Cyberpunk Martial Hero Chronicles

After the girl, who until then had been moving back and forth, left the place, the head that had been left completely alone sank into his thoughts.

‘What the hell is going on here?’

Adapting to something new is not as simple as it might seem.

And when it comes to a situation that one has never seen or experienced in an entire lifetime, the difficulty increases considerably.

That rule also applied to the humanoid of whom only a head remained, suspended in a makeshift workshop located in a corner of a junkyard.

The optical sensors installed in his head moved from side to side.

No matter where he looked, everything was dark and damp.

Abandoned machinery covered in used oil and rust lay everywhere, while countless tools of unknown purpose were piled up haphazardly.

His own situation was no less strange.

Just like those machines, he too was hanging from a wall. Furthermore, he was suspended at a considerable height, which gave him the sensation that he had become a soul floating in the air.

He could see and hear, but he was incapable of doing absolutely anything.

If this was not being a ghost, then what the hell was it?

Suddenly, a small revelation emerged in his mind.

‘……A ghost?’

As soon as that thought crossed his mind, he naturally recalled his final moments.

The silent snowy mountains.

The snow that continued to fall.

The Heavenly Demon, who had collapsed while coughing up blood.

And what had happened afterward?

He had raised his gaze toward the sky.

He had closed his eyes and collapsed.

Thus had the life of the Kunlun Blood Immortal come to an end.

‘That’s right.’

He had died.

And afterward, he had awakened once again in that strange place.

His appearance, resembling that of a wandering soul, with only his head intact.

His consciousness, which had awakened against his will.

The peculiar girl who had welcomed him.

That dark and desolate space.

Death and all those unknown experiences that had come afterward.

The fragments of information began to come together one after another.

Finally, they formed a truly chilling possibility.

‘……Could this place be the Underworld?’

The Underworld.

The place one reaches after dying.

The place where the souls of the deceased gather.

Perhaps it was a completely absurd assumption, but he needed to cling even to such a far-fetched explanation in order to understand his current situation.

Curiously, as soon as he began to consider that this place might be the Underworld, all those inexplicable phenomena started to seem reasonable.

Once he reached that conclusion, he began to contemplate everything around him from a completely different perspective.

The data tablet that projected a faint hologram into the air.

The complex tools whose purpose he did not know.

The mechanical components piled up without any order, coated in grease and covered in rust.

All those strange objects had to be tools of the other world.

Or perhaps they were the remains of other beings who, like him, had ended up falling into the Underworld.

However, if that were true, why had only he awakened in such a state, retaining all the memories of his previous life?

Surprisingly, it did not take him long to find a possible answer.

‘Karma.’

During his path of revenge, the Kunlun Blood Immortal had taken countless lives.

Although his victims were members of the Demon Cult, it was undeniable that he had killed deliberately.

He had even abandoned the Dao in order to carry out that bloody revenge.

It was impossible for the weight of such karma to be insignificant.

After all, wasn’t the Underworld said to be the place where the sins committed during one’s life were judged, the severity of the accumulated karma was determined, and the corresponding punishments were imposed?

Perhaps, at that very moment, his sins were being judged.

Maybe that was why he had awakened from the eternal rest that death was supposed to provide.

He had no way of knowing the answer.

For the time being, all he could do was accept that incomprehensible place and his own existence while waiting to see what might happen next.

‘Oh, Yuanshi Tianzun……’

The humanoid, of whom only a head remained, sank into his thoughts once again.

***

Fifteen days.

That was the amount of time that had passed since he awakened in that unknown place.

Fifteen days was not exactly a short amount of time.

Many things had changed.

He was no longer just a head.

Beneath it, a dull, blackish torso had been installed, along with a left leg that had not even been painted and lacked any protective steel covering.

Thanks to that, he was no longer suspended in the air. Although his body was still incomplete, at least he could support himself on one leg.

It was also worth noting that he could now produce sounds.

Since he used an outdated voice module, his voice was crude and riddled with electronic interference, but it was sufficient for communication.

However, there was something far more important than all those changes.

His relationship with the girl.

“Sir!”

Just then, the workshop door opened and the girl entered carrying a rather heavy-looking mechanical arm over one shoulder.

“Mr. Ash! Look at this!”

Akina called him Ash.

There was no particularly important reason behind that name. It was simply that the humanoid’s head had the letters [ASH] painted on it, an inscription indicating that it was waste intended for incineration.

