"Kiwi is dead, Rebecca is dead, and David is dead too."
Kenji closed his copy of the manga magazine, sitting in a daze.
"Only the driver uncle and Lucy survived, but..."
"This is way too depressing. What's the point if Lucy is the only one left alone?"
At this point, he almost preferred if Lucy had died alongside David.
Being the sole survivor left behind was infinitely more painful.
Did Lucy really have to continue living in this cruel and heartless world, carrying the crushing weight of losing her lover?
To her, going to the Moon didn't matter anymore.
All she truly wanted was for David to be alive, so they could live a peaceful life together...
And David... had wanted the exact same thing.
But in that exact situation, if he hadn't sacrificed himself, Lucy would have died.
So he chose to sacrifice himself.
Ultimately, the Cyberpunk world was just too cruel.
Edgerunners like David and Lucy had zero options other than to accelerate down that grim corridor.
They sprinted toward the finish line, only to detonate magnificently like fireworks at the end.
Still...
Visualizing an arc like that made people choke up with grief.
Especially for David, who had spent his entire life living for the dreams of others.
Whether it was entering the Arasaka Academy to secure a corporate salaryman future for his mother, promising to take Lucy to the Moon, or taking up the mantle of leader for Maine's crew to execute jobs.
He was always carrying someone else's weight on his shoulders.
His only personal dream was probably "becoming a top-tier edgerunner."
But David was born to excel at it,both due to his unique cyber-tolerance and his focus.
He did become a top-tier edgerunner, a leader, and a legend of Night City.
Once upon a time, he had been a green rookie who couldn't even handle hard drinking.
Now, that green rookie was an immortal legend. It truly was...
"Grand in life, glorious in death," Kenji muttered to himself.
---
Following the release of the final chapter of Edgerunners, it immediately triggered a massive wave of reactions.
No one had anticipated that ending.
It wasn't a traditional shōnen climax where the protagonist and his crew unite to defeat the main villain.
Nor was it a party wipe where everyone died without exception, which some had feared.
But the male lead was dead.
Rebecca, the popular support, was dead.
Even Kiwi, the traitor they loved to hate, was dead.
And Lucy, whom everyone guessed would also die, managed to survive under David's desperate final request to Falco.
But...
Did surviving after losing everything actually hold any meaning?
After watching the final panels of Lucy visiting the Moon alone, hallucinating David beside her in the sunlight, readers felt certain that living was a sentence worse than death for her.
Furthermore, the author Aoyama was just too cold-hearted for executing a double-cut punch with that hallucination, driving the fans into hysteria.
The consensus across readers was uniform: Pain. Too much pain!
More importantly, the ending didn't just deliver a heavy blow; it showcased the despair and helplessness of a Cyberpunk world.
Even with David acquiring the Sandevistan and the Cyberskeleton...
He still wasn't anywhere close to match the raid boss Adam Smasher,or rather, the might of Arasaka.
That final fight wasn't a fight at all.
It was Adam Smasher executing a one-sided beatdown on David!
An era like that was just too suffocating...
Countless threads and posts discussing the Edgerunners plot flooded onto major forums and official spaces continuous like tidal waves:
{ "Uuuu, I hate you old fox Aoyama! You should have just let Lucy die too!" }
{ "David, my David! And Rebecca, my Rebecca-chan uuuu..." }
{ "Now Rebecca really did turn into paste..." }
{ "I cried so hard. David had already crossed the edge, but Lucy's kiss and voice actually managed to suppress his Cyberpsychosis." }
{ "At that stage, standard suppressants couldn't do anything for him. I guess that's just love." }
{ "Yes, love is the highest tier of immunosuppressant." }
{ "I'm numb. I thought after David woke up, they'd cooperate to kill Adam Smasher. Instead, he just got slaughtered." }
{ "Adam Smasher felt like the real MC... David was nowhere near his level." }
{ "Who would have guessed the MC couldn't even beat the final boss? How do you even play this?" }
{ "Isn't that accurate though? Think about it. The Sandevistan was ripped off a random cyberpsycho. It's strong, but not unique. Even the peak Cyberskeleton was developed by Arasaka. How could you beat the creator with their own gear?" }
{ "Yeah, even if David won, Arasaka wouldn't let him go. The Cyberskeleton is that strong; they'd just mass-produce twenty of them to hunt him down. He stood zero chance." }
{ "Edgerunners' setting is strictly Nightmare difficulty. The latest and greatest tech is made by corporate giants; trying to fight that with isolated efforts is always going to fail." }
{ "That's the despair of a corporate-ruled world. There is zero hope. No matter how unique you are, even being the MC doesn't grant plot armor." }
{ "Aoyama wanted to present a world completely ruled by corporate giants, where individual effort is meaningless. No matter how hard you push, capital will erase your value." }
{ "Regardless of that... Edgerunners is an incredible story." }
{ "The baseline of Cyberpunk is nihilism. Individual rights don't exist, and there is zero freedom or democracy." }
{ "Sounds exactly like the vibe in America right now... no wonder it's set there." }
{ "Careful! That place is the beacon of freedom and democracy!" }
{ "Well said, you deserve a dangerous weapon made out of laundry detergent!" }
{ "But what did that post-credit scene even mean?" }
{ "No idea, but that quote hit hard. 'David Martinez! Grand in life, glorious in death!'" }
{ "The promo page said Edgerunners is getting an anime and a game titled Cyberpunk 2077. Looks like that guy is the protagonist of the game?" }
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]