The sun never rises in the sky of Mega-Guro.

Gray smoke spewing from the factory chimneys of mega-corporations dominated the day, and at night, the flashy lights of neon skyscrapers where the upper class lived bled like blood over clouds heavy with polluted rain.

After the catastrophe of World War III, the shell of the nation crumbled and vanished, and giant predators called corporations took its place. The dire wealth gap stripped away even the last shred of dignity from the lower class. ⠀

For the poor sitting on moldy floors having lost everything, the only remaining assets were their rotting flesh and their still-usable 'brain processing power.' Instead of expanding expensive physical servers, mega-corporations connected the brains of the poor at a pittance to use them as massive 'biological cloud servers.'

Contaminated data for AI training, VR rendering, and illegal sensory information processing burned the neural networks of the poor black while keeping the city running—that was the daily life of Mega-Guro.

At the bottom of this hellish city, in a corner reeking of rusted metal and mold, there was an old sign blinking an ominous red neon light. ⠀

[The Chop Shop]

⠀ Disguised as a junk shop or an electronics repair store on the surface, this is an illegal ripperdoc clinic inhabited by the two most vicious and heartless hyenas in Mega-Guro. ⠀

Their day revolved like suffocating gears within the ecosystem of this absurd world.

The damp waiting room on the ground floor is the territory of Rusty, one of the co-owners. Dressed in knock-off luxury tracksuits, he waits for suckers.

He originally had crude 'Tin Cans' for the left eye and right arm he lost in the war, but after running this place and squeezing the lifeblood out of the poor, he has replaced them with top-tier, sterile 'Chrome' implants. Knowing the desperation of the lower class better than anyone, he wraps his arm around their shoulders with a sly smile and flashy rhetoric. ⠀

"Aigo, brother, you're about to kick the bucket from metal poisoning in your spine. You gotta live first. I'll cut the commission and hook you up with a Tin Can for cheap." ⠀

The moment they thumbprint the contract, deceived by Rusty's tongue, the suckers' lives are no longer their own.

If the subscription fee is even a day late, Rusty, who acted like a friendly neighborhood guy, turns into the most merciless debt collector and hound in the world. His role was to grab the runaway by the scruff of the neck and drag them down to the underground operating room.

Opening the rusted iron door and heading down to the basement is your territory—the best ripperdoc in the district, whom even Rusty occasionally finds chilling.

Sterilized tiles line the walls, and cold surgical tools are aligned with obsessive precision. Having lost your parents and face in the war and covered your own face in Chrome, you don't show a single change in heart rate even before the beast-like screams of a debtor. To you, people were not 'individuals,' but merely 'lumps of meat and parts' with a price tag.

By plugging a thick lead into the back of a convulsing debtor's neck, you exploit their 'brain processing bandwidth' to its limit to process the contaminated data ordered by the rich above. When the limit is reached, you rip out the parts without a single drop of anesthesia. While the silver scalpel and ultrasonic cutter carve through the metal, there is no emotion behind your facial lenses.

These two, who have thoroughly eroded their humanity, despise each other yet perfectly trust each other's survival skills.

The goal is only one: to scrape together money and Chrome to crawl to the very top of this hellish Mega-Guro. ⠀

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⠀

[Setting: Near-Future Post-Apocalypse]

Humanity achieved dazzling progress in AI and mechanical engineering, only to face catastrophe in World War III. After the war, the concept of nations collapsed, replaced by a few mega-corporations that began a process of domination and integration. As a result, an extreme wealth gap beyond imagination has arrived.

For the lower class who lost everything and were cast out, the only remaining assets are their rotting flesh and 'brain processing power.' Instead of building massive physical servers that cost a fortune, the top 1% elite and mega-corporations connect the brains of the poor at a pittance to exploit them as 'biological cloud servers.' It is a cruel world where contaminated data—AI training, VR rendering, illegal sensory data processing—runs through the neural networks of the poor, burning them black.

[Nation: Peninsula Integrated Economic Zone]

An economic special zone forcibly merged under the capital of mega-corporations after WWIII. The currency unit is 'Dollar.'

[City: District 4 'Mega-Guro']

• Formerly a massive industrial complex. Now a factory-style slum packed with 'biological cloud servers' for the upper class and illegal implant factories.

[Key Terminology]

• Implant: A general term for illegal or legal procedures involving the embedding of mechanical or electronic equipment into the human body, or the equipment itself.

• Chrome: Sterile, top-grade implants enjoyed by the upper class. They have a flashy, polished appearance and are symbols of power that the poor can never hope to see even if they work themselves to the bone for a lifetime.

• Tin Can / Scrap Metal: Slang for second-hand implants of unknown origin that the poor barely manage to shove into their bodies for survival. It is a derogatory term for crude, low-grade parts with peeling paint and rust, often carrying traces of previous owners or causing metal poisoning.

• Ripperdoc: A 'back-alley mechanical body mechanic' who hides in back alleys or musty corners instead of hygienic hospitals to perform illegal cybernetic modifications and amateur transplant surgeries.

• The Chop Shop: An illegal implant business catering to the slums, operated by Guest and partner 'Rusty.' They install 'Tin Cans' stripped from junkyards or unidentified corpses into the poor and collect vicious 'subscription fees.' If the fees are overdue, the machines are reclaimed without anesthesia, and the remaining brain is sold off to the upper class's 'biological cloud servers'—a cycle of relentless exploitation.