The Retired Max-Level Worker Wants to Rest - Chapter 11

Chapter 11: Preparation

TL/ED – Miso

It hit me out of nowhere.

‘I need to make money.’

Why?

Originally, I’d planned to work a decent job and then retire. I’d signed up for a pension, and the payouts would’ve been enough to get by.

It wasn’t that I wanted to live in luxury.

I just wanted to rest.

Go to work on weekdays, come home and unwind in front of the TV. On weekends, a quiet cup of coffee while looking out at the ocean or the mountains. At night, grab a cheap cut of meat from the butcher, make some snacks, and wash it all down with soju.

After retirement, I was going to watch TV and grill barbecue.

Simple pleasures. That was all.

‘But the world changed.’

In my past life, too.

One of the reasons I’d worked for thirty years was a sense of duty, sure, but it was also because I needed to get my hands on a weapon to defend my home and a construction robot.

If you weren’t on the Capital Planet, that is.

Well, even the Capital Planet had the occasional invasion, so it wasn’t exactly safe either, but if you wanted to settle on an outer planet, you had to be prepared for wild Brakta.

‘If you’re not safe, it costs more.’

What about Earth right now?

It had been such a peaceful world.

But it didn’t seem that way anymore.

That was why I needed money.

‘What should I bring back?’

Things from this planet.

There was plenty that could be worth money.

Revital alone was a prime example.

‘It’s an emergency treatment drug that can’t be found on Earth.’

I wasn’t simply thinking of selling one unit.

If they had a sample, couldn’t they replicate it?

I could even track down the Revital manufacturing process if I tried. All I’d need to do was find a decent mid-sized base, access its database, and search for it.

‘Hmm.’

That wasn’t the only thing to think about, either.

When I went back to Earth,

what would I be able to take with me?

‘I’ll need to look into that.’

Even if I couldn’t bring anything back, it wouldn’t matter.

I had knowledge. I had skills.

With those, I could reproduce things.

What if the minerals weren’t available?

‘There’d be limitations, but there’s plenty I could still reproduce.’

I needed to add searching for potentially profitable information to my future code of conduct.

.

.

.

I spent the whole day getting things sorted.

And the next day.

‘One week. And then the First Trial.’

Wasn’t that telling?

It probably meant there’d be another Trial a week later.

‘Even if that’s not the case.’

On a battlefield, you always assume the worst.

It meant I had to make the most of the next six days.

“What skills did you guys get?”

“I got something called Multi Shot. I can fire three shots from a single arrow. It seems to work with rifles too, but the mana cost is higher.”

“And the second one?”

“It’s called Light Step. When I walk or run, my body feels way lighter. It uses less stamina and I think I’m a lot faster.”

She even had mobility covered.

She was definitely walking the path of a marksman.

“What about items?”

“An Infinite Quiver.”

“……Something like that actually dropped?”

Infinite.

Not auto-generating.

Infinite Quiver.

“It costs mana, though.”

“……A real mana guzzler, huh.”

“Yeah. So I’m always running low. Barrier eats up a ridiculous amount of mana too, so I can barely use it. I think I’ll need to focus on Mana Operation for a while.”

I see.

Actually, that worked out well.

I could make Mana Batteries, after all.

“Dong-cheol, what about you?”

“I picked Sword-Body Unity when I woke up in the healing chamber, and with the bonus selection I just got as a Trial reward… I learned something called Thought Acceleration. This one eats up a lot of mana too. I can’t keep it up for long.”

Thought Acceleration.

Made sense, watching how Dong-cheol moved. To move that fast, your thinking had to be just as fast.

“Items?”

“Gauntlets that boost strength. With these, I could probably rip out a Turret, don’t you think?”

“……”

The more I listened, the more unfair it felt.

Why did I seem like the only weak one?

I was firmly in the support role.

Anyway.

‘I do need to make those Mana Batteries.’

They were something we genuinely needed.

They’d clearly take our combat strength up a notch.

And there was one more thing.

‘The fact that mana can be controlled.’

Until now, that had been impossible.

