Chapter 761 - 41: Remote Hinterland

[Johnny: What? The world’s youngest PhD, chairman and founder of the transnational corporation Atlas Group, and the Doctor Doom who split the United States?!" ]

[Johnny: I want to hook up with a chick! Find me a chick quickly!]

[Lille: Are you crazy!]

[Johnny: I want to open a party!]

As Lille returned to the Marvel World and started scanning the recent intel and information inputted into the mainframe by automatic crawlers and his subordinates, Johnny joined in to check it out.

Upon seeing it, Johnny’s facial expressions got out of control!

No way, dude, aren’t you just a street kid?

But upon a closer look: Lille really wasn’t born into wealth and nobility, in his youth, he got caught up in a traffic accident involving an illegal transport vehicle passing by, resulting in him becoming disabled. After becoming disabled, he relied on his mom and dad taking care of him, and during this period, his dad even died from overwork.

Waking up to face debts and physical disabilities, along with the threat of being evicted by heartless developers, and even battles broke out in the neighborhood...

Although the intensity of these battles was much smaller than in Night City, Johnny wasn’t an idiot, and he even learned some rationality from Lille’s mind:

In a city where the law is still more or less functioning, in a city where the worst street fights are just carried out with submachine guns, driving in the streets to hunt someone down already sets the bar high for city intensity.

Night City wasn’t always a place rampant with crime; in general, when a peaceful place suddenly starts seeing unpunished thievery and extortion, the next phase is robbery, armed robbery, breaking and entering;

To divide who takes which territory will further evolve into street brawls and gunfights...

However, the deterioration in New York improved gradually after Lille goofily organized things like homeowner associations and worker mutual aid groups—

Johnny felt a kind of tearing sensation in his mind: Lille, he is definitely the most powerful criminal in Night City, otherwise, how could he break into Arasaka’s database and even lure him out of it?

Even in the Transformers World, he definitely isn’t one of those... flawless "good guys" as shown in most movies.

If only looking at the news in the Marvel World, Lille really appears to be one of those highly capable yet extremely ruthless, hard-to-judge people.

However, Johnny could also see Lille’s origin story, Lille’s "glorious achievements"...

They’re so glorious that Johnny felt a bit inadequate, thinking they were all street buddies, with nothing but guns and drugs in hand, let alone respecting neighbors who have no money and are gutless, honest, "law-abiding citizens," and the like...

Bullshit!

[Johnny: You’re telling me that someone like you, a super wanted criminal and antisocial individual, is actually... a good person here?!]

[Johnny: I don’t believe it, you must have a secret little black room for parties.]

Lille was left speechless.

[Lille: You mean, someone like me has to throw a party?]

[Johnny: Cut the act, man, I’m not laughing at you; I want in, take us there quickly.]

[Lille: Go to hell.]

The data Johnny accessed was already outdated, as Lille was ready to enter other worlds right after arriving in Latovia.

Closing the "blabbering sector" set aside for Johnny, the world before his eyes became much quieter.

Lille’s current base is located within a mountain, its interior resembling a castle, supported by a high-strength alloy framework, utilizing exoskeletons and tools to directly carve walls and pipes out of rock and soil, making little noise during construction while maintaining a good level of concealment.

When Lille walked out of the workroom, two Latovian guards were standing at the entrance:

Like all Latovians, years of not having enough to eat and wear have left them with chronic illnesses or disabilities to varying degrees. One of these two people had a large piece missing from his face, while the other had an abdomen fully replaced with prosthetics.

Their limbs, especially their fingers, showed varying degrees of replacement, perfectly leaving convenient interfaces for exoskeletons.

This level of prosthetics would be considered mid-to-high level in the Cyberpunk World—

From a modern perspective, the Cyberpunk World is a world rampant with prosthetics, but actually, in the middle to upper social circles, prosthetic modifications are done very conservatively, especially military prosthetic modifications.

The more Johnny looked, the more he believed that Lille was indeed one of those... those capitalists he was both very familiar and unfamiliar with!

