Surviving the Stall in Ground Zero

I'd thrown together a makeshift stall, but customers weren't exactly lining up. Thinking about it, I wouldn't have been eager to hand my gear over to a cardboard booth like this either. I'd count myself lucky if they didn't take me for a con artist.

Not that I'd set the thing up on a whim. This was Ground Zero — the lowest slum in all of Gaon Mega City. Nearly everything circulating in this neighborhood was defective or already broken, and among the people stuck with those broken things, there had to be some who couldn't afford a proper repair bill.

...Still, sitting around waiting made me a little nervous, so I added another line beneath the sign.

On the night market ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠street of Ground Zero, the slum of Gaon Mega City, a third-rate mercenary named Jack was livid.

"You son of a bitch. You sold me this garbage and called it a weapon?"

In his hands was a broken rifle. Of all days, he had a job today — escorting a drug transport for the local gang. And just now, during a routine check, he'd found a fatal malfunction inside the gun.

He'd rushed to a nearby technician, but the answer had been hopeless.

"To fix this, I'd have to replace almost every internal part. You're looking at thirty thousand credits minimum, plus three days of work. You'd be better off just buying a new one."

Jack had no choice but to take the rifle back. He couldn't afford the repair, and the gun had to be ready today. The gang that hired him didn't have a habit of letting mercenaries who flaked on a job walk away. Get on their bad side and he wouldn't just lose his livelihood — he'd be a corpse by tomorrow.

Blood running cold, he wandered the street until he spotted a stall. The hell is that?

Tucked in a corner of the stall row was a booth cobbled together from cardboard boxes. Something had been seared into the surface, letters burned in like a brand.

The owner of the cardboard stall was a single scrawny kid who looked one meal away from starving — the idle, parasitic look of someone who'd never worked a day in his life. That kid's a technician?

Becoming a technician generally took a lot of equipment and a lot of skill. The more precise the work, the more likely the technician was to have their entire body plated in cybernetics. That was just how it was. But the one in front of him didn't even have a prosthetic arm, let alone a toolbox. Empty-handed. Probably some cheap-drug addict who'd lost half his mind.

That was what Jack was thinking when the scrawny kid suddenly jumped to his feet and started adding another line to the sign.

The moment Jack saw it, a clever little scheme occurred to him. This gun's already scrap. Can't use it anyway. He'd hand the unfixable rifle to the kid, and if the kid couldn't repair it, he'd shake him down for wrecking it further. The brat didn't look like he had any money — but even if he didn't, Jack could at least take his frustration out on him.

Jack walked up to the cardboard stall and tossed the rifle down in front of him.

"Hey. Stick. Fix this."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

So this was my first customer.

A brown-haired Westerner with a thoroughly unsavory look walked up and dumped a rifle on my cardboard counter.

"Hey. Stick. Fix this."

He had to be easily over six-three, a hulking brute with a nasty face. Yellowed eyes pickled in something that was either drugs or booze, surgical scars scattered across his body, and a cheap prosthetic arm peeking out from under his leather jacket. A textbook mechanized mercenary — the kind of cheap-cybernetic thug you saw all over Fusion Punk.

Mercenaries running that grade of hardware were, more often than not, low-ranking members of a gang or a mercenary company. In other words: a thug. The look he gave me carried more suspicion and malice than trust. He'd brought a broken piece of junk just to see what I'd do with it.

I started examining the thing anyway. Kawaguchi Heavy Industries, huh. Even three hundred years from now, in Fusion Punk, this was the gun lower-tier mercenaries ran into the ground. They'd dumped so many of them onto the market that people were still swapping parts and using them three centuries later. Which meant it was a familiar piece. I'd handled these more times than I could count.

Originally, combat mages used it to peer into the structure of an enemy's spell circles or defensive barriers. But no combat mage was going to spend fifteen points on a function for analyzing and dismantling magic that was already deployed — so in mage builds, it was a dead skill, a relic nobody took.

For a technician, though, the Demon Eye of Spell Breaking was peak efficiency. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You could look inside a piece of equipment without taking it apart.

I lifted the rifle and pretended to inspect it from various angles, pushing unattributed mana threads into the weapon. A sliding sensation — I felt the threads in my hands slip inside the rifle and spread. In that instant, I drew mana from my heart and gathered it toward my eyes.

