WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈

Chapter 006

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The Workshop

The place Go Jin-tae, no, the old man called Gordon, led me was a secluded, sparsely populated corner even by Ground Zero standards.

For a moment, the thought crossed my mind that I might get followed this far only to be found a corpse with my guts torn out, but then I remembered this was a Fusion Punk world.

'It's a setting where every organ can be swapped for a high-performance product. Nobody needs the guts out of a weakling body like this.'

After a long walk, Gordon stopped in front of an old building that looked, at first glance, like it had been abandoned ages ago.

It didn't look anything like the workshop of an elder draped in megacorp products, no matter how I looked at it.

"...Sir? Is this the place?"

The entrance was shut tight by a ridiculously thick, old-model alloy door.

"It's a safehouse and storage building I used a long time ago."

The old man jerked his chin at the heavy alloy door.

"The security lock's completely wrecked. Hasn't opened in years. Open this door without damaging it, and I'll lend you this space."

That made my eyes snap wide.

Someone on the old man's level had to have plenty of top-tier engineers in his workshop.

It was one of the things to be most careful about when dealing with a bigshot.

The jealousy and envy of a bigshot's underlings.

I'd been agonizing over how to handle myself once I ran into them.

And now he was offering me a space of my own, no need for any of that?

This was the best possible outcome, a way to get close to a bigshot without the outside world noticing the connection.

"That's an awfully light condition. All I have to do is open the door?"

"I don't care for people who are all mouth. Show me with your actions."

At that, I stepped forward without a word of protest. No point opening my mouth again and losing the points I'd already earned.

A quick look with the naked eye showed the door was badly rusted, the result of years of neglect.

Hand on the area in front of the keyhole.

To look inside with [Spellbreaker's Magic Eye], I first had to send in a [Mana Thread] with no properties attached.

With the thread reaching inward and the Magic Eye running, the inner structure of the broken lock began to show beyond the thick iron door, as if scanned.

Whatever had once been kept in here, the lock was fairly complicated. There was a mana-powered door lock too, but it looked to be dead already.

'Ugh...'

A tingling pain rose from around my heart. I'd used a lot of mana today for someone my level, and the limit was closing in.

But if this was some kind of test from a bigshot, I had to pass it. No whining now.

'The rust is so bad the gears inside have completely seized.'

While confirming the internal structure, I gave the mana thread the <Heat> property.

Heat climbed from the heart, hot and thick, and sweat started to bead, but it was almost done. No giving up here.

Most important of all, the door couldn't take any damage. That took delicate control.

Slowly, the thread moved to strip the rust without harming the gears. The parts inside weren't all iron.

Some were plastic, and there were sections bound with a kind of fiber, probably security parts. The thread had to avoid those carefully while it cleared the rust.

The superheated thread cleaned the gears of rust beautifully, and last of all, telekinesis forced the gears to mesh and turn.

Click.

With a crisp, mechanical sound, the heavy alloy door that had been shut for years slid open.

"...Done, sir..."

"Not all mouth after all. As promised, from now on this building is yours... Hey. You. Are you all right?"

'Ah, damn... Is this mana overflow...?'

The view swung steeply.

A searing heat spread around my heart, like a red-hot iron being pressed against it.

It felt like I'd wrung out more mana in a short time than this frail body could handle.

With a thud, my consciousness went black.

* * *

Go Jin-tae had first seen Seol Gye-hyeon at the Ashen Chimney Night Market in Ground Zero.

'Black hair, black eyes, and Asian lineage, huh.'

It was a physical trait you rarely saw in Ground Zero, the lowest tier of Gaon City. A bloodline you'd expect to find in Middletown or above, or in the megacorps' upper districts.

But...

'Born far too weak. He won't last long down here.'

A weakling orphan, kicked out onto the street the moment he came of age from one of those relief facilities the corporations ran for show.

That was how Go Jin-tae had sized the kid up as he watched.

At first, it had only been idle amusement, the old man leaning back with a cigar.

But after a little watching, what the kid was doing turned out to be rather entertaining.

Even the way he'd assembled a passable stall out of cardboard lying around was entertaining, and the skills he used on customers were peculiar too.

He combined a few low-grade spells with precision and used them like maintenance tools.

And that technique and craftsmanship were definitely not the kind you'd see in a lower-class district like this.

But the truly entertaining part came after.

A gang member had come at him with threats, and the kid hadn't so much as blinked, snapping right back with nerve to spare.

With a body that looked like a single hit would snap his bones.

'Not bad for a kid who just came of age.'

Taking him on as an apprentice had seemed like fun, but the kid didn't want that. Instead, he wanted to be hired as an independent engineer.

It sounded like wordplay, but watching him scheme to avoid losing the battle of wills had been absurd and fascinating in equal measure.

And now.

That brat had opened a security door the old man himself had designed long ago, with no tools at all, using skill alone, and then keeled over.

"Hey. You. You all right? Wake up! Hey!"

He had looked weak, true enough.

Go Jin-tae clicked his tongue and went over to the fallen Seol Gye-hyeon. Then he laid his prosthetic hand on the boy's body to check his condition.

Mana sent out from Go Jin-tae's prosthetic hand swept once through Seol Gye-hyeon's body and came back. At the sensation of the mana returning from a precise scan of the kid's vital signs and mana circuits, Go Jin-tae's eyes narrowed slightly.

'This brat... His body's a wreck. So he wasn't just born weak after all...'

Clear traces remained of someone having deliberately destroyed the dantian and the heart.

The dantian was shattered beyond repair, and the heart had a hole through it, mana leaking out in a steady stream.

In that state, the kid had been maintaining gear and, determined to pass the test Go Jin-tae set, had pulled far too much mana from his heart. That was why his body had collapsed.

From the unusual magic he used to the ruined heart and dantian.

'He must have been the child of a megacorp, upper tier at the least.'

For Go Jin-tae, who had been through plenty in Gaon Mega City, the kid's circumstances came together on their own.

Power struggles between Gaon City's corporations, bloody faction wars inside a corporation. An unlucky orphan caught up in that filthy politics, dantian and heart destroyed, then thrown away.

A brat driven out of the megacorps' battleground and rolled all the way down to the lowest garbage heap, yet still fighting to survive with venom in his eyes and the skills he had.

"Quick on the uptake, got nerve, and a story to go with it."

The corners of Go Jin-tae's mouth lifted slightly. It had been a long time since he'd found something this interesting.

* * *

"...Ugh."

How long had I been out? Opening my eyes brought the thick smell of dust and a dull ache deep in the chest. Getting up was no good either; the strength had drained so far that lifting a single finger was a struggle.

"You're up, kid."

A gruff voice came out of the dark.

Turning my gaze, I found Gordon sitting in a chair, smoking a cigar.

"Your heart's a mess. The mana circuits are shot to hell. You wrung out mana like that with a body like this?"

A true bigshot engineer, as expected. He'd gotten at least a rough read on my condition while I was out.

"With my employer watching, shouldn't I finish the job I was given?"

"Body's a wreck, but the mouth works fine, I see."

With that, the old man tossed a silver tube he'd been holding.

"Chow down. You were scrawny enough already, and now you're malnourished on top of it. You were about to die."

It landed on my chest, a high-calorie compressed ration.

Fumbling the cap off, I squeezed the nutrient tube into my mouth. A horrible taste filled it from wall to wall, but I forced myself to chew and swallow, for the sake of living.

Ugh... Squelch.

Whatever the taste, once the calories hit my stomach, the pain there gradually eased. It felt like being alive again.

"Haah..."

Barely catching my breath, I pushed myself upright and looked around.

The building's interior didn't look like much, from what I could see.

It was a spacious place, but there was no sign of a proper workbench or tools.

Instead, scrap metal that looked used and discarded, broken machine parts, dusty empty cans, and heaps of trash piled up, a perfect garbage dump.

"Sir, I didn't need this many interior options."

Gordon chuckled at my joke and got to his feet.

"You didn't want to be my apprentice, you wanted to be hired. Shouldn't an employee clean his employer's space too?"

Flawless logic.

"If the boss orders it, I'll do it. Yes."

"While you're at it, I'll give you one more job. Before I come back, use your skills to make something that can turn a profit right now."

"When are you coming back?"

"When I feel like it. Could be tomorrow. Could be the day after."

With that, the old man left the dump without waiting for an answer, no lingering regrets.

What a nasty-tempered employer.

But what could be done? An order's an order.

With all the junk inside, it only seemed small; the building was a lot bigger than it looked. Cleaned out completely, it would make a usable workshop.

"Ha. Fine. Might as well give it a shot."

* * *

Having said "might as well give it a shot," working right now was a bad idea for a lot of reasons.

「Current Time: 02:24 AM」

Same as with the hologram citizen ID, looking at my wrist made a hologram rise in front of my eyes, showing the time.

Going out for the bare minimum of food and supplies was tempting, but it was far too late. More than that, mana overflow had knocked me out cold only a little while ago.

'Heading into the streets before dawn in this condition would be dangerous.'

Since this might end up being home for a while, a look around to get used to the space seemed in order.

'He said he used it as a safehouse and storage building, right?'

Nobody had been in or out for the last several years, that much was certain. Old junk and scrap parts were piled everywhere. It had probably been a storage building where the old man kept parts used in some workshop nearby.

But there was also plenty of household trash scattered around that didn't fit that purpose at all.

'So this is what's left of it being used as a safehouse.'

Whatever the circumstances had been, someone had holed up here for a long time and left it as it was when they moved on.

'That's why the door was so thick and well secured.'

There were stairs, so there seemed to be more space on the upper floor too...

Then, from far off, came gunfire, bang-bang, along with intermittent screams.

True to the damn Fusion Punk setting, a fight had broken out somewhere on a nearby street.

The building key the old man had handed over locked the entrance for the night. With the door shut, the noise from outside cut off at once.

Late as it was, finding a place to rest came first. Opening a door at the back revealed a small room.

A mattress and a wardrobe sat inside, so this had probably been the sleeping space.

After a rough dusting, I lay down on the mattress.

Eyes closed, but sleep was never going to come easily.

A tangle of thoughts crowded in, and my head began to spin.

'I should've quit when my ex told me to stop playing this game.'

The sound of the gunfight outside came back. Unlike the world I'd come from, the public order here was pretty dangerous.

'If I'd fallen asleep on the street today, I could've gotten dragged into a fight like that.'

No, maybe before I even got to sleep tonight, I'd have ended up a fugitive on the run for killing a low-level member of a gang called the Black Dog.

Thinking of it that way, lying on a mattress in a safe room, trash and all, might be a huge stroke of luck.

Chewing over one thing and another, the heavy weight of exhaustion poured down onto a body whose tension had finally let go.

Slowly, I slipped away into somewhere deep beyond consciousness.

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