**Chapter 1: Cyberpunk**

**Chapter 1: Cyberpunk**

"Bumi... huh? Bumi!"

Ayumi Itō was momentarily stunned, then turned around and bowed deeply to the man behind her, saying nervously, "I'm so sorry, senpai! I didn't respond to you in time!"

Yang Dahai scratched his head, opened his mouth, and said helplessly, "You don't have to be so formal, and there's no need to call me 'senpai.' We don't have a hierarchical senior-junior culture here."

But he understood Ayumi Itō quite well, as she was a "magpie" from the Japanese region.

It was said that in Japan, the senior-junior culture was prevalent, and not responding promptly to a senior's question could have serious consequences.

However, new colleagues like Ayumi Itō from Japan would eventually adapt to the cultural environment here.

"Alright, Ayumi, since you've just joined our Man World Culture Company, it's difficult to assign you any specific work," Yang Dahai said. "Coincidentally, the company is holding a new mid-length manga competition, so take a look at these submissions from new artists."

He patted a stack of manga manuscripts piled up on the desk in front of him, almost as tall as Ayumi Itō.

There were a total of thirteen submissions, and due to the company's competition requirements, each entry had to have at least 10 chapters or 150 pages to qualify.

This should keep Ayumi Itō occupied for a few days.

And since these were all submissions from new artists, it was unlikely that anything would go wrong by having a new manga editor like Ayumi Itō review them.

"Am I supposed to choose a few of these mangas?" Ayumi Itō asked nervously. "How many should I pick?"

"Don't be so nervous. You don't have to force yourself to pick anything; you can reject them all if you want..." Yang Dahai said casually.

After all, this was just a portion of the submissions, and since they were all from new artists, rejecting all of them was quite normal.

But then he thought, what if there were good works among them that Ayumi Itō didn't notice?

He immediately said, "Never mind, Ayumi, just pick three that you think are good enough and hand them to me."

"Alright!" Ayumi Itō nodded, then immediately picked up the stack of manga manuscripts and returned to her workspace.

Once back at her desk, Ayumi Itō finally breathed a sigh of relief.

She had recently joined one of the world's top ten manga companies. The company was large, and her colleagues were friendly.

But she found it a bit difficult to adjust to the lack of strict senior-junior culture here, and how unfamiliar colleagues addressed each other by first names rather than surnames.

However, this place was indeed better than her hometown.

"Bumi! If you want to stay here, you must complete your tasks well!" Ayumi Itō motivated herself, saying, "Let's start with these submissions and work hard to get the job done!"

She looked at the pile of manga manuscripts, picked up the top one, and began to read it carefully.

The first manga manuscript had a title that read "Magic King," and the art style was quite good, following the classic plot of a hot-blooded shonen manga.

Ayumi Itō carefully read through it, finding no fault with the story or the art, but she didn't feel particularly moved by it.

"This one... I guess it's okay?" Ayumi Itō pondered.

Her task was to select three good ones and hand them over to the chief editor, Yang Dahai.

This one seemed decent, but Ayumi Itō felt no particular attachment to it.

"I'll just... put it aside for now and decide after I finish reading the others." She then picked up the next manuscript.

Soon, she found herself trapped in an endless cycle of indecision.

"This one, 'Ethereal Immortal Path,' seems okay too..."

"But 'Dark Sorcerer' also seems okay..."

"And 'Lord of the Fire Dragon'... well, it's... also okay..."

...

[Translator: sauron]

After reading seven submissions, Ayumi Itō found herself thinking that six of them were okay, rejecting only one because the art looked too immature and rough.

As for the other six, she couldn't decide which one was better.

All of them seemed decent but left no lasting impression.

What Ayumi Itō didn't know was that if Yang Dahai reviewed these works, he would have rejected them all.

The plots were all old and overused, and the world settings were similar to countless other works.

Such stories, if they didn't offer anything memorable or impactful, were doomed to fail.

"Let's just keep reading..." Ayumi Itō put down another manuscript and moved on to the tenth submission...

"Cyberpunk 2077: Edge...runners?" She read the title out loud, finding it unexpectedly long and a bit odd.

