"Ryo-shacho, Mr. Aoyama is here."
Watanabe Keisuke's voice was tense, his face a mask of professional stoicism as he stepped into the CEO's office.
Ryo Shien quickly wiped the mischievous grin from his face. Only a moment ago, he'd been privately relishing the dark, tragic fallout he knew was coming for the Edgerunners fans. He stood up, adjusting his designer blazer. "Excellent. Bring him to the main conference room."
Today was the day. The formal commencement of Project: Cyberpunk 2077. The Federation's first attempt at a true 3A masterpiece.
Aoyama was already waiting in the lobby. He was carrying a worn-out laptop bag and looking as if he'd just spent three days in a sensory deprivation tank. He stood still as a statue, seemingly oblivious to the dozens of curious, skeptical stares coming from the LightSpeed employees.
"Aoyama-sensei! Welcome," Ryo said, extending a hand.
Aoyama didn't shake it. He just nodded toward the glass-walled development floor. "Let's skip the pleasantries. Call the leads from the game design and art departments. We need to move."
Ryo blinked, caught off guard by the author's bluntness. "Uh... right. Everyone! Meeting room A, now!"
The room was packed within minutes. The veterans of LightSpeed sat with their arms crossed, their expressions a mix of curiosity and "show-me" arrogance. They were the pros; Aoyama was just the guy with the pen. Or so they thought.
Aoyama didn't wait for an introduction. He plugged his battered laptop into the main 4K projector.
"I have a task for everyone," Aoyama began, his voice flat but carrying a resonance that demanded attention. "We are going to build a world that has never existed before. An open-world RPG that feels like a living, breathing machine."
He flipped to a slide showing the character concept for 'V'. "The player will have a choice of three backgrounds. Street Kid, Nomad, or Corpo. These aren't just cosmetic choices. They will dictate the initial relationships, the dialogue options, and the very soul of the protagonist."
He swiped through a series of character attribute trees: Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence, and Cool. Each had dozens of unique perks and sub-branches.
"I'll send the detailed documentation tonight," Aoyama said, his gaze shifting to the art department lead. "Art and Modeling: your job is high-fidelity character rendering. I want the pores on the skin, the micro-scratches on the chrome. Any issues?"
The art director looked at the reference images, his jaw dropping. "No... no issues."
"Good. Now, for the development department," Aoyama's expression turned lethal. "Our task is the hardest. We aren't going to use a licensed engine. We're going to build our own."
The room exploded into stunned whispers. Watanabe Keisuke stood up, his face pale. "Build our own? Sensei, do you have any idea what that means? A custom engine for a 3A title takes years. We'll be in development hell before we even finish the lighting shaders!"
"I know exactly what it means," Aoyama replied, his fingers flying across his keyboard. "It means we don't compromise. We build an engine optimized specifically for high-density urban environments, sophisticated AI routines, and seamless world loading. I've already written the core kernel and the initial rendering pipeline."
He hit 'Enter,' and a wall of code scrolled across the projection screen.
Watanabe stared. He'd seen plenty of 'genius' code in his time, but this... this was different. It was elegant. Efficient. It used mathematical shortcuts that shouldn't have been possible, yet the logic was airtight. It was the work of a 'Game Creator' who saw the matrix itself.
"First we believe," Aoyama said, looking Watanabe in the eye. "Then we question. For now, get to work. We have a world to birth."
---
As the development of Cyberpunk 2077 accelerated, the manga serialization of Edgerunners continued its relentless weekly march.
Over the next month, the story dove into the dark heart of Night City. Chapters 17 through 20 detailed the fallout of David's kidnapping.
Jimmy Kurosaki had intended to "break" the boy, subjecting him to a series of visceral, high-intensity BDs designed to push his neural links to the point of cyberpsychosis. He saw David as a "golden specimen," a boy with a one-in-a-million tolerance for chrome.
The rescue came in a hail of gunfire as Dorio and a frantic Lucy stormed the tuner's hideout. The tension was palpable, Aoyama's cinematic storyboarding capturing every frantic heartbeat as Lucy used her superior netrunning skills to hijack the tuner's own defense drones.
They successfully captured Tanaka, but the chaos of the struggle left a bitter aftertaste. Jimmy Kurosaki, the legendary underground tuner, was accidentally killed during the crossfire.
David stood over the tuner's cooling body, his eyes vacant. In the world of Edgerunners, even a 'legend' could die like a dog in a dirty alleyway, his life snuffed out by a stray bullet or a technical oversight.
Night City didn't care about your resume. It only cared about your luck. And as Aoyama's pen moved across the page, it was clear that the crew's luck was starting to run thin.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]