Chapter 166 - 150 Drone Attack

"...What’s your deal?"

Sol and Cedric sat at the table.

Cedric gave a bitter smile upon hearing this: "Actually, it might have started with me. But I always thought you were so tense because of me."

"Spill it."

"Sigh... Hector signed a contract with Biotechnology for human experimentation. There was a clause that prohibited disclosing the experiment’s content, so Hector simply stopped contacting you guys.

Then... someone died. I couldn’t take it, so I took Andri’s body to settle the score with Biotechnology.

But I had an episode, cyber psychosis."

Sol was stunned, slowly turning his head to Cedric: "You..."

"Yeah, cyber psychosis. Then the three of them subdued me. How they did it, I don’t remember. To be honest, I don’t even remember what I went there for. The doctor told me all of this after I woke up."

"...They can cure cyber psychosis?"

Cedric glanced at Sol: "Do I look like someone with cyber psychosis to you now?"

"Pretty much. Wrapped up like that, anyone would think you were strapped with a bunch of bombs they didn’t know about."

"Fuck off." Cedric raised his cane as if to strike but quickly had to lower it, unable to keep it up. "Sigh, but they couldn’t solve the issue caused by Biotechnology’s experiment. They had to perform a nerve excision and used some other techniques I don’t even know about.

Now I can only use basic functional prosthetics; any other prosthetic just won’t work, and the illness isn’t fully cured either."

"No wonder, you also got rid of those stolen eyes. They make you look a lot more normal."

As they finished speaking, they clinked their beers together and each took a sip.

After a brief silence, Cedric said: "You should have listened to Burger King. Working with the company is a dead end."

"What about going against the company?"

"At least you’ll die like a human—are you seriously still thinking about becoming a company dog after all this?"

"It’s just... the thought of how they died..."

"Go to hell!" Cedric violently smashed the bottle down. "You think living is better? Look at me, I’d rather be dead now!"

Sol lowered his head: "That’s not what I mean... But, Burger King—what he said really hit me where it hurts.

A ridiculous name, but a good one. The company must be seething with rage."

"Ha, then you should pick one too. From now on, you’ll be Dumb Monkey. You look like a gorilla anyway."

Sol chuckled and gave Cedric the finger: "I may look like a gorilla, but don’t you think you look more like a monkey?"

"Where are the others? Scorpion, Mitch, why haven’t I seen them?"

Sol didn’t respond and instead stood up, looking into the distance.

A car appeared on the horizon.

"They’re back."

Amidst the distorted light, they could see dust rising behind the car as it rapidly approached.

But... there should have been three cars going to the checkpoint.

Before Sol could ask about the situation, the newcomer spoke first.

Pan’an: "Sol, something’s wrong—we got spotted by Night Wandering Ghosts near the checkpoint. They might be tracking us!"

Pan’an: "Scorpion and Mitch are leading them away—"

Sol: "Damn it... you’ve got a drone on your tail!"

.....

In the medical room—or rather, the mobile trailer—Lille was focused on treating Jack and V’s issues.

Jack’s problem was primarily physical damage—internal injuries.

With many bones broken, the short-term solution was to remove the shattered bone fragments and replace them with compensatory skeletal prosthetics.

Regina not only returned Cedric, but also brought Lille some low-level civilian prosthetics, including civilian-level skeletal enhancement implants.

The deformed subdermal armor had to be removed. Since the filler material was temporarily unavailable, they had to dismantle it extensively, leaving only a small part of the intact armor under the scalp and facial skin.

This would undoubtedly weaken Jack’s combat effectiveness significantly, but there was no other option for now.

Then, Lille placed these bone fragments into suitable containers—he needed to conduct some experiments.

V’s issues were more complex—some nerve cables of the spinal prosthetics had fused with nerves.

This was quite a serious problem: because nerve cells do not regenerate naturally, meaning issues caused by cyber psychosis were permanent.

But if these fused cables weren’t shut down, reactivating the prosthetics would cause intense stimulation, highly likely triggering cyber psychosis again.

Even if you turned off the prosthetic functions, the prosthetic might still malfunction...

So, to truly treat cyber psychosis, these parts had to be cut off—this might have been one of the reasons Cedric couldn’t use combat prosthetics anymore.

