WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 012

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Prohibition Command

The class structure of Gaon Mega City is harshly, almost cruelly clear.

At the very top sat the absolute rulers, the headquarters of the Big Three Megacorps and their ruling class, in an artificial paradise: District 1, Over Heaven.

Just below it was the upper tier, packed with prominent top-ranking corporations, high-end research labs and elite members of high society: District 2, Sky Nexus.

Then the middle tier, where people scraped and struggled in hopes of leaping into the upper class: District 3, Under Sky.

And at the very bottom, the gutter where all the city's filth and toxic smog settled: Ground Zero.

The layers weren't literally stacked one above another, but crossing into a different district took the kind of effort it took to climb a mountain, so the people of the city called it the four-tier structure.

Vivian was a commoner from the middle ground, District 3, Under Sky.

For a commoner from District 3, there weren't many ways up to Sky Nexus.

Show overwhelming talent on a childhood aptitude test and get scouted by a gifted academy under a major corporation.

Develop a technology patent good enough to catch a megacorp's eye and receive tens of billions in shares and upper-tier citizenship in one stroke.

Or, failing both, the miracle of winning first prize in the city lottery the megacorps ran to give commoners room to breathe.

But Vivian had managed neither.

She hadn't been born a prodigy with monstrous talent, and she wasn't someone with the creativity to produce a patent, either.

There had been only one way for Vivian to climb.

'All I can do is claw my way up from the bottom with my own effort.'

She wasn't gifted enough to be called a prodigy, but luckily she wasn't a complete dunce at magic, either.

Instead of destruction and elemental magic, swarming with once-in-a-century geniuses, she dug into the niche market of recovery magic. Luckily, her choice proved right, and Vivian climbed faster than expected, all the way to the threshold of an interview room at a major upper-tier hospital.

That was when she came to need a prosthetic hand.

But an ordinary commoner like her had no money for a Synix-made magic prosthetic hand, which cost a minimum of tens of millions of credits.

So she combed through every shop like a madwoman, hunting for the most efficient piece of gear within her budget.

"Vivian, was it? You're really lucky. This is the very last one I'd set aside."

Heaven helps those who help themselves, or so they say. A broker she'd been introduced to by chance had exactly the item her barely scraped-together budget allowed.

"It's the real thing, genuine, with service available at headquarters, and I'm showing it to you at the lowest price I can. Don't go telling anyone you got it at this price."

And so Vivian emptied her entire savings and got her hands on Arcana Tech's masterpiece, the Silver Aether Wing Mk-3.

The payoff for that choice was sweet.

"The final successful candidate is... Vivian."

At last, she had accomplished the miracle of entering a major hospital in the upper tier, District 2, Sky Nexus.

But the good days lasted only a moment.

At some point, her body had started to creak.

Use magic for long and a pain like an awl driving into her fingertips came, and cast a high-tier spell and her mana ran dry in an instant.

"Urk... Uuugh... urk..."

Each time, Vivian had to pant through dry heaves or dizziness from mana depletion.

Naturally, raising her tier any further was close to impossible.

And the elite society of the upper tier wasn't merciful enough to wait for a commoner-born doctor whose growth had stalled.

"Thanks for all your hard work until now. With your experience, Doctor Vivian, any subcontractor hospital down there will welcome you with open arms, so pack up your things tomorrow, right away."

In the end, with her growth blocked, Vivian even received a notice of dismissal from her job.

'Is this as far as my talent goes? Did I stop growing here because of the limits of my blood, being from Under Sky?'

Still, she didn't want to end her life as a member of the upper class like this and tumble back down to the middle tier. She thrashed about for a way to survive, and the one who held out a helping hand then was Go Jin-tae.

"You, I like at least that venomous look in your eyes."

Having noticed her tenacity by chance, Go Jin-tae poured in a massive sum of funding, and thanks to that Vivian was able to open her very own private mage clinic in the upper tier and stage a comeback.

But that was Vivian's limit. With her tier unable to rise, she could only stay in that spot forever. The fear that someday she might be dragged back down to Under Sky.

Days of tears shed in secret, chewing painkillers down alone every night.

All of those hellish years.

"Other mages use this model just fine, so you must have blamed yourself, thinking you were simply less capable than everyone else. Am I right?"

That single sentence melted away the old regret that had been crushing Vivian's heart, all at once.

* * *

"...Really, it wasn't my body that was the problem, it was a flaw in the prosthetic, you'rsh saying...?"

W-What...?

