WeTried Translations
Translator: [IncomeElastic]
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became a Genius Engineer That Mega Corporations Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 49
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It's Pretty, and It's a Good Feature
"..."
I couldn't help but stop, staring at the message that had popped up.
Tier 2.
[Heart Mana Deficiency] was a flaw that made it impossible to get past Tier 1 no matter how hard you struggled. In the game, if you carried this flaw and wanted to raise your tier, the only way was to erase the flaw itself. Either pay for an expensive procedure or clear a quest that rarely showed up.
And yet it said the flaw had been bypassed.
This was a phenomenon even I had never run into in the game. I'd only been using the mana core to expand my mana capacity, but when it was combined with mid-tier or higher healing magic, there'd been a new synergy hiding in it.
'Ah. I want to screenshot this and post it on the community.'
It would've been a massive hit. But there's no community here.
"Big bro. Your heart rate went up again. Does it still hurt?"
"...No. I'm fine."
Ding.
Another window floated up.
[ Perk Changes ]
<Emission Magic> [Mana Thread Control] : Output Increased / New Property <Cooling>
<Detection Magic> [Spellbreaker's Magic Eye] : See Through Without a Medium / New Property <Lingering Trace>
<Recovery Magic> [Suture Heal] : Suture Durability Enhanced
<Precept Magic> [Prohibition Command] : Conditional Prohibition Possible
[ Empty ] : Please select a perk.
I knew all of it. It was my build, after all. Everything had changed exactly the way I'd planned.
And at the very bottom, the slot I'd kept in reserve for later was still sitting there untouched. To fill that one, I'd have to take a few more flaws.
Come to think of it, [Pain Hypersensitivity] was one of them. That slot was one I should never touch.
Scrolling down, I found the last window.
[ Tier 2 Unlocked: New Magic Slots ]
<Emission Magic> Tier 2 : [ Empty ]
<Detection Magic> Tier 2 : [ Empty ]
<Recovery Magic> Tier 2 : [ Empty ]
<Precept Magic> Tier 2 : [ Empty ]
Four empty slots.
A screen I'd seen countless times in the game. And slots I'd filled countless times.
Most of them didn't even need hesitation.
<Emission Magic> Tier 2 : [Mana Spray]
<Detection Magic> Tier 2 : [Mana Listening]
<Recovery Magic> Tier 2 : [Regeneration Heal]
<Precept Magic> Tier 2 : [Compliance Command]
With each blank that filled in, my fingertips itched.
The rest I'd carried over straight from the build I used to run, but the Tier 2 recovery slot took a lot more agonizing. Regeneration Heal, or Pain Block.
In the game I wouldn't have given Pain Block a second thought, but now that I'd been through it myself, I'd learned just how agonizing it was.
Still... it couldn't be helped. Giving up what Regeneration Heal offered was too hard.
"...Boss... Are you okay?"
The voice snapped me out of it, and I looked up. Vivian and Rita were watching me with worried faces.
"Ah. I should've told you first."
"Huh? Told us what?"
"Oh, my tier just went up. Since it did, I was taking a moment to sort out my thoughts."
"..."
The garage went quiet.
Rita and Vivian stared at me, dumbfounded.
Huh. What's with this mood?
"...Dex."
"Yes?"
"You're telling us that now? Like that?"
"Huh? Then how should I-"
Before I could finish, Vivian snatched my wrist.
The familiar mana flowed in again. Not a raging torrent this time, but a careful, probing touch.
And then the hand let go.
Vivian didn't say a word. Instead she looked down at her own hand once, then back at me.
"It's true... You've risen. Your tier."
"That's right. From Tier 1 to Tier 2."
It wasn't like I'd jumped to Tier 3. Why was everybody making such a fuss over going from Tier 1 to Tier 2?
I thought that for a moment, and then I realized what the situation looked like.
Come to think of it, from Rita's and Vivian's point of view, I was a guy with a shattered heart who could never climb any higher.
Unlike me, who knew a way up no matter what, they must have believed it was impossible for me to raise my tier.
