Cyberpunk: Ultimate Cyborg System-Chapter 575: Black Skull. (Part Seven)
Passing on some instructions to his resident AI, Dante turned his focus back to the hunters rushing him. He purposefully decelerated his perception, keeping it at a level where he could still follow the enemy’s movements without them appearing frozen in time.
He was fighting half a dozen hunters at once, not counting the snipers, so putting himself at a disadvantage didn’t sound like the smart choice. While it does lessen the strain on his brain and nerves in a battle that seemed like it was going to be long, the true purpose of his move was to trick his opponents into thinking he was losing his edge.
His movements slowed down dramatically, and the hunters noticed right away, increasing the ferocity of their attack. Volcan evaluated most of them as Level 2, though it was unclear how much of a boost the weapons they wielded gave them. Some of them were Sorcerers, yet they used tech weapons to fight. Dante guessed that they might not have any special Arts, which forces them to rely on enhancing their bodies with Aether. It might also be that their arts have limited uses, forcing them to make sure each one counts.
Dante raised his arm to block the baton that one of them swung at him, fully aware that it delivered electric shocks on touch. The ground under his right foot suddenly lost its firmness, and he sank right through, losing his balance.
The electric baton discharged a powerful shock that did no more than bounce off the green plating of 4-3’s Module. Dante wasn’t entirely immune to electrical attacks, but the resistance of his bionics was improved quite a bit when Volcan upgraded them. Even a lightning strike wouldn’t be able to stun him, but he pretended to freeze for a second.
Three snipers were baited into going for a headshot, which told Dante that they weren’t working together. With his Absolute Awareness piking picking both the bullets and the sound made by the rifles that fired them, Dante managed to locate the three snipers and moved to eliminate them.
Turns out the sorcery that turns the ground into a quagmire couldn’t reach that deep into the ground, so it wasn’t long before Dante found his footing again. He reached out with his free hand and grabbed the baton user by the collar, yanked him in, and gave him a good headbutt while reaching for the gun holstered on his hip.
Bullets from a pistol were unlikely to reach a sniper hiding miles away, but Dante doubted a Sorcerer would be carrying a normal pistol on him. The recoil that followed Dante pulling the trigger confirmed that, but even with how powerful the bullets are, they still failed to reach the snipers in time, allowing them to escape.
Jumping out of the swamp just as it began to harden into asphalt once more, Dante aimed from under his arm and fired three bullets, striking another one of his attackers. He then turned to the baton user who rushed in for another attack and emptied the clip in his stomach.
As he turned to the sorcerer, whom he suspected of being the one creating the quagmires, a bullet from the silent sniper entered the range of Absolute Awareness, and Dane was forced to dock. Accelerating his reflexes to the max, he lunged from his lowered position and reached the swamp maker in a single step. His fist blasted forth with all the power he could muster, smashing straight into the Sorcerer’s crossed arms.
Having sensed the crisp snap of bones breaking, followed by the sound of metal shutters ripping as something broke through them, Dante turned his attention away from the swamp maker, going for his next opponent. The sound of metallic taps drew his attention, and he glanced down to find a can rolling to his feet, dragging a trail of smoke along.
A few more followed, and as if they had been thrown at the same time, they all exploded simultaneously, creating a cloud of smoke large enough to cover the entire intersection facing the Red Oni club.
With visibility gone, the fighting came to a sudden stop. The smoke wasn’t anything normal. It was capable of blocking several types of sensors, in addition to most signals, serving as a type of jammer. Normally, it is used to disorient war machines, as well as cyborgs, so being inside it was supposedly bad for Dante. Alas, Dante wasn’t a normal cyborg.
’It’s here!’
His body moved on its own, attacking nothing but the dark green smoke to his left. For an instant, he doubted his own instincts. The smoke only moved in response to him, so it was difficult to believe anything other than him was there. At that moment, three red lines appeared in front of him, and he immediately knew which one to grab.
The lines were laser beams. All three pierced the ground with nothing barring their path, but that was only if one was observing the light they emitted. The surrounding smoke screen acted as a thermal conductor, absorbing the heat from the beams and dispersing it into the surroundings. The smoke around two of the beams heated up instantly, and the third was no different, except for a single spot.
Silent Breath was an exceptional Art and was the base for Suzuka’s cloak. It masks the user’s presence entirely, as well as the effect they have on the world around them. However, what it can’t mask is the effect the world has on the user. When a laser passes through them, some of its heat will spread to the user’s body. The Art would try to make it appear as if that isn’t the case, but it couldn’t be able to mimic the way the heat spreads through the surrounding gas, since the gas in the spot the user occupies is nothing more than an illusion.
Dante managed to catch something, and the only way he could tell was his hand’s refusal to clench into a fist. Not wasting any time, he activated Force Amplification and punched. The impact blasted the smoke around him, creating a small dome.
He didn’t stop, punching the same spot again and again. Even after that much, Dante still couldn’t feel that he was holding anything, making him doubt that his blow landed. He kept his guard up and focused on his Absolute Awareness, and as two seconds crawled past him, he finally sensed a flicker in the Aether around him, and a corpse finally revealed itself.
