"Thank you for eating at…"

BANG!

A loud sound of something shattering reverberated. The man who was clearly Gary, the male owner of the restaurant was interrupted mid-speech.

Leon looked over and his eyes widened. 'The drunkard!'

At this moment, shards of one of the green bottles that were on the table flew everywhere, making a few other customers scream and cower in fear.

The drunkard smashed one of the unopened bottles of beer against the table. The table didn't break but the bottle shattered, sending glass shards flying and spilling the beer everywhere.

The table was toppled over as the other empty bottles rolled to the ground. As for the last bottle filled with beer, the drunkard who was clearly a Geneform took it and casually uncorked the lid with his teeth.

Then, he gulped down a mouthful and burped.

Leon stared in silence and shock. 'What just happened?'

Just after he burped, the drunkard stumbled in place as if he was counting his steps, then he cursed. "That f*cking gambling house!" He spat on the wooden floor.

Leon's face turned weird as soon as he heard that. 'Don't tell me this crash out is because of a gamble?'

"F*ck them!" The man growled. "I swear they fix their games, those f*cking bastards! Cunts!"

"How can I lose 200 straight virtuals? Argh!" He grabbed and pulled out a few strands of his hair in vexation. "I'll kill them! I'll f*cking kill them!"

Leon didn't know why, but the mention of that 'virtuals' seemed to evoke certain deep memories among his fragmented memories.

He shuddered.

He didn't remember the exact memories, but from the combination of betting and virtuals, he already had an idea what it meant.

'This guy actually bet on virtual games?' His eyelids twitched. 'Such balls! Doesn't he know that those games are actually just a frontend representation of a bunch of code written at the discretion and whim of the programmer?'

'Heck, a NetRunner can easily design a virtual game and make all players win only once out of a thousand times or even ten thousand times. And they can even make winning impossible, and you won't even know!'

'And that's what this brother went on and bet his money on?' His eyes twitched as the look on his face soon turned into one of pity.

'In hindsight, how on earth is a drunkard supposed to know what programming and codes mean? All he clearly knows is gambling, sigh'.

Suddenly, there was movement at Leon's side.

Only then did he remember that Gary, the male owner of this restaurant was just in the process of serving them food. This man saw everything as this drunkard caused a nuisance in his restaurant.

'Wait, something's not right…'

Before Leon could react, Gary was already walking towards the direction of the commotion. Throughout, he maintained a gentle smile on his face.

Leon looked at the chef, then the drunkard, and suddenly the look of pity on his face for the latter intensified.

"What are you looking at bastard?" The drunkard snarled. "Can you give me 8 Neo Credits?"

"No, I can't sir," Gary gently shook his head. "But sir, you're causing nuisance in a civilized place of business where innocent people are supposed to be eating in peace and quiet".

"You should have read the rules outside by the restaurant's door. Rule #5 says no violence inside the restaurant".

'Rules?' Only now did Leon realize that he actually entered inside here without even asking if there were rules.

Sweat rapidly gathered in his forehead. 'Thankfully, I didn't break a rule'.

As for the drunkard, this man was brutally confident as he staggered backward a bit in a groggy manner. He only found his balance after putting much effort, then he grunted. "F*ck you and your rules! I lost a lot of money today, you fool!"

Gary stayed calm. "With all due respect sir, I'm going to ask you to kindly leave the restaurant".

The drunkard quickly entered a fighting stance. "You want to fight? You want to fight? Come on, come on, let me show you that I come from the streets!"

"Do you know who I am? Huh? Do you have any idea?"

Leon's face twitched; he almost face-palmed.

At that moment, Gary finally hesitated. It seemed like he was in a dilemma on how to handle the current situation, but that was when calm footsteps approached him from behind.

Hearing those familiar steps, Gary quickly heaved a sigh of relief.

His wife, Mary was finally here.

Just like him, she wore a white apron. She is a beautiful woman with long black hair that was tied in a bun and hidden behind her chef's hat.

She seemed to be in her early 30s.

With a calm look on her face, she whipped her hands clean with a towel while alternating her gaze between the overturned chair, the broken bottle of beer, the other bottles, and the drunkard.

"What's going on here?" She asked as she passed the tower to her husband.

"Ah, I see what's going on here". The drunkard staggered in place then pointed a finger at Gary. "You called for reinforcement right? F*cking coward! Bastard, cunt, fool, shithead, what do you think this slut can do, huh?"

'Slut?' Gary's eyelids twitched.

The look in Mary's face finally darkened. Clearly, she didn't have the patience of her husband.

With a nonchalant look on her face, she listed. "Your antics have disrupted other customers' appetite, you deliberately broke a bottle without caring for others' safety, you've damaged restaurant properties, and you've been a total asshole".

"Starting right now, you're blacklisted from this restaurant. But you still have to pay damages," she raised her fingers and counted. "Your fine is 1 Pound, or you'll have to lose a teeth or two".

"1 Pound? Heh, if I had that much, will I come here, b*tch?!" The drunkard grabbed his penis with both hands and shoved it in her direction, then he spat on her face.

This drunkard spat on Mary's face… he spat on Mary's face!

From where he was in the restaurant, Leon shuddered as he felt the atmosphere in the restaurant rapidly change, turning thick and oppressive.

Gary moved instinctively but Mary raised a hand to stop him. She calmly took the towel from her husband and cleaned her face, then… then what happened next happened so fast that very few people in the restaurant was able to follow it.

