WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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

Chapter 31

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Socket 11

The taxi dropped us off in District 7.

"By the way, taking a taxi is fine and all, but does it have to be a Dolores taxi? Isn't there another company?"

That damn robot and its rough driving had me on the verge of puking.

With this wretched body's Starvation Constitution, throwing up once meant having to force down a horrifying heap of high-calorie food to make up for the lost calories.

Eating jelly on the street wasn't an option, so it would have to be the nutrient tubes I'd carried in my pocket, and emergency ration or not, I didn't want to eat a nutrient tube.

"Of course there are. But every time you go up a class, the base fare jumps by several times. Our garage made big money this time, but that won't last forever. We have to save."

...She wasn't wrong.

I nodded at Rita's sharp answer.

I really did pick a good employee.

We'd arrived at a market in District 7 of Ground Zero that dealt in high-tech goods.

"This place is called Socket 11."

According to Rita, the name came from a small cyber gear shop that used to sit beside Drainage Channel 11 in District 7. Mercenaries had casually called it Socket 11, and the name stuck for the whole market.

At a glance from the outside, Socket 11 looked a lot like a junkyard row piled high with scrap metal.

But one step past the iron fence at the entrance, the scenery changed completely. Between containers towering well over head height, shops crammed with every kind of part and cyber gear stretched out like a maze.

A quick look around turned up guards in matching leather jackets, armed, prowling the grounds on patrol. That meant a force with at least a minimum of organization, gang or armed group, ran the place directly.

"Which group runs this place? They look pretty well trained."

"They're Socket 11's private guards. This area doesn't belong to any gang."

"So it's neutral?"

"More or less. A merchant called the Patron hires the guards himself and keeps the peace."

"A merchant?"

Since he was called the Patron, just like Godmother Valeria was called Godmother, I'd figured he was some kind of broker. Turned out he was a merchant.

"Yeah. There's someone called Patron Rayden, basically the representative of Socket 11."

"A representative? Not the owner of the district?"

"Right. A while back, the gangs around here launched a huge invasion trying to swallow the whole market. Patron Rayden is the one who rallied the merchants into one force and held this district. They say he used a monster of a mercenary called 'Nachal' as his right hand and wiped out every gang that came in."

"Oh. I see. He must be pretty well loved?"

"Yeah. A rare kind of person for Ground Zero."

In Fupunkalypse, trading in a place managed by an armed group, even a gang, was far safer than at some half-baked shop.

You might get your prices beaten down or get ripped off, but at least the odds of getting robbed dropped.

And here, a well-loved man ran the market himself, apparently.

To think a place like this existed in Ground Zero.

It was a lot more interesting than I'd expected.

First on my shopping list was a mana furnace for melting metal.

So far I'd managed repairs somehow, through the Heat property of my mana thread or through Suture Heal, but this time a fairly high-grade material, mythril-silver alloy, had come in.

If I tried to melt mythril alloy on the output of my weak heart alone, I'd collapse from mana overflow long before the alloy ever melted.

To build proper equipment worthy of this alloy, a mana furnace was essential.

"The shops that handle equipment and tools... should be over there. This way, boss."

Following Rita's lead, I started heading deeper inside.

"You seem to have been around here a lot. You get around like you know the place."

Rita let out a soft laugh at my question.

"Lots of memories here. I used to come here all the time with Gordon when I was little."

So Old Man Gordon had used this market a lot too.

I couldn't know exactly what past the two of them shared, but turning to look at Rita's face, I could roughly guess.

Her mouth always said "Gordon" this and "Gordon" that, respectful to the letter, but the look in her eyes just now was exactly a granddaughter's, following her grandfather.

Old Man Gordon must have been better to Rita than I'd thought.

That old man, who looked like he had no blood or tears in him, had days like that too.

While I was lost in those thoughts, I managed to buy the mana furnace I'd been looking for, and fast.

"We've already burned through a good chunk of the budget."

Luckily I'd found a decent secondhand dealer and bought it a little cheap, but even so, it had cost about 400,000 credits.

What could I do? It was equipment I'd be using constantly from here on. You had to invest in places like this.

"So... where to next?"

"Somewhere that sells cyber gear or prosthetics."

"Huh? Are you getting a prosthetic installed?"

"No. I'm not getting one installed myself, but... well, it's kind of similar."

The Mana Induction Coat I was wearing and the battery pack I'd made by modifying an electric battery leaked a lot, honestly, and their capacity was far too small.

That was why the mana battery ran dry after just a little work, and why this damn body kept flopping over from a lack of mana.

So I needed a battery that could hold far more mana than this.

What I was after was a prosthetic that held lots of mana and helped regulate output: a heart core drive.

