Chapter 5: Illegal Alien (3)
There were many nameless stalls in the LL-19 Scrap Market.
No signs, no permits required, and no taxes to pay.
It only had thugs with knives, loudmouths, and drowning debtors.
To stay in business long there, you had to know three rules.
First: never trust anything that looks fine.
Second: never trust a guy selling too cheap.
Third: never trust a customer who barely speaks.
Harune had survived for twelve years by sticking to those three rules.
Twelve years on LL-19.
That was a damn long time.
Here, no person, shop, or name lasted that long.
This was a place where a guy selling prosthetic arms next to you yesterday could be found crushed under a transport pipe today.
So surviving here that long was an impressive feat.
At least, Harune thought so.
His stall was at the edge of the market, right next to a waste heat pipe.
The location was terrible.
In the summer, the heat rising from the pipe felt like it would cook his skin, and in the winter, the heat would abruptly cut out, freezing his fingers solid.
Still, it wasn't all that bad.
Nobody wanted to hang around a spot like that, so obnoxious customers were few and far between.
Harune had set up a shabby tent there and laid out cracked circuit boards, scrap batteries, broken magitech lamps, prosthetic joints, and unidentified crystal components.
Most of it was trash.
However, down in the underground, the difference between trash and merchandise was not that big.
If you could fix it, it was merchandise; if you could not, it was trash.
And… if you could trick someone, that was merchandise too.
With a magnifying lens strapped over one eye, Harune peered at a circuit board no bigger than a fingernail.
It was a cracked auxiliary processing chip.
By surface standards, it was junk.
"Damn it."
He scraped off the scorched part of the circuit board with his fingertip.
The flow of mana was completely severed.
No saving this one.
He tossed the circuit board to the side and picked up the next item.
That was when—
A shadow fell over the stall, but Harune couldn't be bothered to look up.
Waiting for the customer to speak first was basic business.
Greeting them first made him look desperate.
And the desperate side always lost in negotiations.
A brief silence passed.
Then came a low voice.
"How much is this worth?"
Only then did Harune look up.
Standing in front of the stall was a kid he had never seen before.
He was young.
By scan records, his face looked around sixteen, seventeen at most.
However, unlike his appearance, his eyes held deep shadows.
Greenhorns in the Lower Levels usually came in two types.
Either terrified, or aggressive to hide the fact that they were scared.
Yet he was neither.
His clothes were filthy, but strangely, he did not look pathetic.
Harune clicked his tongue internally.
He knew this kid was going to be a pain in the ass.
He looked at the item the customer had placed on the stall.
It was a magitech device slightly larger than his palm.
What a waste.
If it worked, it would be high enough quality to fetch a steep price.
However…
The black metal frame, cracked crystal plate, and severed circuit wires told a different story.
After inspecting the item, he reached a simple conclusion.
"It's trash."
Harune snorted.
"It won't even fetch scrap value."
The kid did not back down.
"There's still mana remaining inside."
"So what if there is? It doesn't flow."
Harune tapped the device with his finger.
"The input port burned out, and the conversion circuit snapped. The crystal plate is cracked, too. You can't fix this."
Normally, someone would swear and back off at this point.
Well, sometimes there were guys who grabbed you by the collar instead.
Those types were easy to deal with.
In this market, people pulled knives far faster than they grabbed shirts.
However, instead of swearing, he stared down at the device.
"?"
"Can't fix it, huh?"
He muttered softly.
Harune frowned.
It was an annoying tone.
A tone that sounded as if he truly did not understand.
The boy pressed the severed circuit line with his fingertip.
"That's not it."
"What?"
"The conversion circuit isn't what's broken. The flow is surging backward here."
Harune's expression crumpled.
"What do you know?"
"Be quiet for a second."
Harune was momentarily lost for words.
And then, the kid gently tapped the item.
That was truly all he did.
Zzzzt.
A single dead circuit glowed faintly.
Harune's eye widened.
"What did you just do?"
"I found where it was clogged."
The boy picked up a thin piece of metal lying nearby.
Harune nearly reached out on pure instinct.
The kid's behavior was pure lunacy.
What he held was not a maintenance tool.
It was just a scrap piece of metal from yesterday's waste pile.
It did not have a proper edge, nor was it insulated.
Poking the board with that junk was a good way to ruin what little remained.
"Hey, if you touch it with that…"
Ignoring him, the kid used the tip of the scrap metal to scrape away the scorched part of the circuit board.
Then he reconnected the two severed wire ends with surgical precision.
Harune held his breath.
That method was not something you could call proper maintenance.
A proper mechanic would never operate like that.
They would use circuit rearrangement equipment, apply flow stabilizers, and secure the cracks on the crystal plate first.
Why spend a fortune fixing something that belonged in the trash?
By his estimate, the repair cost would be higher than the item itself.
And yet.
Vrrr.
A blue light flickered to life inside the cracked crystal plate.
Harune gaped.
"How did that turn on?"
The boy set the device down.
"Because it wasn't a dead circuit."
Don't be ridiculous.
Harune snatched up the device.
Mana began flowing inside the crystal plate.
It was unstable, but it was alive nonetheless.
A dead circuit was flowing again.
Without circuit rearrangement equipment.
Without stabilizers.
Without proper tools.
With just a single scrap piece of metal, it came back to life.
Harune looked at the boy's hands.
No equipment, no blueprints.
With those hands, he fixed an item that seemed beyond saving.
A chill ran down the back of Harune's neck.
What felt even more disturbing was that the boy looked entirely unaware of how extraordinary his feat was.
"How much?"
The boy asked again.
Harune could not answer.
How much? Is he seriously asking that right now?
This greenhorn was asking for the price of his scrap, completely oblivious to the worth of the skill he'd just displayed.
Harune slowly set the device down and looked straight at the boy.
"You."
He spoke in a low voice.
"I've got a job for you."
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