The Vivian who'd been putting on the proud front of an upper-tier mage-physician only a moment ago had collapsed in an instant, her tongue tangling as she sniffled tears and snot like a little kid.

"Sniff... Really...? Sniff! It wasn't a problem with my talent, you shay...?"

"Hey, why are you crying? You're making this awkward."

All at once, the lofty elite doctor of District 2, Sky Nexus, was gone, and only a mage too choked with grievance to get her words out remained, sitting there alone.

"Okay, okay. Let's calm down first. Wipe your nose."

"...I'm fine. I'll ushe mine."

When I handed her tissue torn from the pack I'd bought earlier at the general store, Vivian paused for a look, then took out her own handkerchief from inside her coat and wiped her face.

Hm... Yeah, it was too cheap for an upper-tier person to use.

Sheepishly, I folded the tissue neatly and tucked it into my pocket.

Right now, even this was money.

"...If you can figure out something like this, can you fix it, too?"

Her way of speaking had changed a lot from the start. Had she opened up a little?

I wanted to bring up the repair fee first, but with a tearful woman right in front of me, it wasn't easy to lead with the repair fee.

Ugh. No choice, then.

Fix it first, and slip in the fee afterward.

"It's not a difficult job at all. Please wait a moment."

Mana rose from the external battery in my chest.

Then the mana thread shot out and slid into the prosthetic hand.

Fwoosh-

With the Spellbreaker's Magic Eye switched on next, the prosthetic's inner circuits spread out transparently inside my head.

A beloved piece of gear I'd taken apart and modded dozens of times, so I could practically see it without looking.

The mana leak was happening at the mana insulation contact near the wrist.

The easiest way to patch a leak, like the repairs I'd done before, is to plug it with the synergy of mana thread and Suture Heal.

But repair a spot like the wrist that way and it causes problems with the feel right away.

Even with the leak caught, every fold and unfold of the joint would leave an annoying discomfort.

At every regular inspection, they'd probably fill this section with mana oil and mana shielding gel to induce lubrication and sealing at once, but in the 301 serial range, the gap in the wrist's moving part is built slightly wider than the standard.

'In a normal unit, oil and gel fill the joint gap tight and block the mana, but in the 301s the gap is too wide, so when high-density mana comes in, the insulating gel can't hold against the pressure and bursts out.'

Oil and gel alone couldn't seal it completely.

But there was one function for repairing delicate spots like this.

That was <Precept Magic> [Prohibition Command] (-20 Pt).

Prohibition Command is a tier 1 basic Precept Magic, a function that forces a trivial prohibition on its target.

A magic that restricts a target's actions by drawing a boundary line of magic circles on the floor or in midair, along the lines of 'do not cross this line.'

In the original game, the standard use of this magic was to confine a fully subdued prisoner, or to pin down for a moment the feet of an enemy far below the caster's tier.

But like any tier 1 magic, its binding force was absurdly weak.

Even a tier 3 caster using it on a tier 1 target would see the barrier break in under ten seconds, and its restraining power was so feeble in actual combat that it was the textbook example of a novelty skill nobody gave a second look.

In a game where points were tight to begin with, no user would buy a piece of trash like this, dragging all those drawbacks along.

'But when it comes to repairing machines, magic this efficient is rare.'

Living things have self-awareness, so they force their way through and try to break out of a precept, but pure energy like electricity or mana has no will to resist.

Against mana with no will to resist, even a crude tier 1 prohibition could squeeze out tremendous efficiency.

Manipulating the thread stretched inside the prosthetic, I looped it in a round circle through the air along the leaking part of the wrist.

Then I carved the precept of [Prohibition Command] onto the path the thread traced.

'I declare it. The passage of mana across this gap's boundary surface is forbidden.'

A faint halo of light rose inside the prosthetic, and the Prohibition Command magic circle began to spin round and round, activating.

Taking out the tissue I'd tucked into my pocket earlier, I wiped the sweat running down my forehead.

Luckily, the leak site wasn't very complex.

At my current level, catching any more leakage than this would have taken real strain.

"Phew..."

Withdrawing the thread, I let go of the hand.

"The repair's done. Try rotating your wrist to see if anything feels off, and send a little mana through while you're at it."

Right as I said that-

Ding.

A message popped up before my eyes along with the sound.

[Live activation of all initially registered perks confirmed.]

[ An additional perk slot has been unlocked. ]

[ Check or purchase new perks? (Y/N) ]

...What is this?

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