Upgrade Complete!
Santa's Rest Stop. The rooftop.
Beside the massive ventilation fan, Ash sat in silent meditation, legs folded beneath him.
His gaze was fixed on the sprawling panorama of Sanctum, its districts divided and interwoven in dizzying complexity. It was a landscape like peering into the innards of some colossal machine.
A chaotic sea of lights.
Every one of them scurrying toward its own destination.
It was the tangled nightscape of a restless city — and yet, viewed from even a single step removed, nothing in the world could have been more beautiful.
Using the occasional throb of hip-hop or rock music drifting up from below as his backdrop, he played back a voice recording.
It was the conversation he had shared with Ifrit that afternoon, in the lounge of Halloween Entertainment.
"Mister."
Akina's voice cut through. Ash paused the recording and turned his head.
"Ah, so it is you."
She came over and sat down beside him.
The flickering neon of Sanctum's night reflected in her blue eyes.
"I've decided."
After a brief pause, Akina went on.
"I'm in. The Nexus Retaking Operation."
Ash's optical sensors turned toward her.
"It will be dangerous."
"I know. But you see, mister..."
Akina gave a faint smile. There was something self-deprecating threaded through it, somehow.
"There's no such thing as a safe place for people like us."
Her voice was soft enough to be swallowed by the wind, but the weight it carried was anything but light.
Ash found himself nodding before he realized it.
'Safety.'
Was there a word more hollow in all of Sanctum?
Especially for greenhorns like them, Pathfinders who had only just begun to explore.
To survive, you had to run.
Even if the direction was wrong.
That was simply the kind of world this was.
Ifrit's proposal was dangerous, without question. The risks that brushed past Ash's main core alone were numerous enough to lose count of.
But at the same time, it was an opportunity.
The terms she had offered were that outrageous.
"It was called the Revenant, right?"
Akina had risen from her seat and was leaning against the rooftop railing as she spoke. The nightscape and her silhouette framed themselves together in a single shot.
"That was the name, yes."
"It was seriously incredible."
"I concur."
The reward Ifrit had offered was a vehicle.
Its name: the Revenant.
A heavily armored transport that had undergone a monstrous level of customization.
That afternoon, following Dullahan into the armory, Ash and Akina had come face to face with the Revenant for the first time.
To put it with a touch of exaggeration — they had fallen in love at first sight.
True to a name meaning the phantom of one long dead, the Revenant radiated a heaving, chilly presence. The scars of years spent carving through the Outer were etched across its armor plates, and somehow those very marks only deepened the vehicle's air of proven reliability.
It was a retired, outdated model, yes — but that hardly meant it had lost its worth.
Comparing it to a skeleton buggy or some stretched limousine with nothing but extra seats would have been an insult in itself.
It was, quite literally, a fortress on wheels.
"It used to belong to Dullahan, right?"
"To be precise, I was told it was a vehicle under ROA."
"ROA... I heard every society has a team specializing in transport, but I never imagined it'd be Dullahan's crew."
Riders of Apocalypse.
ROA, for short.
True to a name meaning riders of the apocalypse, they were a Pathfinder group that specialized in transport, travel, and rescue.
A kind of specialist collective born out of the growing distrust of the Restman system.
The Revenant had been ROA's own vehicle.
In other words — no ordinary machine.
"Honestly, who could say no to that? The Revenant's got to be worth well over ten million credits, easy."
"Ten million...! That much?"
"Of course! It's a fully custom build, even if it's a little old. And when I skimmed the data logs earlier, it was packed with all kinds of features!"
Akina laughed brightly.
Ash could not.
The reward was excessive.
Which meant the danger must be beyond imagination as well.
A stage where a top-tier armored vehicle worth ten million credits was on the line — what manner of peril could be lurking there?
Perhaps even Ifrit couldn't predict every variable, and this was nothing more than a reckless gamble on her part.
'But what of it?'
This was Sanctum.
A world where cowering in fear meant walking away empty-handed.
There was no reason to hesitate in the first place. No room for it, either.
Ash rose from his seat without a word and walked to her side. The nightscape of Sanctum, seen leaning against the railing, drew that much closer with every step.
"I have a favor to ask of you."
At Ash's low words, Akina turned her head.
"What is it?"
"Find me a data card."
"Hm? On what subject?"
"Driving."
The girl's eyes went round.
Having read the meaning beneath the words, Akina burst into a clear, ringing laugh.
"You're going to drive, mister?"
"Well, someone ought to learn, no? The Revenant is ours now, after all."
"Hehe! Can't argue with that!"
After a good round of laughter, the two of them fell quiet and simply watched the city lights, saving their words. After a while, Akina spoke.
"So we've got three days left, right?"
Her voice sliced through the still night air.
Ash nodded silently.
"That is so."
Three days.
The time remaining until the Nexus Retaking Operation.
Akina stared at some point in the darkness beyond the city lights. In her blue eyes, a trace of anxiety and fear coexisted — and over it all, an anticipation that swallowed them whole.
"We'll need to prepare."
With those words, spoken like a quiet vow, she slowly reached into her jacket. What she drew out at last was her Pathfinder license.
"Mister."
Akina turned her head and looked at Ash.
Her gaze was steadier than it had ever been.
"Ready for your upgrade?"
Ash was silent for a moment.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
"Completely."
Teal optical sensors met blue eyes.
Those two gazes no longer held the city's lights.
They looked at nothing but each other.
The stage was set.
And to leap onto it, they would need to be prepared for anything.
So what, exactly, needed preparing?
The answer was simple.
Maximizing Ash's combat power.
Pouring every last credit they had into upgrading him.
As it happened, they knew just the merchant for the job — a grizzled old man who puffed away at his cigarette insisting that, come death itself, he was nothing more than a 'bartender.'
