I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With - Chapter 27

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 27

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Rex (1)

Among the materials Serena had left behind, there were drugs too.

Load them into the prosthetic procedure table, and it calculated the patient's weight and prosthetic ratio on its own and adjusted the dose. In other words, the engineer didn't have to worry about it.

An ampoule from the storage cabinet went into the table's dosing port with a push.

Clack.

Trickle...

The drug began to flow down the tube fixed into Rex's arm.

"It might feel a little uncomfortable. That's just the drug going in, so don't mind it."

As for the drug, well... this wasn't a big hospital, and the table wasn't the kind of facility that could use an anesthetic for full sleep. It only dulled the feeling around the surgical site a little.

Next, I worked the interface and switched off the spine's pain function. A prosthetic has no real need to feel pain, but without it a person can't tell how far they're pushing their own body, so the function is built in on purpose.

'But still. It's probably going to hurt.'

Limbs can be separated from the torso completely, so they hurt less. The spine frame was different. Once it was operated on, it connected fully to the body's nervous system, so the pain could never be removed entirely.

How did I know? Because in the game, every NPC I did this on screamed their head off.

That was how I was getting ready for the procedure.

"...By the way."

"Yes. Go ahead."

"With all my prosthetics shut off, how am I supposed to raise my hand?"

"Ah. Right. If it hurts, just say so."

Saying that, I pushed a towel between Rex's teeth.

"Mmph? How'm I s'posed to say it hurts wif my mouf stuffed..."

"Quiet, please. We're starting the procedure now."

I'd only said it to put him at ease. It wasn't a procedure I could stop halfway just because it hurt.

At my words, Rex squeezed his eyes shut like a man who'd given up on everything.

Zzzzzing.

When the spine frame's casing opened, my hands stopped without my meaning them to.

'The Main Spine Type 3, made by Baekdu Precision.'

Honestly, it wasn't something I'd handled much.

Even among the game's NPCs, it was rare to see anyone fitted with a low-tier spine.

The only reason I knew this piece was that Flawless All-Metal in the community had used it as the core of their build.

┗'Flawless All-Metal': The Baekdu Precision Main Spine Type 3 is the heart of the all-metal build. Slot this in first, then start.

┗You're telling me to start by slotting a low-tier spine?

┗'Flawless All-Metal': Try it and you'll know. It's made for low tier, but it's not a low-tier piece. It's built really fucking well. This thing.

Back then I'd wondered what that was supposed to mean. Until I tore one open myself on my engineer character.

I looked inside the frame.

'...Yeah, you can smell the master craftsman in the design alone.'

The internal structure was strangely roomy.

Low-tier prosthetics are usually designed to fit their tier exactly. That's how you make them cheap. There's no reason to leave slack in something that will never receive more output.

This one was a little different. The channels the mana passed through were far thicker than the amount Rex pushed through them now.

'They made it to last. Especially since it's the spine.'

Baekdu Precision does its business with low-tier martial artists. When a fighter's tier rises, the body changes, and when the body changes, the prosthetics have to be swapped out.

But this piece had been made with that assumption built in from the start. Fit it at a low tier, or keep going up past mid tier, and it would hold for a good while either way.

The only problem was that the day Rex's tier went up never came.

'...So it's been empty all this time.'

There'd been no mana to fill the generously cut channels. This spine had sat idle for years without using even half of its own performance.

I looked down at that empty space for a moment.

Bite an intake module onto it, and for the first time those channels would be used at their full thickness.

And if he could use mana through the full width of this spine...

'He'd be able to put out power beyond his own tier.'

And maybe, if he got used to power beyond his tier...

'Someday he might break through his limit and climb.'

With my thoughts sorted that far, I let out a heavy sigh at the opened spine.

Modifying the limbs had been easy. Cut away the casing, seat the intake port in its place. Nothing difficult about it.

But the Main Spine Type 3 couldn't be handled that way.

The channels for the mana were laid out so densely that attaching an intake port would cost that much space in losses.

So what do you do? Connect a tube to the intake port and make one more line for the mana to run through.

And how do you insert that? Well...

The plan was to pull it all the way outside and set it in fresh.

In all, eight intake modules had to fit inside his back.

The work ahead was something my mana thread could technically handle, but it was bound to be long, and my pitiful mana pool and my mana battery alone wouldn't carry it.

