Players Invade Cyberpunk

Chapter 1123 - 364: Six Walnuts (Part 3)

"Fire!"Bang bang bang!

A few armed Humvees driving on the highway didn’t even get a chance to react before they were precisely hit by mortar rounds, and a dozen or so Cuba Soldiers were blown to kingdom come with their vehicles before they even had time to sound the alarm.

Seeing the enemy patrol wiped out, Masked Rider urged,

"Move it, fast, they might’ve heard something inside."

However, in reality he was overthinking it.

Because a long-stilled internet breeze had just blown across Europe, and all kinds of streaming platforms were popping up like mushrooms after rain, then going feral.

And unlike Voice of the Horizon, they didn’t bother to strictly control the video content or the streamers, and on top of selling goods, the companies also added money-based tipping and such.

So, catalyzed by capital, a bunch of things that would usually never see the light of day started swarming into the streams like viruses for the sake of traffic, slowly fermenting.

Besides the mild stuff like streaming SEX or doing drugs, things like Black Mewtwo, copper-crafting, torture-kills, cannibalism, slave-training, illegal body mods and the like were exploding across unregulated media platforms.

TXL?

That’s kiddie-level vanilla.

But the European governments didn’t shut it down right away, because the economic growth it drove was way too fast; just for the tax revenue alone, they were willing to wait and see.

Behind every taboo lies desire.

Desire that can’t be stopped.

Normally this crap wouldn’t affect Cuba any time soon, but since Cuba was at war and needed European Community satellites...

The European Community decided to give Cuba a bit of data support and opened up some network nodes.

And the air-defense site was one of the places with rights to use satellite network nodes.

So what if the front line was a living hell?

We’re over thirty klicks from the front.

If the radar’s quiet, that means no missiles and no air raids, so everything’s fine.

So over a hundred Soldiers just huddled together watching streams, and as for the sound of artillery?

Ha ha.

Didn’t hear a thing (emotionless).

"Holy shit, look at this bitch from Germany—she actually installed three pairs of tits, her head’s got more studs than a walnut, and she’s put in six extra holes, ohoho... I can’t even imagine how freaky her off-stream fun is."

"This is way hotter than the strippers at our bars, no wonder it’s Europe. Once I save enough cash, I’m immigrating to Europe to be one of the top dogs, I’m done wasting my life in this shithole."

"You? Your pockets are cleaner than your face. All your money’s blown on bar waitresses, and you wanna go to Europe? Keep dreaming, hahahaha."

The Soldiers were chattering away with great enthusiasm, all about which country’s camgirl was the hottest and dirtiest, which mansion or castle was brain-meltingly luxurious, and those legendary, mysterious tales of old-money European nobles.

The rich might have their physical needs met, but their psychological needs are something that’ll never be satisfied.

They each registered an account on the platforms; just by leaking tiny little snippets of their daily life, they could rake in millions or even tens of millions of followers, and countless people were DM’ing to say they were willing to be slaves and servants.

The high of having millions of people trailing behind your power and status with just a flick of your hand made those Mewtwo videos they’d watched a hundred times feel like cheap junk.

On top of the endless river of tips, with the platforms taking a 90% cut, the company shareholders were swimming in cash. It was the first time they’d tasted what "internet economy" meant since the internet collapsed.

Compared to that, the money made in physical industries wasn’t even a rounding error next to what the streaming platforms pulled in.

Very soon, even more people joined this commercial bloodbath.

As for Horizon Corporation, the birthplace of streaming platforms, maybe only its war coverage could still attract eyeballs. The rest of the videos weren’t exciting enough and didn’t make much money, so European big corporations mocked them as idiots sitting on a mountain of gold without knowing how to dig.

As for the bottom-feeder paupers, nobody was watching their videos.

Life was already shitty enough day to day; who the hell wanted to watch someone else living the same miserable and boring life as them?

And even if they did see it—

What?

You’re saying this is Europe?

No way.

You Euro-hater, don’t you know that in Europe, even washing dishes in Czechoslovakia gets you a hundred euros a day?

You’re just bitter, you broke-ass.

And while the Soldiers were sighing over how great life was for Europeans, they stayed totally oblivious to the danger creeping in around them.

Standing watch?

What standing watch?

Someone already couldn’t hold it in and went to jerk off and do drugs, and nobody even noticed that the automated machine guns on the perimeter had been dismantled.

Embom’s eyes were wide, staring hard at that French female streamer in the chat who was practicing the no-instrument method of guitar practice, not wanting to miss a single detail. This might be the closest he’d ever get to a European woman in his life.

He stood on the sentry post, both hands gripping his rifle like it was a Sax, playing along with her high-pitched singing.

As the barrel heated up, on the verge of going off at any moment, even his breathing grew heavier, to the point he didn’t notice the head popping out of the bushes ahead at the first instant.

But right at that moment, his cybernetic pupil shrank hard, and a numb tingle shot up his tailbone.

The symphony Embom was playing reached its climax.

Gun to gun.

Ace versus ace.

Everybody pulls the trigger together.

The result was one side’s forehead getting blown into mush, and Embom fell straight back, stiff as a board.

But the performance didn’t stop. Even in his final moment, the Sax stood proud and tall, glaring at the heavens, spraying out its discontent.

The gunman, Black Sun in the mask, was still shaken.

"Fuck, what the hell was that? Scared the shit out of me. Standing right there and I almost didn’t see him—good thing he didn’t shoot me."

Because it was all pixellated, he didn’t immediately realize what the guy had been doing.

Masked Rider, walking up behind him, took one look at the scene—same mosaic and all—but immediately understood exactly what kind of crap it was.

He patted Black Sun’s shoulder with lingering fear and comforted him,

"If he’d shot you, you’d never wash that off in this lifetime. It’d hurt worse than dying, so don’t dwell on it. Understanding is bad for you."

Every Knight passing by, except Masked Rider, also gave Black Sun a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, which only confused him more.

And the garrison Soldiers slacking off in the streaming rooms soon got the punishment they deserved.

After half an hour of fighting, the Knights completely took the air-defense site. Only two of them died by accident when a drugged-up, hyper Cuba NCO pulled a grenade and took everyone with him, Sianweistan included, because the other guy had one too.

That "other guy" included Masked Rider, who broke his leg trying to be cool with a Rider Kick and failed to run.