Counterfeit Hero

The part was discovered by Fatty in a corner of the marketplace’s network.

This component, labeled as a magnetic instrument, was designed and manufactured by a workshop named Black Devil. It looked very inconspicuous on the virtual screen’s full display, yet it was priced at a hefty 130,000 Fei Yuan. From the time it went online until now, a whole year had passed, and not a single piece had been sold.

In the Free World, this is quite normal.

You see, the Free World is a place that relies on the natural law of survival of the fittest and the tacit balance of forces to form social rules, a world without laws. In this world, there are countless genius scientists and mechanical masters, and also countless frauds.

Turning stone into gold, turning water into oil, these ancient scams exist in just another form in this world. Spending hundreds of thousands of Fei Yuan to get sent a piece of junk worth only a few hundred bucks is completely normal here.

You need to distinguish the frauds’ items, and, damn it, those scientists aren’t that reliable either.

These lunatics’ brains are beyond comprehension. They conduct research entirely based on their interests, and their inventions could very well be worthless junk!

In the Free World, there is a widely circulated story that explains it all.

A hundred years ago, a renowned mechanical master, together with several materials science experts, spent ten years developing a blueprint for an indestructible mechanical arm of a mecha.

Due to technical confidentiality, this blueprint was never made public. Ultimately, after fierce competition, it was bought by a giant mecha manufacturing enterprise for a huge sum. All based on the reputation of the mechanical master and the experts!

But upon opening it, the company boss had a heart attack on the spot. The blueprint was real, and the mechanical master and experts indeed had put ten years of effort into the research, but the cost of producing a mechanical arm was enough to bankrupt the giant company!

Thousands of materials synthesized, thousands of fusion formulas, component analysis, detailed synthesis procedures, all sorts of masters’ research could be said to stand at the pinnacle of mechanical materials science at the time. But for the company, it was completely useless!

It was a blessing in disguise. Eventually, the company acquired considerable technical accumulation from the master’s research data and completed several technological innovations using some of these technologies. After spending huge purchasing fees and nearly ten more years of continuous research, these things finally came in handy. During this time, the company was almost dragged down.

So, in the Free World, there are countless superb talents and cheats; it’s hard to distinguish between real and fake. Without sufficient professional insight, trying to strike a bargain here will probably end in disappointment.

Speaking of Black Devil Studio, among the many research and workshop entities in the Free World, it is also quite famous. The reason is not because this studio has invented something extraordinary, but because this studio is more famously quirky than the other lunatics!

In this small studio led by the famous mechanic Casimir Belchi, with a team of twenty people, anyone randomly picked out is a genius scientist in a particular field. But more precisely — a bunch of eccentric science freaks.

The reason these people gathered in the Free World is that here, no one cares about any of their bizarre, ridiculous, or horrifying research! They can obtain a large amount of funding through research bounties, buy any materials they want, find countless lunatics like them, and conduct any experiments they couldn’t do in mainstream human society!

Thus, this studio is usually defined as a research institution by buyers. Apart from needing to spend money to commission targeted research projects, few people dare to delve into the products they produce themselves.

This magnetic instrument sitting there, not being asked about for a year or even a hundred years, is not surprising at all. Besides, it is essentially a semi-finished product placed by the Black Devil Laboratory on the marketplace not for sale but to seek collaborators who can further solve the problems and perfect the research.

Fatty didn’t know that this magnetic instrument was just a concept Belchi came up with due to the material properties after a certain experiment and wanted to miniaturize the repulsion engine of a ship. At the time, its research use was not clear, with only a general direction, mainly aiming for civilian use like exoskeletons for explorers or narrow-space operations.

To others, this item didn’t mean much. But in the eyes of Fatty, who possessed Caspar’s Journal and was a mechanic with rich combat experience, once developed, this thing would absolutely be a treasure!

A priceless treasure for Mecha Martial Arts!

Fatty’s eyes sparkled like a weasel seeing a hen, gleaming with a greasy green light. He knew, without any exaggeration, that with this item, his Mecha warriors could compete against the superpowers equipped with Tenth or even Eleventh Generation Mechas!

The function of the magnetic instrument is simple; it generates repulsive and attractive forces.

These two most common forces are nothing to ordinary people, but in the Mecha Martial Arts mastered by Fatty, the generation of these two forces is like an external martial arts expert gaining inner strength!