30

3rd person POV*

It started in Megabuilding H11 floor 24. In one of these massive contained cities within a cities. Over 8000 apartments capable of fitting 16 people each, with all the facilities and shops needed on the lower levels, so people can literally live their entire lives without ever leaving the building. People living in the numerous apartments noticed the change first, either leaving or entering their floor they noticed their hallways were for once, spotless. The ever prevalent trash removed, the graffiti gone, the various signs of dirt and stains gone. Most of all was the obvious fact that the whole damn thing was so CLEAN, an obviously lighter shade than all the other floors that could be seen over and under the balcony walls exposed to the central shaft that provided skylight access and some ventilation.

They weren't complaining of course, if the owners finally decided to get some cleaning service hired and got rid of the pests then good on them. They would enjoy having the best looking floor in the building and not have to worry about stepping on some bugs or rats for a while. Some of them even went to brag to their other floor neighbors who came up to see the miracle for themselves. Though everyone that talked with each other were confused, no one had seen or heard the cleaning happening, and such a thorough cleaning job had to have been done as a group and taken at least an hour, but still no signs were found.

Finding no answers the majority pretty much just shrugged their shoulders and continued on with their daily lives. A few others tried to access whatever cameras they had access to only to come up empty, the camera for their level mysteriously blacking out. The floor being dirty one frame and clean the next. They gave up the search, gossiping with their fellow netizens about the new mysterious cleaners, hoping to catch them in the act the next time they did something like this.

They did not have to wait long as the next day a truly bizarre scene greeted those who began to rise for the working day. Every floor was clean. Every. Floor. From the top of the highest levels they could access via elevators to the very ground floor where there were nothing but shops, it was all cleaned, and no one saw, anything.

The whole building was nigh on unrecognizable with how clean it was. The whole area was just brighter, fresh, and just overall better. It looked like the place was brand new, except for the various broken machines and lights, but even they looked brand spanking new too. All the people who were still awake in the middle of the night were found standing around in a daze, looking around in disbelief. When questioned about who did such a quick clean, some cause they were just curious others who wanted the same cleaning for their unit, none of them could say. They all say one second things were normal then the next they all blacked out before waking up still standing with everything clean with no signs of drugs being used or any items being stolen.

Every night after that any messes were immediately cleaned up without fail with all attempts to record, stop, and talk with the mysterious cleaner failing. With no proof of the being's existence its' existence quickly became a urban legend with many curious tourists and investigators coming to take a look at the phenomenon with no success.

Some even tried to get in contact with the megabuilding owner to see if they are aware only to receive a reply stating that it is merely the janitorial staff doing their duty.

However, no trace of such staff even among the tiny amount of existing staff who were not informed about any people who could do such a job, many of them worrying if they were about to lose their jobs.

For such a simple service, the quality and speed of it has attracted far more attention than it should, with news floating higher among Night City's elite.

Especially once said phenomenon was seen in the other megabuildings that wished to replicate the new standard of hygiene and cleanliness of megabuilding 11.

That more than even the cleaning itself surprised the residents of Night City, why would the owners of these mini cities pay a significant chunk of money to clean their properties when they were content to just leave them to rot before. Even when various cleaning companies tried to offer their services before they were all refused citing a lack of need for such, with people instinctively realizing the owners were just too damn cheap and apathetic towards their tenant's living conditions.

So just how could these companies suddenly begin pumping money into their cleaning standards?

*Tri2 POV*

I tossed in the several thousand dollar credit chips into my inventory, mentally nodding at the increase in my meagre funds as they converted into new untraceable currency. I was at a bit of a loss at where to start with my cleaning idea when it hit me, money did not matter to me, experience did. I just wanted access to the megabuildings, an entire city's worth of decades of waste and pests. So I did the simple thing, I undercut my competitions and made a very attractive offer. Normal cleaning services would ask for tens or hundreds of thousands to clean the entire building, and would take weeks if not months to complete the job where by the time they finished they would be needed again already. So my offer of near instantaneous cleaning for damn near literal dirt cheap a total fee of one eurodollar per apartment unit present.

Of course I did not actually have a valid way to contact the owner of said megabuilding, so I had to...get a bit creative. Simply cleaning an entire floor without their notice, the remnants of my Stealth skill rumbling in my head making it childs play to detect and avoid surveillance, and then sending a email stating if they wished to hire my services after my example of my work as well as my offering price. Needless to say they were skeptical given that there was no trace of my existence except a clean hallway, but I offered to complete the job overnight and my fee would be only a bi-weekly credit dead drop. They took some bargaining to convince them to accept my offer, with me having to leave the heads of a few solos hired to track me down at the public terminals I was using to finally get them to see my way. Now I had a slightly gainful employment history which I then used to convince the other megabuilding owners to accept my offer after seeing the result of my work for half a month.

Thanks to my Jump skill I was able to rapidly traverse the city and complete essentially a cleaning circuit around the city's megabuildings and their floors in the middle of the night, with my Cooking skill surprisingly enough allowing me to create a noxious food dish whose smell basically forced people to black out and forget the last few minutes upon awakening. What a frightening dish, then again Cooking is Chemistry in a sense.

