“Shit shit shit shit!”

Jacob ran up the stairs and through the following corridor, his tongue spouting curses the entire time. He failed to slow down and ran into a wall, quickly pushed himself off it, and continued to run. Bursting out of the Red Fist bar, he whipped his head left and right, then went running.

A man opening his car caught his sight. Jacob ran up to him and, without hesitation, planted a punch into his guts. As the man fell to the ground, Jacob picked up the keys that had been dropped and then climbed into the rusty vehicle, cursing as the engine refused to ignite.

Hearing the rough hum of an engine nearing its final days, Jacob slammed the gas pedal and took off. As he sped through Hollowgrid’s empty roads, he gritted his teeth so hard it felt like they were going to crack. His eyes were on the road, but his mind kept playing the same scenes again and again.

~[ ]~

Riot was powerful; everyone knew that. Word says that he fought a Level 4 hero and won, leading to his gang being targeted, which ended in its destruction. Still, the giant of a man was powerful enough to survive, and his resourcefulness allowed him to escape and restart somewhere else.

When the red bastard entered the arena, everyone present thought they were going to see how ketchup is made. They had all challenged the boss before—some even got to use guns in the fight, yet they were all crushed. Riot was invincible, and they all had confidence in that. That confidence waned as the fighting started, and once everything came to an end, only horror remained.

It all happened so fast that few were able to grasp what had happened. After beating Riot till he couldn’t move, the red-haired bastard proceeded to break both his arm and leg. He then grasped him by the jaws and lifted him with one arm, acting as if neither size nor weight mattered.

“I beat you.” He said. “From now on, you’re my bitch.” Taking his eyes off the battered Riot, he gazed at the crowd and spoke three words. “All of you.”

~[ ]~

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK!”

Jacob didn’t understand what was happening. When he first met the guy, the red bastard was a nobody eating at that old noodle shop. Even after learning about him being a Diver, Jacob still didn’t think much of him. The grudge he held on what the bastard did to his first bionic arm stuck, but by the time he got a chance at payback, the red bastard beat him instead.

Burning the old noodle shop was supposed to be his revenge. Jacob learned that the shop and the old hag running it held a special place in the red bastard’s heart, so he wanted to make him suffer by setting it on fire. That turned out to be a grave mistake.

He was going to kill him. The red bastard was going to kill him. That’s why he has to escape. He has to get away from the district—from the city. So long as he could do that-

“Huh?”

As his grip on the steering wheel tightened, Jacob noticed something in the road ahead. One moment, it was a single black dot, and in the next, it expanded several meters, swallowing everything around it. By then, it was already too late.

Jacob drove right into the darkness, his body failing to react. He squeezed his eye shut and slammed the brakes. Only once he felt the car stop did he dare to look, and what he saw brought him momentary comfort, at least until he realized that the street was different from the one he had been driving through.

The silence caused his hair to stand on end, and when he looked out of the window and saw the dark sky, that’s when he knew he was screwed. Something crashed onto the car just then, and before he could see what it was, the roof got ripped like the cover of a sardine can, and the one who did it came into sight, striking horror into Jacob’s heart.

The thing looked like an astronaut with that round glass helmet, but the rest appeared to be a compact power suit covered in sleek dark plating. Though humanoid in shape, it didn’t feel human, and that sensation only got worse when a voice came from it.

[This time,] it said. [You won’t be getting a refund.]

As fear gripped Jacob’s heart, a scream rising to his throat, the figure in dark armor suddenly sank into the car’s hood. Still frozen, Jacob could only look at stare at the space that thing was in. It was a while before he realized it was gone, and as the words it said repeated in his mind, a different scene returned to him.

“I don’t know where you got that thing, but you should probably go ask for a refund.”

All of a sudden, Jacob felt like he knew who was behind that black glass mask. Even though the idea crossed his mind first, he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. The dozen people who followed him to that place didn’t believe it either, but as the only thing they had in common was a red-haired enemy, they had no choice but to accept it as their reality.

~[ ]~

When he first walked into the Red Fist bar, Dante was fully prepared to commit a massacre. He was ready to kill every last lowlife in that place, then burn their corpses into charcoal, but in the end, Volcan talked him out of it.

His resident AI only needed Riot alive, but once Dante regained the rationality needed to spare him, he no longer felt like crushing a bunch of insects under his boot. That didn’t mean he was going to let them go.

Metal arm, along with the twenty or so who attacked the police station and the Bowl of Fortune, would mysteriously disappear one after the other. Eventually, a message will arrive from each of them, all saying that they left the city, fearing what would happen to them if they stayed. Still, with the one who supposedly drove them away being a very powerful Diver, few believed the story, but no one dared to question it in his presence.

With Riot defeated, Red Rage now had a new boss. To be more accurate, Dante took over everything the gang owned, and though that would have meant its disbandment, Dante explicitly said that he runs the place now, and that they all now worked for him.

After witnessing his battle against their former boss, no one dared to disobey him. That fight was the first time Riot had displayed his true strength. People had heard about his fight against Red Bull, leader of the hero team Crimson Watch. That was the reason they had joined the gang, hoping to be a part of its revival and the bright future they hoped for, but all of their hopes were crushed by the red demon.

As powerful as he was, Riot still lost. No one thought things were going to be the same this time around. The wall of muscles no longer had the option to go start over somewhere else. His life was in the hands of a new master now, and unless he wanted it to end, he would have no choice but to follow orders.

Soon after the fight ended, a video of what happened appeared online. Unlike the previous time, Dante wasn’t taken off guard. He purposefully let those managing the underground arena leak it, and he even instructed Volcan to take some of the recordings and spread them around.

Going viral no longer scared him. He was no longer a weak Level 0 basic. He was a Level 4 Ascended Cyborg capable of climbing to Level 6 with a single thought. He had nothing to fear, and he was sick of hiding.

In a matter of minutes, the recording spread far and wide. At first, few believed what they showed—the normal version was a blurry mess that’s only seconds long. Because of that, the supposedly slowed-down version was met with strong skepticism, that is, until an older video resurfaced once more.

Talk of the Red Demon was everywhere, and many scraped the net for every mention of him, trying to uncover any details. It was soon made known that the red-haired youth was a Basic only a few months ago, but in less than half a year, he had installed enough implants to become a Diver who could contend with monsters.

The rumors kept being exaggerated with each passing minute until people came to believe that he was a Level 5 Ascended Cyborg. Adding it the fact that he had achieved all of that in a short time, that he had done so at such a young age, and most importantly, his appearance, the internet would come to know him by a different name.

The Cyberpunk.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep