WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
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◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 44
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Natural Disaster
With Baek So-ha gone from the room, only Rita and I were left inside.
"Zino's here too."
From my chest, as if reading my mind, Zino cut in.
"Oh. Right. Zino too."
I looked down at Rita in my arms.
Her hair was rising slowly, heavy with static. Under her skin, blue light had spread along the veins, and a faint pulse beat with every breath. Electricity leaking from all over her body spat tiny sparks, snap, snap.
And her eyes. The amber irises had narrowed into vertical slits, sharp as blades.
Sensing my gaze, Rita covered her eyes with the back of her hand.
"...Don't look, Boss. My eyes are weird right now."
She was trying to wave it off lightly, as a joke. But the fingertips over her eyes were trembling a little.
'Oh. I see... Mutation must be something embarrassing for Rita.'
In this world, psionic powers are a product of pollution.
It started with the poor of Under Sky and Ground Zero. Mutants were born among people who lived breathing chemical smog and toxic mana waste, and that blood was passed down through the generations.
Then, among those mutants, psionics began to appear. A new kind of power nobody had ever seen.
Naturally, the megacorps weren't about to leave that alone. They ground up tens of thousands of lower-class people to build their clinical data, and in the end they perfected the gene mutation procedure.
Thanks to that, these days anyone with money could become a psionic cleanly, with no outward mutation and no nerve damage.
So for a body to show mutation like that meant...
'Of course. Rita was a natural awakener.'
In the game, mutation wasn't much of a penalty. Mutant was one of the races you could pick, and even if some NPCs disliked characters with mutant traits, to the player it was only a very slight inconvenience.
But for Rita, living in this world, the mutation, and the very fact of being a natural awakener, could be a wound and a source of pain.
The day we met, I'd thought she was a breezy person who wasn't the least bit ashamed of her own flaw.
I'd been wrong. She'd just been used to acting like she wasn't ashamed.
"...Weird? It's pretty, though."
Rita peeked at me between her fingers. The face showing through them had gone bright red.
"...Boss, you can say stuff like that?"
"I could always say it. I just never had anything to say it for."
Rita covered her face with both hands entirely.
"...Ow."
That was when I noticed them. The two arms covering her face.
Her forearms were swollen, stained a dark red.
I pulled my safety goggles down.
Through the Spellbreaker's Magic Eye, I could see hairline cracks in the bones of both forearms. One in her ribs too.
It was the first time I'd seen Rita hurt.
I couldn't say why, but in that moment, I got angry.
An anger with no place to go, aimed at no one I could name.
"Let me look at your arms."
I carefully pulled down the arms covering her face. The amber eyes, narrowed to vertical slits, were fully exposed.
Rita flinched, but I didn't look away from them.
Crackle!
Electricity jumped through the fingertips holding her. It wasn't a mere tingle. It stung.
"Ah, Boss! There's still electricity left in me, so...!"
Rita tried to pull her arms away. I didn't let go.
"I know. It's fine."
A thin wrap of mana thread, then [Suture Heal]. All the while I clamped down on the cracks one by one, the electricity kept jabbing at my fingers without a break.
"...Boss. Doesn't it hurt?"
"Could it hurt more than it hurts you right now, Rita?"
Once the rough first aid was done, I slowly released her hands.
"If my tier were a little higher, I could have healed you perfectly, but I'm not built that way... So that was only a temporary fix. When we get back to the garage, use up every medicine we've got and get it treated properly."
"Mm... yeah... yes... I'll do that."
"Promise."
"Yes. Promise."
Then.
Boom!
A huge sound came from the hallway. Dust rained down from the ceiling.
On reflex, I shielded Rita's head.
"It's okay, big bro. The only mana reading outside is our guest."
Click.
With those words, the door opened.
Even having heard Zino beforehand, I couldn't help but flinch.
Because Baek So-ha before the fight and Baek So-ha after it looked like two completely different people.
She seemed angry somehow, and sad somehow too.
Seeing her, I spoke first.
"Miss. I'm glad you made it back. I was waiting."
Baek So-ha's eyes turned to me for a moment.
"...Yes. With someone waiting, coming back is worth the trouble."
The stiffness in her face eased, just a little.
Baek So-ha set down in front of Rita what she'd been carrying over one shoulder.
Thud.
Legs. A pair of pitch-black prosthetic legs, torn off whole at the thigh joints.
"This is your guard fee."
"...Huh?"
Before I knew it, I was scanning those legs through the safety goggles. A Baekdu Precision combat prosthetic. And from the top-tier lineup that never even circulated on the market.
How much was this thing worth? With this, the debt I owed Rayden would...
While I stood there thinking that, Rita stared blankly, glancing back and forth between the legs and Baek So-ha.
"Rita, was it?"
"...Yes."
"I take back calling you riffraff. These belonged to the one you held off, so they are yours by right."
Rita's lips moved, and then she bowed her head.
"...I'll gladly accept, Guest."
Aw, hell. She wasn't giving it to me. Tch.
Thinking about it, Rita had done the guarding all by herself, so it only made sense that she'd get paid.
