In the junkyard devoid of human life where the air is unbreathable and would cause serious damage, sits a young man no older than 21. His hand was fiddling with new things that he got. A blue screen that could speak to him. and it’s hella interesting.
Jay is certain that this is all a reality and not just some psycho putting him in a simulation. Even the best one couldn’t produce pain and visuals that felt as real as this. He has just survived getting his heart pulled out by a group of debt collectors.
Is this a new kind of slave contract?
Jay is certain that wasn't the case. Why give him such advanced technology and then let him roam free? In conclusion that must not be it. He also rules out the possibility that someone is messing with his mind. No Mind Bender would let him question their simulation.
Is it really just a mech-building system that randomly appears?
Jay knew that couldn’t be it but he had no more guesses. So he decides to go with it. He will have to find out another time.
“Could I check how many Mech points I have?”
[Jay Rolona]
[Brain capacity 42/100]
[Baseline human + Heart implant]
[100 mech points]
[skill]
[Mech UI designer I]
Jay expects to see more than just Brain capacity. From entertainment, he consumes some of them and gets a super powerful system that could make them a Stella tier mech pilot and defeat all their problems. His system doesn’t seem to be that powerful. He also noted that the system recognizes his knowledge as an Apprentice UI designer. Which he finds amusing since it is the only skill that he does have.
“What is brain capacity?”
No answer
Jay is quite frustrated, the system that has been helpful so far has decided not to answer this question.
“Who created you?”
Another silence from the system. It seems like there are some questions that it would rather not answer.
“Could I use my mech points?”
[Shop]
[Apprentice basic mech design] [100P] [15 Brain capacity]
[Apprentice mech recycler] [100P] [22 Brain capacity]
[Apprentice Mech Ui designer II] [120P] [30 Brain capacity]
3 things pop out for him to buy. Jay wants more information and the System seems to know what he thinks when the window expands.
[Apprentice mech designer foundation]
[It’s good to lay a foundation! Basic knowledge about mech design encompasses the basics of putting mech parts together. The bare minimum to make a functioning mech!]
[Mech recycler I]
[Another man's trash is my mech! Basic knowledge of putting other mech parts together have an understanding of parts that of another mech that could be put together]
[Mech Ui designer II]
[User experience is king, You already have a basic understanding of the UI. May customize the user experience of a specific type of people.]
Does the system seem oddly cheerful?
Jay read the description of these skills while smiling a bit. from the options presented to him so far The Apprentice Foundation sounds like the only option he could go into since he didn’t have much knowledge about it. He drops out before the first year's end, where the final exam is you putting a mech together. So filling that knowledge gap would be nice.
He taps into the blue screen and the floating screen responds to him this time.
[Thank you for your purchase! Please prepare a safe space for information injection.]
[The information will be injected in 3]
wait
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
[2]
[1]
A pang ran through his brain. It’s like being shot in the head and the bullet just lodges itself in between his cranium. More than that the bullet split into tiny pieces and ricocheted inside his skull. Jay was caught unprepared and fell to the floor wincing in pain. He tried to mitigate the pain by squashing his head with his hand but it didn’t make a difference.
It felt like an eternity but in reality, it took him 5 minutes for the pain to disappear. Jay wanted to rip his brain out of his skull for how much pain he was in.
[Brain capacity 57/100]
What the hell was that
Jay cursed inside, he never expected to feel like dying a second time in one day, However with great pain comes great benefit, Jay now could realistically build a mech. I had a very basic mech that could function. A rather unpleasant way to learn about the basics. Still, he knows many people who would take this over sinking hours and hours into reading material and researching mech. He too would take this pain.
What baffles him is that this kind of technology exists in the first place, he could know about how to be a mech designer just by suffering a bit. How could that be possible? Jay is rather doubtful about the cost of this. Maybe a demon would come to take his soul one day. Or maybe that is how the higher star sector learns.
No wonder they were stupidly smart…. Wait…that doesn’t make sense. Whatever
With the pain now slowly dissipating, Jay goes back to check out the quest that he was given.
[Build a functional mech]
It still looks impossible. A mech is made from many different parts but is mainly composed of 3 to be called “functional” First is the Power source that powers the whole mech. Second is the frame to keep you safe from the outside world and lastly, the cockpit to let people inside. As long as you have all 3 you have a functional mech, even if it can’t move.
What if…
Jay looks around the junkyard. This place is filled with many useless gadgets and gizmos. Most of them are just broken electronics with a little bit of toxic waste that has been thrown out. The floor is made of out said garbage that takes up so high it could even build a skyscraper with all this junk. Maybe he could find something useful here.
The toxic air outside posed no problem to Jay, he could tell that his newly replaced heart was working to keep all the toxic air away from his system. With that problem out of the way, Jay began searching for something that he could use to build a mech.
He considers going back to the city but the risk of him running into the gang that kills him is too high. He would likely get his heart stamped out a second time if he went into the city now. Worse, Jay still has zero money to his name, he could not build anything.
But here everything is free for the taking. No one is going to stop him from going through their trash. And no one is out here to steal his stuff either.
Maybe living here isn’t bad?
A passing thought that Jay quickly shoved back into his brain. There’s no food out here and he would have to be alone in this place. That would make him go insane.
Enough with his shower thought, he quickly recognized that there was some mech part that had been thrown out here. With so much trash it makes sense that some would be mech parts but sadly most of it is just unrepairable or he couldn’t fix them with his current knowledge.
But he does find something that is usable, an entire arm hammer that has been thrown out. The electrical part of it is fine but the hammer couldn’t even be called a hammer. The proper description would be an uneven spear with a slightly bent tip. The mech must have been through some rough Double H to get this damage.
Jay is ecstatic to find a working piece in a sea of junk, but the joy is short-lived since he encounters another problem. How would he put the mech par together? The hammer hand is longer than a meter and weighs about 100 kg. The best he could do was to drag it around but that also proved difficult in this bumpy sea of trash.
Left with no other choice Jay dragged the hammer arm along with him. It’s not impossible, just very hard and time-consuming. To be honey Jay has no direction to where he wants to go in life.
His life should have ended in tragedy, died in a junkyard, left to rot in this trash kingdom where he truly belongs. rising from the dread is not an ideal position for him. Sure, he was glad that he was alive but he wasn’t sure that this was the best course of action. Maybe he should have died. He has no friends and family, no one has missed him. And he is stuck here in a junkyard unsure of what to do.
Along the way, he found another piece of equipment that he could use. A pocket wielder that still has some battery left. It wasn’t in the best condition but anything will do. He shoves it into his pants pocket.
Hours passed by and Jay came across more pieces that he could use, an old chair and some scrap of metal that could pass as a leg for the mech. He didn’t have any more hands to drag more junk around so he left the hammer hand here. For a functioning mech, he only has one thing left to find, A battery.
Even a broken battery could be useful since it could be easily recycled into a new one. Batteries come in many different types and variations but most of them just hold energy. The battery should have been the most expensive bat of the mech, at least that is what he remembered from the class that he took.
After looking around for another hour, the orange sky starts to turn dark. This planet runs on a 45-hour day cycle which is almost double the Terra imperial time. Still, all of the space uses the standard imperial day to count the time. The clock would display two different times, Imperial time and local time. And the local time here would be around the 25-hour mark since the sky got dark around there.
Jay also realized something terrible, the second main reason why they built a dome around the city. The violent wind when it got dark, he completely forgot about this fact since no one in their right mind would be out here in the first place.
Oh no
He thought that the wind would ramp up over time but as soon as the sky became dark, the wind showed him no mercy. The debris and metal scrap flew all over him, he quickly got a hold of a heavy object that had been buried deep in the scarp and grabbed it tight. The wind picked up again and tried to carry him into its gusty arm but his hand wouldn’t let it.
A metal piece flew over and cut him in the hand, throughout this whole day this was the least painful he had got. The cut is not deep but they are not the only ones. The metal scrap of all kinds hit him. Jay let out a small groan and gripped the metal harder, hoping to weather the gust.
Before long, the wind had already passed But he could feel it returning. Jay wisely uses his time to get more safety for himself. He lifts a big piece of metal to block the wind and waits for another wave.
Normal people would have died long ago, the air here is filled with dangerous substances for the human body. It felt even harsher when the wind was trying to kill you. A wave of scarp hit his newly built shelter causing it to kink klang.
Jay waited for the night to pass, unable to fall asleep. He really doesn’t want to die a second time.