WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 43
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Nothing's Free in This World
"Oh, right. You don't even need a promise. Honestly, I'd be happy if you came back with it broken again. I'd just fix it again."
Baek So-ha snorted at my words.
"So you would collect a repair fee once more?"
"Is there anything free in this world?"
That made Baek So-ha frown.
"Exactly. As if anything in this world were free... Even if you borrow Geumgang's strength to win the chairman's seat, it still wouldn't be wholly your own."
Without saying more, Baek So-ha pulled the white cloth that had been covering her body toward her. She draped it over her shoulders and knotted it tight at her chest.
I turned my head away, just a little.
I'd lost more than a few game characters' heads by gawking at this sort of thing.
"You may look now."
At Baek So-ha's words I turned back, and the cloth that had been a blanket a moment ago had become a fine set of clothes.
What the hell. Do megacorp heirs learn this kind of thing too? How to make clothes out of a blanket, in case yours go missing?
While I was busy with that idiotic thought...
Step.
Baek So-ha's foot touched the floor.
Holding my breath without meaning to, I swept my gaze down her leg through the safety goggles. Thigh joint, knee, ankle.
No problems at all. It was moving exactly the way I'd intended.
Then Baek So-ha's foot split the air.
Whoosh.
The arc of her leg drew a half circle through the air and left a snow-white afterimage.
Boom!
The leg hadn't struck anything. It had only cut through empty air, yet the air compressed and burst, and the shock of it rang through the room. The dust that had settled on the floor was shoved by the wind pressure and scattered toward the walls all at once.
Before I knew it, I'd lost myself watching that movement.
Somewhere inside a kick that was enormously dangerous and powerful, I'd felt a beauty I couldn't name.
The overwhelming strength of a tier 6 martial artist, one step short of the high tier, joined with the finest technology a top-level megacorp could produce. The real thing, a properly set-up body arts build like the ones I'd seen in the game, was alive and breathing in front of me.
How many years had gone into that single kick?
As a gamer who'd loved Fupunkalypse, I felt a thrill run down my spine.
Baek So-ha slowly drew her leg back. The hem of the white cloth settled a beat late.
"...Not bad. You managed to fix this much in such a short time."
With that, Baek So-ha nodded at me.
"I will be sure to repay you for saving me."
Baek So-ha turned toward the door.
"So, Seol Gye-hyeon, you stay here."
"Yes. I wasn't planning to go out anyway."
Baek So-ha looked back at me, dumbfounded.
"I don't know how to fight, so I should just stay put. If I went out, I'd only get in the way."
"No. That is not... Usually in a case like this... Should you not say something like, 'Understood, Miss. I will wait here for you to return, Miss'?"
"I don't think I'd say that, to be honest?"
"Try it anyway."
"Huh?"
"Quickly."
Ha. Humoring a rich family's young lady is hard work.
"Understood, Miss. I will wait here for you to return."
Baek So-ha looked at me for a moment.
"...Yes. It has been a very long time since anyone told me they would wait for me."
Then Baek So-ha took hold of the door handle.
Click.
The moment the door opened, something that had been leaning against it toppled inward.
It was Rita.
My arms shot out on reflex. I did catch her, but this body, which had no muscle to speak of, was never going to properly catch Rita falling that suddenly.
Thud.
I landed on my backside with Rita in my arms.
Crackle.
My fingertips tingled where they touched her. Under her skin, blue light had spread along the veins.
"...Ugh, Boss...?"
The amber eyes looking up at me had pupils as thin and vertical as blades.
I'd never seen that before.
Baek So-ha looked down at the two of us for a moment.
"You have something to do while you wait. Look after your assistant."
Leaving only that, Baek So-ha stepped over us and walked out the door.
Through the open doorway I saw thick dust. And standing in it, the silhouette of a strange man.
Thud.
The heavy door closed again.
* * *
The Blackhorn Captain, Yun Ka-in, looked down at the girl blocking the door.
She'd seemed to be a psionic of around tier 4, but the moment this girl touched the device at her throat, Ka-in felt a sudden pressure.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Tier 4. Until a moment ago, she'd certainly been about that. But now that those fingertips had touched the device, a dread had begun to well up that there might be something more beyond it.
Something he couldn't handle.
So without meaning to, he put everything he had into one kick and sent the girl flying.
Her body hit the door, then slid down it.
Wham!
Thud!
The hand resting on the device dropped limply. Only then did the presence he'd felt from the girl subside, as if it had never been there.
Ka-in looked down at his own foot. The foot had moved before he'd even thought.
He'd been afraid. The Blackhorn Captain of Baekdu Precision, afraid of a mere psionic.
In the gap while he was caught in that thought, the eldest young lady's bodyguards lunged at him.
"Blackhorn Captain!!!!"
Both of them were children he had trained himself and placed with the eldest young lady. He'd never imagined he would become her enemy, and he'd given her the strongest of them...
They were children he had raised.
He knew every weakness they had and every habit. That was why the fight was one-sided.
"Why...! Why, Captain, are you on the Vice Chairman's side...!"
Ka-in didn't answer his pupils' question.
