"You could always find someone else. See who's willing to take in a drifter wandering the borderlands. And that guy in your back seat? There aren't any decent doctors out in the Badlands for whatever's wrong with his head. Want help? Go to Night City."
Somewhere in his haze, Luo Qi heard voices.
He rubbed his eyes. His head still felt light and floaty, as if it had been slammed in a door.
Who am I? Where am I? It feels like I forgot something important...
"Hey! Hey! Lucky! You okay?"
Before Luo Qi could react, a pair of large hands steadied his swaying head. A strangely familiar face leaned in close.
"Can you hear me?"
Bzzzz—
The blur in his vision gradually sharpened. Clutching his skull, which throbbed with splitting pain and a high-pitched ringing, Luo Qi finally saw where he was.
He was sitting in the back seat of a car parked inside a cluttered auto shop.
The anxious-looking man in front of him felt more and more familiar the longer he stared. In his memory, fragments of chaotic images began to overlap.
"V?... V! You're... V!?"
Luo Qi's eyes flew wide open. His mind went blank, and for a moment he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
"Ah—ugh—zzztzzzt—!!"
A sudden surge of memories crashed into his brain, colliding with the scattered fragments in his mind and plunging him straight back into agonized convulsions—
He saw someone shoot him. Before he even had time to feel the pain, his vision blurred, and the next thing he saw was his own body sinking with an ocean liner into the depths of the sea. The broken memory lasted only an instant before thousands upon thousands of strange, flickering images howled through his head without warning.
[System malfunction detected. Emergency reset in progress.]
[Reset complete. All data has been rolled back.]
[Insufficient authorization. OVER-1 combat sequence has been disabled.]
Only after the final prompt faded did the turmoil in Luo Qi's head finally settle. Fine beads of cold sweat covered his forehead and back.
Looking at the tense, worried V before him, Luo Qi became certain that he had forgotten something.
But he had no time to think about it. The shock of realizing that he had somehow crossed into another world instantly seized his mind.
"I... I'm... I'm okay... V."
A thousand thoughts became a single sentence. Luo Qi patted the back of V's hand, signaling that he was fine.
The words were meant for V, but also for himself, panicked and unsteady as he was. He needed time to sort through the mess in his head. The memories there were so disordered they could drive any normal person insane—utterly without sequence, like the shriek of a deep-sea siren looping in his ears for twenty-four straight hours.
And yet, for some reason, those simple words did not sound strange or distant when they left his mouth. It felt as though he and V had been friends for years, as if that familiarity had been buried deep in his subconscious.
"You're okay—thank God. Once we..." V glanced discreetly at the mechanic standing nearby and changed what he was about to say. "Once we get to Night City, I'll find you the best ripperdoc there is."
Hearing that familiar voice soothed Luo Qi a little. Feeling the worn softness of the back seat under him, he slowly adjusted his breathing to ease the pounding pain in his head.
V was always dependable. If there was anyone in Night City you could trust as a friend, the young man known only as V had to be the best possible choice.
Even if Luo Qi had no idea what kind of connection his original self had once shared with V, at least the current situation was not the worst.
Nearby, rock music roared from the radio, warped slightly by static with that old, distorted feel.
On the TV, a news anchor was solemnly reporting on "space pirates"—
This was the world of Cyberpunk 2077. You would never hear news like that in his old world.
Slowly, Luo Qi closed his eyes, only for an overly anxious V to immediately shake him awake.
"Heh... I'm fine, V. Really. Don't worry."
He smiled. The neural pain in his head had dulled, just a little.
"Good. Just remember this—if you die, I'm going right back and settling the score with those bastards."
V gripped Luo Qi's shoulders and spoke with a look of absolute determination unlike anything Luo Qi had ever seen before.
Only after Luo Qi nodded did V finally let go in relief.
"Now, where were we?" V asked the mechanic.
"Your friend needs to go to Night City and get his head checked."
"Not that. The line before."
"I can't fix this car," the mechanic said, all stubborn indifference.
But V wasn't some green rookie. As a former member of the Bakkers clan and someone who had spent years surviving in the Badlands, he wasn't about to be stumped by a mouthy mechanic.
"The payment we agreed on stands. Not one eddie more."
"Sure. Then take my tools and fix it yourself." The mechanic folded his arms, acting like he couldn't care less.
V gave a cold snort, shoved him aside from the hood, and said, "No problem. Move."
Watching the small confrontation from the car, Luo Qi felt faintly helpless and let out a light laugh, careful not to use too much strength.
So this world's V was a straightforward Nomad through and through.
"I'm thinking of bypassing the coupling and pulling a line out from the engine."
He said he was "thinking," but V didn't hesitate in the slightest. Reach, yank—wire in hand. Then he jammed it into some other place, and apparently that counted as installed.
As far as auto repair went, Luo Qi was completely out of his depth. All he could do was watch V work without understanding any of it.
"If you do it like that, the compressor will keep running. It might blow out," the mechanic warned.
V turned and looked at him as if he were an idiot. "Did I ask for your opinion?"
"Pfft..." Luo Qi burst out laughing in the back seat, then immediately felt his temples throb hard a couple of times.
Yep. That was V. One hundred percent genuine.
Same familiar temper, too.
The mechanic, having asked for that humiliation, awkwardly retreated to the side.
"Alright, let's see if this works..."
V opened the car door, slid into the driver's seat, and started the engine.
Whrr—failed ignition, attempt one.