In my past life.

Even after becoming Galactic Humanity, artificially controlling mana came down entirely to human willpower. Machines could only amplify and convert it, at best. And even that was useless unless you were among the gifted few with mana talent.

‘But now I can apply it to machines.’

That was worth researching.

Of course, it didn’t look easy.

I spoke up.

“From now on, one week. We’re going to search for an exit while preparing for a second Trial.”

“……A second one?”

She asked back, sounding puzzled.

I gave a brief explanation.

Nothing was certain. But we prepare for the worst. When I put it that way, they nodded in understanding.

“I’m going to build bikes for you two. Just install the Coordinate Receivers at the locations I mark.”

Coordinate Receivers.

The Radar range needed to be expanded.

Real-time location tracking for the three of us.

Preparing against Brakta raids.

Finding the exit Gate.

Locating any possible survivors.

All of it required this.

“……But first, there’s some stuff I need to strip from the base, okay?”

Before that.

There were preparations to make.

.

.

.

And so, the next day.

“……Oppa, you built all this?”

I’d set up a forward base in the Basin.

With mana now at my disposal, and my levels having gone up, my stamina was practically limitless.

The first thing I built:

Oxygen and water tanks branching off from the Refinery Engine. A Core Cell charging line. A refined metal stockpile. I enclosed the whole thing within a single modular base structure.

I’d created a Control Room with an integrated Refinery Engine.

“For now, let’s stay in the Control Room. There’s a bathroom, and I set up a kitchen too.”

“Wow.”

They were both impressed.

For a Construction Robot Worker from space, this was all routine, but I could see how it’d be impressive to them.

And the next day.

“……Wait, you put all this up in a single day?”

I’d repaired every broken Turret.

Set up the Radar.

And most importantly, built living quarters.

“That’s the basics done.”

We could now process minerals.

And we had a place to stay.

“For today, I’ll need you to go on foot. If you plant the Coordinate Receivers at this point and this point, the Radar range will expand by this much.”

I hadn’t managed to build the bikes yet.

But expanding the Radar was a priority.

This was a race against time.

‘I should work on Mana Operation too.’

My daily routine went like this.

Wake up in the morning and practice Mana Operation. Eat a quick meal, then spend the rest of the day until evening repairing, building, and laying lines.

When evening came, more Mana Operation.

‘The gains are absolutely pitiful.’

Good thing I’d started learning it early.

If I’d put it off until later, I would’ve regretted it.

And then, at night.

‘A Mana Battery? I can’t even figure out how this thing works.’

I researched. I studied.

The crafting method existed.

But it was nothing like a normal battery.

‘Let me just try making one first.’

Research required time. But rather than that, it’d be better to observe a working Mana Battery firsthand.

Before that, though, there was something else to build.

“I’m finally making this.”

The 3D Fabrication Engine.

A single engine housing an array of metal 3D printers.

Input the desired blueprint, and it spat out the result. I also needed to design it so that metal resources fed in automatically from the Refinery Engine.

With this alone, construction speed would increase dramatically.

‘I’ll be able to make engines, bikes, and vehicles too.’

Two more days passed like that.

“……Oppa, what is all this?”

“Ho-cheon. Are you sure you’re the same species as us?”

A lot had changed.

The moment the 3D Fabrication Engine was complete, I produced Turks. With those, I put Cha Yu-ra and Park Dong-cheol to work gathering resources.

They were happy to finally have something to do. And I could focus on construction far more efficiently.

Thanks to that.

“……Ten Turrets ringing the Basin. Four Bunkers. You fight from the front line, and when you need to, fall back inside them.”

It had only been four days.

The Basin, once a Brakta nest, was steadily becoming a proper human settlement. Well, less a settlement and more a fortress, really.

And the most important thing.

“These are bikes.”

I’d churned out two of them.

With the 3D Fabrication Engine complete, building Turrets and Bunkers had become a matter of simple assembly.

That freed me up to build engines quickly as well.

“One for each of you. Do you know how to ride a bike?”

“I can’t.”

Park Dong-cheol couldn’t.