And that guy had just announced his tier going up like he was talking about what to have for lunch.
"...Um, Boss."
Rita raised a hand cautiously.
"That's a really big deal, right? Should I clap?"
"Is this something to celebrate? Big bro, can we celebrate?"
Clap, clap, clap.
Rita started applauding without even knowing why, and Zino asked, reading the room, whether they were allowed to celebrate. Right in the middle of that commotion, Vivian covered her mouth with a hand.
Her shoulders were trembling slightly.
I flinched, thinking she was crying again, but no. She was laughing. Her eyes were a little red, but she was definitely laughing.
"...Honestly. You're a strange person."
"Is that a compliment?"
"What do you think?"
Vivian looked at me, exasperated, and went on.
"Dex. You're allowed to be a little happier about something like this."
I was speechless for a moment.
From where these people stood, I'd turned the impossible into the possible, something close to a miracle. Of course I should've been happy. But my reaction, which seemed to be anything but, looked strange to them.
"...Actually, I am happy. Quite a lot."
I meant it. I'd just found a synergy that nobody on the community would've known about. I was genuinely thrilled.
"Then that's all right. I'm glad I could help."
Vivian said, picking up her coat.
"And from now on I really will come every week. I won't break my promise this time."
* * *
With that, Vivian went home, and I returned to the workbench.
"All right, shall we get started on some work with the new magic?"
"Wooow! New magic!"
On the workbench lay the pair of prosthetic legs I'd left half-dismantled that morning, exactly as they were.
Normally this was where I'd pull out mana thread first. Fill the inside with thread and use it as a guide to look around, the basic way to use the Spellbreaker's Magic Eye.
But now I lowered my safety goggles without any thread at all.
"...Oh."
It seemed to cost more mana than using thread, if anything, but the inside had started to come into view properly.
It was thanks to the Tier 1 magic getting boosted when my tier went up.
It wasn't always the case, but as a rule, the way you used most often was the one that got enhanced.
Maybe that was why, with the Spellbreaker's Magic Eye, which I always used to look inside equipment, the enhancement that got picked was so often this one, seeing in without a medium.
I pushed the goggles up onto my head and called Rita.
"Rita. Could you come over here and show me your hands?"
"Huh? My hands?"
Rita, who'd been sitting on the sofa, came over with a puzzled look and held them out.
I drew out mana thread. The thread slowly began winding around Rita's hand.
"...That tickles a little."
"Bear with me for a moment. It's necessary."
Soon the thread had wrapped Rita's hand completely, like a glove.
"Could you make a fist for me?"
When Rita clenched her fist, the thread across the back of her hand pulled taut.
"Now stretch it out. Then raise it over your head."
How much the knuckles stretched and shrank when closed and open. How far the wrist bent.
This was gear for brutal fights. Measuring only while the hand sat still was useless.
"That's good."
I drew the thread back from Rita's hand. All the measurements were written down.
Now the problem was the material.
The Blackhorn Captain's casing was a fairly high-grade alloy. The me of not long ago couldn't have touched it without a mana furnace. If I'd tried to melt it with my heart's output, I would've melted before the alloy did.
But now it was different.
"Zino. I'm going to teach you a new magic. Watch closely."
"New magic? It's new magic! Wow!"
I drew a single strand of mana thread into the air. And on it, instead of high heat, I used a property I'd never used before.
<Cooling>.
The air around the strand chilled in an instant, and white frost bloomed along the thread.
"It's cold! Big bro, this is cold! I've never seen this one!"
"Did you log it?"
"Yep! But it's kind of like high heat, so it's confusing!"
"You can't get them confused. Remember it well. From here on we'll be alternating between the two."
I turned to Rita.
"Rita. I need you to hold this for me."
"Huh?"
Rita stood the prosthetic leg upright and lifted it by hand.
Whoa, damn. She's strong. I couldn't even lift that thing.
"No, no. With that electromagnetic field ability of yours."
"Oh."