But as Lille walked out of the room, Johnny stealthily peeked at the sensors and saw something unfamiliar in the eyes of the two guards:

Even though the two guards appeared very professionally frozen in place, with almost no discernible fluctuation in their eyes, Johnny felt that these two guards genuinely regarded this job as a...

As an extremely mission-driven job, even including a certain amount of fanaticism!

It’s almost akin to how he plays with his guitar.

[Johnny: I underestimated you, Little Lille, I didn’t expect you to learn the Arasaka way... You’ve probably done quite the brainwashing, haven’t you?]

A small line of text appeared in front of Lille.

Lille remained silent and walked straight outside—

This secret base had all professions necessary to sustain life: gardeners, farmers, technical workers, construction workers, security, researchers...

It’s just that the gardeners were cultivating genetically modified animals and plants, farmers were farming with soil from Wakanda, technical workers operated engineering robots, construction workers used tools that were exoskeletons...

All data would be sent to research institutes for data analysis and optimization, though unfortunately, the research level in Latovia wasn’t that high, mainly dealing with common operational optimization and experimental data collection.

Johnny was familiar with all these equipments, but what was strange was the harmonious atmosphere here, tense yet without constant complaining, full of energy but not suffocating...

Is it really possible for someone to enjoy going to work so much?

While pondering this, Lille’s sensitive sensors enabled Johnny to see through walls and overhear the conversation of workers inspecting the pipeline:

"Hey, Philip, wanna sign up for an advanced mechanics class after work?"

"Sure, I’ve been thinking about some weird tech problems lately..."

They were even discussing signing up for classes after work! And they were doing it with smiles!

Johnny, an uneducated drifter who skipped school as a kid, never worked as an adult, and became a super rebellious youth who deserted the military to join the resistance, couldn’t comprehend what he was witnessing:

What does it mean? Why do people like to work? Why do they like to study? How can they talk about it with a smile?

[Johnny: Your brainwashing skills are too strong... maybe you’re the one I need to defeat...]

[Lille: Haha, some people who refuse to study are panicking.]

Bang.

As Lille passed through the channel, the conversation stopped.

Upon this pause, Johnny thought he understood: The situation was even more absurd than he imagined, as he surprisingly discovered that this place didn’t stop at high prosthetic adoption for just the security!

Even the production staff were subject to such high levels of prosthetic integration? Surely Lille was a dreadful capitalist who corrupted these workers, these poor people...

This should prove that Lille is undoubtedly a rich bastard, after all, is there any worker who isn’t afraid of their boss?

Is there any laborer who doesn’t dislike the leader?

Is there any...

Before he could finish his clandestine thoughts, Johnny saw the expressions on the Latovians looking at Lille, expressions that couldn’t be summed up with just a few words.

If it was just admiration, that might be an attraction to strength; if it was merely gratitude, perhaps Lille had first taken their lands, forcing them into a corner before brainwashing them; if it was mere obedience, maybe they had grown accustomed to lives without resistance, suppressing themselves from challenging an unjust system.

It could be fear, dependence, adoration...

In any case, with such a mindset in viewing, Johnny could fabricate ten thousand reasons.

But the look the Latovians gave Lille was too complicated.

It was so intricate that Johnny found it hard to deceive himself into believing that these people were brainwashed, deceived, or controlled by power.

All the way out of the fortress, out of the mountain, a tranquil village quietly stood at the foot, where people on vacation were following local Latovian customs, gathering to sing and dance—

Though they had the most advanced technology with them, able theoretically to enjoy the extremest technological entertainment, they chose this method with the least technological content, without Super Dream, no drugs, no fully automated pleasure toys.

They were real living people, choosing their own leader.

This even made Johnny inexplicably feel a weird sense of jealousy...

[Lille: You say music has a soul. What’s your take on the music here?]

[Johnny: In the boondocks... I wonder what they’re so happy about...]

[Johnny: But the tune is nice.]