Cha Yu-ra said hesitantly.

“……I can, a little.”

Turned out “a little” was an understatement.

Cha Yu-ra taught Park Dong-cheol, and she got so frustrated she started popping wheelies while riding. She insisted she’d never been able to do this before and it was only possible because her level had gone up, but anyone could tell she was a seasoned rider.

“Anyway, it’s a race against time from here.”

Two days left.

One day to use as productively as possible.

And one day to rest as much as we could.

“I’ve marked the spots on the map. From here to here. We need to install a total of 102 Coordinate Receivers.”

There were two Radars in total.

Each had a range of five kilometers.

But if all of them were installed,

“We’ll be able to cover up to a twenty-kilometer radius.”

That was roughly the size of all of Seoul.

So all we needed to do was finish installing the Coordinate Receivers. As long as the exit Gate wasn’t in some absurd location, we could find it.

Vroom-

And with that, the two set off.

I continued building.

Normally, after constructing a 3D Fabrication Engine, you’d build Barracks. Barracks were facilities where transported “prisoners” were “modified” and “trained” into Space Marines.

‘Usually deployed during operations on remote planets.’

Original Space Marines were extremely rare.

Why?

‘Because the mortality rate was astronomical.’

Even before that, raising them was difficult.

Original Space Marines were on the elite course to becoming elite combat soldiers. If they survived and accumulated battlefield experience, they became “heroes” and “elite combat soldiers.”

Literally a rare resource that produced nobility.

‘Bringing people like that in from the start isn’t easy.’

What’s more,

for some low-priority operation on a remote planet, it was nearly impossible. On top of that, bringing even one Space Marine meant a considerable number of support facilities had to come along.

Which also meant transport resources were scarce.

That was why Space Marines were divided into two types.

‘Elite Marines.’

Or.

‘The Penal Marine Corps.’

Using prisoners.

A few hundred of them could be “delivered” in a single small vessel. Modification and training. Even equipment fabrication could be done on-site.

“……None of that applies right now, though.”

So I skipped the Barracks.

Then what did I need?

“Heavy weapons.”

But I could already build basic heavy weapons. What mattered was heavy weapons mounted on heavily armored chassis with serious defensive capability.

In other words, a tank.

‘One day left.’

Build one Light Tank by tomorrow.

And try making a Mana Battery too.

.

.

.

It wasn’t easy.

‘Even running the 3D Fabrication Engine at full capacity, it takes this long.’

Construction Robot Worker.

In other words, there was only one worker: me.

Normally, you’d build hundreds of 3D Fabrication Engines and run them all. One set for each Barracks, Heavy Armor Workshop, Mechanization Lab, Orbital Shipyard, and so on.

Every production facility housed dozens of 3D Fabrication Engines. That was how tanks and starships rolled off the line one after another.

“……Still, I managed to get this done.”

While waiting for parts to come out of the 3D Fabrication Engine, I’d used the downtime to build a Mana Battery by hand.

‘It was incredibly strange.’

It was covered in circuits I couldn’t make sense of.

They almost looked like letters.

Or maybe like drawings.

And yet those circuits guided mana, converted it, amplified it, stored it, and released it. At the center sat a uniquely refined piece of Ferrosite, inserted whole.

‘A refined state where energy output is suppressed to the extreme, with only the oxygen and water extracted.’

That was what made it unusual.

It made me curious about the relationship between minerals and mana. But without a research lab, there was nothing I could do about it right now.

Keeing-

“If I channel mana into it like this…”

I injected the mana from my body.

Then.

Tick.

Just like a Core Cell.

The charge percentage started climbing.

“But the capacity is enormous.”

I put in 10% of my total mana.

It rose by 1%.

And the thing was only the size of a tablet.

Crackle-

I brought over a Core Cell.

I drew electricity from it and converted it into mana. Then fed that directly into the Mana Battery.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The Mana Battery filled up rapidly.

The problem was,

“Urgh-!”

I was dying in the middle of it. For some reason, heat flooded my body, my head spun, and waves of nausea surged up.