WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

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

Chapter 021

──────

Where Did a Guy Like This Come From?

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

"...I'll explain shortly, so could you give me a moment?"

Between the heavy concentration and the surprisingly complex work, which had burned through a lot of mana, my head felt foggy.

Something was trying to surge up from far below, and I clamped my mouth shut and held it down. If it all came up now, there'd be no end to it.

That much food earlier had turned out to be real poison.

The mana in my heart, which I hadn't used for anything except Spellbreaker's Magic Eye, was almost scraped to the bottom, and the battery inside my coat was nearly empty too, no need to check.

This is bad. Time to rest for a while.

Only after I'd managed to push the heaving back down could I open my mouth.

"Can you tell me where this piece came from?"

"Where it came from? You want to know? If you learn where it came from, you might end up in danger, you know?"

"Well, then I don't need to hear it. That's fine. Either way, it means you didn't get it through proper channels. Is that right?"

"Yeah. That's right. It's not genuine."

After hearing that much, I nodded.

"First of all, everything you told me, Godmother, was right."

"...What did I say? I don't remember."

"You said the technician who handles your eye would be the best there is when it comes to prosthetic eyes. And that's true. This person is just about top-tier."

Valeria, who'd been wearing a dazed look, abruptly scowled hard at that.

"What are you suddenly talking about? You found something that person never did."

"This gear looks like it belongs to one of the megacorps, maybe even one of the top Big Three. And a very high-end product at that. Ah, you don't need to answer. Knowing is dangerous."

To be exact, it looked like a Geumgang prosthetic eye, one of the Big Three.

Not just a high-end eye. A piece with technology packed in beyond even that.

"Gear like that usually has security devices installed. You know that, right?"

Naturally, anyone who wanted to use stolen or siphoned-off gear had to tamper with those devices and modify them.

Otherwise the gear obviously couldn't be used. Until the head office sent a release code, or unlocked it remotely, the thing stayed completely locked down.

"Of course I know. Selling off that kind of stuff is part of what I do. But the security devices on this one should've all been removed."

"Yes, that's right. That's exactly the part where I praised the technician's skill. Honestly, my skills can't strip the security off something like this that cleanly yet."

That much, at least, was worth admitting.

With my current skill, I couldn't take the security off high-spec, high-end gear like this. Partway through the work the mana would run dry, and I'd be swimming at the bottom of a mana overflow.

And when removing this kind of security, nothing was more dangerous than stopping halfway.

But I knew a future this technician didn't.

In Fupunkalypse's future, before using any gear from the Big Three Megacorps, you almost always had to have an engineer remove its security first.

By then all three megacorps had collapsed, so there was no genuine way to unlock anything.

That was why I'd done an enormous amount of security removal myself.

And once the security was off, there was always one extra task engineers made a point of double-checking.

Finding and neutralizing the traps that only activated when the security was removed.

Corporations had their own traps, set to go off when the security on their prosthetics was released.

And the most vicious of them were certain Geumgang products.

"But this eye had a trap planted in it that wakes up once the security is removed. On the surface the security looks properly stripped, but amazingly this trap only activates a long time after the removal. A trap that slowly, painfully wears the user down and ruins the body. That was what had been eating away at the inside of your head, Godmother."

Urk.

The nausea surged again, and I forced it back down.

My condition was getting worse than before. I must have overdone it more than I'd thought.

"...Then what has our technician been doing all this time? Missing a problem this big?"

"No. That person didn't miss it."

I shook my head.

"When the technician checked right after removing the security, there really would have been nothing. The trap is designed to activate only after you've put the eye in, and even then only once quite some time has passed wearing it. It was made not to be there in any situation a technician could see. Nobody who's never been through this could ever know about it."

* * *

When Valeria first saw him, she'd taken him for a pretty-faced boy, something like a pet kept by Gordon's successor.

Until he spoke to her with that audacity.

'That's a bit of an insolent tone, isn't it?'

Audacious, yes. And a little amusing. Somehow he even overlapped with the young Gordon.

Gordon had been exactly like that. Never cowed in front of anyone, with the stubborn grit to butt heads whenever he believed he was right, even if it meant being a little insolent.

But Valeria had grown far too old now to indulge a young punk's insolence in full.

With a throbbing headache and an unpleasant irritation both spiking, she'd leaned back against the sofa and released a little of her mana.

Yet, astonishingly, with a weak heart and body that didn't even reach the 1st tier, he had endured her power and looked straight back at her.

'...Well, look at that.'

The irritation she'd been feeling melted away.

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

"I hear that a lot."

Cracking a joke in this situation?

Valeria snorted a laugh without meaning to.

"I don't dislike guts."

Fine. For Gordon's sake, she'd test him once.

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

That was how she'd thought of it when she took the matter on.

"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..."

And so that insolent punk had come to handle her eye.

It had started with a notice that he'd be using magic.

'Magic?'

A kid without a single prosthetic of his own had been acting like an engineer, and she'd wondered what he was up to. It turned out he combined 1st-tier spells and used them the way an engineer would.

Valeria wasn't a mage, but she'd seen mages to the point of boredom on her way up to this seat.

So she could tell. How delicate this insolent punk's skill in front of her really was.

There was no waste of mana. As if a single drop lost would be unforgivable, he used only the exact amount the work required.

'...He controls mana this delicately at that age?'

