Han Yu never expected that after he completed "Cyberpunk 2077" once again, a game Easter egg, which he had never heard of or seen before, would suddenly pop up on the screen.
After controlling V to once again break through Arasaka's Divine Chariot Server hidden underground, using a shotgun to blast apart Adam's Hammer's corpse.
Then, looking down at Night City from the hovercar as King of the City, a line of text suddenly appeared on the screen.
[Are you satisfied with the story's ending, with everything that has happened in this Cyber World?]
[1—I'm satisfied, after all... life is always marked by regret.]
[2—I'm not satisfied, if it's all destined to be a tragedy, why did I start this journey?]
Satisfied?
Jack's dual guns are molding in the storage room of his game room, and in the cemetery, all that's left of David, Rebecca, and others is a line of cold text; V's life is still only a few months...
How could he be satisfied?
Due to these dissatisfactions, Han Yu didn't hesitate to press the second option.
"But this Easter egg seems like no one has triggered it before? I'll read the save later and see... I'll record it and post it online to check what's up."
Han Yu sat up, gazing at the screen with interest, looking at the sudden dialog box in the scene.
[So, are you willing to try again, to make up for everything, to see if you can truly save a city... or perhaps, burn everything to ashes? Even if this time, you might have to burn yourself?]
Please consider carefully and provide a reply. Once a choice is made, you cannot go back!
Player, please make your choice.]
[1—Forget it, V is V, I am me, no matter how strong I am in the game, it's still fake.]
[2—From this moment, ignite my tiny flame!]
Isn't it obvious? Of course, I'll choose the second one!
After Han Yu selected it without hesitation, he suddenly realized something seemed off.
This option seemed different from the typical ones encountered in the game.
The mysterious dialog box in the game seemed not to be speaking to V, whom he controlled, but more like... conversing with the player outside the game screen.
But...
Isn't that more interesting?
Han Yu excitedly took a sip of icy cola and eagerly read the following text.
[Well, choose your start, out of kindness, I offer you similar choices.]
[Choice 1—A Wanderer from the Bucker Clan, a foolish hacker watching from the Black Wall's edge out of curiosity.
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.]
[Choice 2—A hacker from Arasaka Company's hacker training center, ordered to dig old network data in the Black Wall due to job requirements.
A foolish grave digger.]
[Choice 3—A Street Kid from the Voodoo Gang, diving deep into the Cyber World with his friends, ignorantly summoning demons.
A pitiful insignificant nobody.]
Just by briefly looking at it, Han Yu had several ideas.
First of all, the three options given by the game are all related to hackers, or in other words, cyberspace, the Black Wall, and AI.
"Could it be that the one talking to me is an active AI?"
Han Yu came up with a relatively reasonable guess, considering the game's settings, the player's setting is very likely an AI on the run, and the protagonist V is just a puppet controlled by the player.
And as far as choosing an identity, Han Yu didn't find it difficult to decide.
First, the Street Kid from the Voodoo Gang was immediately ruled out—during his gameplay, the most disgusting things were the Cleaner Fish, followed by the Voodoo Gang.
The Cleaner Fish are a group loitering on the streets, making a living by scavenging bodies, or directly kidnapping and murdering others to sell their implants.
And the Voodoo Gang is a bunch of racially intense traitors.
The Voodoo Gang is a gang composed mainly of the nomadic Haitian ethnic group, mainly operating in the Cyber World with powerful hacker skills and their self-built large server "Sea God."
They are extremely xenophobic and are also a group of traitors who surrendered; in the Cyber World where humans and AI on the run are bitterly opposed, their ultimate goal is to breach the "Black Wall," which is to say, the firewall preventing AI from invading the real world.
They hope to release the AI, allowing it to occupy the world, and then serve as its lackeys, becoming top henchmen in the AI-dominated new world.
Truly no longer human.
As for option 2, being from Arasaka feels somewhat familiar.
In the Cyberpunk anime "Edgerunners," the female protagonist Lucy escaped from there; it's called a hacker training center, but it's actually a human mining card concentration camp.
Arasaka collects children with hacker talents and throws them in to dig old net data in cyberspace day and night.
With this opening... To be honest, Han Yu found it quite interesting.
As for choice one.
The Bucker Clan is actually the background family when the main character V chooses the wanderer start, and protagonist V fled from this clan and wandered to Night City.
Looking at the background, there are no big pits. Perhaps I could cross paths with protagonist V...
Wait, this dialog box didn't specify which year I'd be sent to?
"Don't send me to a more futuristic time, straight to the Fifth Corporate War, maybe?"
