Over the next few days, Lin Mo kept up the loop of running one simulation a day.
By now he had to admit: this commission was the toughest he'd faced so far.
Multiple runs over several days, constantly pruning and refining the plan—each simulation produced different details…
…but almost every single one ended the same way: a bad end.
Fail, try again; fail again, try again—the rhythm dragged him right back to that "stuck on a boss fight" feeling from his gaming days.
He still remembered how stubborn he'd been back then. If he hit a wall, he had to break it with his own skill. If he failed, he simply reloaded.
The way he was using the simulator now felt exactly like that: banging his head until the optimal route emerged from accumulated experience.
It was also the first time he'd proactively taken a job and proactively hunted for the best clear.
He had the luxury of time this go-round—nothing like earlier commissions that boxed him into tight deadlines.
Back when the simulator only gave him one run per day, there was no chance to iterate. Even with a bad outcome, he had to grit his teeth and go in for real the next day.
This time was different.
If he had time to prep and plan, then with the simulator to "trial-run" outcomes, even the nastiest job would eventually crack.
In a sense, as long as he stayed in shadow and the enemy stood in the light, the blade hidden in darkness would always find a chance to slide between the ribs of the man basking under the spotlight.
Still, this approach—using simulations to harvest intel and a "clear guide"—had its drawbacks. Or rather, drawbacks he personally minded.
Yes, previewing tomorrow's events was convenient. But he didn't want to be someone who relied only on a crutch.
He wouldn't refuse tools out of pride—but he also wouldn't lean on them completely. Which was why he was compiling and analyzing every run's output by hand.
—
The pen flew across paper, strokes biting deep like a knife. Dense notes streamed from his mind into a small stack of pages. He sat ramrod straight at the desk, brows knit—sometimes stuck in thought, sometimes writing in bursts.
"A headache… Almost every 'weak spot' has motion sensors. And the snipers at elevation clearly have visual augments. With that overwatch, slipping in unseen is basically impossible unless we neutralize them first."
He scowled, circling items on the page.
"Or hope they all get sudden diarrhea so we can sneak in during the stampede?"
He let the joke bleed off some tension, then sighed.
"Didn't expect to be blocked at step one—can't even get through the front door, let alone 'infiltrate.' I ran several sims and still no clean entry route. Why the hell didn't the game have motion sensors like these?"
He dumped his thoughts onto paper, then reviewed and replayed. A rotten pen beats a good memory; write more, think more, and a seam always shows.
After so many runs, looking at his notes, he almost felt like he didn't need Regina's intel anymore.
He was practically paving a blood-slicked walkthrough with his simulated corpse. Security forces, devices, contingency handling—he'd mapped most of it out.
If he still couldn't pull off a clean infiltration, he'd be insulting the "him" in the sim who died to get this info.
But the one problem choking him was also step one:
—Cross the wall unseen and enter the facility safely.
Looked simple. In practice, it stacked several hard constraints.
First: motion sensors—wherever the hell they sourced these. He'd never seen them in the game.
In the game you popped Sandy and chopped. Enemy reaction time stretched under time-dilation—you carved them up before they blinked.
But motion sensors don't care how fast you are. Enter their net, you're flagged. No wonder the first attempt got burned. The installs were so well hidden you'd never notice without prior intel.
He'd tried having Sasha's team black them out, then slipping in under cover. That did work—without the sensors, a time-slowed dash was almost undetectable. Wait for a sniper to blink, and he could make it inside.
But he making it didn't mean Sasha could.
Which raised problem two: what to do about the snipers.
Real snipers aren't the half-blind, tunnel-vision mooks from a videogame.
From multiple sims, he was sure the Arasaka Harbor snipers were "see six directions, hear eight" types. With memory/recognition implants, they probably tracked every guard's post. If anyone vanished from a station, alarms would ripple immediately.
This wasn't a videogame where you stuff a body into a dumpster and call it stealth.
He even recalled a questline: Arasaka Saburo's personal bodyguard—an absolute monster—still balked at four snipers and asked V to clear them first.
These trained shooters weren't easy marks.
He even suspected that if he hadn't unlocked Move Like a Ghost, Glide Like a Wraith—the perk that prevented locks—those snipers might have tagged him even in Sandie time-dilation.
