WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 019

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Valeria (2)

By the time the table had been cleared three times over, I was finally sated and sense came creeping back.

In one corner of the marble table, plates and trays stood stacked in a precarious tower.

"Wow... Boss... Are you really supposed to eat like that?"

"...Good question. Honestly, this is the first time I've ever eaten this much."

"Is there a black hole in your stomach or something...? How is this even possible?"

Every day had been nothing but junk high-calorie preserved food. Proper meals were new to me, too.

So the sheer amount my stomach could hold was a surprise even to me.

...Still, a real meal after so long was motivating. Time to earn a lot of money from here on.

"...Calling for one more round would be rude, right?"

"...Yeah. It was already plenty rude, so cut it out now."

Rita was shaking her head at me in disgust when it happened.

Knock knock.

Someone knocked on the door of our room.

"Yes. Come in."

The door opened, and the person who walked in wasn't the security agent who had guided us here earlier.

A dark navy suit without a speck of dust, neatly groomed hair.

A man whose impression said general manager of this club, or maybe elite secretary, to anyone who looked.

But my eyes had been going over his body since the moment he stepped into the room.

'...This one's no pushover either, it looks like.'

The first thing to catch my eye was the hand showing below his suit sleeve.

The skin covering his wrist and fingers was top-grade synthetic dermis, pores, fine palm lines, even natural body warmth reproduced flawlessly.

'Same as before. They've smudged it so you can't tell what product it is.'

The exterior had been altered to make the prosthetic unidentifiable.

And going by the way the back of the suit bulged out around the waist, an artificial spine frame had been driven into his backbone, too.

If prosthetic arms were the basic equipment anyone in the Fupunkalypse world used, an artificial spine frame was a special prosthetic only high-tier body-arts users touched.

Compared to an arm you could simply cut off and replace, the surgical difficulty and nerve-integration complexity were on another level, so it was naturally ultra-expensive gear. Once installed, getting it out was a job in itself.

'A fairly high-tier body-arts user, then.'

The moment he stepped inside, the man caught sight of the mountain of empty plates stacked on the table, and his eyebrow twitched slightly.

But he composed his expression perfectly in an instant and bowed deeply, ninety degrees at the waist.

"I apologize for keeping the Godmother's honored guests waiting so long. I'm Roman, chief secretary of Club Velvet."

His voice and manner were polite, but a subtle weight sat in the gaze he fixed on us.

"The Godmother is waiting on the top floor. I've been instructed to escort you two personally."

* * *

The penthouse office on the top floor of Club Velvet.

Back to a vast wall of glass where the neon of Ground Zero stretched on without end, Valeria reclined at an angle on the sofa and put a cigar between her lips.

She rolled the rose-engraved lighter once around in her hand, then lit the cigar.

It had started as a painkiller of sorts, something to take the edge off the headaches that kept stabbing at her lately.

'I hated it so much when that stubborn Gordon smoked.'

Fragments of the past rose up in the cigar smoke.

Hsss... Haah...

After decades of being fiddled with, the lighter had picked up far more grime and wear than when Valeria had handed it over.

Carried and used until it ended up like this, and still it never once came back to me.

'He really is a ruthless man.'

She was thinking exactly that when it came.

Knock knock.

A knock at the office door.

"Ms. Valeria. I've brought your guests."

'Strange. It's not like Gordon came back himself, and still my heart's fluttering.'

Expectation she couldn't quite hide flickered in her gaze.

Gordon had finally sent the lighter back. It had to be because he'd found some worthwhile kids, just as he'd said he would.

"Come in."

The door opened, and two people stepped into the office.

But the moment she saw them, her brows twitched into a faint frown.

'...Those are the ones Gordon sent?'

To Valeria's eyes, she who had stood beside Gordon through his prime, these two were nothing but green, callow youngsters.

Then she thought better of it. If a man as fussy as Gordon had sent them with his own name on the line, there had to be a reason hidden in them.

Blowing out cigar smoke, Valeria switched on the prosthetic eyes in both sockets.

The tactical prosthetic eyes implanted in her began moving continuously, surveying the visitors from every angle.

The first to catch her gaze was the orange-haired girl with the bobbed cut who walked in at the front, Rita.

'...What is that?'

Valeria's prosthetic eyes began analyzing the girl.

The choker wrapped around her neck.

A psionic suppressor, unmistakably carrying Gordon's own handiwork, one she could never forget.

'A shackle Gordon made to hold down power she can't handle on her own.'

Valeria had watched the gear that passed through Gordon's hands for years, so the data from her eyes let her see through the mechanism of that control device in one pass.

