Most folks have heard the trolley problem.
A train's coming. Do you do nothing and let it run over five kids on the main track, or throw the switch and kill one kid on the side track?
Variations abound. There's no standard answer. And most of the time, you're not tied to the rails or holding the lever—you're just some passerby lugging a toilet tank handle past the scene, with zero say in where the train goes.
Li Pan, though—he's staring that dilemma in the face.
Watch 0791 slide into a corporate war and—sooner or later—become a fleet-skipping battlefield where fourteen billion kids get crushed…
or help the Cult pasture Lambs and sacrifice one hundred million kids, betting the rest might have a sliver of a way out?
Hard call. A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand—fine. Night City's huge; throw in the ghost belts beyond the outer ring, count the strays and roaches and bedbugs as "people," and you're still looking at a metro area north of fifty million. Not short on scum. The syndicates do worse every day—turning them into feed might be doing society a favor. Merit for the masses, if you squint.
But one hundred million? That's over the line, little brother. Keep this up and big brother's chopping your head off through tears…
And honestly—how much is a hundred million?
Li Pan's sense of scale has gone numb. When did units start inflating like this? Two months ago he was sweating the second decimal place. Now it's all hundreds of millions…
Hard. It's really hard…
He doesn't get long to brood. Jimoni shows up—with the Lambs.
They come in an ordinary-looking hide sack, clammy-slick like skinned fish. Duan Kecheng opens it and sticks his face in for a sniff, drooling in bliss.
"Ahhh—two hundred Lamb whelps—so fragrant…"
Jimoni watches, eyes mixing disgust and fear. Catching Li Pan's glance, she smooths her face into a smile and bows, handing over a smaller leather purse.
"A little token of regard."
Li Pan hefts it, opens it: a money pouch—twenty gold coins, the kind Duan used to pay the hotel.
"These are Solomon Gold Coins," Jimoni said. "They're contract tokens for summoning demons to trade, and keys to the Great Demon Domain.
"Each time you complete a contract with our kind, you earn one—your credit, our friendship.
"They don't exchange directly for Lambs, but they buy many of our other goods. Since today's order is large, please accept these as a gift."
Rebates, basically.
"Big brother, you keep them," Duan said. "I've got plenty. Besides paying, you can spend one to call a demon to run errands."
Fair point. Cross-dimensional demons: what's impossible for mortals—or even immortals—is a flick of their wrist.
Duan demos on the spot: burns one coin, gives Jimoni a pack of talismans, and has her hop to the Cult's world—his own cave—to fetch treasures.
Li Pan is tempted to see if he can pay a demon to hop to the Shangzhen Monastery and shake Li Qingyun down for pills—but with Duan right here, better not. Next time.
He does, however, shop from Jimoni's Grimoire. Because he just closed a two-hundred-Lamb deal, she offers her knowledge and spells for coin.
Li Pan trades four coins for four spellbooks:
The Demonic Lexicon · Abyssal Studies · Beginner's Grimoire · Book of Resurrection
Demonic Lexicon: a translation spell-book. Open it beside any magical text; it renders the script into what you read.
Abyssal Studies: the demons' take on the Void and Interstice, space theory, their history, and notes on other civilizations and beings they've met.
Beginner's Grimoire: their elementary-school magic reader. Only demons can actually learn from it; Li Pan just wants the tour.
Book of Resurrection: a demon specialty—a consumable that casts Resurrection.
When a demon's projection or avatar dies on a foreign world, Resurrection brings them back in the Abyss. The casting requires a demon, but the target need not be one.
As long as the entity is otherworldly, the container died, the divinity/soul was merely expelled (not destroyed), and it's weaker than a duchess-class demon, it qualifies. Any soul revived by Jimoni bears her brand, becoming her thrall—unless you buy it back.
Which means: if a company Apostle dies and even the Archive can't reel him in, Li Pan can burn a coin to hire a demon to read the Book and cast Resurrection, another coin to ferry the soul out of the Abyss, and a third to redeem the soul from Jimoni. Drop it into a new cybernetic body—reborn.
Call it four coins per life.
As Duan says, a backdoor reincarnation—kinda trashy, but it works.
There are attack and support spells too—same model: buy the book, pay demons for support.
