Reboot: Mechanic

Confirming with Theobold that her reward would only be more and not less, Mary was satisfied with the result and quickly dismissed herself.

Of course, Theobold wanted to cry, but could not. 

He could only blame himself for asking what Mary came to him for. The Egg Benedict had come at a flawless time to stop her, but he still failed to latch onto the opportunity and sought his own doom.

'Sigh, my wallet has a big hole now, always getting looted.' Theobold exclaimed inwardly, walking back to the camp to check up on the injured and the aftermath of the evolved Gilaso variant corpse. 

There were simply too many things for him to do, and he could not afford to idle around. That was the life of a dutiful and honorable military commander, unlike Egg Benedict. 

While Theobold got himself busied with the task ahead, Mary had returned to the Iron Sentinel.

"Okay, why did you want me to return so quickly?" Mary asked right away.

When they were still in a confrontation with Benedict, Shi Tian had subsequently made a signal to her, prompting her to cut the conversation as short as possible with Theobold. 

"What's your skills in terms of a mechanic?" Shi Tian ignored her question and instead asked his own. 

Although confused, Mary still answered him regardless. 

"Not above Mechanist Isaac, but definitely above you. And in terms of the mechanic class rank, which is separated by Apprentice, Trainee, Engineer, Staff Engineer, Senior Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, and a lot more that I forgot. But, I should be at the Staff Engineer level." Mary replied, but was more of an informative detail than a reply. 

Shi Tian nearly choked when he heard all of the rankings and was even more astonished when Mary said there was a lot more but forgot about it.

"How many rankings are there?" He asked in disbelief.

"A lot, Nathan. Did you think a Mechanic was an easy class? It's a class that requires a ton of studies and years of experience to even be called an accomplished mechanic." Mary rolled her eyes and snorted.

"Then what is my level?" 

"The lowest of the lowest duh. You're barely able to call yourself an apprentice of the Mechanic class rank." 

Faking a cough, Shi Tian decided to feign deaf and failed to hear that part about him being the lowest.

"Anyway, since you're a Staff Engineer, then you should be capable of replicating this blueprint, right?" Shi Tian changed the topic and gave her a rough blueprint that he had made according to the information given to him from the integrated chip.

It was a blueprint that analyzed the structure of the rigged IC chip semiconductor along with the specific type of silicon material. 

Integrated circuit chips are a combination of diodes, microprocessors, and transistors in a minimized form on a wafer made of silicon. 

Each of these components has a specific function. These can perform calculations and multiple tasks when combined with each other. 

Thus, Mary was unable to replicate it without knowing its properties, but with the blueprint now, she would be able to replicate it. At least, that was what Shi Tian hoped.

Mary was staring at the blueprint with a solemn expression, seemingly analyzing it thoroughly. 

A few minutes later, Shi Tian asked, "So how is it? Can you replicate the IC chip based on the blueprint?" 

The technology of the rigged IC chip was far more advanced than in the past, and even he had difficulty reading the structure. 

Another few minutes passed by, and Mary finally put the blueprint down. 

"The blueprint might look rough, but according to it, we can actually find many replacement components of the rigged IC chip. Although not the same type, the replacement components could actually work after coding it based on the blueprint description." She responded in a somewhat professional manner.

At the same time, she was staring at Shi Tian quite intensely, almost as if she was discerning it was actually Shi Tian and not someone else. 

"Where did you get this blueprint?" Mary finally asked. 

"I can't fathom that it was you who created this blueprint even though the ink was quite new." She added, telling him outright that she couldn't believe it was him who made it.

After all, some of the descriptions in the blueprint were too detailed for the current Shi Tian to be able to know. 

It was as if a 3-year-old suddenly knew how to do differential equations or Laplace transformation inverse equations. 

The logic just doesn't make sense even if the 3-year old was supposedly a prodigy or was learning from the mother's womb.

"Oh come on, are you seriously doubting me? Do you think Master Isaac would take in a useless person as an apprentice?" Shi Tian said and pretended to adjust an imagined eyeglass that was slipping toward his nose to look cool. 

"The way you're acting is even more suspicious. If I had a vent right now, I would have voted you out already." Mary twitched her mouth and said.

The more he wanted to explain and acted irregularly, the more suspicious Mary was. 

However, she can't fathom how he was able to achieve it given that there was only him here. Of course, Shi Tian could have been faking it and was a great mechanic pretending to be an amateur, but that didn't make sense either. 

If he was acting all along, then she would have long realized or noticed it, given that she was an actor herself when needed to do missions in the past. 

And she doubted his acting skills could be better than her. 

"I'll keep this in mind, but don't think I will stop watching you." Mary made a gesture of a V-finger in her eyes and then toward Shi Tian, indicating that she was going to watch him very carefully.

Meanwhile, Shi Tian smiled innocently and remained still. But inwardly, he was reminding himself to never do this kind of action again unless it was necessary.

'This is what happens when one acts smart but is actually incompetent.' He exclaimed inwardly.