Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG-Chapter 173

I don’t know what I was expecting from the area around New Tress Radio, but it certainly wasn’t this. A thick junk barricade made from scraps of cars and broken blocks of cement blocked in the entirety of Karaoke Plaza. It didn’t necessarily look handmade as much as it appeared some massive natural force drove junk out of the area, making the barricade by accident.

“Well… that throws a wrench in our plans, doesn’t it?” Lia asked.

”We proceed on foot then.” Hampton was the first to pop open his door. “Keep your eyes peeled. We don’t know what kind of creature lurks around here.”

I’d thought about this a couple of times on the way over, but now that we were here, I couldn’t help but voice my concerns. “Is it wise to go to a place that no one has ever returned from? I can’t help but feel this might be a bad idea.”

”When you put it like that, I find myself agreeing with you. Can’t we, like, just not?” Lia joined me in questioning her superior.

Renold piped up as he also got out of the Prowler. “Put it this way- if we don’t get the stuff to repair the APC’s sensors, we’ll be at the mercy of another drone attack. If it's just one or two, it won’t be that big of a deal. But what if the Urjune sent a dozen at us? Especially if they have rocket pods like the last one had.”

I got out of the vehicle, quickly followed by Yonrow. “You think that crashed drone is still there?” It’d be nice to scan it and see if I could steal some tech from it.

”No chance they haven’t salvaged it yet…” Renold shot down my idea immediately.

Hampton popped the trunk open, allowing everyone to grab their weapons of choice. “We could stop by on the way back though. If it's still there, we could try and steal their radio frequencies.”

”Oh! If we know what they’re using, can you change the broadcasting stuff here to scramble it?” Lia offered an idea that actually wasn’t all that bad.

”Uh, maybe.” I’d have to see if the stuff here even still worked to begin with. “Assuming we live through this, that is.”

Yonrow sighed, finally throwing in with us. “Can we just get a move on? It’d suck to be out here past nightfall.”

”Chek. Lia, summon one of your little dogs. We need some intel on our surroundings.” Hampton gave out orders as he eyed the junk wall.

”Uh, sir? No can do. None of the wolves want to answer my call here unless it’s urgent. Even Silver is skittish.” Lia shrugged as she swiped her gun from the stack of weapons in the back. “I’m basically a mundane human.”

Hampton frowned deeply. “Well, offer them a treat or something? Going in without the slightest bit of intel is a very bad idea.”

“Doesn’t work like that…” Lia muttered under her breath.

Yonrow, on his way to inspect the junk wall, offered a solution. “We could go up the surrounding buildings. Look from there.”

”I- uh- I have a drone I can send in.” I offered if only to avoid climbing up the stairs of the surrounding buildings. No shot the elevators worked. Even if they did, trusting them not to collapse under me was an entirely different situation.

”Send it over then. See if you can’t figure out what we’re up against while we try and get a way through the junk.” Hampton motioned for the rest of the squad to follow, leaving just Renold and I with the Prowler.

Renold looked around, glancing at the long-abandoned side street we were parked on. “You need anything else?”

“Uh- no. Just my bag.” I slung said bag over my shoulder as I watched Renold head back for the driver's seat.

The charming man slung his heavy gun into the passenger seat with grace and ease that belied the weight of the gun. “I’m going to hide the Prowler. Shout if anything comes up, but otherwise, I’ll be back in a few moments.”

”Chek.” I shifted over to the side of the street, parking myself just inside of a small shop. Crazy how I somehow managed to end up alone again even with a full squad supposedly protecting me. Not that it mattered too much.

I opened my bag, rifling through the various goodies I stuffed inside before leaving home. I pulled aside the chords connected to the sized-up Blackout, which I was still waiting on a name for. Hmm… Blinder? I like Blinder. Anyway, when I hooked up the Blinder I hadn’t worried too much about the chords and all that since I thought I’d clean everything up before getting in the field. Kinda forgot to do all that, so it was a mess filling my bag.

Once I got those shoved to the side, I rooted through the rest of the tech I brought along. Several Listeners and Scouters were a must, of course. Oh, and my deck to run various applications. Then there was the Jammer and Sonic Suppressor taking up far too much space. Probably wouldn’t even need them, but could never be too safe. And finally, there was the hard, repurposed toolbox that held my silent drone.

I pulled out the drone’s container, flicking it open to see my baby. The drone itself was a mere shadow of the Heavy Combat Drone used by the Urjune, but everything I put into it was a hundred percent hand-built and designed by me, so it felt quite a bit more special even if it would be incredibly weak by comparison.

As soon as I connected to the drone using my deck, the four blades whirled into action. For a brief moment, the noises from the drone’s blades were extremely loud. Then, with a press of the controls, the modified mufflers kicked into action, silencing the propellers. For a few moments, as the muffler synced up the right pitches, there was low vibrato in the air before the noise cut entirely.

Using my beat-up deck as a makeshift control board, I controlled the drone and sent it up into the air. I did a few test drives before, of course, but actually flying the thing while I had pressure on my shoulders? Entirely different.

And the environment wasn’t the best for flying something fragile like my drone. There were hundreds of reaching vines just waiting to pluck it right out of the air, never to be seen again. Or at least, not in one piece. It would be truly tragic to lose my drone on its first mission.

Thankfully, it was quite easy to dodge everything. I just had to fly out in the middle of the street away from any obstructions. I messed with the flight path a few more times, adjusting the altitude and direction of travel before I finally got a good look at our target.

