Looking at the heavily guarded Vortex Gang stronghold, a few people hidden in the shadows exchanged glances.
Baldie: "So, what do you think, should we sneak in and have a look?"
Brother Ni frowned at the stronghold covered in surveillance cameras: "We don’t have a hacker among us, infiltrating is going to be tricky." Get full chapters from novel•fire.net
Shui Yue: "If it doesn’t work out, we could just rush in directly. In terms of numbers, we’re not necessarily afraid of these wild ones."
Even though it’s just a few of them looking for clues to this side quest, it didn’t mean there were no players at night; even at night in Night City, dozens of people were roaming the streets. Even if they weren’t as elite as the daytime crowd, taking down a Vortex Gang stronghold was still no big deal.
However, Brother Ni felt this approach was inappropriate. After all, the person who provided him with the intel was also from the Vortex Gang. If he got it wrong and took down one of their strongholds, it would be hard to justify.
Thinking of this made him a bit anxious. If only he had that boss-level drone that could eavesdrop, high-tech was truly essential here.
"Here’s the plan." Brother Ni paused for a moment, "I’ll see if I can find a loophole to sneak in. You guys apply for remote hacker support, see if they can disable their surveillance so we can slip in."
Shui Yue was the first to express doubt.
"Maybe forget it, I fear you might get spotted and end up with an axe to your head."
Seeing his professional skills being questioned, Brother Ni immediately glared back, defensively explaining,
"Those were all accidents before, didn’t have a problem last time, right?"
"What’s past is past, now is now. I am no longer the me of yesterday."
"Ah, right, right." Shui Yue nodded repeatedly, "It’s all just accidents."
"This dual-wielding axes assassin, I await your good news."
After saying this, he and Baldie went to contact Lucy. With two player hackers offline at night, the rookies left behind were unreliable, in the end, they needed a pro to step in.
Brother Ni sighed deeply; it was true that his luck was a bit poor, unrelated to his skills. Now he could only hope that fate wouldn’t mess with him any further.
He circled the entire stronghold, finding its defense to be unusually tight, with patrols and surveillance everywhere, almost more advanced than the Death Dance Bar.
However, some things are just inevitable. The lousy infrastructure of Night City left many streetlights in the Watson District out of order, and the piled-up containers inevitably created large shadows for hiding.
Brother Ni found a spot in the shadows, used his pocket tweezers to cut a hole in the wire mesh, then slipped in quietly.
It was pitch black here; Brother Ni couldn’t even see his fingers. Unless they had thermal cameras, there was no reason they could see him.
Carefully advancing along the shadows, he found the stronghold to be even more eerie than he had imagined.
No one gambling, no one screaming from drug use.
It simply didn’t have the vibe of a gang hangout. Because of this, Brother Ni had to move even more slowly to avoid making even the slightest sound.
Luckily, after reviving in the Taiping Continent dungeon, he had equipped himself with stealth-specialized lynx claws. The specially designed foot structure allowed him to move silently; otherwise, it would have been troublesome.
And just when he sneaked into a container, a truck marked with the Vortex Gang insignia arrived at the stronghold’s entrance, stopping at the junction. The driver said to the guard,
"Tonight, we offer a sacrifice for the angel’s birth."
The guard replied, "The Moon Goddess watches over us."
The conversation between the two was filled with the eerie vibe of cultists, sparking Brother Ni’s imagination; he captured two key phrases.
Damn, is Night City also known as the Third Tokyo?
Is the first impact coming?
Then he shook his head, probably not related to EVA, as these characters appeared in the Bible, Lilith being Adam’s first wife in the Old Testament.
But the Moon Goddess...
Brother Ni looked up at the moon. In the setting, the moon had already entered a stage of human development and construction and had been thoroughly demystified. Why would the Vortex Gang call Lilith the Moon Goddess?
However, it was almost certain that this was the cult stronghold Caidix mentioned; they hadn’t found the wrong place.
Thinking of this, Brother Ni felt a bit excited. Regardless of whether this mission was related to the underground castle, at the very least, the dungeon wouldn’t be smaller than their previous confrontation with the Voodoo Gang in the Taiping Continent.
After the driver exchanged the passphrases, the truck drove into the stronghold, stopping outside the containers, and opened its back door.
Brother Ni, hiding on the other side, didn’t dare peek to see what the cultists were unloading, but judging by the sounds, it didn’t seem like firearms or prosthetics.
According to Caidix, it was a little lamb, in other words, a person.
This person was the offering the cultists prepared to sacrifice to the so-called angel.
So, as the cultists’ attention was drawn to the cargo, Brother Ni continued to move further in, trying to avoid any mishaps by being extremely cautious. Any small sign of trouble, and he would instantly retreat into the shadows.
Eventually, he found a passage on top of a container leading inside, looking like a hole left from when a support beam was previously hoisted.
Squeezing through the opening, he reached the highest point of the entire stronghold, overlooking a relatively spacious open space below. In the middle stood seven or eight Vortex Gang members, gathered around a bathtub. Beneath the bathtub was a large Vortex Gang graffiti, filled with ice cubes and water, seemingly waiting for something.