The Hunger Inside Me

A headache crashed down on me the instant I opened my eyes.

I twisted my wrist and brought up the holographic clock.

"Slept in pretty late."

This body wasn't particularly strong, so it seemed I needed a fair amount of rest. The moment I managed to haul my heavy frame upright, my stomach let out a loud, unmistakable rumble. A body saddled with Starvation Constitution was already screaming for food.

I started by filling the hole in my gut with the nutrient tubes and water Gordon had left behind yesterday, then got to my feet. It was day one. I had a lot to do.

The first thing I did after getting up was take stock of the junk and spare parts scattered through the building. Gordon's homework — making something that would actually turn a profit — was urgent, but there was a prerequisite I had to solve first.

This body. The one that blew a mana overflow the moment I pulled even a trickle of power. Even in the game, that had been one of the first bottlenecks you had to clear if you wanted to go down the magitech engineer path. The simplest, easiest fix was to build an external mana battery.

Which meant I needed materials.

"Hope there's something usable in here. Be nice if I could make it with what's already on hand."

I activated Demon Eye of Spell Breaking and started rummaging through the junk. Pairing it with telekinesis made the work a little easier.

Looks like the old man used to run a repair shop in this district.

Most of what was lying around were parts from low-grade equipment. As if to prove the hunch, I even found a fallen neon sign in a corner.

Before Gordon started using this place as a safehouse, it must have been an actual workshop, not a warehouse. Everything here was leftover parts from that era.

I kept digging through the scrap heap like that, and eventually found something useful in a forgotten corner. An electric battery for cybernetic prosthetics — the kind that went into cyber-gear.

If you were a mage who could store mana internally, or a martial artist, you didn't need one. But people who couldn't, and still wanted to run high-output cyber-gear, needed a power source. That's where these batteries came in. The most common option for anyone who couldn't use mana was electrically charged prosthetics, and this was a battery built for exactly that.

The casing had rusted from neglect, but the internals were salvageable — a few damaged circuits, nothing a little work couldn't fix.

This one should hold me over for a while.

This was one of those things you only knew if you'd actually been a technician. The engineering architecture of an electric battery for cyber-gear and a mana battery for a heart or dantian mana drive was ninety-nine percent identical. The only difference was whether you put electricity in, or mana. Strip out the remaining electrical circuits and the blocking chip, etch in a fine circuit to trap mana, and I could convert this into an external mana battery.

I tore open a cardboard box and started sketching a design on the flattened side. I couldn't just rip the battery apart and start hacking. Even if the architecture was ninety-nine percent the same, that remaining one percent was the difference between a finished product and an explosion.

"Good. The design's solid."

The moment the blueprint was done, I sent a thread of Mana Silk streaming from my fingertip. I imbued it with High Heat and Severing properties, melted down the impurities, electrode plates, and mana-blocking chip inside the electric battery, then used Precision Telekinesis to extract the slag. After that, I carved a mana-concentration circuit into the empty alloy walls — a circuit that would compress and trap mana.

The circuit lines that would hold mana inside the former electric battery were etched in. The instant the last stroke landed—

Ssshhh—

Mana seeped into the battery, and for a moment it gave off a faint, gentle glow.

"That's one down. Next up — the charger?"

Ordinarily, mana entered the body with every breath, got refined through the lungs, and charged into the heart or the dantian. But thanks to Heart Mana Deficiency, mana just leaked out of my heart in a steady drip. I could buy mana stones and use those, but I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠didn't have that kind of capital. So I decided to build a mana charger.

Once again, I started with a blueprint. There were four core components I'd need.

I arranged the components on the blueprint and designed a mana circuit that would link them all together tightly. Before long, I had a complete design for a mana charger that could harvest ambient mana from the air and feed it into the battery.

"Let's see. This used to be a repair shop — materials of this grade should be around here somewhere."

I fired up Demon Eye of Spell Breaking again and dug through the workshop warehouse junk until I found three of the four key parts: a large fan motor ripped out of a ventilation unit, a filter from an old air purifier, and a compressor extracted from an air compressor. Unfortunately, there was no such thing as a mana coil anywhere in this warehouse.

"No helping it. I'll have to jury-rig one."

The metal most responsive to mana was mithril, with silver a close second. But precious metals like that weren't going to be sitting around a place like this. There was, however, a metal here that could stand in for them.

Copper.

Copper had a faint mana affinity and conductivity of its own — enough to serve as the coil's primary material. The catch was that using a low-conductivity metal like copper demanded a mana-focusing circuit of considerable precision.

Etching mana circuits had been the most critical part of the game. Get even a fraction of it wrong, and whatever you were repairing — or building — would fail in an instant. I'd died over three hundred times and raised a single character for more than a hundred years. Etching mana circuits was something I could do in my sleep.

I lifted several strands of thin copper wire into the air with Precision Telekinesis and carefully wound them into a coil.

I'm already getting hungry again.

Then I drew Mana Silk from my fingertip and began etching a mana circuit into the surface of the copper coil.

"Can't go too fine with this."