But 0791 is a science-side world. Until someone breaks Heaven's law, duchess/marquis-grade demon magic has limited effect here—not cost-effective. RPG white-phos is cheaper. So one Book of Resurrection to test is enough.
Business done, Duan's itching to pasture Lambs. Once Jimoni fetches his materials, they head out the way they came, leaving the Solomon behind.
Credit where due: the Abyssals are interesting. Not as domineering as science-side or cultivation humans, but they have unique gifts across the Myriad Worlds—jump, revive, cast, raise Lambs. In a sense, they're the protagonists of the multiverse.
And funny thing—Abyssal Studies claims the demons met Earthlings long ago.
But Earth-0 was in a total civil war: bend the knee or be erased. At the fever pitch, every colony that backed the Legion faced purges to extinction. Even demons lurking in the Abyss were spooked.
They've seen worlds die—catastrophes and backward tech kill civilizations all the time.
But Earth-0—hyper-advanced tech and obsessed with fratricide, glassing billions at a time—that kind of hegemon is rare.
Abyssal demon-gods merely pasture a few Lambs. Lambs eat people, yes—but they're useful. If you neither eat nor use, and still slaughter the world—that's waste.
So even hell would rather avoid Earth-0's brand of lunatic—if not for even worse lunatics kicking in their door with a sword.
Li Pan has no comeback. From a person's view, the fate of billions is cosmic. From a civilization's view, an Earth is a node on a strategic map to seize and subdue. Collateral? Numbers.
Flip it around: if Earth-0 didn't bare its fangs, it might have been pastureland for interdimensional demons already. Under the Security Committee, countless Earths are oppressive and unequal, sure—but they forged a civilization that even demon-gods hesitate to cross.
In this forest, survivors are wolves. A civilization too kind, too saintly—doesn't last long in natural selection this cruel.
For Li Pan, though—Earth-0 or Cult or demons—they all grind people into paste. 0791's future is clear: Night City drowns in blood and fire. Time to run. Early birds reincarnate.
Forget trolley problems.
Who knows when 0791 blows?
No time to pine over a measly eighty million.
First: bag a trillion. Make money. Split.
Resolved, Li Pan returns to 0791, leaving Li Xuehong in the fridge to cultivate, and opens his eyes—
—to Shiranui bouncing on his hips for "cardio."
…oh.
Right. At work, brooding over the eighty million, he'd spaced out and, without thinking, accepted Shiranui's invite to dual cultivate at Yunding Apartments…
Some traps you just can't sidestep.
He powers through to a finish, downs some water, and runs the Grail playbook, glancing at the panting Shiranui.
"Kiriko—Kōga's been dragging their feet. Any word?"
"You heartless thing—am I not enough? Still thinking about Asahime…"
She flings a pillow, then her eyes glaze; she pings Kōga Asahime.
"The elders accepted the company contract. The village is running chūnin exams among twenty-one houses to select recruits and lift the demon-god seals. They'll serve as an outsourced mercenary unit."
Li Pan thinks.
"Good. Don't report them to HQ yet. Have them contract with Panlong Construction first—call it an onboarding test.
"You command them. I'll send you a watchlist—tail the Night Group managers and accounts. Report any movement. Be ready to kill."
Shiranui scans the list.
"These… Night Group managers? Understood, boss."
The list came from -18's probe into Emiliya's team—a network of managers, finance leads, and mid-level execs across Night Group's banks and subsidiaries. Some gaps, but it's most of them.
With Kōga as insurance, if Emiliya flakes, he can cut losses fast.
In Night City there are no white lotuses. Blink and you're scammed.
My poor eighty million…
He shoos Shiranui off to work and re-checks the op plan.
With Li Xuehong's power, stealing the Grail is easy. With Kōga watching, any Emiliya tricks get countered. Panlong's security escorts it to the company.
Cash for goods. Clean.
He files the proposal to launch a "Holy Grail Bidding War."
Finance replies in a syrupy, knife-tipped voice:
"Proposal rejected."
"WHY?!"
"My trillion!" Li Pan howls.
"You underbid," Finance coos.
"I what? …Come again?"
"0791," the sweet voice says, "do you know the average price a subsidiary GM pays to run a Grail Bidding War?"