Only then did Rita press two buttons on her choker and float the leg into the air.
Pulling thread from my gloved fingertips, I touched it to the casing.
<Heat>.
Sizzle...
The surface of the high-grade alloy glowed red, then began to melt away.
I found my mouth curling up before I knew it. So this was Tier 2 output.
With Precision Telekinesis, I slowly bent the melted alloy. What had been a prosthetic leg began to change shape, bit by bit.
"Zino, cooling."
"Cooling!"
Sizzle...!
White steam billowed up. The metal that had been glowing red a moment ago hardened in exactly that shape.
Melt, bend, cool, again and again. The shape of the leg faded little by little, and in its place came the form of a gauntlet to wrap around Rita's hand.
It took about two days to get that far.
Once the casing was finished, I laid the shock-dispersal layer into the forearm lining, so the force of a block would scatter up along the arm. The compressed mana cell went in side by side just above the wrist, to store the electricity leaking from Rita's body. The convergence circuit from the instep I peeled off along the grain and relocated, splicing it into the knuckles and the center of the palm, to gather the scattering electricity in one place.
Where I'd run short after stripping parts away, I filled the gap with [Regeneration Heal]. I held a leftover scrap of casing against it and trimmed the outline with thread, and the magic recognized it as a part that needed to be regenerated and bridged the two pieces together.
If closing a small gap again was Suture Heal, then plugging a large hole was Regeneration Heal.
"...Boss, what was that just now? The metal just stuck together by itself!"
"It's something new I got when I reached Tier 2. Pretty handy, isn't it?"
"It seems like more than just handy..."
Next came engraving the mana circuits. That took quite a while too. It was only after about three more days that I was finally able to finish the gauntlet.
Last of all, I had Rita slip it on once and run some electricity through.
"A little is fine."
The electricity that had been leaking from Rita's wrist slid smoothly into the mana cell above it. Then, when Rita clenched her fist, that electricity gathered at the tips of her knuckles and crackled.
Storage, convergence. Both worked properly.
"We'll check the defensive functions in a real fight. Though the best case is that nobody ever lands a hit on you."
I took the gauntlet off and went over it one last time, in case I'd gotten anything wrong.
Thankfully, it had come out perfectly, exactly as I'd designed it.
And as a finishing touch, just as Rita had wanted, I'd carved a pretty aesthetic feature into the mana circuit.
"Here. This is yours now."
* * *
Rita took the gauntlet.
It was lighter than she'd expected.
It was something that had been made for her over nearly a week.
She slid the gauntlet on. It fit her hand as precisely as if it had been tailored.
She quietly clenched her fist. The electricity leaking from her wrist slipped smoothly in, and light began to spread through the circuit running over her knuckles.
Amber.
The same color as her own eyes, the ones she saw in the mirror every morning.
"Hahahahaha! It works! It works exactly the way I designed it! Success!"
Rita let out a snort of a laugh at the sight.
A few days ago, the man hadn't been the least bit happy that his tier had gone up, and now he was far happier about finishing the gear meant for her.
So, from where Dex stood, climbing to Tier 2 on a shattered heart counted for less than finishing a single piece of equipment.
Because he was still looking at somewhere much, much higher.
Rita snorted again, looking at the gauntlet made just for her, flashing amber.
"It's pretty. It's a good feature."
* * *
Under the neon sign of Titan Garage, a woman stood.
Wearing a black coat that reached her ankles, she'd been looking up at the sign for a long time.
"...Titan, huh."
Her voice was low and unhurried.
Behind her, a man spoke up carefully.
"That's four times this month alone. Mostly alone, and every time they stay for a long while-"
"I know."
The woman said it in a quiet voice.
"That's why I came myself."
The man shut his mouth.
The boss of District 5 in Ground Zero. People on these streets called her by this instead of her name.
Queen Mantis.
The woman lowered her gaze from the sign to the firmly shut door of the garage.
And slowly drew up the corners of her mouth.
"So this is where my kid keeps coming and going."
Knock. Knock.
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