I wasn't looking for something to put in my own heart. Like the spine, the heart was a tricky site for a procedure.

And even if I bought a heart core drive, there was no way for me to perform the procedure on myself.

My plan was to use a kind of workaround and build a mana storage space that could stand in for a heart.

For that, naturally, I needed a heart core drive.

No matter how skilled an engineer I was, building something like a heart core drive from a zero base was hard.

I needed at least something to use as a base.

"Hey, young sir! Looking for something? We've got everything here!"

"Miss! Just take a look at this one! Seriously, you won't lose out!"

The moment we stepped into the alley, the shouts of vendors hawking their wares started grabbing at us from every side.

Since this was a district where mercenaries came and went in droves, cyber gear and prosthetics seemed to be the most profitable business.

I started glancing around, sizing up the situation.

Near the entrance they seemed to sell low-grade goods, mostly scrapped prosthetics, secondhand prosthetics stripped off dead mercenaries, broken weapons and burnt-out circuit boards, and the deeper in you went, the more expensive the goods got, along with megacorp products.

I started moving a little deeper in.

Here and there, hardware too high-end for the surroundings caught my eye. Naturally, the prices on those were far beyond what I could afford.

And if I lowered my standards a notch...

'The quality is terrible for the price.'

I understood that corporate-made goods carry a price, even from a small company, but the price was excessive for the quality.

And that was true even for junk so idiotic it made me wonder if anyone in the world really walked around with it lodged in their heart.

If it was this expensive even here, there was no point going deeper.

I turned back toward the entrance without regret.

Modifying a broken piece pulled out of a mercenary's body would be far more economical, and easier to get decent performance out of.

Rita, who'd followed me around for a long while, asked.

"Boss. What exactly are you trying to find?"

That made me stop in my tracks for a moment.

It had hit me that I hadn't told Rita, who'd been following me this whole time, a single thing.

"I'm trying to make a heart core drive."

"Huh? A heart core drive?"

"Yeah. My heart is wrecked, so mana keeps leaking out. And my dantian is completely shattered, so it can't hold any mana at all. That's why I keep getting mana overflow when I use magic for long."

The cheerful Rita clamped her mouth shut and started staring at me.

"I've been getting by so far by modifying a battery, but I can feel its limits, so first I'm going to try building an external mana drive. I'll keep it outside my body for now, and later, once I've gathered better materials, I'll finish a proper one and fix my heart."

When I said that, Rita, who'd kept her mouth clamped shut, finally opened it.

"How can you say that so casually? Isn't it a hopeless situation?"

"Hm? What do you mean? Oh, the broken heart? What can I do about it? Just because it's hopeless doesn't mean I can sit down and give up. I have to do what I can."

The truth was, I'd built this character with my own hands, so there was nobody to blame. It was my fault for playing the game with such a fringe job.

"...You really are amazing, boss. I learned something again today."

"Thank you. Let's get going."

I scratched my head and let Rita's words go in one ear. The thought struck me that it was probably just flattery, since I was the boss, after all.

A boss shouldn't ride the ups and downs of an employee's flattery.

"...What the hell. Another bust?"

But no matter how long I searched, nothing decent turned up.

When I thought about it, it was only natural.

A high-grade prosthetic like a core drive was never going to be sitting around in a place like this.

At that grade, you could tear one down for parts and still sell it for a lot of money.

'...Guess today's a bust after all.'

Still, I'd gotten the mana furnace. Telling myself that was something, I pushed the box aside and stood up.

"Heading out?"

"Yeah. That's it for today."

Just as I turned to leave, a crude signboard caught my eye.

[Oil & Coil]

No proper neon, just a sign scratched onto a sheet of iron.

I was about to walk past the shop without a second thought, when it happened.

Without meaning to, my eyes went to the man guarding the front of the shop.

Crouched in front of the shop, he was servicing tools with an indifferent expression.

The hands carefully oiling the tools and checking their condition were thorough, almost fussy.

An engineer's skill and character are 90% determined by how they keep their tools.

In that sense, the sight of the man maintaining his tools pleased me a great deal. The better an engineer's fundamentals, the more likely their skill was outstanding.

I stopped, walked over to the man, and asked.

"Are you the owner here?"

"No. I'm the engineer who does equipment maintenance here. The boss is inside, you'll find them if you go in."

That piqued my interest even more.

They had an engineer of this caliber on staff, and the shop was this shabby?

A strange feeling came over me. A feeling that something like fate was waiting inside.

Without hesitating, I pushed open the shop door and stepped in.

Sure enough, I was right. Out of everything I'd passed so far, this was the place with the best-kept stock.

Thinking a place like this might have something decent, I caught sight of one particular item and stopped dead in my tracks.

'What the hell? Why is that thing in a place like this?'

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