I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With - Chapter 28

WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 28

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Rex (2)

Even when the fifth module went in, Rex hadn't screamed once.

'...The big shots I saw in Fupunkalypse screamed like crazy during a procedure this size, and they even made a scene out of it...'

Zzzzzing.

Every time the blade bit into raw flesh and metal scraped past bone, I could feel the muscles in Rex's back twitch grotesquely.

It wasn't a difficult job from an engineer's standpoint. What mattered was how much the patient could take.

The astonishing part was that the longer it went on, the less sound Rex made.

If anything, he'd opened the eyes he'd had shut, and he held his face upright, staring at the wall.

As if there were really something on the other side of it.

The towel in his mouth had been dyed red long ago.

And still this man didn't let out so much as a groan. His eyes bloodshot, he stubbornly endured all of it.

"...Almost done. Just a little more, hang in there."

* * *

After he got his left arm, Rex's life became simpler.

No talent meant you could just buy it. Once he'd grasped that plain truth, there was nothing left to hesitate over.

Complete a mission and the money came in, and when the money came in, he bought a new prosthetic to put in his body.

"...You're swapping prosthetics too often. I know they're good ones, but if you keep changing them like this, it's bad for you. Your brain gets confused."

"Shut up. Just do as you're told."

At some point his regular technician had started trying to talk him out of it. He didn't care. Whatever else happened, as long as he endured the pain of flesh being cut, he could keep getting stronger.

By the time he'd swapped out his right arm and both legs, Rex had finally earned the seat next to the boss.

Ah. That joy.

The joy of leaping over the wall of his birth just by enduring the pain of flesh being cut.

The days that followed felt like a dream.

The boss entrusting him with her back. Her hearing Rex out to the end in meetings. All of it was good.

Above all.

"Rex."

The boss remembered his name and called it.

That alone felt like it could carry him through ten more years.

But only after he'd come to stand right beside the boss did he realize some cruel truths.

Everyone who'd made executive was a freak outside any standard, born with innate talent. Among them, he was nothing but a lump of scrap, the weakest and most alien of them all.

And the boss saw him as a curiosity, a strange guy who got stronger by swapping prosthetics.

He was a clown who was barely hanging on at her side thanks to the boss's amusement. The day he realized it, Rex went back to the garage.

Before the boss's interest cooled and he was thrown away, he had to get stronger.

Eyes, ears, chest and belly. With a body steadily losing its human shape, Rex did manage, in the end, to hold his own among the monsters.

But he couldn't climb any higher than that.

He was someone who could stand beside the boss only because of her amusement. If he stopped, he'd be discarded. So Rex made his decision. He believed it was the last road that could bring him one step closer to the boss's side.

So the last thing he fitted was a spine.

Because he believed it was the last road he had left to climb.

"Rex... I'll do pretty much anything for money, but this one's a hard no. You can't put in any more than this."

The technician started explaining again to Rex, who clenched his teeth in stubborn silence and gave no answer.

"The spine especially, once it's driven in, it's hard to pull out. Maybe impossible. Buying this is you yourself..."

"Admitting this is where it ends, you mean."

This time the technician couldn't say anything.

"I know. Put it in."

That day, Rex paid for his future.

And after that, Rex never got any stronger.

Yeah. He'd thought he'd never get stronger again...

* * *

"...All done. It's truly over now. Your pain sense will come back soon, and the anesthetic will wear off, so try moving."

The engineer's tired voice drilled into his ears.

Even to the one going through it, it had been an enormously long time, so it must have been enormously hard on the one performing the procedure.

Only then did Rex ease the strain in his jaw. The towel he'd been biting dropped to the floor with a thump. It was soaked in blood from how hard he'd bitten. He wondered whether he might've broken a tooth.

Feeling was gradually coming back to the prosthetics that had been switched off.

'...Light?'

The first thing he felt was that his body was enormously light.

His vision was clear, and his hearing seemed far sharper.

He was still marveling at the sensation when the engineer spoke.

"Your whole body will probably feel a bit light. Oh, and your eyes and ears may be much better too. That's because your prosthetics weren't getting enough mana, so they couldn't perform properly until now, and they've just started to. So please be careful when you get up..."

Before the engineer finished, Rex had sat up and banged his head on the ceiling with a thud. He'd only meant to raise his body, but it had shot up as if bouncing off something, without his meaning it to.

"Too late, I see. Does it hurt?"

"Hm. My body's sturdy enough."

"Customer, come down first and try walking. I need to check your leg balance. Oh, and walk very gently. Do it wrong and you'll go flying again like just now."

At that, Rex placed his foot down with real care.

It was strange. Was this how he used to walk around originally?

Only then did Rex realize how heavy the prosthetics he'd hung on his own body had been.

And now that those heavy prosthetics felt this light, he could also realize just how much stronger he'd become.

The moment he felt it, he couldn't hold back any longer and burst into hearty laughter.

"Ahahahahahaha!"

* * *

'...Why's he laughing?'

I was rattled, watching the customer suddenly burst out laughing in the middle of the garage.