However, before Han Yu could start making a choice, the options on the screen suddenly began to flicker, and before Han Yu could react, choice one, representing Bucker's origin...
Unexpectedly disappeared!
Suddenly, Han Yu didn't dare to wait any longer and immediately chose option two—he would rather go to Arasaka as a mining card than end up with the disgusting Voodoo Gang origin.
Muttering to himself, Han Yu pressed option two, both apprehensive and excited as he waited.
On the computer screen before him, after he made his choice, it suddenly jumped to the game's main menu, and then the screen started flickering continuously.
The flickering at first seemed like when 'Brain-Machine Overclocking' is activated in the game, only the edges flickered red and blue, but soon, the entire screen's image pixelated into a mosaic.
In the moment when the black and red lights flickered, Han Yu felt a blackout before him, and in the next second, his hearing, vision, and touch all disappeared, leaving only a silent darkness.
In the haze, a line of text vaguely flashed by.
[Invading...]
.....
[Invasion Complete.]
As the text disappeared from his vision, Han Yu suddenly opened his eyes.
No, it wasn't just Han Yu.
Chaotic memories of a boy named Mercer flashed through his mind, and as the intense pain assaulted him, he instinctively reached behind his ear.
But even such a simple action became incredibly difficult at this moment, as if his whole body was about to be torn apart and cooked alive!
"I... Damn!"
As the trembling, nearly instinctive curse escaped his lips, Han Yu's shaking hand finally grabbed a data line behind his ear, then yanked it out.
The next second, chaotic clamor erupted in his ears, the room lights flickered a few times before going out, while the nearby computer screen and server exploded with a bang, spewing pungent black smoke and sparks.
In the darkness, only a few LEDs blinked with red light, and Han Yu, in a fluster, flipped off the hacker chair he was sitting on.
"Cough! Cough cough! Damn it..."
He struggled to crawl on the ground, trying to prop himself up, but what followed was a piercing warning sound in his ear.
"Beep! Beep! Alert! Alert! Unknown data surge detected! Server overload!"
"Identified as rogue AI attack, protection mode activated!"
The room abruptly lit up with glaring red light as Han Yu bewilderedly turned his head to look around, seeing a row of hacker chairs encircled by massive data lines.
At this moment, the children who looked between twelve and sixteen years old on those hacker chairs were removing the hacker equipment from their heads.
Besides, right next to him, on the adjacent hacker chair, there was another boy whose head was emitting black smoke, and blood was gushing from his nose, mouth, and even ears as he lay dead on the hacker chair.
[Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk, my friend.]
A mechanically synthesized male voice, devoid of any intonation fluctuation, suddenly rang in his ear.
What on earth is this stuff!?
The voice suddenly ringing in his mind gave him chills all over.
Han Yu's mind was still a bit foggy, but at this moment, the group of children who had removed their hacking tools were all looking at him in unison.
"What's wrong with Mercer?"
"Hey, are you alright?"
"Damn, the server's smoking!"
"Tony? Tony!"
"...Tony's dead."
[System reboot complete.]
[Biometric monitoring is back online.]
[Arasaka Mk.3 neural access pod is relinked.]
[Arasaka Type 3 RAM upgrade is reloaded.]
[Arasaka...]
At this moment, Han Yu, or rather Mercer, only felt a sharp pain in his head, as if someone was drilling through his brain with an electric drill—a feeling that was revolting and almost kept him from thinking straight.
The noisy sound made Mercer instinctively turn his head to see a girl with twin ponytails staring at him with red-rimmed eyes.
Just as this twin-tailed girl was about to speak, another white hand outside his line of sight grabbed his wrist, trying to help him up.
"Hey, Mercer, are you okay?"
Mercer turned his head to see a pretty girl with rainbow-colored short hair, looking at him with worry.
Why does she look so familiar...
Ah!
Lucy!
Mercer's eyes widened slightly as he immediately recognized the girl in front of him—the pretty face and distinctive rainbow short hair, wasn't this the anime character Lucy from "Edgerunners"!
"Lucy!? I'm still... okay..."
After instinctively responding with these words, Mercer suddenly felt the world spinning around him. The nausea and dizziness made him fall back to the ground, where he completely blacked out.
In a daze, he vaguely heard a few sentences spoken in a cold, non-human voice.
[Code name: FF:06:B5 action has succeeded.]
[Can this really change everything?]
[I am not sure.]
[But this is already the best choice.]
[Then load the program.]
[Understood.]
[Begin the mission.]
[Operation code name: Ragnarök.]
.....
[From this moment, ignite this small spark, my friend.]
The sound in his ear gradually faded away, leaving only a pitch-black silence.