Karaoke Plaza was a barren wasteland similar to the Outlands. It looked almost as though every single vehicle and bit of debris that had been in it had been forced out to join the junk wall. The actual plaza itself remained empty of even the slightest speck of clutter aside from the sand.

Oh, also another peculiarity was immediately evident. Once I flew the drone past the junk wall, I didn’t spot a single plant growing inside the premises. It was almost as though the entire place had been cursed—or maybe blessed considering the state of the city—to not grow anything. Not a single blade of grass or fleck of vine emerged from inside the junk wall.

Even the vines growing from nearby buildings and attempting to reach over the junk wall weren’t spared. Almost as if passing an invisible boundary of death, they were entirely wilted. The drooping plants didn’t have even the slightest signs of life to them.

It wasn’t until maybe the thirtieth or fortieth floor up that the plants returned to racing up the sides of New Tress Radio’s building. It was like there was a perfect dome of death centered around the first floor, stopping anything from growing nearby.

Definitely weird, though I couldn’t help but find myself tempted to look for the source of such an aura. The plants in the city were straight-up evil hellspawn of some freaky entity, so having an aura of no plants around would be quite nice. Then the temptation faded as I actually thought of what the cause could be.

It looked like some kind of curse was present in the area. Definitely not something mundane, at least, considering it had such a strong effect on the nearby plants. Maybe a Remnant of a time long past? Or perhaps some kind of mythical monster lurked here? Or maybe it was some kind of magic gone awry, which I guess would make the issue a literal curse?

Regardless, the entire place gave me an incredibly bad feeling that was hard to put into words. If I had to say exactly though... maybe it felt like the Leper-Khan's box monster had? It was this sense of instinctual unease that seemed to radiate through the fabric of my being.

I relayed everything I saw to the group, showing off the drone footage as much as I could. I flew around, checking the entire area before going window by window to see if I could spot anything suspicious. Nothing. Or at least nothing of the window offices. Before long I had to recall my drone though as the battery life rapidly plummeted.

The silent drone flew back under my control, landing perfectly at my feet. I stuffed it back into its case, connected it to my pack’s battery, and stuffed it back into my bag. “So, what do we think?”

”I don’t like this.” Hampton was the first to reply, his hands twitching incessantly. “Is there anywhere else we could go for parts?”

Lia leaned back, staring up at the tower as she stretched out her double elbows. “What do you think it is? A ghost? An actual curse? Oh, I know! Some horrible monster that is both a ghost and a curse?”

Hampton shot a glare at her. “You’re not helping.”

”Lia is helping plenty. Really inspiring.” Yonrow said as he started sketching some horrifying visage of a cursed ghost in full view of the leader. It seemed he had a humourous side to him after all.

I also stared up at the tower, my mind lost in thought for a few moments. I was the entry specialist, so this was technically my field of expertise. And my almost a decade of experience screamed at me that going through the dead zone was an incredibly bad idea. “Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way?”

”Oh? Do share with the group.” Renold replied, stroking his gun as he stared at the junk wall. “What other way should we look?”

”Why do we have to go in through the first several floors? We don’t know what it is or how dangerous it is outside the fact no one ever returns, so why not skip it entirely? We could shoot a line above the death zone and zipline across. Avoid it entirely.” I offered. Most of the stuff I’d need would be on the upper floors anyway, so there really wasn’t a need to even get involved with this dead zone.

”Hmm… could work. Except we don’t have a zip line nor do we have a way to launch it across.” Hampton crossed chrome arms.

For my plan to work, we’d need several things. A pulley system to manipulate any of the heavier loot we’d need to take out of the tower for one, but also quite a bit of microwire or some equivalent. As for getting across the gap…

”Do we have a grenade launcher? I could try and rig it to shoot harpoons. Then we tie a wire to the harpoon and launch it across.” Should be a simple enough modification, though I might also have to scavenge a couple of grenades for their actual launching capabilities.

Renold kicked off from where he leaned up against the junk wall, sticking his arm out. The chrome shifted under a silent command, the hand sliding down and out of the way to reveal a barrel. His arm crooked weirdly, giving the entire limb a look reminiscent of a gun. “This work?”

Okay, sick! But also I wasn’t as confident in modifying chrome as I was a standalone weapon. The past week of repairing chrome had boosted my confidence a bit, but this? Too bad I didn’t make one of the rail rifles I saw in Sentinel’s stolen research papers. Having one here would offer some great utility.

”Uh, maybe.” I eyed the limb, trying to picture how I'd modify it.

"You need anything else for this to work?" Hampton asked.

I waved to the rest of the group. “Chek. While I’m taking a look at his arm, the rest of you guys need to find several spools of steel wire and a bunch of pulleys.”

“We passed by an old department store on the way. Might have what we’re looking for.” Yonrow offered.

”Oh, I’ll drive!” Lia jumped over to Renold, sticking her hand out for the Prowler’s keys.

Renold instead tossed the keys over her head to Hampton. “No way I’ll let you wreck my baby. It’s around the corner, stashed inside of an old coffee shop. Be careful, will you?”

A growl rose up from the back of her throat before she harrumphed sharply and turned away. “Just you wait!”

Hampton just sighed as he trudged off toward the vehicle. “Stay safe. We’ll be back shortly.”

”Chek chek.” I pulled on Renold’s grenade launcher arm as I headed for the safety of a nearby building, taking the opportunity to do some preliminary scans of the chrome with Technical Expertise.