Starting as a Mechanical Hunter

Little Finger hesitated, and Gao Gong immediately realized his slip of the tongue, coughed dryly, ”Don’t overthink. Please understand it in the literal sense, purely a scientific discussion.”

Little Finger shook his head and said, ”Her mother was not a Bionic Man, but a Primordial People prostitute.”

”So her father is a Bionic Man?”

Little Finger hesitated for a moment and nodded, ”You could say that.”

”I still don’t understand.”

”Alright,” Little Finger sighed and said, ”I’ll start from the beginning. I wasn’t born in Nightless City, but in the farther Other Shore of Freedom. Do you know what the Other Shore of Freedom is?”

”A sky battleship on the surface, the spendthrift capital of the second-generation Mother City.”

”Pretty much. My old man, who was also my mentor, was a Prosthetic Doctor specializing in reproductive modification for the wealthy. You know how twisted the rich can get. Initially, it was just size, then material, and eventually transformation. You probably can’t imagine, a row of...”

Little Finger continued babbling about the beginning.

”Later, on a stormy night of electronic rain, outside a club, my old man and I saw a little girl who had her limbs broken because she refused to take guests. Blood filled her joints, making her look terrifying, and I was scared silly at the time.”

”The old man took her home and replaced her Prosthetic Body. Because the old man had a lover named Old Rose, we called her Little Rose.”

”Strangely, Little Rose was incredibly suited for Prosthetic Body modifications. According to the old man, she had nearly 100% Prosthetic compatibility. This ability allowed her to easily master more advanced, dangerous Prosthetics.”

”So while I was still running around cutting appendixes and removing calluses, Little Rose was already mixing in the underworld, gaining quite a reputation.”

”Little Rose always kept her past a secret, and we didn’t dare to ask. It was later that my old man was the first to find out. It turns out her mother was a prostitute, and her father was a Bionic Man noble from Cloud City.”

”This Bionic Man noble was very powerful, traceable back to the Six Major Bionic Groups ruling the entire Bionic Realm. Though it’s unclear why he came down or left his seed on a prostitute, in any case, it happened.”

”During Little Rose’s growth, we could vaguely feel forces probing, fighting. To protect her and ourselves, we began constantly hiding.”

”And in this process, Little Rose became silent, aggressively pursued Power, and even began voluntarily engaging with very dangerous things in the underground world.”

”If the old man were still around, he could persuade her, preventing her from falling into some kind of madness. But during an assassination attempt on her, the old man was also attacked by an Assassin and severely injured, and Little Rose was kidnapped by the enemy.”

At this point, Little Finger took a deep breath and downed half a cup of wine.

”… On the day of the old man’s burial, Little Rose appeared. After paying her respects to the old man, she told me the truth: after being kidnapped, another force saved her, and this force was the notorious Rebel Army, that infamous Terrorist Organization.”

”They gave her two choices: to either join the Rebel Army or join a faction that could offer her enough protection.”

”What did she choose?” Gao Gong asked.

”Sister Rose chose to join them and became an Assassin of the Dark Net, while I inherited my old man’s work, becoming a Prosthetic Doctor at the Other Shore of Freedom.”

”About seven or eight years passed. Occasionally, I heard about a top Assassin emerging from the Dark Net, assassinating many big names, even including the administrators of Mother City. This top Assassin was called Black Rose, and that Black Rose was none other than the Little Rose back then.”

”When we met again, her body had fully undergone Transformation, becoming a complete Bionic Man.”

”She told me she had left the Dark Net and was now a free Assassin, asking if I would go with her. She needed a Prosthetic Doctor she could fully trust.”

”Obviously, you agreed,” Gao Gong said.

Little Finger shrugged and said, ”Before dying, the old man told me I must find Little Rose and protect her. What other choice did I have?”

”Later, we traveled to several continents. I vaguely felt she was searching for something, probably didn’t find it. Eventually, she seemed disappointed. We moved to this Radiation Zone. I went back to my old trade, and she became an assassin broker, starting to run a small underground organization.”

”As for what happened afterward, you know more or less,” Little Finger glanced at Gao Gong with some bitterness, ”I pined for her for so many years, only to be overtaken by a little wolfdog.”

Though Little Finger complained like that, he wasn’t truly angry. His feelings for Sister Rose were more of a sibling nature, possibly as brother and sister.

Little Finger let out a long sigh and said, ”About a year ago, the Dark Net found us again, and for some reason, Sister Rose actually rejoined that organization, even starting to interact with their high-levels. I tried dissuading her several times but to no avail, which led to this mission.”

”Is this a trap?”

Little Finger thought for a long time but couldn’t be sure, ”I can’t rule out that possibility, but it also might just be an accident. Sister Rose never does unprofitable deals—except for you!”

Saying this, the middle-aged man glared at him.

Gao Gong laughed, ”Who says I’m a bad deal? Charge for five minutes, last for three hours, quite the bargain.”

Seeing the other person stare at him wide-eyed, as if to say, such shameless people exist, Gao Gong coughed dryly and quickly changed the topic, ”Anyway, finding Sister Rose is the priority now, do you have any leads?”

”I didn’t have any, but after the bartender turned into Sister Rose, it gave me some ideas.”

”Oh? Please, explain!”

”As the ace of the Dark Net, Sister Rose is proficient in all close combat techniques, long and short firearms, and some secret network infiltrations. She is essentially without weakness.”

Gao Gong nodded, the ace of the Dark Net must be a level 40+ character, proficient with all weapons, which is pretty formidable.

”But only I know that Sister Rose’s strongest technique isn’t using weapons, but a skill based on her Talent. Under this skill, everything and everyone can become her weapon. I’ve only seen her use it once, and that time, she wiped out enemies across seventeen floors.”

”She named this skill Evolutionary Bionics!”

”Evolutionary Bionics!?”

[Mission completed, experience +20000, a random Bionics blueprint]