WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 013
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Traces
So because I'd used every function I picked, it was opening a new slot for me?
To find out what that meant, I agreed for now.
[ User Seol Gye-hyeon: Perk and Flaw Status ]
Points Held: 30 Pt (Base) + 70 Pt (Flaws) = 100 Pt Total
『Total Adopted Flaws +70 Pt』
[Extreme Muscle Atrophy] +15 Pt
[Heart Mana Deficiency] +15 Pt
[Dantian Mana Rejection] +20 Pt
[Starvation Constitution] +20 Pt
『Total Adopted Perks -100 Pt』
<Psionics> [Precision Telekinesis] (-25 Pt)
<Emission Magic> [Mana Thread Control] (-25 Pt)
<Detection Magic> [Spellbreaker's Magic Eye] (-15 Pt)
<Recovery Magic> [Suture Heal] (-15 Pt)
<Precept Magic> [Prohibition Command] (-20 Pt)
The list of perks and flaws scrolled up before my eyes.
It was a part I knew by heart without needing to look. But...
The words that floated up after that were a little surprising.
[ Condition met. The additional Perk/Flaw point shop is now open. ]
It meant I could pick more of the perks and flaws I'd used when creating my character.
So if I took on more flaws and earned more points, I could get new perks, right?
With that thought, I opened the flaw list, and...
[ Selectable Flaw List ]
[Pain Hypersensitivity] (+15 Pt)
[Reduced Sleep Efficiency] (+10 Pt)
[Mana Withdrawal] (+15 Pt)
[Drug Addiction] (+30 Pt)
...
..
.
'How the hell am I supposed to pick any of these now that it's real?'
Shaking my head, I shut the window.
I'd played this game so much that I knew quite a few ways to get around the flaws, but that was back when it was a game.
Now that it was real, Starvation Constitution and Muscle Atrophy alone were already more than I could handle.
Besides, there wasn't a perk I urgently needed right now.
'Keep it for now.'
I closed the system window without a shred of regret.
What mattered right now wasn't the system window in front of me, but the customer who was supposed to test what I'd fixed.
Yet this woman, wherever her tearful gratitude had gone, was sitting there in a daze, doing nothing, just staring at the prosthetic hand.
"...Doctor?"
At my casual call, Vivian's shoulders gave a start. When she slowly raised her head, an odd unease and fear wavered in her blue eyes.
"...I'm a little scared."
"Of what?"
"When I found out that what had tormented me for years was a defect in the prosthetic, I honestly felt saved. But..."
Vivian wrapped her hand around the prosthetic's wrist.
"What if it's been fixed perfectly and my tier still doesn't rise? What if the mana leak is gone and I still can't get past this wall... then what do I do?"
I nodded as I listened.
"So that's it. With the excuse gone, you'd have to face your real talent, and that's what scares you?"
"...Yes. That hit a little too close to home."
Arms crossed, I opened my mouth.
"It's not impossible."
"...Right."
"But Doctor, for the past few years you held on in the upper tier while wearing a leaky piece of junk. Several times more mana drained out than for anyone else, your fingertips ached with pain, and you still kept casting. What do you think that means?"
As she listened, Vivian's eyes slowly began to widen.
"You've been running a marathon with a sandbag weighing dozens of kilograms strapped to you. And I just cut that sandbag off."
"Ah..."
"So all that's left is to run. I can't guarantee how far you'll go, but you're lighter now, so you'll definitely get much farther than before."
Seeing the corners of Vivian's eyes start to glisten again, I got flustered.
"Ah... no... Um... I wasn't trying to make you cry again, you know?"
At that, Vivian shook her head.
"No, it's not that. It's just, it's been a long time since I heard something warm. It's the kind of thing you hardly hear in the upper tier. Thank you. It's comforting."
The upper tier... what on earth was that place like?
While I was thinking that, Vivian flexed her wrist and spoke.
"Phew... Then shall we start with the reason I came here in the first place?"
"Hm? What reason?"
"What were you calling me until just now?"
"Doctor... Ah."