And no matter how much bio-ware you slot, a proper sniper round can chew through chrome, let alone meat.
Don't kill guards, don't get spotted by patrols, don't get scoped by unknown high-perch shooters hidden in who-knows-which nook…
Even he couldn't promise a 100% success rate. For Sasha, it was worse.
But a foreign facility without a netrunner was also a non-starter…
And even after the sniper net, there'd be patrol drones, corp netrunners, and more.
He exhaled, massaging his temples. It was late. He stepped out to the balcony.
The cool night wind washed his face; his mind eased as he stared up into the dim sky.
He'd tried this "use the sim to test and iterate" approach before. Anyone could guess how it worked: draft tomorrow's plan today, then preview its outcome via simulation.
It was a solid method.
But after a few experiments back then, he'd learned the simulator punishes cheese. If you used it purely for "trial and error," the rewards turned to junk.
Makes sense: suppose you scripted "Tomorrow I solo the Arasaka Tower," then "Tomorrow I solo Militech." You'd expect big rewards from such "legendary" feats, right?
What if the sim wrote: "You, overconfident, walked into Arasaka Tower and got shredded at the door by automated systems."
And the reward? Garbage.
He remembered once, out of curiosity, he "planned" to skip school entirely.
The sim text came back: Xu Wanyue kicked down the door, dragged him by the ear to class.
The reward? A Firsthand Lesson in Getting Your Butt Whipped.
After that, unless necessary, he avoided using the sim just to brute-force outcomes.
Until today—when it really shone again.
—
After a few minutes of night air, he returned to the desk and reviewed his compiled intel one more time. At length, he capped the pen, stuffed the notes into a drawer, and left them be. Unless an insider saw them, no one would make sense of those pages anyway. No need to over-paranoid his own home.
He lay down, slipped on the BD headband, and ran the next day's simulation.
[Simulation start]
[After a solid night's sleep, you greet a new day. Quick wash, then off to Arasaka Academy…]
He skimmed past the boring class routine.
But when he went to view the night op's outcome, he froze.
There was no outcome.
He scrolled back and found the break point:
[…After class at dusk, you prepare to take David to Lizzie's to rendezvous with the others per plan.]
[Just then, a call comes in—and blows up your entire schedule.]
[It's Kitagawa Hiro. The moment you answer, you hear thick grief in his voice. Why would a grown man sound like that?]
[You quickly learn the truth—Kitagawa Shizu was in an accident.]
[As Hiro haltingly explains, you piece together what happened:]
[A stretched limo malfunctioned for unknown reasons and plowed head-on into Shizu's school bus. Thirty-two on board; thirty dead.]
[Because of past incidents, Hiro had been stuffing Shizu's bag with emergency injectors and a small firearm. Thanks to those meds, Shizu and one classmate survived until Trauma Team arrived.]
[Even so, despite timely rescue, Shizu lost a leg and required a cyber-limb replacement.]
[The sudden accident shatters tonight's operation. You cancel the plan, change course, and take David to Night City Medical Center to see Hiro and Shizu.]
[There, you find Hiro drowning in guilt, and Shizu doing her best to comfort him.]
[You talk for a long time, collecting details of the crash:]
[The perpetrator was likely someone rich or powerful. For a limo to crush a larger school bus and still flee the scene, it must have carried special armor and reinforcement.]
[Time of incident: a little after 4 p.m., just off Shizu's campus. The bus had barely left when it was hit.]
[There are no leads yet. NCPD promises swift resolution, but with his years on the street, Hiro is convinced it'll be swept under the rug. Someone with money and clout won't see justice.]
[You can do nothing for now. It's too sudden, with too little to go on. You ask Hiro to stay with Shizu and focus on recovery. The reckoning can wait.]
[With that, tonight's infiltration is fully scrubbed. You dismiss the crews waiting at Lizzie's and announce the postponement.]
[A heavy night settles over you. You head home with a knot in your chest and lie awake, turning it over.]
[Simulation Rating: An Unexpected Incident]
[Simulation Reward: €$13,000 (Shizu Kitagawa's medical expenses)]
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MY CYBERPUNK 2077 SIMULATOR
🧠💻 MY CYBERPUNK 2077 SIMULATOR 💻🧠
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⚙️ Level up.🔫 Fight harder.🌃 Stay alive.💀 Or get swallowed by the city.
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