WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 020

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Anti-Tamper Trap

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

The room went dead silent at the words.

Valeria was still glaring at me, furious.

For now, I clenched my teeth and took that stare head-on.

Psionics? Or magic?

I couldn't tell which, but something like an invisible pressure was bearing down on my shoulders.

Seol Gye-hyeon's weak, spindly limbs trembled, but my eyes never wavered.

How long did it go on?

The anger that had seemed to sit in Valeria's brows smoothed away.

"You. You've got more spine than I first thought, huh?"

I pried open my barely cooperating jaw and answered.

"I hear that a lot."

Valeria snorted a laugh.

"And you're pretty brazen, too. Not bad."

With a light flick of her finger, the pressure bearing down on my whole body scattered in an instant.

Only then could I breathe again, cold sweat trickling down my back in streams.

"I don't hate guts."

She blew a puff of cigar smoke into the air.

"But I'm not so fond of someone who has nothing but guts."

As the smoke slowly thinned, Valeria's gaze landed on me again.

"The technician who looks after this eye is one of the few people in all of Ground Zero who really knows prosthetic eyes. Signed an exclusive contract with me, and they've handled my eye for almost ten years now."

Huh. I'd seen this pattern somewhere.

The silver-haired woman who'd shoved a gun muzzle in my face a few days ago came to mind.

She'd been exactly like this, too.

While I was thinking that, Valeria slowly opened her mouth again.

"And yet you just told me you saw in three minutes what that technician couldn't see in ten years."

She set down the cigar she'd been holding in her mouth and leaned toward me.

"Can you take responsibility for what you said?"

The woman back then had said she'd kill me if I couldn't prove it.

And now Valeria was asking whether I could take responsibility.

But compared to Silver Thorn, the woman with the Cheonroe prosthetic arm, Valeria's words felt dozens of times heavier.

I opened my mouth for the moment.

"Of course I can."

Steadying my breath once to push through the pressure, I went on.

"But for an accurate diagnosis and treatment, I'd need to come close to you and check the gear directly, with my own hands, while you're still wearing it. Is that all right?"

"Godmother. Direct contact from an outsider is against regulations..."

The instant I finished speaking, I felt Roman, who'd been watching from behind me, shift with a soft rustle toward me.

Valeria raised a hand and stopped him.

"Roman."

"...Yes, Godmother."

"It's fine. Step aside."

Roman didn't move, even at Valeria's words.

Valeria tapped her own eye and said,

"It's really fine. Don't worry. Trust my judgment. And... a punk at this level can't hurt me. You know that too."

With her saying that much, Roman bowed his head and took one step back.

"Come and put your hands on it. But if you can't take responsibility for what you said, or if anything happens to my eye, or my body..."

Valeria ground the cigar out in the ashtray.

"Then whatever you and that girl are to Gordon, don't expect to walk out of this room alive."

Anger was gathered in Valeria's eyes as she said it.

Only then did my thoughts reach Rita beside me. I'd been so absorbed in the situation that I'd just now realized I had company.

Sorry for dragging her into this, I stole a glance at her condition.

But the face of Rita, who I'd assumed would be at least a little scared, was calmer than I'd imagined.

No, if anything, she looked like she was watching the whole situation with fascination.

In the eyes she turned on me, there was an inscrutable liveliness and mischief.

'Is she a lot more fearless than I thought?'

My hands and feet were shaking so hard I could die, so how could she look at me with an expression like that?

With that thought, I slowly approached Valeria.

"...Is it all right if I put my hands on you now?"

"...Fine."

With her permission, I slowly sat down on the sofa right beside her.

Up close, the sharp scent of the cigar she'd been smoking drifted over.

From a distance she'd looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, but sitting face to face like this, she seemed far older than that.

Maybe around Old Man Gordon's age?

The difference from Old Man Gordon was that she seemed to have spent quite a bit of money on skin care, or anti-aging treatments of some kind.

"Haah..."

Letting out one sigh to loosen the tension, I slowly raised a hand and brought it to Valeria's eye.

"I'm going to use magic. It's not an attack spell at all, so please relax."

"Hmm..."

The tension in the room shot up enormously at my words.

'What would have happened if I'd just done it without saying anything?'