Given the mana overflow I'd triggered yesterday, I needed to be careful today. For now, I'd keep the circuit on this coil simple, and once the battery was fully charged, I could build a proper one. To keep a mana overflow from hitting, I monitored my heart and took breaks as I worked.

Scratch. Scratch.

The moment the last circuit line connected, the entire orange-copper coil drank in mana and began to hum with a faint vibration. It wasn't a premium material, and the circuit wasn't perfect, so the output wouldn't be strong. But for a starting-stage tool, it wasn't bad. Once I got my hands on proper materials, I could upgrade.

I laid the salvaged parts out on the workbench and got down to the real conversion work. Alternating Severing and High Heat on the Mana Silk, I cut discarded steel plate and welded an ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠outer casing to match the blueprint. Inside, I seated the motor, filter, compressor, and coil in their exact positions.

What remained was the mana circuit I'd draw with Mana Silk. This was the hardest part — but not for me. I'd drawn this circuit more times than I could count while playing the game. A processing circuit that would take in air, purify it through the filter, run it through the compressor and coil, and send refined, pure mana flowing into the charging terminal.

I connected a power cable to the finished mana charger and flipped the switch.

Wiiiiing—!

A satisfying hum, and I could confirm the charger was running normally.

"It works."

Leave it like this for a few hours and the prosthetic battery would be fully charged. Once a mana user's level got high enough, ambient mana in the air couldn't keep up with consumption, so people usually bought mana stones to charge with. At my current level, though, a battery like this was more than enough.

After the work was done, I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠checked my condition. There was a slight tightness around my heart, but I'd paced myself with breaks, and for now, no overflow.

Time's gotten away from me.

While the battery charged, I should go pick up the things I needed. I checked the money I'd made yesterday. Repair fees from customers including the mercenary Jack: 15,000 credits. The apology money that Black Dog junker had left: 20,000 credits. Total fortune: about 35,000 credits.

It wasn't much, but I had to stretch it and get what I needed.

Tools and parts are a pipe dream. For now, I'll just grab some daily necessities and cleaning supplies.

I opened the building door and stepped outside.

Daytime Ground Zero had a strange quality to it. The smog hanging in the air blocked most of the sunlight, so noon actually felt dimmer than night. If anything, the neon signs blazing in the dark had been sharper, more vivid. That didn't mean there was nothing to look at. Holograms floated everywhere, driving home the fact that I'd arrived in a world completely different from the one I'd come from.

Still, it was brighter than night, and a lot more ordinary-looking people were out and about. I went from store to store, picking up the daily necessities I needed right now. Clean underwear. A few pieces of clothing that could pass for casual wear and work clothes. Hygiene and cleaning supplies.

The real problem was food and water. Decent food and bottled water were far more expensive than I'd expected. I had no choice but to buy the same high-calorie nutrient tubes I'd eaten last night, plus water-purification tablets. The taste would be awful, but for staying alive right now, this was the best I could do.

If I think of it like the chicken-breast-only diet I used to run when I was hitting the weights, maybe I can live with it.

I set my items on the store counter and handed over the bills. Unfamiliar music started playing from the store speakers.

Static. Crackling. The speaker was half-broken, noise cutting in and out, but the host had a strong voice and the content came through clearly.

The shopkeeper clicked his tongue like he'd heard it all before and kept packing my things. I listened. This was Ground Zero news. Worth hearing.

If I'd slept on the street last night, I'd have gotten caught in that gang war and ended up as a human sandbag.

It was a pretty useful broadcast. I asked the shopkeeper as he bagged my things.

"How do you pick up this broadcast?"

The owner glanced at me with a cloudy, half-broken prosthetic eye.

"What? You live in Ground Zero and you don't know DJ Stan's show?"

Tch. That's how you talk to a paying customer? Not a fan. Next time I'm shopping somewhere else.

That's what I thought. What I said was:

"No. None of the broadcasts I used to listen to were like this."

That wasn't a lie. The Seol Gyehyeon who'd lived in the facility had never heard this broadcast.

"It doesn't run on the corporate official net. Turn on a network scanner, punch in ST-NET-09, and lock the channel. If you haven't been here long, you'd better start listening to Stan's show every day. Cuts your odds of dying in a ditch."

As he said it, the shopkeeper slipped a nutrient jelly into my bag.

"Uh, I didn't buy this."

"Those nutrient tubes you bought are cost-effective for filling your stomach, but if that's all the greasy garbage you eat, your organs'll melt and they'll find you as a corpse in under a month."

He jerked his chin, indifferent.

"The jelly I tossed in is low-grade, but it's got organ protectants and vitamins. Eat it alongside the tubes. If it sits well, come back and buy more."

I took back what I'd thought earlier about talking to customers like that. For a guy with this kind of character, I could live with the attitude.

"...Thanks. I'll definitely shop here again."

"Yeah. That's why I gave it to you. It ain't free. It's an investment. Don't die, and come back."

If I keep an eye on him and he turns out decent, maybe I'll fix that prosthetic eye and the speaker. I'll charge him for it, of course.

With that thought, I stepped out of the store.