Right. She'd originally come on Old Man Gordon's request to check on my condition.
"I use the prosthetic this way when I see patients anyway. With this, I should be able to tell whether any mana is leaking, right?"
"That makes sense. What should I do?"
"Could you sit comfortably and roll up your sleeve for me?"
I sat down comfortably, as she said, and rolled up my sleeve.
Looking almost a little shy, Vivian gently took hold of my wrist.
"...Then I'll begin."
* * *
Vivian looked at the hand held out to her.
Maybe it was the storm of emotions she'd just been through. Taking the hand of the man who had saved her from the curse tormenting her, and comforted her on top of that, felt oddly embarrassing.
'Vivian. Get it together. That man in front of you is a patient right now.'
Steadying herself, she carefully clasped his hand.
Then she drew a deep breath, raised her diagnostic magic, and began examining his body.
Maybe it was because the prosthetic's defect was gone. The mana that flowed out through the diagnostic magic was clearer than anything she'd felt before, and it spread smoothly. The sensation of casting itself felt entirely different from what she was used to.
At that very moment,
"...Ah."
Vivian couldn't help letting out a low groan.
The body of the man before her, as revealed by the diagnostic magic, was in a horrifying state.
His heart, and the vessels connected to it, were riddled with holes and in tatters, mana oozing out of them, and his dantian had been crushed so badly it no longer had any shape.
That wasn't all.
Traces kept turning up one after another, so artificial they were grotesque, far too strange to dismiss as wounds from illness or accident.
'There are traces of a mutation that makes muscle growth fundamentally impossible, and even traces of the body's caloric needs having been forcibly, abnormally inflated.'
To Vivian, a mage-physician, the man's body looked like the very mark of someone deliberately driving a person's life to the extremes of survival.
As if someone had deliberately snapped his wings off completely, for a lifetime ensuring he could never crawl back up and look at the sky of the upper tier again.
'This... this body is so completely broken, and he's still been alive?'
Having seen that far, Vivian found herself examining the traces inside his heart.
'...Four schools of magic.'
Emission, Detection, Recovery, Precept.
Magic of four schools was carved into his heart.
Considering that the heart had been shattered, he must have known magic of even more schools.
Most people only used two or three schools, so this was exceptional.
After confirming that much, Vivian checked the man's hair and eye color.
Deep black hair and deep black eyes, completely unlike her own pale blue hair and blue eyes.
They were the traces of a bloodline from District 1, the very top of Gaon City, from the Big Three Megacorps.
Only then did the pieces fall into place in her head.
'So he's someone who was driven out of the top tier for some reason.'
It happened often enough in the upper tier, too. Those who lost power struggles had their dantian or hearts shattered and were cast down to the lower levels.
'He looks too young to have been driven out by a power struggle of his own, though...'
It seemed more likely that he'd been made to share the blame when his parents lost.
'I was only affected by a broken prosthetic, but this man was driven out of the top tier. And not for his own fault, but for his parents'.'
She couldn't even imagine the despair that must have come with that.
Just thinking about falling from the upper tier to Middletown, Under Sky, was this painful.
Just being unable to raise her tier any further was this painful.
'This man will never be able to raise his tier for the rest of his life.'
Having seen that much, Vivian felt ashamed of the things she'd said to him just a moment ago.
'Over one broken prosthetic, I blamed my talent and despaired as if I'd lost the whole world, and yet...'
The man in front of her had had everything he was born holding unjustly stripped away, and his body had even been butchered so he could never raise his tier.
And still, with a calm face, he had comforted her, telling her she'd shed the sandbag and only had to run.
"...Haah."
Holding the man's bony hand in hers, Vivian bit down hard on her trembling lower lip.
Along with the shame, a sorrow she couldn't bear as a fellow mage welled up inside her.
At that moment, Vivian made up her mind.
To do for this man whatever she could, as much as he had done for her.
"...Doctor? Why the look on your face?"
As the man asked, not understanding, Vivian gathered mana from her heart.
"Please stay still. It'll be a little hot, no, very hot. Please bear with it."
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