SMACK!

Mary's right hand moved so fast that all Leon saw was a blur, what he did know was that this chef just gave the drunkard a brutal back-handed slap!

The drunkard saw stars.

Leon saw spit fly freely from the drunkard's mouth, including two dirty brownish white teeth.

She knocked two of his teeth out with a slap!

At that moment, a thought reverberated in Leon's head. 'A Cyber Gladiator!' He shuddered. 'This fool dared spit on a Cyber Gladiator's face!'

His face twitched. 'Balls of steel man'.

Even the effects of 5 bottles of beer couldn't stay in the wake of that slap.

The drunkard's eyes immediately became lucid again as he collapsed to the ground, then seeing Mary standing in front of him and realizing what just happened, his eyes widened in terror.

His whole body shook as he quickly got up to his knees and smacked his head against the wooden floor repeatedly. "…I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I was blind, please forgive me…" he kept on saying.

Mary took water, soap, and disinfectant from her husband before calmly washing her hands on a bowl that he brought.

Only after that did she look at the drunkard again. "You've paid with two teeth, but that's in the past. That payment is no longer enough".

"For the next 5 days, you're to come here by 6 every morning. Your job is to clean every nook and cranny of this restaurant, including the toilet. I don't want to see a single speck of dust".

"Y-yes ma'am!" The man bowed repeatedly.

Only after that did Mary let him stagger out of the restaurant.

Gary smiled apologetically at the other customers. "Please forgive what just happened, it doesn't happen often".

"…" Leon's face twitched.

They ate their food in silence.

Throughout, Leon couldn't even taste what he was eating as the memory of that slap kept on replaying in his head over and over again.

He twitched his lips. 'What a monster'.

When they finally left the restaurant, Leon heaved a sigh of relief.

"I enjoyed the food!" Daren and Rex said in unison.

Leon threw a stiff glance at them, then chuckled. "Hehe, me too".

As they left, Leon noticed a metallic shovel that was carelessly placed by the side of the restaurant.

…

Later that night, Leon gathered with the rest of his crewmates as they finally gave a progress report for the day.

When Ghostwire learned that Cain visited them at the mechanic workshop again, the NetRunner's eyes visibly constricted.

Talia and Brick didn't have much of a reaction. Since they were flanking them in the morning to help them escape in case there was an ambush, they also saw the Ascended Cyber Gladiator when he approached them.

Though they didn't react much to knowing of Cain's coming, what they did react to was the contents of the conversation that they had with the gangster.

"A gun and ammunitions job?" Talia was stunned.

"No". Brick made his opinion known immediately. "We can't afford to strengthen our enemies by feeding them guns, that's just foolish unless there's a way to rig the guns to not shoot at us. And clearly, that's not possible for such manual kinetic guns".

Leon nodded, then he said. "But I see it as a win-win situation".

"How?" Talia looked at him.

"With or without our work, I believe that the Zmer gang will eventually have alternative means to equip themselves with guns and ammunition. Besides, it's not as if they're not properly equipped right now. They just want more".

"As for us, in my opinion, we're severely underequipped. I need a lot of materials to fully work and equip the crew, but we're limited by materials".

"By working with Cain, I can get access to a lot of materials. As qualified Mechanists, it's very easy for me, Rex, and Kain to ration the materials for the commission, then use the left overs to properly equip ourselves".

"I can even use them to create other things apart from guns and ammunition".

"So yes, I do think we should accept this deal".

"Besides, Kain should be able to testify about how hard it is to get such a large scale job as a Mechanist. Working on lots of guns will help us grow as Mechanists, making us help even more during the eventual showdown".

Brick opened his mouth to talk, but then he closed it back and kept quiet. Every one of them looked at Talia, waiting for her decision.

Talia was calm. "I'll tell you my decision tomorrow".

Leon nodded; he was satisfied with that.

…

Later that night while everyone already slept, Leon suddenly woke up and snuck out of the inn.

He walked into the darkness of the streets while staying vigilant. With his familiarity with this community already, he easily retraced his steps back to the open market.

Close to a wooden building at the edge of the market, a female corpse laid by the side of the road.

It was the woman who grieved for her daughter in the morning.

Someone already brought her down from where she hanged herself, most likely the owner of the wooden building who didn't want a corpse hanging from his house.

Staring at the cold corpse, Leon's facial expression warped as different thoughts went through his mind. In the end, he bent down and carried the corpse with his superhuman strength before quietly leaving through the streets.

On the way, he stealthily borrowed the metallic shovel that was at the side of Gary and Mary's restaurant.

Leon walked a long distance with the corpse, taking her outside community G.

With the shovel, he dug a grave for the woman and buried her.

Staring at the sand beneath him, his expression turned complicated. 'There's no epitaph'.

Leon thought for a few seconds, then he walked towards a nearby tree.

A few minutes later, tiny branches of a tree protruded from the grave in a pattern, forming a sentence.

The sentence was…

["A mother who loved her daughter."]

Leon stared at the epitaph in silence for a few seconds, then he looked up and took a deep breath before turning to leave.

As he left, the HUD screen of the System lit up.

DING!

~----~

[You have displayed the ingenuity of a Mechanist!]

[You managed to create an epitaph for a woman despite lacking materials to leave a lasting memory of her life.]

[You have gained +34 Ascended Essence!]

[Ascended Counter: 860/1000]

…

[You have received a new Mission…]

~----~

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