Ashes.

What remains after something is consumed by flames.

Ash had not bothered to correct that name.

After all, now that he had arrived in the Underworld, shouldn’t he adapt to its customs?

Absorbed in his thoughts, he raised his head and addressed the girl.

“Ah, Miss Akina. Have you returned already?”

Unlike his voice, which was filled with electronic interference, his manner of speaking was extraordinarily old-fashioned and refined.

Perhaps because of that, at some point Akina had begun addressing him formally instead of speaking to him casually.

According to her, addressing him informally made her feel as though she were committing some kind of impropriety.

“Was everything all right while I was gone?”

“I’ve been perfectly fine.”

Akina gave him a broad smile and placed the mechanical arm she had been carrying over her shoulder on top of the worktable.

Thud!

Judging by the noise it made when it landed, it must have been quite heavy.

Ash shifted his gaze between Akina and the mechanical arm through his optical sensors before gently activating his voice module.

“Miss Akina, you always go to so much trouble for me.”

“It’s nothing. Shall we install it right now?”

“As you wish.”

Akina smiled again, gathered her tools, and approached Ash.

Then she examined his left shoulder or, more specifically, the artificial neural network matrix that abruptly terminated in that area.

However, she soon became puzzled.

“Huh? Why doesn’t the slot fit? That’s strange. I’m sure I brought one of the same Type C. Could it be because it’s a model from an earlier generation? Why is it reversed……?”

Ash, who had been watching her, suddenly called out to the girl.

“Miss Akina.”

“One moment. I’m thinking. We’ll talk afterward.”

“……Miss Akina?”

“Oh, please. What is it?”

The girl raised her head while grumbling.

Then her eyes met Ash’s turquoise optical sensors.

Ash gazed into the girl’s blue eyes for a few moments before calmly explaining what he wanted to say.

“That’s not the correct side.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The arm you brought is the right one.”

Upon hearing those words, Akina turned her head.

Her gaze settled on the mechanical arm she had just placed on the table.

She alternately compared that limb with her own arms.

Finally, she realized that it was, indeed, a right arm.

Akina’s face turned as red as a tomato.

Since her skin was naturally very pale, that blush was even more obvious.

“I-I already knew that! I was simply checking the left shoulder too!”

“Is that so?”

“……Of course!”

“It seems my unnecessary concern led me to intervene when there was no need. I apologize if I made you uncomfortable.”

Faced with such an impeccable apology, Akina had no choice but to close her mouth.

Amid the slightly awkward atmosphere, the girl began discreetly making her way toward Ash’s right shoulder while muttering under her breath.

“……Are all humanoids from previous generations like this? Why does he talk so much? And at first, he couldn’t even understand me.”

Although she had spoken quietly, the audio input device installed in Ash’s head picked up her words without difficulty.

“It’s all thanks to the data card with the integrated language pack that you provided me. I will always be grateful to you.”

“……I was talking to myself.”

“I heard you so clearly that I couldn’t tell. I’m still not used to it.”

Akina glanced sideways at him, but soon gave an embarrassed smile.

Then, as if she had just remembered something, she began searching the pocket at chest level.

Shortly afterward, she pulled out another data card.

“A new book?”

“A book?”

Akina tilted her head curiously.

“Ah. I was mistaken. Is it a new data card?”

“Exactly. Have you already finished reading everything the previous one contained?”

“That’s right.”

Akina nodded upon hearing his answer and inserted the new data card into a slot located on the side of his head.

Click!

A small sound was heard as the card locked into place.

[EXTERNAL DATA-CARD DETECTED]

“I’m going to start working now, so you can review the data in the meantime. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask me.”

“I shall do so.”

Ash accessed his own system using senses to which he was already beginning to grow accustomed.

In one corner of his field of vision, crisp sequences of green characters began to appear.

[DIRECT MEMORY INTERFACE ACTIVE]

[ACCESS PROTOCOL. . . ENGAGED]

[INITIATING DATA STREAM. . . DONE]

[DATA INDEXING. . . DONE]

[DATA: Akina’s General Knowledge♥ Ver 1.3]

[RESEARCH. . . NOW<<<]

Along with the flashing system messages, an enormous amount of information began flooding his mind.

The method of transmitting knowledge in that world was fundamentally different from the one he had known during his previous life.

Such an extraordinary amount of knowledge, which would normally have required an entire lifetime of study, could be inserted into his mind in barely an instant.