This time Baek So-ha held out a hand to me. A small object sat on her palm.
A black device the size of a thumb, with a single button.
"It came out of Blackhorn's pocket. During his fight with me, he kept pressing this."
I studied it through the safety goggles.
"...That's it, all right. This must be the button that sets off the trap."
That made Baek So-ha frown once more, and she pocketed the button.
"I will take this. It is something Father needs to see."
In exchange, she held out her other hand. A white card the size of a palm, with a single mountain peak engraved at its center.
"This is the Baekdu Token. Whoever carries it is a benefactor of Baekdu, and if they knock on Baekdu's gates with this token in hand, whenever they please, Baekdu will not forget the debt."
I could tell it was a very valuable item. A token that got you treated as a megacorp's benefactor.
"You really didn't have to go this far..."
"Did I not tell you? There is nothing free in this world."
At that, I couldn't help asking.
"...What about the money?"
"The money has already been paid to Valeria."
That scheming bitch. She'd already gobbled it up.
"I am sorry. The contract left me no choice. But do not worry. I have left word, so something good will come to you."
Baek So-ha turned around.
"You have worked hard until now. From here on, we will handle things ourselves. The commission is complete. You may go back now."
Stopping at the door, Baek So-ha went on.
"You did well. I will not forget it. Seol Gye-hyeon, and Rita."
* * *
Sky Nexus, the private residence of Vice Chairman Baek Tae-ho.
Vice Chairman Baek Tae-ho was looking down out of the window, tilting his teacup.
Baek Tae-ho felt this Sky Nexus was a birdcage. A cage that kept him from climbing any higher. Baek Tae-ho wanted to go up, to Over Heaven.
Black hair, black eyes. The pure blood Baekdu had guarded for generations was the same blood as the rulers of Over Heaven.
Born with the same blood, Baekdu had always stayed one tier below. Under the name of Geumgang's ally, beneath Geumgang's feet.
Every Baekdu chairman until now had been content with that.
Apex of District 2. A king within the cage.
He'd never even seen one of them scheme about how to climb above it. They'd only schemed about how to hold on to that seat.
And Baek Tae-ho couldn't even have that seat. He'd been born second.
A man born second, in District 2.
He had lived his whole life one tier down, and in his brother's shadow.
It was Geumgang that had reached out a hand to him first.
Do as we tell you, and we will open the gates of Over Heaven.
It didn't matter if Baekdu's name went under Geumgang. They'd been beneath Geumgang's feet for generations anyway. All it would strip away was a flattering word like "ally."
Something his brother had once said came back to him.
'You wanted this chairman's seat that badly? Then you should have said so. I never wanted this seat.'
Foolish talk. The chairman's seat was never what Baek Tae-ho wanted in the first place.
That seat was only a staircase. A way out of the cage.
Then.
Knock, knock.
A knock came at the door. The news he'd been waiting for must have arrived.
"Come in."
The door opened and the secretary stepped in. A face that was always without a hair out of place had gone pale white today.
"...I have something to report."
"Did Blackhorn bring back the older girl?"
The secretary bit their lip instead of answering. Seeing that, Baek Tae-ho spoke once more.
"Speak."
"We've lost contact with the Blackhorn Captain and the entire pursuit team for forty minutes."
The hand reaching for the teacup stopped.
"Lost contact?"
"The last signal came from near the hideout where the eldest young lady was hiding. There has been no response since."
She'd been a child with her prosthetics nearly half smashed when she fled. And she hadn't even been gone a full day.
"What is this? What variable was there? Was another corporation involved?"
"...No, sir. According to what our spy reported, the eldest young lady's prosthetics have been repaired perfectly."
"...That body? In a single day?"
In truth, even Baekdu's own engineers would have needed two or three working together, with the finest equipment, for an entire day to repair that. And it had been done in the lower tiers, in that short a time?
"If the Blackhorn Captain lost... then probably..."
"...Yes. It's likely they inspected the trap and disarmed it too."
Baek Tae-ho could only shake his head. This was a variable he'd never imagined.
Down in the lowest tier, an engineer crew able to quickly repair such a battered prosthetic and at the same time dismantle a Geumgang trap. Baek Tae-ho simply couldn't have conceived of one existing.
"...I'm sorry, Chairman."
"No. This is nobody's fault. It's practically a natural disaster. It was something no one could have foreseen."
But that natural disaster had cost him a good many things.
He'd lost Blackhorn, and the relationship with Geumgang had been exposed to the other side.
"Still... this one hurts a little."
Baek Tae-ho set down his teacup and pressed a hand to his head.
"If you have nothing more to say, you may go."
"...Yes, sir."
The secretary slipped out of the room as if fleeing.
Footsteps receded beyond the closed door, and silence settled over the room once more.
"Sister's coming back, then."
At the sudden sound of a woman's voice, Baek Tae-ho lifted his head.
Without his noticing when, a woman was leaning against the doorway.
Black hair, black eyes. A face that closely resembled Baek So-ha's.
Baek So-yul, his brother's second daughter.
"That's why I told you. I said I'd go and finish it again myself. Why didn't you listen and make a mess like this?"
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