It was also the first title she'd seen that stood out significantly from the previous nine manuscripts.

Ayumi Itō immediately opened it and began reading. The opening featured a man in a yellow jacket whose face was obscured, speaking a few words.

"In 2077, my city was voted the worst place to live in America."

"Why? Violent crime is rampant..."

"The population living below the poverty line is the highest in the nation..."

At the same time, the artwork depicted scenes of a futuristic high-tech city—maglev cars, holographic projection technology, trains traversing the city, and...

Cyborgs with mechanical body parts.

"This is an undeniable fact, but people still flock here, because the city always offers a glimmer of hope..."

"Even if it's a lie or an illusion, it's so close, almost within reach... It drives people to risk everything!"

This was a story set in the future, in a future America!

Ayumi Itō immediately understood that this was a story about the future.

No, she realized, this was a depiction of reality.

She continued reading. The protagonist's name was David Martinez, and he lived in a city called Night City.

However, the initial plot was a sudden scene where a gun-wielding criminal, completely unrelated to the protagonist, ambushed a city police officer on night duty.

This left Ayumi Itō puzzled.

The police began a fierce shootout with the criminal, but the criminal just stood there, seemingly unfazed by the bullets, and kept firing wildly.

Then, the panicked police called for backup, saying, "It's a cyberpsycho! Call the anti-terrorism squad!"

Cyberpsycho? What's that? Is it the name of an evil organization?

And why wasn't the criminal afraid of bullets? Was it some special superpower in the manga's setting?

With these questions in mind, Ayumi Itō eagerly continued reading.

Then she understood the manga's setting. There were no superpowers, only so-called body modifications and cybernetic implants.

Powerful implants gave cyborgs great strength, but if a person's mind couldn't handle the burden of these implants, they would turn into mindless killers, slaughtering endlessly in the real world, becoming so-called cyberpsychos.

This setting was indeed novel, and Ayumi Itō immediately remembered it as something unique after reading it once.

She continued reading with interest and curiosity...

Soon, she saw the protagonist being bullied by a rich classmate at school and the dire state of his family, realizing that Night City was indeed not as beautiful as the opening suggested.

On the contrary, the wealth gap was severe, and the poor lived without any dignity.

The protagonist then argued with his mother, but they were soon caught in a gang shootout and had a car accident.

However, it seemed that a rescue team arrived at that moment.

The protagonist, David Martinez, provided an answer, "Trauma Team, we're saved."

But just when Ayumi Itō thought that the protagonist and his mother were saved, the cold words of the so-called Trauma Team rescuers appeared on the page, "This one's not a client, and neither is this woman."

"Ensure the client's safety; leave these people for the city's corpse retrieval team."

And then they just left, with no intention of saving the protagonist and his mother.

"How could they..." Ayumi Itō clenched her fists, feeling a surge of anger.

But fortunately, the scene shifted, and it seemed that the protagonist and his mother were saved.

However, it appeared they had ended up in the cheapest "hospital."

At the same time, David discovered a military-grade cyber implant, the "Sandevistan," hidden in his home by his mother.

But then, he was beaten up by his rich classmate.

"It seems this will be the key to the protagonist's rise." Ayumi Itō said excitedly, "David will surely change this cruel and hateful world!"

However, the next plot twist came when David's mother, after a casual remark from a scavenger, was declared dead...

David didn't even get to see his mother one last time and could only return home with her ashes...

After the trauma of his mother's death, the rich classmate's second round of humiliation over the phone, and the Trauma Team's refusal to save them, David found a black-market doctor and had him implant the "Sandevistan" cyber implant into his body!

End of chapter.

Ayumi Itō couldn't wait to turn to the next chapter, but...

"Did I really finish reading it so quickly?!" She said in shock.

She had unknowingly finished reading all three chapters, over a hundred pages in total.

Unlike the previous submissions, this time, she wanted to keep reading after finishing.

She wanted to see how the protagonist, David Martinez, would use the "Sandevistan" implant to rise and change this cruel world!

"This one! This one is definitely good!" Ayumi Itō decided on the spot that this was the manuscript she would submit to Yang Dahai