It was a veritable storm of data.

That incomprehensible and overwhelming sensation was comparable to receiving, all at once, the contents of hundreds of ancient Taoist texts containing decades of accumulated knowledge, all in a single blink.

Akina’s murmurs, the noise of the tools she was handling, and the crackling of welding sparks began to gradually fade away.

Ash focused all his attention on the information he was receiving.

It consisted of knowledge accompanied by extremely subjective interpretations and annotations, presented from a young girl’s perspective.

However, even taking that detail into account, everything related to that world seemed extraordinarily strange and cruel.

Amid that avalanche of information, Ash quickly identified the concepts that seemed to be the most important.

Sanctum.

Outer.

Pathfinder.

Most of the information was related to those three terms.

Without a doubt, they had to represent the fundamental elements that characterized the Underworld.

Ash began carefully investigating those three concepts amid that ocean of knowledge.

And shortly afterward, he let out a deep sigh.

‘……This is, quite literally, hell.’

Humanity’s only city and its last bastion.

Sanctum.

Contrary to the meaning of its name, which referred to a sacred place, Sanctum was, in reality, a merciless arena where a constant struggle for survival took place.

All of its citizens were required to hand over enormous amounts of money, known as credits, every month under the strange concept of ‘Individual Merit Evaluation’.

In her annotations, Akina had used the expression ‘price for breathing’ to describe that system.

Ash found it an extraordinarily apt comparison.

The problem was that this price for breathing was not the only burden its inhabitants had to endure.

Sanctum demanded credits at every turn, constantly pushing ordinary people to the edge of the abyss.

Eventually, those who ended up being driven to the outskirts of the city were forced to make one final decision.

Abandon their fragile bodies of flesh and blood and replace them with cold metallic bodies.

In other words, completely transform their bodies through cybernetic implants known as Cyberware.

Once that transformation was complete, they headed out in their mechanized bodies toward the ruins of an ancient civilization known as Outer, a place that represented both their final hope and an inexhaustible source of despair.

In those deadly lands, battered by ionic storms, they recovered whatever scarce artifacts and data from antiquity they managed to find.

Those objects constituted their only chance of surviving one more day.

People who risked their lives venturing among the remnants of the past in the hope of finding a future.

All such individuals were known as Pathfinders.

‘……I already suspected that this world wouldn’t exactly be a pleasant place, but I never imagined it would reach such extremes. An existence in which every day passes under constant, invisible pressure. Could there possibly be a worse hell than this? As expected of the Underworld! There isn’t even the slightest shred of mercy here!’

His misunderstanding only continued to deepen.

“Finished!”

Without him noticing, Akina had completed her work and cheerfully announced that she was done.

At the same time as he heard her exclamation, a series of system messages began to appear, indicating that the connection had been successfully completed.

[R-ARM UNIT: CONNECTION STABLE]

[NEURAL MATRIX: SYNC OPTIMAL. . .]

[. . .]

“Would you like to try moving it?”

Following her instructions, Ash began slowly moving his new right arm.

Its movements were considerably smoother and more precise than those of his left leg.

He opened and closed his fist and also tried flexing the different joints.

Although he experienced strange sensations and even noticed slight tremors, there was no doubt that the arm responded to his will.

It was truly fascinating.

He had barely had an arm installed, and yet he experienced an inexplicable sense of stability and freedom.

Perhaps it was because, in his previous life, he had been a swordsman.

A renewed confidence began to rise within him.

Now he felt that he could even bravely confront the merciless laws of the Underworld that had horrified him so much only moments earlier.

Ash spoke with absolute sincerity and profound respect.

“You never cease to amaze me. Miss Akina, you are truly worthy of being considered a genius.”

Apparently, Ash’s praise managed to delight Akina, who began laughing cheerfully.

However, after a few moments, the girl clapped her hands.

“Mr. Ash, can you make this gesture with your hand?”

She showed him a rather peculiar gesture.

She extended only her index finger and pinky while keeping all her other fingers curled.

Ash observed the strange gesture for a few moments and then began bending his steel fingers.

Although his movements were a little clumsy, he managed to reproduce exactly the same shape.

Upon seeing it, Akina made the same gesture with both hands and shouted enthusiastically.

“Yeah! Rock and Roll!”

The girl began laughing with completely innocent joy, as though it were the most entertaining thing in the world.

That smile was something that did not appear on any of the data cards.