I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With - Chapter 009

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 009

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First Repair

"Mind if I take a look at your arm?"

"What? You? Give me a break. Do you even know what my prosthetic is, asking to look at it?"

The woman glared at me, her face dark with anger.

"What is it? A broken prosthetic. And I'm an engineer. Ah, forget it. Fine, if you don't want to show me, then don't. Rest here as long as you like. I'll tell old man Gordon you stopped by."

Shaking my head and waving a hand, I took a step toward the door.

"...This is megacorp-made. Not just anyone can handle it."

Seeing me turn so firm, the woman called after me, her voice a notch softer. I stopped, turned back, and stepped into the room again.

"Yes. A Cheonroe mana-discharge amplification prosthetic arm."

Surprise flickered across her face.

"You recognize it? This isn't a mass-produced model, it's a custom."

"So what if it's custom? Does Cheonroe's signature tech just vanish? You can tell roughly from what's built into it."

"...As expected of Uncle Gordon's apprentice, huh..."

"I'm not an apprentice, I'm a hired engineer. So what'll it be?"

"...Fine. You can look. Just look."

Truthfully, she didn't have much of a choice here.

Judging by the situation, the prosthetic had gone wrong in the middle of a fight, and in a state like that, finding a proper engineer would be hard enough.

"Yes. Excuse me for a moment."

Slowly closing the distance, I felt my heart start to pound.

Because there was a pretty woman right in front of me? Not a chance.

Honestly, the thought that a customer who looked this rich might pay a repair fee was only the second reason.

The real reason my heart was racing was that this arm was the first one I'd ever get to open up, a complete and genuine megacorp finished product.

When playing Fupunkalypse on an engineer build, what had been the most frustrating part?

The game's main story took place in 2333, long after most of the megacorps had already fallen. Because of that, none of the gear lying around then was intact. Getting hold of a genuine megacorp-made piece was like plucking a star from the sky, and everything was a patched-up repair version, modified like a rag quilt over generations.

And now, right in front of me, was a genuine cyber gear that carried the full cutting-edge technology of a megacorp from before the fall.

Swallowing hard, I laid a hand on the prosthetic.

Swish.

Mana thread slipped out of my hand and seeped into the prosthetic.

"Wh... What? You're a mage?"

"Shh. Let me concentrate. Don't break my focus."

At that, the woman clamped her mouth shut, at least for the moment.

Through the thread, I began to focus on the inside of the prosthetic.

The Spellbreaker's Magic Eye and the mana thread together fed back the precise blueprint of the Cheonroe arm.

'Ah. It's so beautiful...'

So this is what a genuine megacorp product is like.

The mana circuit network, aligned without a single error, and the layout of the main components were practically a work of art to an engineer's eyes. A level of refinement in a different dimension from the patchwork gear of three hundred years later.

And the exterior was just as lovely. Skin so soft it was nearly indistinguishable from a human arm, with tactile sensors packed in tightly beneath it. You could feel the effort that had gone into making it comfortable even for everyday life.

'So much to learn here.'

But the admiration could wait. The fire burning right now had to be put out first.

The sparks kept leaping up, and traces of pain were starting to show on the woman's face.

Pushing the thread deeper, I traced back to the point where the mana was flowing in reverse.

Fine cracks had formed in the mana conduction lines inside the prosthetic. The recoil of the mana leaking from them had also split the inner wall. No wonder the mana was escaping outward, throwing off sparks and backflowing into her dantian.

"The fight must have been brutal. Your mana conduction line burst. And the recoil brought the inner wall down with it. Was it a strong opponent?"

"Yeah. A tough one. But I almost had them. If I could've just fired one more full-charge discharge. Of all times, the arm blew up mid-charge..."

"If the arm blew mid-charge, it's a miracle you're alive."

Hmm... but this is kind of strange.

After staring down at it for a while, I raised my head and asked again.

"Say. Do you usually maintain this arm yourself?"

"...No. My crew has its own engineer. They handle the maintenance and upkeep."

"That engineer seems pretty terrible."

"What? What do you know? Who are you to call our engineer terrible?"

"The output frequency of the mana coil in the prosthetic is badly out of sync with the mana flowing from your core drive. That's something that should've been tuned continuously during maintenance."

"No way. You've got it wrong, haven't you?"

Hm... is she close to that engineer or something?

The woman had started huffing, clearly angry, and I decided to back off for now.

Fighting with a customer before getting paid did nothing for anyone.

"Ah. Right. No. It's not that big of a problem. It doesn't get in the way of using it. It just makes some noise."

Of course, that was a lie. The frequency gap was big enough that she must have been in some pain, too. Spiteful as it felt, part of me wanted to just leave it like that, but the misaligned output frequency on such a fine arm kept bothering me, so I matched the core and the prosthetic's frequencies anyway.

Phew. That feels better.

After that, I drew mana up from the battery in the Mana Induction Coat.

'Good thing I made the mana battery early.'

Trying to repair gear of this caliber without a mana battery might have meant three mana overflows.

The mana conduction lines in this prosthetic were an alloy of mythril and silver. Naturally, nothing here could repair something like that.

But I had [Suture Heal].

Releasing the mana thread as fine as it would go, I stitched up the split conduction lines and the cracked inner wall. Then I used [Suture Heal] on top.

Together with the mana thread, the [Suture Heal] mechanism kicked in, and the gaping holes in the conduction lines and the cracks in the inner wall closed up.

Hiss!

The sparks leaping near her shoulder died down in an instant. Her ragged breathing eased, too.

"Huh... Huh?"

The woman opened the eyes she'd had squeezed shut.

"My body feels a little better."

"It should. The emergency treatment was flawless."

Wanting to take in just a little more of the megacorp's cutting-edge tech, I pushed the thread all the way to the center of the prosthetic.