"How would I know? Just tell me what to bid."
Giggle.
"That's not how it works. You propose a budget that fits your ops. If the board approves, I fund whatever you ask.
"But say I only give you two trillion and you actually pull it off. What's 01 going to think? The board?
Oh, you're amazing, you showed off. Do the other GMs still get to do their jobs?"
"Right… my mistake," Li Pan says. "I'll revise."
"Good. And don't forget my ten percent," she purrs.
…She's bold, at least.
"Thanks, gorgeous. Mwah!"
He immediately pings 0113.
"Yo, A-Three?"
"You again? It's dawn. What do you want?"
"Nothing, nothing. Missed you. Thought we'd chat."
"I'm hanging up."
"Wait—quick question. How much did your Grail cost?"
"Grail—0791, are you trying to make more trouble?"
"Which is why I'm asking. I've only lost four 007s so far. HR says eight more are inbound. That's enough to bid for a Grail. What should I budget? Prep?"
"This isn't a bidding war," 0113 said. "Stealing the Grail is just step one. You also have to hold it. Lose it after capture and you're written up.
"So you don't do this until your company has scale and strength.
"Once you have it, everyone targets you. Storage and security both need a full upgrade. Sleep with one eye open.
"Me, I waited until I'd wiped out the god-kingdoms in my local plane and formally notified 0113. Then I fetched the Grail.
"Cost me twenty trillion."
"…How much?"
"Twenty trillion," 0113 repeated. "A month's output. But don't copy me. I had no rivals left.
"You—your Grail's in Night Corp hands, right? They're not weak. Second tier under the Committee. And unlike us research types, the banks are interlaced—cross-invested, cross-seated. Mystic Party Bank sits under the First Reserve board's umbrella.
"Night and Takamagahara aren't the same league. They're just stuck on the 07 route with no waypoints—slow to reinforce. Challenge their rule and the bloodline won't take it lying down. You're likely looking at a company war before they yield."
"Got it. Thanks," Li Pan says, swallowing.
He stares at the handset.
So the "worthless" vampires are actually the Finance Bloc. Makes sense—banks aren't for amateurs.
Where there are people, there's politics. Politics builds factions.
The Finance Bloc (Tax Bureau) holds the biggest stake in First Reserve Bank—the strongest camp in the Committee. Capital rules.
Second is the Scientific Ethics Committee—tech is productivity; corner tech and you corner everything. But institutes compete, and they still borrow from banks—hard to act as one.
(Side note: SEC is TheM's main customer. The company's monsters—beyond R&D—mostly sell to SEC labs.)
Third is MICC, the military-industrial complex. Starships, mecha, weapons—huge output, but profits are capped by SEC patents. They borrow from banks and pay taxes to Finance. Unless there's a corporate war windfall, peacetime means getting eaten from both ends.
Beyond the Big Three: smaller orgs and foundations—Terra Holdings at the core of the green/vegan alliance; their nemesis, the Miners' Guild; a grab bag of trusts, concerns, and cartels. Cross-holdings and cooperation—until someone can swallow someone else whole.
With Night backed this hard, the steal-and-run plan gets risky.
Unless he hides on the cultivation side, he'll still cross the Tax Bureau somewhere.
But after all this prep, Li Pan can't let go. He dials another number.
"Yo, 0213? About 0213007. Mhm—your temps' frames are gene-modded from marine life? So the illegal lab's coastal? Also, why fish-men? At least go amphibious…"
"Didn't I send this yesterday?" says the 0213 GM, baffled. "Ninety-three percent ocean on 0213. Hardly any land."
"Heh, don't stress," Li Pan says. "Just smoothing things over so we don't stay at odds over the temps. Thanks again for backing me in the meeting. Come to 0791—I'll comp you a hot spring."
"Kind of you," 0213 says politely. "We work for the company—mutual support is proper. Our frames are saltwater-fish based—can't survive in freshwater."
"Since we're bath bros now," Li Pan says, "a question. Your Grail Bidding War—what'd it cost? Twenty?"
Silence. Then, in a gravelly voice:
"One hundred forty trillion. Ten years. Didn't win. Flooded the continental shelf."
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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