"Six hundred and sixty thousand, eh. And you plan to do something with this?"
One hundred thousand left over after settling their debts, five hundred thousand from Ifrit, and Akina's emergency stash on top.
All told, six hundred and sixty thousand credits.
That was the entirety of their ammunition. Whether or not he knew it, Santa simply kept flashing that sly grin of his.
"Browse to your heart's content, my dear 'customers.'"
And so the hunt began.
Akina's eyes went wide as she darted between the cyberware components. The amusing part was that, unlike before, this time Ash was every bit as eager.
He combed the shop's interior with methodical care.
Gleaming chrome arms, optical sensors billed as combat-ready, machine legs strewn about at random — all the way up to a grotesque, tentacled prosthetic of unknown origin.
Santa's shop was, as always, chaos incarnate — but somewhere in that chaos, useful treasure was surely hiding.
The problem was the sheer quantity of it. Sift through it piece by piece, and those three days would vanish in a blink.
So Ash and Akina huddled up briefly to talk it over.
"Mister, what do you need most? It's gotta be the right arm, right? Isn't that one so worn out it barely moves anymore?"
"It serves well enough."
"Hmm... then the legs?"
The legs did hold some interest.
Truth be told, Ash's leg units didn't match in specification, so he stood with a faint, chronic lilt to one side.
But that was a matter of discomfort, not necessity. There was a gap in output, sure, but the legs moved as he willed them all the same.
"What about the optical sensors? This one says it comes with a combat-aid targeting system. Splits your view into a grid and gives you range readings!"
Rather than answer, Ash shifted his gaze to a torso unit tucked in the corner of a shelf — something he'd been keeping an eye on since the day they'd returned from their first expedition.
A somewhat crude-looking torso, its defining feature a large battery pack jutting from the back like a turtle's shell.
The listing boasted more than double the power storage capacity of his current chassis.
'If I'm replacing parts, power capacity comes first. Naturally.'
In fact, from the moment Ash had resolved to upgrade, he had set his sights on one thing and one thing only.
Power capacity.
The greatest flaw he'd discovered during the last expedition had been his maximum power output, plain and simple.
Setting aside the Neural Cultivation Arts and their martial techniques, his current battery pack could barely squeeze out two full days of operation.
Given that his torso had been scavenged and stitched together from a waste-processing plant, that much was unavoidable.
But things were different now.
He had six hundred and sixty thousand credits, and three guaranteed days. More than enough to replace his torso with room to spare.
He'd looked around on the off chance there was an even better chassis, but for raw power storage, this model was the best of the lot.
Ash pointed at the torso he'd been studying.
"Elder Santa. Might you explain this part to me?"
Santa, who had been perched on the counter, slid his sunglasses down and peered over at them. Then he cracked a grin.
"Not something I'd recommend. Battery capacity's high, but the thing's brutally heavy. Word is the neuro-matrix system's unstable, too."
"And the price?"
"Four hundred fifty thousand."
The price was safe enough.
And yet — a product its own seller was telling them to avoid.
Ash mulled it over briefly, then turned away.
"Then what of this one?"
Another torso.
A clean, well-finished body painted dark crimson, striking for the words 'CHAKA CHAKA' printed diagonally across it.
Santa slid his sunglasses down again, looked, and shook his head.
"Ash. You don't buy Chaka Chaka products."
"Wherefore not?"
"Specs look good on paper, right? It's all a load of bull. Durability's garbage — could conk out on you any minute. You remember that pistol you brought in last time? Chaka Chaka product too."
He meant the pistol that had originally belonged to Ifrit. Sure enough, as Santa said, it had been mangled to the point of needing repairs.
Ash kept picking out products after that, but each time, Santa shook his head.
Eventually Akina, her face flushing red with frustration, finally exploded.
"Ugh! It's all garbage! Every last bit of it!"
"Watch your mouth, girl!"
"Is this all your shop's got, old man? If it's all junk, why do you even have it on display?"
"To sell it, obviously!"
"While telling us it's all junk!"
"There's good stuff too, damn it!"
"Then recommend something, old man!"
At Akina's brazen shout, Santa snorted with laughter.
"A recommendation? You really want my recommendation? It won't come cheap, you know. You sure you can handle it?"
"Hah! I've got money! So pick out the very best thing you've got for our mister here!"
Whether her firing off demand after demand amused him or not, Santa went on laughing for a good while. Then, abruptly, he turned his head toward Ash.
"Ash. What you need is high power capacity, right?"
"...How did you know?"
"Look at the stuff you've been picking. Nothing but brute-force battery hogs, every one of them. I take it power ran a bit short on that last expedition?"
Ash answered with a nod.
"Okay. Power capacity and nothing else? Then as it happens, there's one very special item that's just perfect for a man like you."
"Then bring it out! Right now!"
"...Ugh. Mouth on this brat."
Grumbling, Santa disappeared behind the counter, past a dark, heavy curtain.
A moment later,
he emerged carrying a single jet-black torso unit.
Set down on the workbench, it radiated an aura unmistakably different from the cyberware on display.
Above all, it was the logo embedded in the center of its back that seized the eye.
A swirling pattern, shaped like a churning vortex — and beneath it, a short, simple inscription.
"Huh? Vortex Energy?"
Akina murmured it, recognizing the mark at a glance, and Santa drew out a cigarette and lit it.
Exhaling a long drag of smoke, he tapped the unit's smooth surface and grinned.
"That's right. Made by Vortex Energy. And not just any product — it's their newest prototype, stuffed to the gills with brand-new tech."
His eyes gleamed with mischief.
"The real worth of this beast isn't some battery capacity number on a spec sheet. Say — you two ever heard of KERS? Kinetic Energy Recovery System?"