But just as I was looking over the mana circuit section that connected to the mana drive, that was when it happened.

'What is this?'

In a corner of the output control circuit, a strange mark caught my eye.

Not a break from impact, but a fine scratch, as though someone had scraped it away on purpose.

Ugh. Should I tell her or not?

But if I send her off without saying anything, she's really going to end up a corpse...

After a moment of agonizing, I decided to at least bring it up.

"...Customer."

"Hm?"

"Have you made any enemies lately with the engineer who serviced this arm?"

At my question, the woman's brows knit.

"Huh? What are you talking about? Do you know how close we are?"

"It looks like that crew engineer tried to kill you."

Using the thread, I lightly stimulated the circuit in question. With a tingling jolt, the woman's shoulder twitched.

"Looking at it now, someone tampered with the overload safety valve. Haven't you noticed recently that the prosthetic burns more mana than it used to?"

"What? Y... Yeah. Lately it does seem like the mana consumption's been creeping up!"

"Someone scraped the safety valve circuit and punched a hole in it. With a hole in the safety valve circuit, the mana would naturally leak out, the arm would feel worse to use, and a lot of mana would drain away. And naturally, the more you charged, the worse it would get. If you'd done just one full charge, the whole arm would've gone up in a mana explosion. And of course, the recoil would've wrecked the mana drive in your dantian, too."

Shock gathered on the woman's face, and her expression shook hard for a moment. It seemed she had a guess or two.

"Are you sure? Can you prove what you just said? If you can't, you die right here by my hand. Be certain."

The moment my eyes met hers as she said it, a chill ran down my spine.

She wasn't threatening me. If I couldn't prove it, she really meant to kill me.

The subject I'd touched was that sensitive.

"Proof? Is there any, I wonder... Let me take a look first. Please wait."

Drawing more mana from the external battery, I stitched up the damaged safety valve and used [Suture Heal].

'It wasn't just damage.'

Surprisingly, there was another tiny component lodged beside the safety valve.

On a normal prosthetic, there was no way a part this dangerous would be sitting next to a safety valve.

I pulled the component out of the circuit and handed it to her.

"This should count as proof."

"What is it?"

"A chip used for overclocking. It was next to the safety valve, and you don't normally leave one of these there."

Taking the chip, the woman's face went cold and rigid. After staring down at it for a long while, a resolve settled over her features.

"Thanks to you, I was saved from nearly dying. And I learned something I didn't know. That someone I trusted was actually not on my side. I'm sorry for brushing you off at first."

'Oh. Right now. This is the moment.'

Bring up payment while the other person is steeped in emotion and relief, and you collect the full price without any pointless haggling.

It was the optimal collection timing, learned from surviving on an engineer build in Fupunkalypse.

With a deliberately calm face, I held out a hand.

"If you're grateful, then pay the repair fee."

The woman snorted a laugh.

"How much?"

Let's see...

In Fupunkalypse, I'd have named an exact figure, but this world was hundreds of years before Fupunkalypse. I honestly had no feel for how much to ask.

The money I'd earned from back-breaking repair work was exactly 15,000 credits, so... then...

"Let's make it 150,000 credits."

Considering the complexity and value of the arm, it deserved far more. But I was still just starting out, an engineer with no name, for one thing.

And she seemed to be an acquaintance of the man whose place I was living in, so I tacked on a discount.

And... remembering those scary eyes from earlier, I couldn't bring myself to name a high price.

In Fupunkalypse, too, there were easily dozens of characters who'd gotten shot dead for charging too much.

"Your nerve's smaller than I expected. Is that really enough?"

"Huh?"

"Here."

She pulled a card out of her coat and flicked it onto my outstretched palm.

"A credit card with 500,000 credits on it. Keep the change. It's all yours. Honestly, you saved my life, so this shouldn't settle it. It's just all I've got on me right now."

Without hesitation, I bent at the waist in a 90-degree bow.

"No, not at all! Thank you! Dear customer! If you ever have trouble again, please come to our garage anytime!"

"Ha ha ha! You get funnier the more I look at you."

The woman looked over the repaired arm for a moment and flexed it a few times.

Whirr... Hiss...

She must have been drawing mana up and letting it down, because the arm let out a terrifying sound.

Good thing I got paid up front. After seeing that, I probably couldn't have asked for the fee.

After checking the arm for a moment, the woman turned her eyes back to me.

"One more thing."

"Yes. Go ahead."

"What happened here, what you found out today. From now on, that's a secret between the two of us. You and me, just the two of us. Understood?"

The eyes of the woman saying it were sunk in a dull, faintly damp darkness.

Meeting those eyes head-on, I nodded.

"This place is something like my consulting room. No doctor leaks a patient's secrets."

At my words, the woman studied my face for a moment, then asked.

"...What's your name?"

"Just call me Dex."

"Dex... Dex, huh..."

She rolled my name slowly around her mouth, then smiled with only the corners of her lips, her eyes still dead. For some reason, the face struck me as strangely alluring.

"All right, Dex. I'll be sure to remember that name. See you again soon. Next time I'll come to pay not the repair fee but the price of my life you saved. If I survive, that is."

Terrifying thing to say.

"Understood. If you start hurting again, come back anytime. Patient."

It was, so to speak, my killer sales line.

She said she'd pay again next time, so she had to survive. That was the only way she'd come back for more service.

The woman used a medicine from inside her coat to treat her body, then stood in front of the exit.

Then she looked back at me one last time with a faint smile.

"This time Uncle Gordon picked up a proper apprentice."

"Like I said, I'm not an appren-"

"I'm off."

The door opened and shut in one breath.

"...My head is spinning."

After she left, I looked down at the card in my palm.