Whrr—failed ignition, attempt two.
Then, under the mechanic's mocking sneer, the red old car finally roared to life.
"Huh. You really do know a thing or two. But how long's that going to hold?" The mechanic's attitude softened a bit as he lowered the hood.
"Long enough to get us to Night City. After that, I'll figure something else out." V clearly didn't care. Compared to the car, he had more important things to worry about. "Lucky, how are you feeling now?"
"Yeah. I think I'm okay." Luo Qi nodded.
"Then let's go meet the client first. You good with that?" V asked.
Luo Qi knew exactly who that so-called client was.
Jackie Welles.
It was a heartbreaking name, because behind it was a heartbreaking story.
Luo Qi had no intention of declaring war on all of Arasaka, but if it was to save Jackie, he would do it—even if it meant commandeering a flying fortress and blasting his way all the way to Hiroshima. Back then, after enduring the miserable thirty-frame experience to finish the first chapter of the game, Jackie dying in the car had completely crushed Luo Qi's desire to keep playing. From that moment on, right up until he transmigrated here, he had never touched the game again.
V had taken a merc job to transport a client and some cargo across the Night City border. The pay from that job was supposed to be the money V and Luo Qi would use to survive next.
So they had no choice. This job had to be done.
V had just connected to the broken car radio and was about to try contacting the client again when two trousered legs in uniform stepped up outside the rolling shutter door.
V immediately put away his device.
Clatter—
The shutter door was pulled up, revealing a swaggering guy in a cowboy hat and sunglasses, dressed like some small-town sheriff.
"Hey, Mike. Didn't know you had company."
The mechanic—Mike—who had acted pretty tough in front of V, instantly tensed up.
"They just got here a few hours ago. I... I thought he'd already checked in with you."
Hands on his hips, swagger dialed up to eleven, the sheriff waved lazily.
"Relax, Mike. Everything can be talked out, right?"
His words sounded reasonable enough, but his tone reeked of arrogance and superiority.
The mechanic touched the brim of his cap and quietly backed off to the wall.
"Pah." The sheriff spat disdainfully, his eyes glinting with hostility. "Didn't anyone tell you? When you come into town, you check in with the sheriff first. Tell him what you're doing here—even if all you're here for is a cup of coffee."
There it was. The classic line. Exactly the same as in the game.
Sheriff by title, sheriff by soul, sheriff as the supreme life-form of America...
Luo Qi sat quietly in the back seat, doing his best impression of a mute. He was a little nervous, but the snark in his head had not stopped for even a second.
Still, there was a real gun hanging at the sheriff's waist.
One that could actually kill people.
Who knew whether a sheriff in the real world would still have the "infinite tolerance" of the newbie opening in the game? In the game, you could pick the rude dialogue option or even bounce your car around right in front of him and nothing would happen.
But what if, in this world, he just pulled out that revolver and blew someone away? Or did something else ugly? Would the story still unfold the way Luo Qi remembered?
Luo Qi was not about to gamble on whether this world had a "save-load" function.
"Hm. Didn't notice there was another one in there." One hand braced on the roof of the car, the sheriff's cocky mouth curled under his sunglasses.
"No need to worry. We'll be gone soon," V said, drawing the sheriff's attention back to himself.
"That's not what I'm asking, is it?" the sheriff cut in. "Name's Andrew Jones. Maybe you've heard of me. Served in special forces in the last war. Ever hear of the Silver Shogun?"
V looked like he wanted to shake his head, but in the end he said nothing.
"Not much of a talker, are you?" The sheriff nodded and strolled around the car, finally planting one boot on the hood. "This a Nomad car? Hah. I thought as much..."
"I'll fix the car and leave. I'm not staying," V said, silently clenching his fist as he gave ground.
"That's right. Best not stick around. I get pissed off every time I see strays like you." The sheriff gestured with disgust, looking at V like he was trash. "So. Where's your clan camp?"
"No clan. No camp. Just the two of us."
"I don't buy it. Nomads always move in packs." The sheriff clearly didn't like the answer.
"My family scattered. That's why I'm heading to Night City," V explained.
But V wasn't telling the whole truth.
The real reasons were these: first, to smuggle goods for a client; second, to get Luo Qi to a doctor.
Looking at V's profile, Luo Qi suddenly realized something.
If he and V had known each other from even earlier, then there was a chance they had once both belonged to the Nomad clan called the Bakkers.
The sheriff was right. Right now, V and Luo Qi were drifters even among drifters.
Homeless. Rootless. With no one they could truly trust. That was why V placed so much faith in him, and cared for him so fiercely.
V's radio was busted, his equipment couldn't get a signal, and he had planned to borrow the local transmitter tower. But the sheriff didn't care about any of that. He wanted V and Luo Qi off his turf as fast as possible. Just seeing these "stray dogs" circling around his town pissed him off.
But with Luo Qi there, V didn't dare clash with him. Grinding his teeth and swallowing his anger, he could only drive out through the gate.
As the car rolled onto the dust-streaked highway, Luo Qi suddenly spoke.
"V... thanks."
"I owe you my life, Lucky," V said without turning around.
Meaning: this was nothing.
Luo Qi looked at his back and smiled helplessly.
Who knew what kind of past had forged this relationship between them—something beyond brotherhood, closer than blood?
But it wasn't bad.
Not bad at all.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 172)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 116)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter119)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 66
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 52
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 55
The Way the Umamusume Look at 42
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 40
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 36
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 30
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 26
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 26
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