It took some time, perhaps because of that, but astonishingly the punk solved the problem she'd been living with.

It was something even the doctor in charge of her body had never noticed.

The doctor's words, that if anything it was probably stress.

And so Valeria had believed it and lived with it.

That it was the price of carrying this city's nights on her shoulders, a sign that she was getting old.

She had believed it and lived that way, and yet.

Valeria slowly raised a hand and laid it on top of her head.

The sharp sensation that had pounded at her from the inside without end was completely gone.

And the explanation that followed was remarkable too.

That the technician who'd looked after her for ten years hadn't done anything wrong, that it was a problem nobody could know without having been through it.

No. Then did that mean this boy had been through all of it and knew?

Only then did Valeria realize.

Delicacy that didn't fit his age. Experience that didn't fit his age.

Someone had made this kid close to complete, at that young age.

Among the people Valeria knew, only one could do something like that.

Gordon.

Only then did Valeria understand who Gordon had sent.

Not the girl. This punk was the one Gordon had sent.

'Ah. I want him. I want him so badly.'

She knew he was a kid Gordon doted on.

And she liked that about him.

What would Gordon's reaction be if she took a kid like that?

And it wasn't only a matter of her relationship with Gordon.

If she left him alone, he'd probably leave Ground Zero behind, just like Gordon had. She didn't want to let that happen. It would be Ground Zero's loss.

Having thought it through that far, Valeria opened her mouth.

"You. Become my exclusive engineer. I'll give you several times, no, dozens of times what Gordon pays you now."

* * *

There it was. That line.

The moment it left Valeria's mouth, goosebumps swept over my whole body.

It was one of the top three offers that, nine times out of ten, got your character killed if you accepted.

The instant I accepted, Valeria's enemies would become mine, her subordinates would stand a good chance of becoming enemies too, and there was even the possibility that Valeria herself would turn into my biggest enemy down the road.

'How do I get out of this situation?'

I had to get out of here, even if it took every bit of my in-game experience.

That was what I was thinking when it happened.

"I'm sorry, but that won't do, Godmother."

Rita, who'd only been watching until now, suddenly cut in.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, but this person here is the owner of 'Titan Garage.'"

The temperature in the room plunged again in an instant. Roman's body twitched. He seemed to be shifting to a spot from which he could move the moment Valeria gave the order.

"Titan... Right. Just because he took over Gordon's signboard, is there some reason I should worry about Gordon's feelings?"

"Do you really think so?"

Rita didn't back down.

"Gordon trusted you, Godmother, and sent the one who took over his signboard's name here. Even with a token of the promise. Are you saying it's fine to betray that trust?"

Having heard that much, I felt it was time to draw a line here.

If I didn't cut Rita off now, I'd truly end up as the owner of the garage that carried on after Old Man Gordon.

And I truly didn't want to follow Old Man Gordon. However he might think of me, to me Old Man Gordon was still an employer and a landlord, nothing more and nothing less.

"I'm sorry, but I'm not someone who took over Titan Garage. I'm the one who founded it. Using the same name doesn't mean I'm following Old Man Gordon."

"Huh? Boss, what are you saying...?"

Rita was flustered at my words, while Valeria's scowl was smoothing out.

I went on.

"Which is exactly why I can't become your exclusive engineer, Godmother."

"What?"

"My goal is to build my own garage and climb up by my own strength. If you need my skills, I'll take jobs from Old Man Gordon and jobs from you. But I have no intention of being anyone's subordinate or exclusive hire."

Valeria, sitting in front of me, burst into loud laughter.

"Ahahaha! You're a greedy little bastard! Fine. So what you mean is, with your skills you can handle both me and Gordon at once, is that it?"

Huh. That's not exactly what I meant.

But before I could say anything, Valeria, flushed and thrilled, kept going.

"Good! A punk far bolder than that stubborn Gordon has rolled in. All right, I'll give you what you want. I'll treat you as an independent engineer. Roman!"

At Valeria's call, Roman came over and handed me something.

"...This is...?"

A terminal. Something like a smartphone, more or less.

"From now on, I'll pick out commissions I think you'll need and send them through this terminal. My fee is 50%. That's a big concession on my part. You're still an engineer with no name value."

Valeria flashed me a grin and went on.

"But remember this. Standing as an independent signboard, without leaning on my name or Gordon's, means you bear all the responsibility that comes with it. Whatever situation you end up in during a commission, I won't lift a finger to help. No. If you fail, I'll probably hold you to account instead. Satisfied?"

Good. It was about the best result I could have hoped for.

But one problem had come up.

Maybe from burning through too much mana earlier, the edges of my vision were slowly darkening. I wanted to walk out of this room right now and lie down anywhere.

Forcing my mouth open, I answered.

"Yes. Thank you. Of course I'm satisfied."

Then, as if nothing was wrong, I took the terminal from Roman and tucked it inside my coat.

"Then I look forward to working with you from here on. As partners."

* * *

After the two of them had left the room, Valeria spoke to Roman.

"Roman. Look into those two's pasts."

"Yes, understood."

"Especially the boy. Where he's been and how he lived, whatever history he has, all of it. Something will turn up, I'm sure."

Crumpling the cigar she no longer needed to smoke and tossing it into the trash, Valeria went on.

"In my experience, a punk like that always has a hard life."

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried