Chapter 159
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 159
—I heard you can’t fight properly without combat limbs. A weak body must be so exhausting.
En remarked, standing before the Mechanical Maintenance Room. He tapped lightly on the door.
Hiss.
The door slid open, revealing a child-like alien. She was petite, only reaching my chest, with a pair of adorable little horns poking out from her hair.
A Tarpa.
I knew the species well; I had seen them in Noel's memories.
The race that passed its scientific technology down to the Akresia Empire.
The Empire’s mechanical engineering was built upon the technology of the Tarpa. Even now, some of them worked as technicians for Imperial corporations.
“Ah, so you’re the guest for the prosthetic transplant.”
The Tarpa tilted her sky-blue face up to scan me. Her eyes were solid black, lacking whites, but they weren’t eerie. Since the Tarpa looked relatively human, I could tell she was female.
—Make it so this human can fight, Lapis.
Standing side by side, the Equesian was easily twice the Tarpa’s height.
“Come on in, human male. Your name?”
“Luka.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“It’s a common one.”
“As you might have heard, my name is Lapis. Lapis Lazuli. I translated it from my original name into human words.”
I let out a dry chuckle as I stepped inside.
“Hmm. They call Bellato a multi-species nation, but everyone seems desperate to please humans—changing your names to make them easier to pronounce, learning our language…”
My words dripped with sarcasm.
“It’s not just Bellato; all nations on Planet Novas are human-centric. We have to adapt to make a living here. On any other planet, humanity would do the exact same for us,” Lapis replied gently, not a hint of anger in her voice.
From inside his helmet, En snorted and took a seat.
—Narrow-minded bastard. You mistake kindness for flattery? With a personality as twisted as yours, it’s glaringly obvious how you were raised.
En’s venomous words stabbed into the back of my head. And since he wasn’t wrong, I couldn’t even argue.
“Please make yourself comfortable on the operating table.”
Feeling a bit awkward, I rubbed the back of my neck and leaned back onto the table. It was surrounded by a clutter of complex electronic machinery and monitors. The cables tangled across the floor were so messy my feet caught on them with every step.
Clank! Whirrr!
Two pairs of robotic arms rose from either side of the table.
“Are you doing this alone?” I asked.
Lapis offered a soft smile. “I prefer working alone. Besides, I have these AI robotic arms. They’re excellent assistants.”
She patted one of the arms attached to the table. As if responding to her touch, it nodded its head.
Lapis grunted as she carried over the prosthetic legs and arms that had been leaning against the wall. They had to be for me. Given her small frame, it looked like a struggle.
—Need a hand? En asked from his chair.
“No, thank you. I prefer to do all the work with my own hands.”
—Stubborn thing. Suit yourself.
En leaned back again and stared out the window. The Mechanical Maintenance Room was on a high floor, offering a clear view of the city below.
Border City was a chaotic mess of urban sprawl, easily rivaling the Lower District of Akbaran. If anything, the clash of architectural styles from countless different species made it look even worse.
Thud.
After moving the prosthetic limbs next to the table, Lapis wiped her brow.
The arms and legs she’d brought over lacked artificial skin, leaving the machinery and metal completely exposed. Yet, they didn’t have the rigid, cold feel of Imperial designs.
Hummmm.
Their surfaces curved smoothly along the contours of muscle fibers, and a blue light pulsed intermittently through the visible circuitry. They looked more like works of art.
“Which company made these? I’m not familiar with Bellato’s manufacturers.”
“If you had to name a company, it would be Lapis Lazuli Co.”
“I’m honored. A custom prosthetic from an individual artisan.”
It seemed my physical data had been sent over long ago. A custom prosthetic from a private workshop wasn’t something you could make in a day or two. It took at least several months, sometimes even years. Ivan’s variable prosthetic and Fransek’s flashy ceremonial one both fell into this category of custom, non-mass-produced gear.
“The ones you’re currently using don’t have sensory feedback, so removing them won’t be painful. Let’s begin.”
Lapis replaced my limbs slowly, one by one. Her deliberate pace was meant to keep me from feeling anxious about having all my limbs detached at once. It was a delicate, considerate process.
“Do you have any spare cybernetic eyes lying around?” I asked, looking around. Lapis’s workshop was filled with all sorts of miscellaneous prosthetics. Surely there was at least one cybernetic eye.
“Why do you need a cybernetic eye?” Lapis asked as she detached my right arm. With the help of a robotic arm, she swapped her tool.
“Biological eyes have inferior functionality. It seems my eye regenerated while my brain was being treated.” I tapped below my right eye with my left hand. The squishy feel of a real eye was foreign.
“Discarding a perfectly healthy body just to get stronger is something only a madman would do.”
The corner of my mouth twitched into a smirk.
“That describes me perfectly. So, scoop this eyeball out and put in a combat-use cybernetic eye.”
For the first time, Lapis’s smile vanished, replaced by a deep frown.
“I do not carve out perfectly healthy flesh to implant machinery. If you want a cybernetic eye, go look in the black market. And don’t ever come to me again. Even if it’s an order from Lord Japa, I will have nothing to do with you.”
En, who had been listening in, chuckled.
—Making Lapis angry in less than ten minutes… that’s quite a feat. You really have a talent for being an absolute piece of trash.
“My true colors are showing, I guess,” I said with a shrug.
—That’s just how people from the Empire are. I hear you lot discard your natural bodies like old clothes.
“And I didn’t know Equesians were so talkative.”
—Whether you’re an Akies or whatever, Japa is wasting his money.
Lapis frowned even harder as she listened to our bickering.