A man who'd spent hours bleeding out while his back was torn open, laughing like this all of a sudden, was bound to scare me...

"...Um, sir. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Rex answered that way, and kept laughing anyway.

What is this guy? If he goes crazy like this, how am I supposed to collect the repair fee?

That was what I was thinking.

Maybe the laughter had carried, because a crash came from upstairs, followed by the sound of someone running down the stairs.

"B-Big Bro? Big Bro!!!"

It was that gang member from earlier. Rita followed behind him down the stairs, looking a little worn out.

I nodded to Rita.

"Good work."

"Hearing that from you, boss, really does give me strength."

The gang member saw Rex standing there unharmed in the middle of the garage and froze on the spot.

"...Big Bro. You're... standing? Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Thanks to this remarkable engineer. No, he's gone past remarkable. A monster of an engineer."

Rex pointed at me as he said it.

Then tears suddenly began streaming from the gang member's eyes.

"...Sob."

Uh. Wait.

A man bawling his eyes out with an overwhelming look on his face and crawling toward me was a pretty terrifying situation.

"Engineer!!! No!! Big Bro!!!"

The guy dropped to his knees right there on the floor.

"From today on, I'm taking you as my big bro!!"

"Excuse me?"

"I'm blind, I didn't recognize you! What I did, rudely, when I first met you! I'll pay that back my whole life! With everything I've got, my life included!"

"No, uh. You don't have to do that."

"Big Bro!!"

"I'm telling you, you don't have to."

"No, you deserve that kind of treatment. I've been through plenty of engineers, and not a single one of them could actually fix me. If it weren't for you, I'd have died today."

'...Oh. Is this the moment?'

The second I heard that, I straightened up.

When someone's soaked in gratitude and relief, that's when you bring up payment, so you get the full price with no pointless haggling.

On top of that, this customer's conditions were excellent. I'd saved him from nearly dying, he'd said so himself, and he'd said it in front of his subordinate.

There would be no better timing than this.

Putting on a deliberately calm face, I held out my hand.

"If you're grateful, don't just say it. Pay the labor fee."

"..."

"You've been through it yourself, so you understand how hard that job was, don't you?"

Sure, it had taken some time, but I'd done most of the work through the prosthetic procedure table, so my body wasn't all that tired.

But at a time like this, saying it was easy brings the unit price of the labor fee down. I had to puff it up and insist I'd gone through hell.

"Ahahahahaha!"

At my words, Rex burst out laughing again, then went on.

"Yeah. You're right. If I'm grateful, I shouldn't just say it, I should obviously repay you. That's only proper."

With that, Rex picked up the coat he'd left beside him. He rummaged through the inner pocket and pulled something out, holding it toward me.

"Sorry about this. I was in the middle of a fight, so I'm not carrying much. Would you take this for now? I'll definitely come back and repay you properly."

Seriously, between that Mantis Crew executive and this one, I guess "I'll pay you later, so sue me" is the average with these violent organizations.

Thinking that, I inwardly sighed and took the object.

A palm-sized lump of metal.

Huh? Wait, don't tell me.

"Sir... is this a mythril alloy?"

"Yeah. A mythril-silver alloy. I got it back when I was trying to modify the prosthetics on my body somehow and boost their performance. Thanks to you I don't need it anymore, so it's yours."

Hearing that answer, I looked down again at the lump in my hand.

In Ground Zero, something like this couldn't be bought even with money. A top-grade material you could only get through connections.

The moment I took the lump, I bent at the waist to a nearly ninety-degree bow.

"Thank you, valued customer! If anything goes wrong again, please come to our garage anytime!"

"Hahaha! Of course! I'll be dropping by often from now on. Take care of my prosthetics every time."

Hearing that, I couldn't help being moved.

I'd practically landed a regular maintenance customer for our garage.

"Absolutely! I look forward to working with you!"

"Hahahahaha!"

After a short while, it was time for them to leave.

At the garage door, Rex turned back to me and spoke.

"Engineer. Just wondering."

What now.

A man who looked like a robot sheathed in iron armor was hesitating over his words, and it made me a little uneasy. What on earth was he about to say...

"Could I get stronger than this, even from here?"

Hearing that, I snorted with a smile.

Flawless All-Metal from the Fupunkalypse community had once hit the peak with that very character.

Because of a world-destroying contamination, they'd ended up as the world's main enemy and fought for days before the character got deleted, but as far as I remembered, no one had broken Flawless All-Metal's record for a good while.

"Of course. I knew someone just like you. They hit the peak once, too."

"...I see. If it's an engineer of your caliber saying it, it must be true."

With that, Rex snapped up a hand and pointed at himself.

"I'll come back later. And that time, I'll pay a proper labor fee."

"Of course. Please come back alive and in good health."

The garage door closed.

* * *

Valeria stood at the window, looking down at the night of District 8.

That kid still hadn't left her head.

An odd engineer who'd made her feel, somehow, like she was looking at a young Gordon.

Where on earth had that brat rolled in from?

She was in the middle of that thought.