A refined training mechanism: through the staged control unit at the center of the choker, output opened up gradually from Tier 1, taming the body to adapt to her enormous power.

If one day she could master her power perfectly and the suppressor was released completely...

[Bio-field latent wave measurement: estimated minimum Tier 5 ~ maximum Tier 7]

'A rough gem holding Tier 7 power.'

Reading the precise scan from her eyes, a smile spread at the corners of Valeria's mouth.

'No wonder. Worth sending with that stubborn man's name on the line.'

Next she looked at Rita's expression.

Young as she was, her eyes didn't dim in the slightest even in front of Valeria, who stood at the pinnacle of District 8.

The potential inside her body was beyond imagination, too. A vessel more than worthy of the sign reading Gordon's successor.

Then the focus of her prosthetic eyes shifted to the young man following half a step behind the girl.

Deep creases formed between Valeria's brows.

[Prosthetic Response: 0%]

[Muscle Strength and Body Density: Lowest (Severe Muscle Atrophy and Deficit)]

[Heart Mana Wave: Unstable Residual Wave Below Tier 1]

[Dantian Mana Wave : Unmeasured]

'......What is this?'

The young man's data pouring in through her eyes was dismal beyond words.

A feeble body with no prosthetics of any kind and no mana of any kind. So weak that even a third-rate vagrant from a District 8 back alley could probably strangle him.

The only passable thing about him was a face oddly pretty, like some young master from the upper tiers.

'What's the one behind her? ...Ah, the man she plays around with?'

At that thought, a strange, scoffing laugh slipped from the corner of Valeria's mouth.

Then again, a brat that age carrying the vicious potential of a Tier 7 wouldn't be odd for keeping some pretty-faced guy at her side to play with.

If she was Gordon's successor, she'd have inherited his willful temperament down to the last bit, too.

For someone of that caliber, such indulgence was entirely understandable.

Twinge-

The headache clamped down on her head again.

Maybe it was the stress lately, but the headaches kept coming.

Hsss- Haah.

Blowing out a long stream of smoke, Valeria sank deep into the sofa and spoke to Rita.

"When I heard that ruthless man Gordon had sent someone, I was curious what kind of kid would show up... He's picked up a decent-looking brat and raised her as his heir. So, you're the one who brought my lighter?"

* * *

Roman led us to an enormous, gorgeous office.

"......Godmother. I've brought them."

Roman bowed ninety degrees at the waist and stepped back.

'Wow. I think I've only seen an office like this in the movies.'

Beyond the glass wall that filled one side of the room, dazzling neon lights spread out into the distance.

And with her back to that window, a woman sat on the sofa, legs crossed, reclining at an angle.

One glance at her face was enough to tell she had prosthetic eyes and a cyberbrain device embedded in her head.

And the faint mana circuits showing along her nape and collarbone made it plain that countless prosthetics lay beneath her neck as well.

An overwhelming aura of the strong, felt from a single glance.

'So that's her. The bigshot broker who runs half of Ground Zero's night, Godmother Valeria.'

The menacing presence lived up to the reputation.

Facing a lioness in person had to feel something like this.

A chilling pressure, the feeling that she could finish me off in a heartbeat with a single finger.

When I met the eyes flashing through the cigar smoke, it felt like my heart stopped.

'...I can't even breathe.'

An endless alarm seemed to ring in my head. Run, right now.

But Valeria's gaze brushed past me and stayed fixed on Rita's face for a long while.

That was when I noticed Valeria's prosthetic eyes were active.

'...Huh?'

I watched the movement of her prosthetic eyes for a long time. Something about them felt wrong.

'But... honestly, I'm not sure.'

My magitech build wasn't complete enough yet to be certain. If we'd met after a little more growth, I could have been confident.

Right now, it was almost upsetting that my abilities hadn't grown as far as I wanted.

"When I heard that ruthless man Gordon had sent someone, I was curious what kind of kid would show up...... He's picked up a decent-looking brat and raised her as his heir. So, you're the one who brought my lighter?"

But the pained look on Valeria's face as she said it left me no choice but to speak.

"Godmother."

"...Hm?"

At my voice, Valeria's red eyebrows rose in displeasure.

Her murderous gaze shifted to me, sending a chill racing over my whole body, but it was too late to take it back now.

Meeting her eyes without flinching, I spoke, feigning calm as best I could.

"Haven't you been getting headaches lately?"

"...What?"

At the unexpected question, the corners of Valeria's mouth stiffened.

"I think that's because the prosthetic in your right eye is broken."

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