And truthfully, I didn't have the nerve to do this job with my own hands. Cutting into a person's flesh and putting a machine inside wasn't something I wanted to do myself, not if I could help it. And it wasn't as if there were no alternative.

The one mercy was that the work didn't demand especially delicate handling.

"Phew... Now the real procedure begins. Bear with the pain, please."

I started operating the procedure table.

* * *

As the engineer's voice reached him, Rex closed his eyes.

A low, droning sound that sent chills through him started up from his back.

When the blade first touched him, Rex clenched his teeth at a sensation he hadn't felt in a long time.

'It's been a while since anything like this.'

A blade going into his body, tearing raw flesh, the feeling of being wounded. It really had been a long time.

Once more of his body had become prosthetic than flesh, there was no longer any reason for a blade to touch it.

The engineers willing to operate on his body had all vanished, too.

Feeling the pain of flesh being torn, Rex recalled old days.

* * *

Rex knew well that he was no great man.

He wasn't smart, and he wasn't strong. Nor was there any single talent he could claim.

So instead, Rex learned how to clench his teeth.

When a fight broke out with the neighborhood kids, Rex would take four times the beating and still never give up.

He charged in with a broken nose, charged in with teeth knocked out. Fall down, get up, fall down again, get up again.

Sooner or later the other kid always wore out first, and then Rex could win.

Endure, endure, keep enduring, and someday you win. That was the way of life Rex had learned from childhood.

He'd thought living like that would keep him winning forever...

But then Rex met something he couldn't beat by enduring, for the first time.

At nineteen, was it?

For the first time, Rex fought an opponent he couldn't beat no matter how long he held out.

It was a low-ranking Black Dog member, and these days Rex barely remembered why they'd fought at all.

Though it was only a simple brawl with a low-ranking member, Rex felt a complete wall in that fight.

That day, Rex learned for the first time that some things in this world don't give, no matter how hard you clench your teeth.

He was beaten to a pulp, chewing on the dirt of the ground.

"That's enough. Stop."

With a woman's voice, the foot that had kept stomping on him was lifted away.

What Rex saw when he raised his head was a woman.

A woman with an appearance Rex had never seen once in all his life up to then.

Black hair and black eyes. He'd thought colors like those existed only on a screen.

On top of that, her looks were beyond comparison with the women of the red-light district he'd seen in the alleys... how to put it.

Grace. Yes. It was a grace the women of the red-light district could never imitate, and he felt it for the first time then.

Rex stared up at that face in a daze. He even forgot his mouth was full of blood.

"You're pretty useful. If you follow me now and say you'll work for me for the rest of your life, I'll let this go. What'll it be?"

Rex couldn't answer.

It wasn't that he didn't understand what she'd said. He simply couldn't take his eyes off that face.

The woman tilted her head slightly.

"If you don't want to, fine."

At those words, Rex came to his senses.

"I'll do it."

It was an answer he'd barely managed through a voice gone hoarse from the beating.

The boss heard the reply and turned away without much reaction. No word that he'd chosen well, no question about his name.

He found out later that the boss never remembered that moment at all.

It didn't matter.

From that day on, Rex lived for that person.

* * *

"Guuuuuuuuh..."

'...Holy shit, he's holding out fucking well.'

Honestly, I was a little impressed.

What I was doing right now was cutting into raw flesh and driving machinery into the spot. The anesthetic I'd given him had only dulled the feeling a bit.

And yet this man hadn't wavered in his posture once since a while ago, gritting his teeth and enduring. Now and then I heard the sound of his teeth grinding, but even that was miraculous, really.

It wouldn't have been strange for anyone else to pass out.

'Maybe it's because he's had prosthetics fitted plenty of times before...'

I glanced at the interface.

The fourth module was halfway in. Only half left to go.

"...Almost done. Hang in there a little longer."

* * *

Once in Black Dog, Rex got to confirm all over again how worthless a man he was.

He always felt the wall he'd felt before.

But this world was one where enduring alone wasn't enough.

While the colleagues who'd joined at the same time all climbed higher, only Rex stayed in place.

Even so, he endured somehow. Clench your teeth long enough and you do end up enduring.

He got his first prosthetic when, by some stroke of luck, he pulled off a big mission for the organization.