I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With - Chapter 008

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 008

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The First Customer

Back at the workshop, the first order of business was a meal.

After so long at work, the strength was starting to drain out of this body.

Maybe it was the weak frame, but the longer the concentration lasted, the more energy it burned.

For now, the nutrient jelly the shopkeeper had thrown in as a bonus would do.

Compared to the nutrient tube, which was dry and greasy like swallowing oil-soaked biscuit dough, the nutrient jelly was far more edible. Bland to the point of being nearly odorless and tasteless, but at least it didn't leave that grease-slick, want-to-puke feeling.

'But the price is way too high.'

A quick look at the stall earlier had shown it costing nearly double.

Still, to feed a [Starvation Constitution] body, buying high-nutrition food was probably the better call. Once some money came in, switching over to the jelly seemed like the right move.

...Honestly, about 90% of that reasoning was just that it was so much more edible than the tubes. Living on nutrient tubes alone was not something a human being should have to do.

Kind of makes me feel bad for my characters back when I played Fupunkalypse, living on nutrient tubes with a mindless click.

With the stomach filled, next I took out the coat bought along with the clothes.

Of everything picked up today, it was effectively the most expensive item, and the final piece of equipment for completing the external battery.

"Let's see."

First, a space to hold and mount the external battery inside the coat. Stitching a bit of cloth on to make a pocket would do.

A [Mana Thread] went to work sewing cloth onto the coat's lining, and the thread-stitched cloth became a fine coat pocket.

But as it stood, the moment the thread vanished, the pocket would come right off.

<Recovery Magic> Suture Heal (-15 Pt)

This was where the [Suture Heal] function came in.

Originally, it was a low-grade healing spell for joining torn skin or split wounds.

But in truth, in the Fupunkalypse world, where high-performance nano medicine and prosthetic replacements were everywhere for anyone with money, a recovery mage was the worst-efficiency build there was, abandoned by everyone as a so-called trash build.

Raising a high-tier healer and paying upkeep forever cost far more than just buying medicine and using that.

But a new synergy had turned up, one that used mana thread and Suture Heal together.

'Force-stitch the seams of a broken part or material with mana thread, then use [Suture Heal] on top.'

Then the system registered the thread-joined section as a stitched-up open wound. And once the mechanism of [Suture Heal] kicked in, the seam stuck together and fused.

The amount and level of mana consumed varied with the material and size, but stitching a scrap of cloth like this didn't demand much.

The seam between the coat lining and the added cloth fused smoothly, as if the two had been one piece from the start, and set hard.

With the thread withdrawn, the pocket stayed firmly pressed against the lining without budging.

"Good, pocket's perfect."

Next, using that same synergy of mana thread and Suture Heal, the stitching of mana-conductive copper wire into the coat began.

A mana circuit, starting from the battery cradle inside the coat, running across both shoulders and down the inner wall of the sleeves to the wrists.

With this body, the situations that would burn the most mana were, in the end, the ones where [Mana Thread] and [Suture Heal] were used for work at the fingertips.

The [Spellbreaker's Magic Eye] would still have to draw from the heart, but for hand work, pulling mana from the mana battery would do.

"Final touch is..."

Once the copper wire's end, run out to the sleeve cuff, had been thinned down with telekinesis, my eyes went to my left wrist.

Even the lowest classes of Gaon Mega City had a minimum biological circuit built into this wrist as standard. That was how a wrist could show the time, or check a citizen ID or an account.

No need to risk drilling a new channel. Just lay one mana circuit over the biological circuit, make a terminal for the copper wire to connect to, and attach it with Suture Heal... and that was it.

"Phew... Done."

The name I'd come up with back when I was playing the game alone: Mana Induction Coat. Maybe this much qualified as a prototype.

The terminal grafted onto the wrist looked a little awkward, but... well, in a world where people cut off their own arms and swapped in prosthetics, a modification of this size was nothing.

The finished coat got a quick shake and went on.

The fit was a bit roomy, but the feel of it wrapping from the shoulder line down to the sleeves was convincing enough.

"Maybe because I look like a pretty boy, the clothes actually hang pretty well."

With the half-charged battery in the pocket, time to test it.

Slowly, focusing on the fingertips, I pulled on the battery's mana.

"Hmm... A little disappointing."

The mana didn't travel smoothly from wrist to finger joints.

"Some mana leakage, maybe..."

A result of the copper wire's low conductivity. There was room to improve it once better material turned up.

'When I make some money and get high-purity silver thread or mana-stone conductive thread, I'll build a new one.'

Still, this much would keep a mana overflow from dropping me mid-work.

A check of the time, in case the biological circuit had a problem, brought a shock.

'It's already past 7 in the evening?'

Right as that thought crossed my mind.

Bang!

The front door flew open.

* * *

At the sudden opening, I assumed it was the old man.

"Sir! Back already?"

Right now the interior wasn't even fully tidied, and nothing decent had been made yet...

Maybe show him the Mana Induction Coat and run my mouth a bit. With that thought, I looked toward the entrance.

Thud-thud!

What came inside wasn't old man Gordon but a woman in skin-tight leather.

With white-silver hair and a striking red prosthetic eye, she came tumbling in half-drenched in blood.

The woman, too, looked a little startled to see someone there, and raised her firearm. She clearly hadn't expected anyone to be here.

"You... Who are you?"

The hand holding the gun was trembling.

The prosthetic right arm and the pistol in its hand looked like they'd been made as a set.

'Looks like a Cheonroe product.'

Cheonroe.

The name of the giant megacorp that made the gear users most wanted when they went for a mana-discharge build.

For Fupunkalypse players, the mana-discharge build was one of the high-firepower builds known as the dream of every guy.

It didn't burn physical rounds like an ordinary gun. It drew the user's internal mana, concentrated it in the acceleration coil inside the prosthetic, and fired a densely compressed mana bullet through the gun.

No ammo limit, and the firepower and impact feel were incredible, but the downsides were just as clear.

The mana recoil and heat hitting the mana circuit on each discharge were insane, so without a decent mana-recoil-suppressing prosthetic, the whole arm blowing off was the usual outcome.

And the maker that produced, on a dedicated line, both the top-grade prosthetics designed to withstand that insane recoil and overload and the mana-discharge guns was the megacorp 'Cheonroe.'

'She's wearing a prosthetic that high-end, and her arm is shaking like that?'

"Uncle Gordon... where... is he... Ugh..."

This door wasn't one just anyone could open, no matter how you looked at it. Having examined the interior myself, I knew: it had a monstrously complicated structure.

Being able to open that door meant having the key to it. Which meant a friend of old man Gordon's.

"I'm the engineer old man Gordon hired. Come on in, for now."

I helped the woman to the back, to the spot where I'd slept last night.

"Hngh... ugh..."

Along with the ragged breathing came the thick smell of blood.

'Heavier than I expected.'

Maybe it was the weight of her prosthetics added on.

Or maybe this body was just too frail.

The woman leaned against the wall and barely managed to catch her breath. The look she kept fixing on me was full of wariness.

"You're an engineer Uncle Gordon hired? I've never seen your face."

Uncle, huh. Calling old man Gordon "Uncle" instead of sir or old man suggested a pretty close relationship.

"Strictly speaking, I'm closer to a tenant renting this space. I stay here and do the work old man Gordon gives me."