A sharp tingle bloomed behind my eyeballs, and the rifle's internals unfolded in my mind as if I'd taken the whole thing apart. The condition on this thing was a work of art.

Low-grade ammo used for too long — residue baked solid in the chamber and gas tube, the rifling in the barrel worn smooth. On top of that, they'd jammed in parts from a completely different gun that didn't even match the spec, so the tolerances were off. The recoil would have been far worse than a stock rifle.

I checked the condition, then said, as if it were nothing:

"Your shoulder must've been killing you every time you fired this, right? Ever notice the recoil's way worse than other guns?"

The mercenary's eyes went wide.

"Huh? Yeah. Compared to my buddy who uses the same model, mine kicks a hell of a lot harder. How'd you know?"

"How do you think? I'm a technician. Three thousand credits and I'll get it shooting today. Five thousand and I'll fix the recoil completely. What's it gonna be?"

The mercenary scowled and started haggling on instinct.

"What? Repair's that expensive? You out of your mind? Cut it in half."

Honestly, it was a little more unnerving in person than it had been on a game screen. How many people living in modern Korea had ever looked someone with killing intent in the eye? But if this place ran on the same world as Fusion Punk, then what I'd learned in the game would work here too. I could not afford to look weak. Not here.

"The fuck did you just say?"

I deliberately twisted my face into a scowl and shoved the rifle back toward him.

"Then I'm not fixing it. Get lost."

The most important thing was to act like I didn't need a thing from him. That was how you made the other side desperate. Sure enough, the mercenary's furrowed brow eased a fraction.

"You little shit. You actually gonna take responsibility? If you can't fix it and this gun ends up worse, you're buying me a new one. You got that? Huh?"

Judging by his tone, he was the one in a hurry. The words were still tough, but they'd lost a lot of their edge. Figuring out the recoil had probably been what did it.

I held out my hand first.

"Up front."

"...You little shit. Got more guts than you look."

He pulled something out and tossed it on the counter. Physical bills totaling five thousand credits. I snatched the money and tucked it into my clothes.

"Much obliged, sir. I'll fix it to your satisfaction."

My tone flipped to polite the moment the money hit my pocket. Once they'd paid up front, they were a real customer.

I laid my hand on the rifle and closed my eyes. From here on, it was precision work. I couldn't afford to lose focus. A few strands of mana thread slipped from my fingertips and were drawn into the gaps of the chamber.

First, I imbued the threads with High Heat. The cheap casing residue baked into the gas tube and chamber began to melt, slowly. I pulled every last drop of the liquefied fouling out with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Precision Telekinesis.

Next I layered Rotation and High Heat onto the threads and started restoring the rifling inside the barrel. I couldn't bring it back to factory spec, but I could get it good enough to fire without a problem. Finally, I used High Heat and Cutting to shave the mismatched parts down by fractions of a millimeter, until the tolerances lined up.

"Done."

The mercenary, who'd been standing there in a daze, took the rifle as if hypnotized and wrapped his hands around it again.

"Would you like to verify the repair? Ah — it's a firearm, so I suppose checking it on the spot is difficult."

Even in a lawless slum, you couldn't just start blasting into the air in the middle of a crowded night market. What if he turns into a nightmare customer and demands his money back, claiming he can't tell if it's fixed?

That was when he spoke.

"...Ah. N-no need to fire it. I can tell. It's perfect."

The mercenary's voice was trembling — not slightly, but visibly. The same guy who'd been threatening me a minute ago if I wrecked his gun suddenly bowed at the waist.

"Th-thank you so much for the repair! I'll take good care of it!"

...What?

I blinked blankly at his receding back. He wasn't a nightmare customer. He was a gentleman. You really can't judge people by appearances.

I watched him go with a satisfied smile.

Fortunately, landing that first customer seemed to break the ice. I picked up two more after that. And strangely enough, they all followed the exact same pattern as the mechanized mercenary. Customers who'd started out suspicious — some of them outright threatening me — would suddenly change their tune the moment I finished the repair, bowing politely as they backed away.

I checked the satisfying bulk of credits I'd accumulated and smiled. With this much, I wouldn't have to starve or sleep on the street for a few days, at least.

But around that point, a faint, stinging pain rose near my heart.

That would be why. I still had limits on how much mana I could use. I had a way to break through that limit soon enough, but until I built the thing I needed, I'd have to be careful.

I was thinking that was enough for today — time to pack up — when a voice cut in.