Probably something I didn't want to imagine.

Drawing mana up from the battery, I pulled out a mana thread and pushed it inside the prosthetic eye.

At the same time, I focused mana into my own eyes.

[Spellbreaker's Magic Eye]

The prosthetic eye's inner structure unfolded sharply before me.

'Figures. This one's stolen goods too.'

The guards' gear I'd passed on the way up here came to mind. Every piece had been modified past any recognizable original form.

The eye was no different.

But since this was a fairly expensive, high-end piece, one part of its interior had been altered on top of the exterior modifications.

'A security device.'

Megacorp products, especially expensive high-end ones, come with security devices.

Devices installed to keep anyone from stealing or siphoning off the gear.

And right next to it.

'I knew it was there.'

Right beside the traces where the security device had been removed, a small chip that looked perfectly harmless at first glance was embedded in the mana circuit.

But I knew what it was.

I'd seen plenty of them while playing Fupunkalypse.

A trap device built to activate once a product's security was disabled, in other words, a kind of copy-protection device.

A trap corporations set to trigger when a prosthetic's security is released.

Naturally, the traps differed by company and by product.

Some companies were content to simply wreck the item so it couldn't be used, while others planted crude traps that blew the item up.

And this looked like one of those trap devices.

Carefully, I moved the mana thread over to it.

I couldn't rip this out by force right now. The moment I tried, a new, hidden security device would kick in.

There was no telling what would happen to the eye then. With luck, it would end with the eye just getting wrecked, but it might just as well explode.

And if the eye exploded while I was touching it and Valeria got hurt...

'I'd die right here.'

Removing it would take extremely careful, precise work.

"...The prosthetic eye might stop working for a moment. Please don't be alarmed."

With that warning, I slowly began wrapping mana thread around that part.

The thing to watch was that I couldn't cut off all the mana entirely. If no mana flowed through this part at all, the expensive eye would be ruined.

...Maybe just wrecking the faulty eye would be enough to prove I was right.

But my pride as an engineer wouldn't allow me to make a piece of gear this good completely unusable.

Slowly, in fine detail, I shaped mana thread around the area I wanted to tear out.

Then I used [Prohibition Command].

'I declare it. Mana is forbidden passage across the boundary of this gap.'

The Prohibition Command took effect and rerouted the path of the mana.

The eye stopped working for a moment, but mana kept flowing in around the trap. At that point the trap judged that the user had removed the eye and paused its work.

For only a tiny stretch of time. After that, it would switch to its removed-eye mode and the trap would activate again.

In other words, the very gap while the mode was changing was the opportune moment to remove this trap.

I tore the trap out at once and carved a new path into the spot where it had been, one mana could flow through.

And then, when I released the Prohibition Command...

There. Done.

* * *

Hsss-

The sharp sensation that had been ceaselessly hammering the inside of Valeria's temples vanished in an instant.

'...Huh?'

It was an uncannily unfamiliar feeling.

Like everything in the world had stopped and only she could still move.

So peaceful it felt like falling into an eternal sleep.

For the past several years, headaches had been as natural a part of Valeria's days as breathing.

She'd put it down to the pressure of ruling the night of this enormous district, then to the signs of aging that came with getting older.

So to endure the pain, she'd forced herself to manage it with medicine, cigars, liquor and the like.

But now... it was far too quiet.

Everything in the world.

Whatever had been prodding at her head for years, no, it felt as though her entire skull had come off and dropped somewhere far away.

Valeria couldn't help opening her mouth.

"What did you just do inside my head?"

* * *

I withdrew the mana thread and took my hand from Valeria's face.

"Haah... It's done."

But no answer came back from Valeria. She just sat slumped back, staring blankly into the air with empty eyes.

Seeing that, I panicked badly.

Huh? Wh... what? I didn't do anything wrong? I think I did it well? Where did it go wrong? What do I do? Are Rita and I going to die here now?

"...Ms... Ms. Valeria? You bastard!!! What the hell did you do?!"

Seeing that, Roman had been about to rush over to me in shock when it happened.

"Don't come over. Roman. I'm fine."

Valeria, who'd been gripping her head for a moment with those empty eyes, turned to me and asked.

"You. What did you just do inside my head?"

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