasy sneer.
And then it happened.
Bwoooom—! Kwaang—!
A massive cloud of dust exploded upward beyond the wasteland horizon.
Dozens of modified nomad vehicles roared in with savage engine noise, charging toward the camp with unstoppable momentum.
The Aldecaldos’ main combat force, led by Saul Bright, had finally returned.
When the boss saw the scale of the approaching force, his face turned deathly white.
"Shit! It’s the Aldecaldos!"
The boss spat on Ji-hwan, who was curled up on the ground bleeding, and hurriedly turned around.
"Leave that one! His guts are already pierced; he’ll bleed out anyway. Get in the cars! Move, move!"
The moment the order fell, the surviving thugs scrambled into the armored vehicles.
The boss also climbed into the passenger seat and slammed the dashboard in frustration.
"Step on it! Go now!"
The thug in the driver’s seat frantically shifted gears and stomped the accelerator to the floor, and the heavy armored vehicle’s engine let out a deafening roar.
Kiiiiiiik—!!
The wheels spun wildly, spraying the Badlands’ acidic sand in every direction.
But all that harsh grinding did was shake the air; the vehicle did not move forward even an inch.
"What are you doing! Move it!"
"B-boss! The car won’t go! Something’s blocking the front... h-huh?!"
The subordinate’s voice cracked with sheer terror. When the boss looked through the windshield, his eyes nearly burst from their sockets.
In front of the armored vehicle’s bumper, Ji-hwan—the man they had thought was dying with a hole through his abdomen just moments ago—was standing there, blocking the vehicle’s path.
Dark red blood streamed from the corner of his mouth, and the wound in his stomach was still bleeding horribly.
Ji-hwan, bearing the engine’s explosive thrust with his bare body, was so choked by the backflow of blood that he could not even let out a single groan.
The fatal wound in his abdomen was spewing red steam and trying desperately to close, but the enormous load of forcing the vehicle to stop kept tearing the fresh flesh open the instant it formed.
And yet Ji-hwan held the armored vehicle back with everything he had.
The massive wheels spun uselessly, kicking up dust, but the vehicle did not move forward even an inch.
"You goddamn bastard!!"
With the Aldecaldos’ main force already closing in on them, the Raffen Shiv boss became frantic and kicked open the car door.
He strode up beside Ji-hwan, who was gripping the armored vehicle’s bumper and not moving an inch.
"Persistent little rat. I’ll cut off your head!"
The boss raised the blue hidden blade mounted on his left prosthetic arm. Then he tried to bring the blade down mercilessly toward Ji-hwan’s neck.
Taang—!!
A sharp crack of air tore through the barren Badlands atmosphere. At the same time, the boss’s head burst like a watermelon, spraying a crimson mist in all directions.
Far away, atop one of the Aldecaldos’ modified vehicles charging through the dust, a woman braced a heavy sniper rifle against the passenger-side window frame and steadied her breathing. It was Panam Palmer.
She blew the acrid gun smoke from the muzzle and lowered her sharp gaze.
Mitch Anderson, who was behind the wheel, turned the steering wheel with his rough metal prosthetic hand and let out a long whistle.
"Whew. Told you our girl’s marksmanship is insane. Hitting a shot like that from a moving vehicle..."
Even at Mitch’s easygoing praise, Panam kept staring through the scope without answering.
The silhouette of the blood-soaked man standing in front of the vehicle she had just decapitated the boss with, holding back a massive armored truck with his bare body, felt strangely familiar.
"Huh...?"
Panam’s brow furrowed, and a stunned voice slipped out.
"Wait... is that Ji-hwan?"
"B-boss?!"
When the boss’s body, now missing its head entirely, hit the ground with a heavy thud, the pupils of the thugs inside the vehicle shrank in terror.
Thanks to the brief time Ji-hwan had bought by burning through his own life, the Raffen Shiv’s escape plan ended in utter failure.
"Aaaagh!!"
"The Aldecaldos! Run!!"
Amid gunfire from every direction, the desperate screams of the Raffen Shiv gang began to drown out the burning camp.
The Aldecaldos’ main force, led by Saul, had finally arrived on the battlefield and was delivering merciless judgment to the kidnappers.
Listening to the sound of the enemy being swept away, Ji-hwan finally let go of the armored vehicle’s bumper.
His legs gave out, and his body collapsed heavily into the muddy ground.
Soaked in blood, Ji-hwan looked up at the ash-gray Badlands sky.
'Sleepy...'
A sticky wave of drowsiness pressed down on his heavy eyelids, and beyond his fading vision he could feel rough footsteps rushing toward him in a panic.
"Here!! He’s alive over here!!"
A familiar, rough voice. Saul, Mitch, and Panam were running through the dust toward Ji-hwan’s side.
And seeing them, Ji-hwan felt safe enough to let himself sink into sleep for a moment.
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