24. Intelligent Weapons

The apartment building Karl entered had been completely gutted. Everything except the load-bearing walls had been smashed to pieces, which conveniently allowed Karl to spot the stairwell at a glance.

The RPG had been fired from the fifth floor, but Karl had no intention of taking the conventional way up.

Unless the attackers were fools, they would have certainly rigged the stairs and other choke points with landmines and similar traps. Karl had no time to disarm them one by one.

He glanced briefly up at the height of the ceiling, spotted a recessed ceiling light embedded above, quickly calculated his jumping capability in his mind, and decisively made his move.

The deployed monowire whipped through Karl’s hand, slicing a one-meter square opening directly into the ceiling above him. As chunks of mixed concrete and rebar rained down, Karl stepped forward, planted his foot on a falling slab, and sprang upward.

The height difference between the apartment ceiling and floor was 2.8 meters, plus 20 centimeters for the floor thickness, making the distance from one floor level to the next 3 meters. Karl stood 1.8 meters tall, his vertical jump was 50 centimeters, and factoring in his arm reach, he could just barely graze the second floor's level.

He remembered that a standard basketball hoop was 3.05 meters high. Was this supposed to count as a slam dunk for him?

As Karl leaped, he slapped a single palm against the second-floor surface, but relying solely on the strength of five fingers was hardly enough to support his upward climb. Thus, the monowire came into play once again.

The monowire was only razor-sharp—one molecule wide—along its cutting edge. Everywhere else, its essence was a chargeable wire whip; in other words, it could double as a climbing rope.

It shot out once more, though this time the non-bladed side of the monowire flew toward the recessed ceiling light on the third-floor ceiling. The tip pierced through the lamp fixture's cover, then carried the rest of the line to wrap securely around the internal metal chassis. Just as Karl had guessed, apartments of this design were standardized: what was on the first floor would be identically replicated on the second, complete with embedded ceiling lights.

Karl heaved himself upward, leveraging the monowire he was using as a makeshift climbing rope. A crisp mechanical click echoed from his wrist-mounted hardware, and his body was yanked a bit higher. As his upper torso cleared the second-floor level, Karl braced his elbow against the ground, engaged his core, and flipped himself up. At the same time, he gave a sharp pull that wrenched the embedded ceiling light—already buckling under the sudden human weight—free, retrieving his monowire while bringing down a section of the ceiling with it.

"Cool. It actually worked."

In a braindance, as long as Karl personally experienced a braindance editor's memories firsthand, he could memorize and master all the techniques showcased within it. The method he had just used was actually a trick from an adventure braindance.

When about to plunge off a cliffside waterfall, the braindance editor had thrown a rope toward a tree near the cliff edge, successfully managing to suspend themselves mid-air.

Though he had heard that shooting that film had cost the lives of quite a few braindance editors, as long as it had succeeded once and been recorded, the relevant technique was permanently etched into Karl's mind.

Truth be told, he hadn't been entirely certain he could pull it off before actually attempting it. He had figured that even if he failed, the worst that would happen was falling right back down to the first floor, so he had given it a shot. He never expected the results to be this good.

The sound of the monowire retracting carried a faint sense of sluggishness, as if the mechanical internal structure was suffering from minor friction issues.

"Well, I suppose I did pay a price for that."

The monowire could be retracted via remote control, but that was typically done while standing firmly in one's tracks, raising a hand to reel back a deployed wire. Almost no one else tried what Karl had done—hanging their entire weight from the monowire and then using the retraction mechanism to forcefully winch themselves upward.

Using the monowire to reel in a human being; that was completely defying the natural order of things.

Karl didn't know much, but Viktor's craftsmanship was top-tier. If he had been using a monowire modified by any other ripperdoc, it probably wouldn't have survived Karl's reckless abuse.

"This makes me envious of mantis blades. If I had mantis blades right now, I could just jam them straight into the wall and scale it like Spider-Man."

Amidst the fierce gunfire outside, the noise Karl made while slicing through the floors was so faint it could practically be ignored. Taking advantage of the unceasing gunfire outside, Karl repeated his previous trick.

"Swish, click..."

This time, the sound was a bit more pronounced, almost as if the monowire was voicing a silent protest.

However, having reached the third floor, Karl decided against cutting through any more ceilings.

Cutting any higher up might land him right in someone's lap. Even if no one was there, the attackers were stationed on the fifth floor, and hearing the commotion right beneath their feet would be far too easy.

Now, it was time to take the stairs.

Approaching the stairwell, Karl peered over and noticed that the attackers had not rigged any landmine traps on the stairs leading from the third floor to the fourth.

Did they think the warning provided by the traps on the lower floors was already enough?

Karl remembered that certain types of landmines could be linked via data networks. In other words, once triggered, the connected party would instantly know precisely which mine had detonated. For the attackers, rigging the third floor might genuinely have been deemed sufficient.

It was a pity his own netrunning skills weren't up to par yet; otherwise, he would have long since hacked that connection, bypassed the security, and turned the landmines to his own use.

Crouching low and stepping with absolute silence, Karl crept toward the fourth floor. There, he spotted a man standing with his back turned, right at the edge of the floor plate, continuously firing downward. The weapon the man held was one Karl had only ever seen in reality for the first time just now.

It was a smart weapon.

[Arasaka TKI-20 Shingen]: A smart submachine gun manufactured by Arasaka, utilizing advanced technology to automatically track targets. Small and exquisitely crafted, it is the dream weapon of every soldier and mercenary. If your marksmanship is lacking, choosing this weapon is a foolproof bet. The sole requirement for using this piece is having a smart-link module installed.

Advanced Arasaka tech in the hands of the attackers. Why was he not even remotely surprised?

Karl was currently seven meters away from the man standing with his back to him. He had zero confidence in his stealth capabilities to close the distance to the target's back across this completely open, unobstructed space and take him out silently.

During the process, if the enemy even took a single second to turn around, he could blast Karl's head off with his smart weapon. Karl didn't possess any sub-dermal armor, and getting shot still hurt quite a bit.

Therefore, stealth ended right here.

He had closed the distance as much as humanly possible. Compared to triggering explosions all the way from the first floor and having the enemy hunt him down with smart guns, this was already a massive improvement.

Karl raised the Hoshigumo.

"Bang."

A burst of blood blossomed right before Karl's eyes.

"Nice gun. I'll be taking that."