Of course all the money was but the jam on top of the bread in comparison to the true reward. Each megabuilding was a city in of itself indeed. Thankfully I still had access to the cleaning perks which gave me AOE cleaning and god speed level cleaning ability which also killed pests like bugs and rats. The megabuildings were absolutely INFESTED with both. Not even regular bugs and rats too, these were city borne super bugs and rats that evolved to survive against everything the corporations could develop and deploy against them in terms of biowarfare. There were easily millions of everything at minimum, a majority of them were normal weak emaciated things that gave about as much experience as the one that gave me my idea, but still the remaining percentage was still a very large amount of pests that gave me 1 or more experience points.

Even better were the various solos, mercenaries, and gang members that I either came across or were sent after me by someone or another which provided me with plenty of experience and items. Even despite my loss of Skills and weakening curse I was still one of if not the most dangerous combatant on the face of the planet in terms of stats and skills. Despite losing the Skills from my Gamer interface I still had partial muscle memories of the more physical skills and memories of those that I did use frequently, which was most of them since I grinded them all heavily. I was not being assisted by the System which helped auto correct my movements but I was still able to use them at a high mortal level, but not at my previous superhuman levels. Unfortunately, my crafting skill was the one least helped by my memories due to how it functioned, mainly the materials flowing like water in my hands when it was active. Luckily, I still had memories of me manually creating items as examples when teaching my students and Disciples. So while I could not create the more advanced pieces of technology that required specialized facilities and personnel, I could still eventually create things like las and plasma weapons given time.

With the sheer amount of experience gained from essentially clearing out the arcologies I managed to recover quite a lot of skills and figured out how the System was prioritizing its recovery.

Spoiler: Skills Regained

Mind Rip Level 1: A spell that allows the user to mentally drain the knowledge from a target. Higher level allows for targeted draining without harming the target.

Interrogation Level 50: The skill to get answers from someone, one way or another. Increase effectiveness by 50%

Swim Level 50: Your ability to move through and underwater. Increase swimming speed by 250%

Driving Level 75: A skill that allows for the driving of various vehicles with familiarity and skill. Increases vehicle speed and maneuverability by 385%

Piloting Level 75: A skill that allows for the piloting of various aircraft and spacecraft with familiarity and skill. Increases air/spacecraft speed and maneuverability by 385%

Language (Demonic) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to speak and write in the language of Warp Daemons, fluent understanding.

Language (High Gothic) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to speak and write in the Imperium of Man's High Gothic, fluent understanding.

Language (Low Gothic) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to speak and write in the Imperium of Man's Low Gothic, fluent understanding.

Language (Orks) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to speak and write in the Ork's language, fluent understanding.

Language (Techna Lingua) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to speak and write in the Adeptus Mechanicus' language, fluent understanding.

Language (Sign Language) Level Max: The skill to allow the user to 'speak' sign language, fluent understanding.

Light Foot Level Max: A technique in which to walk or run silently. Passively decreases walking noise by 100% and running noise by 50%.

Lip Reading Level Max: A skill that allows for the user to figure out what sound a being with a mouth is making via it's movements.

Navigation Level Max: Grants the ability to navigate when travelling and to plot faster and safer courses using known data.

Unarmed Combat Mastery* Level 1: Allows the user to fight skillfully unarmed. 510% increase in attack damage while unarmed. 102% increase in attack speed while unarmed.

Tracking* Level 1: A skill that allows for the user to track targets across great distances. Increase tracking range by 11000 meters.

Eavesdrop* Level 1: A skill that allows the user to listen in on the conversations of others from a distance. Increases listening distance by 306m

Rip* Level 1: A skill that rips apart an enemy or an object using a strong force. Increases tearing force by 3000%. 1 MP per rip.

Deceive* Level 3: A skill to lie and trick others. Increase chance of success by 1060%. Decreases by 10% for every level the enemy is higher than user.

Parkour Level* 3: A skill that allows the user to rapidly negotiate obstacles, increases ability to detect and create fastest path through terrain by 330% and boosts Dexterity by 530% when used to travel on created path.

Climb* Level 3: A passive skill that allows you to climb things faster. 530% to climbing speed.

Barter* Level 24: A skill that allows for the trading of goods and services for more preferred prices. Increases haggling success chance by 148%

Charm* Level 43: A skill that indicates your ability to positively interact or persuade others.

Salvage** Level 35: Through a continuous action a skill that allows for the reclamation of more useful materials from recycled objects. 95% increase in materials gained. 75% chance of uncommon materials gained. 35% chance of rare materials gained

Seems it was prioritizing my survival first and was going in order of costs with the lowest leveled skills being repaired first, presumably those costing less exp than the higher ones, which judging from the amount of prestige stars is what is happening. The perks are also being restored to my screen as well along with the skills which was doubly nice. While great that does mean I would not have access to all of my truly impressive skills till a lot later or sooner if I found a bigger source of experience other than open war.

A mixture of Charm and Mind Rip allowed me to quickly gather a lot of knowledge that then normal citizens would not be aware of, such as the locations of the local water holes of the Solos that were being hired to hunt me and the names and locations of various Fixers, people that gave out contracts to said mercs. It also allowed me to find the hidden stashes of various gang members and small time crooks, in addition to whatever juicy secrets and blackmail they might have had on other people, even a few corpos.

For now I kept to cleaning the back alleyways in secret, but once I am done with those and whatever gang members I come across; then it will be time to move onto the next step. The creation of a corporation, gonna need an army to deal with their armies after all and I cannot be in more than one place at one time, yet, maybe. That is something for future me to consider, but for now, back to cleaning. So I ran into the darkness of Night City leaving behind a trail of cleanliness like some kind of reverse slug. Wait for me Arasaka, Militech, your time will come, and sooner than you think