In a handful of exchanges, the two of them were rolling on the floor. Ka-in stomped on the fallen pair's prosthetic arms and legs one after another, crushing them.
"Ghh."
"Aaaagh!"
"Lie there for a while. When this is over, everything will be settled and peace will come. I will not abandon you."
"Hypocrite!!"
Ka-in stopped in his tracks for a moment at that.
"You are a hypocrite, Yun Ka-in!!"
"...Perhaps I am."
Ka-in began walking again, toward the very door the people here had struggled so desperately to protect.
Most likely, the eldest young lady was inside.
The Vice Chairman's order had been clear. Alive or dead, bring her before his eyes.
Ka-in raised his foot to break the door down, and at that very moment...
The door opened.
The girl who'd been leaning against it tumbled inward. A gaunt man caught her and collapsed to the floor along with her.
And stepping over the two of them, the eldest young lady walked out.
'... The prosthetics have been repaired to perfect condition.'
He had confirmed that her spine and legs were completely shattered in the last battle. Yet in the meantime, by some means, they'd been restored to perfect condition.
'Something that seems impossible even with high-tier magic...'
It had been barely a day since she'd fled with her prosthetics completely destroyed. And yet, astonishingly, the eldest young lady had found a way to restore them to perfect condition in that time.
'As expected of the eldest young lady. Remarkable... To know an engineer of that caliber, even in a low tier like that.'
Truly worthy of Baekdu's heir.
In the same moment, Baek So-ha's eyes swept over the fallen bodyguards and came to rest on Ka-in.
"...Eldest Young Lady."
"Did my uncle send you?"
"Yes."
"Hm. I see. Blackhorn."
Baek So-ha's eyes slowly traced Ka-in's face. Black hair, black eyes, and mixed in between them, a foreign cast to the features.
"From the very beginning, I disliked a mongrel like you sitting in the captain's seat."
It was a familiar remark. One he'd heard all his life at Baekdu.
No further conversation was needed.
Ka-in slowly lowered his stance.
She was a young lady who had trained since early childhood, eating elixirs and cultivation pills like daily meals. On top of that, she'd been born with a natural gift for the martial arts.
If they fought fairly, in all likelihood, Ka-in would lose.
But...
Ka-in rubbed the button in his pocket.
The button the Vice Chairman had handed him, the one that could activate the trap.
If he pressed it at the decisive moment, he could bring her down perfectly once more.
Even more so now, when the bodyguards who might have helped her lay there with their prosthetics smashed.
With his thumb hooked on the button in his pocket, Ka-in kicked off the floor.
Ka-in's black prosthetic leg drove into Baek So-ha's flank.
Baek So-ha raised her own leg too and took it on her shin.
Boom!
'She's shaking.'
The repair wasn't perfect. Naturally so, since only a single day had passed between her defeat and flight and the completion of the repairs.
The repair state couldn't possibly be perfect.
A stroke of luck.
Thinking so, Ka-in began to press the attack.
He went after the leg whose repair seemed incomplete, again and again.
Boom! Crash! Boom!
Two kicks, three, four. While she took the whole downpour on one leg, Baek So-ha's other foot, planted on the floor, didn't shift by an inch.
'I thought the repair... wasn't perfect...'
Though it kept shaking, it never gave way. She must have known an engineer of a far higher level than he'd expected.
Ka-in's attack had failed to break through Baek So-ha's guard, and in the instant a small opening, a very small one, appeared...
That leg that hadn't moved at all swung once.
Boom!
A shock hit his crossed arms as if a lump of iron had fallen on them. Ka-in's body was driven backward. His heels, holding on, scraped the floor and left two long marks.
His arms went numb. Even though he'd blocked it.
And Baek So-ha was already rushing at him again, swinging her leg.
This time Ka-in had no choice but to back away, practically rolling.
Fighting head-on was impossible. In talent and in the quality of prosthetics, she was overwhelmingly the stronger.
Then there was no other way.
Seeing Baek So-ha about to attack once more, Ka-in deliberately opened a small gap in his guard.
In that instant, Baek So-ha vanished.
Boom! Boom!
Explosions went off in succession on the walls to either side. Wherever her feet had touched, the wall was dented inward.
Baek So-ha, flying at him at blinding speed.
It was the preparatory stance for Cheonji-gak.
This was the moment.
Click.
Ka-in pressed the button and waited. For that one beat when her body would lock up in midair.
But Baek So-ha's body never locked up.
Baek So-ha's leg shot straight up.
In that instant, the air of the entire hallway turned heavy.
A pressure like a whole building coming down on his head began to crush Ka-in's shoulders. And the leg hadn't even fallen yet.
His knees buckled on their own. The floor beneath his feet couldn't bear it and sank into a round hollow.
Pop, pop...
The lights overhead couldn't hold out and burst, one after another.
He had to dodge. But the body already on its knees wouldn't move.
Click. Click.
Inside his pocket, only the button was pressed, uselessly.
Like a snowy mountain collapsing whole, the snow-white hem of cloth came down.
Why...?
"Whyyyyyyy!"
Crack!
Boom!
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