“Stop fighting in my workshop. It’s distracting. En, if you’re going to keep at it, go wait outside. This work requires extreme concentration.”
—Fine. Oh, and this is your terminal, Luka. Your room assignment and schedule are on it, so check them.
En placed a terminal on the table and walked out.
With him gone, the conversation between Lapis and me died down. She channeled all her focus into implanting and calibrating the prosthetics.
*
The transplant was complete. The procedure had been so comfortable I could have fallen asleep.
I stared at my new limbs. They were almost embarrassingly high-end. Instead of blood, light flowed through vein-like circuits. Even without any specific calibration, they felt incredibly light.
“Now, to measure the signal bandwidth for output adjustment…”
Lapis wiped her sweat with a towel tied around her waist and stood before a monitor. A hologram interface flickered to life.
“Set it to maximum.”
“What? These aren’t ordinary parts. Your nervous system will burn out.”
“I can feel it. It’ll be fine even if you open it all the way,” I said, closing my eyes. In the darkness, I imagined blue light bending along the circuits.
Whir.
My fingers, surging with power, moved sluggishly as I artificially boosted the output. Soon, I hit the bandwidth limit locked by the software.
If I focus, I feel like I can break through it…
It was a strange sensation.
“Ah! W-What are you doing?!” Lapis cried out, staring at the monitor.
Only then did I open my eyes and release my focus.
Beep, beep, beep.
Error messages flooded the monitor. The complex graphs and numbers beside them spiked and plummeted erratically.
“See? I can force the signal bandwidth open anyway. Just unlock it before the internal program glitches out.”
I was bluffing. In truth, it was my first time trying anything like that.
I just hacked a machine using my biological signals.
I knew it was possible. I’d heard that many electronic warfare specialists used their brains as computers to link directly to networks. But I was no electronic warfare specialist.
The only explanation is… I’ve pushed my control over prosthetics to the absolute limit, so I’ve learned to control them as if they were my actual body.
The biological signals sent from my brain were converted into cybernetic signals that moved the prosthetics.
If the strength of my signal is greater than the program’s, it prioritizes my command.
It was just a guess. There had to be people in the Imperial Guard who had experienced something similar. If only Heilas were here, I could have asked him. He was a soldier who knew everything.
…Heilas was dead. The thought was a harsh reminder.
Just thinking about it threatened to pry open the box of emotions I had locked away. It was why I had avoided mentioning the Custoria Family in front of Japa.
Silence fell. Lapis, sensing the shift in my mood, waited a moment before speaking softly.
“Would you like a handkerchief?”
At first, I didn’t understand. Then, I touched the area beneath my left eye and let out a hollow laugh.
“Seems my broken head hasn’t fully healed yet.”
“Shedding tears isn’t a sign of being broken. Not being able to is.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
Lapis smiled warmly, seemingly pleased with my response. By human standards, she was cute, but not particularly pretty or beautiful. Still, I found myself liking her smile.
“I’ve unlocked the bandwidth limit. I’ll call this set of prosthetic arms and legs Lazuli 21,” she said, tapping at the hologram interface.
My limbs felt even lighter.
Whirrr!
Then, a sharp wave of neuropathic pain and signal overload surged through me. It felt as if shards of glass and needles were stabbing into my arms and legs. An untrained person would have blacked out instantly.
“Ah, it hurts a lot, doesn’t it?”
“I like the pain,” I said through gritted teeth. I wasn’t joking. I finally felt like I had a proper body again. The ecstasy of grasping power easily crushed the pain.
“…Pervert.”
“Pervert, madman, psycho. I hear them all the time. They don’t hurt my feelings. So, any special features? It feels like a prosthetic that focuses heavily on the basics.”
I stood up, detaching the cables connected to my limbs one by one.
Thud!
A light punch made the air ring.
Excellent.
The responsiveness and speed were superb. Lapis’s skill was truly that of a master artisan.
“You have good intuition. Since I knew nothing about you besides your physical data, I focused on the basics rather than extra features. You’ll be hard-pressed to find anything better than this in its class.”
“And?”
Artisans rarely made simple things. There had to be at least one special feature.
“It self-repairs minor damage. Liquid metal, inserted between the metal layers using a double-compression method, solidifies when exposed to air to reinforce cracks. It’s the same principle as blood clotting.”
“Expensive, complex, and luxurious.”
“That’s what makes it special.”
I walked past Lapis and picked up the terminal from the table. Its basic functions were similar to the ones I used in the Empire.
Beep.
Since it was the terminal's first boot, it took a moment. In the meantime, an advertisement popped up on the small screen.
—Snake, snake, snake! A burger made with a ground snake patty! Might even have poison! But it’s thrilling! It’s great! It’s delicious! It’s fun! Snake, snake, snake! Come on down to Japa Burger!
A snake wriggled across the screen before throwing itself onto a frying pan. The scene cut to various species eating burgers with bright smiles.
—A taste so good, you won’t even notice if your friend dies next to you! And if you do die while eating, we’ll compensate you with life-changing credits!
Someone foamed at the mouth and fell over backward.
—Japa Burger has twelve locations in Border City.
Suppressing the urge to smash the terminal, I turned to Lapis, demanding an explanation.
“Lord Japa is the godfather of the food industry here; he has a tight grip on the market. Would you like to see the Japa Pizza commercial too?”
“Don’t tell me I have to watch this ad every time I reboot the terminal.”
“Sharp as a tack. Snake, snake, snake,” Lapis said, swaying her head to the rhythm.
…This is going to drive me insane.