V had only a brief episode, which Lille stopped, but the situation was still bad.

Lille repeatedly compared these fused points with his existing knowledge and discovered something interesting.

In another world, Peter’s final frenzy during the Lizard Man phase involved hormonal and neuronal changes, many of which happened in the synaptic regions where V’s nerves had melted.

However, when Peter exited the lizardization phase, these nerves were repaired.

Lille thought it over and decided to cut out these fused parts and then recalibrate the spinal prosthetics.

This cutting would render the Si Anweisitan chip ineffective—they’d have to contact the manufacturer since Lille hadn’t mastered the full mechanism of Si Anweisitan yet.

As for the broken Mantis Blade...

It could only be removed for now, with supportive bones filling the gaps to restore normal function.

So after a round of repairs, neither of them needed to be disabled anymore, but their combat strength was significantly reduced.

Jack and V moved their bodies, each feeling a bit helpless.

But given the high-intensity battle, surviving was good enough, and prosthetics could always be reinstalled.

After finishing everything, Lille lay down on the operating table himself.

"One last thing, my neural interface and cyber modulator in my head are broken and need replacing. V, open your neural bridge interface, I need to use your hand."

While connecting his personal link to Lille’s interface, V said: "This sounds weird—are you sure it’ll work? I’ve heard controlling the human body is quite challenging..."

The wanderer prosthetic doctor nearby was stunned—

Lille’s skills were evident; he could see that.

He could understand the issues with Jack—mainly bone fractures—but when Lille began dealing with V’s melted nerves and recalibrating the spinal prosthetics, he admitted this was beyond his expertise.

V’s spinal prosthetics were quite advanced. The nerve cables and their extensions were many times more numerous than typical models, using biological conductors, plastics, and metals that were clearly too rare for the average person...

Forget about troubleshooting—it might take him a whole day just to install it, and even then, there was no guarantee it would connect properly according to the manual.

But even so—it only showed that city doctors had better skills; there was nothing shameful or shocking about that.

Using neuron bridging to perform surgery on oneself was something else entirely—

First of all, directly controlling a person’s actions through prosthetics was a very complex operation; this wasn’t on the same level as using a Magic Doll to cause prosthetic malfunctions or locking them!

Breaking things was always much easier than performing precise maneuvers.

Moreover, surgery is a real-time process!

This meant Lille had to stay conscious, using a large number of immediate and nearly immediate script commands through V’s Prosthetic Eye and body to perform the prosthetic surgery on himself!

The cyber modulator and neural interface lines would all connect to densely packed nerve areas!

How painful would that be?! And he had to operate on himself...?

So he hesitantly raised his hand: "I can help you. No need to do it this way..."

"Thanks, but my surgery is a bit special. I have to oversee it myself."

Only the most trusted people could witness such a surgery.

Because Lille wasn’t just installing prosthetics, he was also modifying his auxiliary heart to inject it with Lizard Potion.

Just as he was about to send the doctor away, he received a warning on the Wanderer Camp’s channel—

"Prepare for combat!"

The prosthetic doctor could no longer worry about Lille’s situation; he grabbed a rifle from the corner and ran outside.

Lille frowned slightly: "Continue the surgery, Jack—there are still two magazines left for the raccoon dog, use them sparingly."

"Got it."

Jack flexed his arms, making a soft transmission sound, then jumped out of the trailer and closed the door with a bang.

In the distance, a considerable number of combat drones floated in the sky—it was clear they were from Military Technology.

Navi jogged over to hand Jack a gun before ducking behind cover.

"Where’s Burger King and the others?"

"The surgery isn’t finished—mark the targets. Remember how to handle a gunfight?"

"Remember." Navi took a deep breath. "It’s just... I heard military drones are extremely dangerous. The old-timers haven’t seen many, but why do I keep running into them in every gunfight?"

"What does that tell you—it tells you you’re rolling with the big boss now."

Jack positioned the raccoon dog, aiming at the drones speeding towards the camp across the horizon.

He mumbled softly: "They really are dangerous, dangerous and persistent—using a raccoon dog against drones, not worth it..."

Bam!

In the chaotic Adkaduo Camp, electromagnetic bullets fired fiercely!