The Retired Max-Level Worker Wants to Rest - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Occupation

TL/ED – Miso

In my past life.

Back when I was a Construction Robot Worker.

The early days were really tough.

Fighting monsters?

‘I got used to that quick enough.’

The hardest part was watching people die.

It always happened right when you’d grown attached.

-Hey, eat something while you work.

There was someone who looked after me.

James, a father of two and former bakery owner.

“Haha, thank you.”

Eating inside the Turk was prohibited.

You spend at least eight hours in there, usually twelve. In that kind of work environment, the most sensitive issues are food and the bathroom.

Food gets replaced with nutrition capsules.

Because the less you eat, the fewer bathroom breaks you need.

What a shitty rule that was.

-It’s fine. You think they’re gonna fire you for one extra bathroom break? You’re an outstanding worker who survived three years in this hellhole. Haha.

Yeah, most people just looked the other way.

But it depended on the commanding officer.

-James! I told you to be careful with that stuff. This CO doesn’t let anything slide. Total by-the-book, by-the-book!

Cecile, who had lost both her husband and her children.

She’d been a military nutritionist in her past career.

She still picked up odd jobs here and there even now.

-Stash this away and eat it after your shift. Got it?

She looked after me too.

I was the youngest among the Construction Robot Workers.

Back then, I had just turned twenty.

James was fifty, Cecile was forty.

‘They were all good people.’

That’s what made the work bearable.

We’d chat while mining minerals.

I learned a lot about repairs and construction too.

But those bonds didn’t last long.

-Battle stations! Everyone deploy! Hold the defensive line!

The commanding officer shouted.

A Brakta invasion, they said.

-Wait.

James looked up at the sky.

His Turk grabbed hold of me.

“Huh? What? We need to hurry-”

-You’re sitting this one out.

“What?”

Cecile came over beside us then.

-See that? The purple clouds in the sky.

“……”

I saw them.

They sent chills down my spine just looking at them.

-That’s a large-scale air assault. We can’t stop it.

-She’s right. Everything we’ve built, from structures to the tanks we produced… we only prepared for ground forces. Going out there is a death sentence.

Then we should retreat.

Why would we hold the defensive line?

“Then let’s run together!”

I shouted.

But James shook his head.

-I can’t. Refusing orders during wartime means no death benefits.

Right, James had two kids.

He’d lived his entire life for them.

And he used to say sometimes.

‘I live for my kids, and I’d die for them too.’

I didn’t understand it back then.

But was this what he’d meant?

Still, surely staying alive mattered more.

“Cecile. Can’t you do something-”

Clank.

She attached a wire to my back.

It was connected to the transport ship.

-There’s no room for me. The CO’s emergency shuttle only has one Turk slot.

That bastard of a commanding officer.

Sending the entire force to their deaths while he escapes alone?

The curses came out on their own.

This is exactly why having a good CO matters-

Tap.

James pressed his fist against my front visor.

Cecile awkwardly did the same.

-Get there safe.

-You survive. No matter what.

Those were their last words.

The wire attached to my back pulled me away.

The Turk lifted off the ground.

James and Cecile headed toward the defensive line.

A few minutes later.

KRABOOOOOM!

A massive explosion swept through the base.

* * *

I hated it.

People dying.

The more you cared, the worse the pain.

There were times I thought I’d gotten used to it. Someone would die right next to me and I wouldn’t even cry. I figured if I just pushed through and forced myself to look away, it would all evaporate and disappear.

But it didn’t work like that.

It all hit at once.

It doesn’t disappear. It gets buried in your heart.

‘This is why I shouldn’t get close to people.’

Park Dong-cheol, Cha Yu-ra.

I’d only known them for a day.

I’d deliberately tried to avoid conversation.

But when they followed orders with those bright, innocent expressions, I couldn’t help but grow fond of them. They even fed me breakfast this morning.

‘Damn it!’

I’d just heard the radio transmission.

At this distance, there was a delay.

By the time I told them to retreat, the fight had already started and they couldn’t receive the transmission.

‘A Basilak, of all things.’

Just in case, I’d told them its weak point that morning.

But could they actually kill one?

‘Not easily.’

The Basilak’s dorsal shell was immune to light arms.

Meaning nothing short of heavy weapons could get through.

A Gauss Rifle wouldn’t even come close.

‘Aiming for the inside of its fangs, that’s absolutely not an easy thing to do.’

On top of that, Creeds always came as a package deal.

A Basilak-and-Creed combo was truly no joke.

At times like these, the Turk’s movement speed felt agonizing.

“Faster.”

VROOOOM-

I pushed the speed higher.

Arriving at the base, I loaded two warheads.

Saving them came first, but the mission had to go on. That was the only way their sacrifices would mean something.

I set out.

Even at top speed, thirty minutes.

.

.

.

I arrived.

A thirty-minute trip done in twenty.

CLUNK.

I climbed out of the Turk.

As expected, the battle was already over.

The problem was…….

“……Cough, what took you so long.”

Park Dong-cheol.

One arm was gone.

Blood poured from his abdomen.

Thwik-

Without a word, I drove the syringe in.

Bioseal, a hemostatic nano-fiber coagulant with anti-infective properties. Used for amputations, open wounds, and shrapnel injuries.

Thwik.

Revital this time.

He’d need the energy.

“Still, we did it.”

Cha Yu-ra was there too.

A chunk of flesh had been torn from her thigh. And one of her arms hung limp and ragged, meaning the bone must have been completely shattered.

She was better off than Dong-cheol, at least.

Thwik.

I stuck her with a syringe too.

In the distance, the Basilak’s carcass was visible.

Countless Creed corpses littered the ground as well.

“……I told you to retreat.”

That was all I managed to say.

What I really wanted to say was something else.

Thank God.

Thank you for being alive.

You did well.

But the words wouldn’t come out.

“Hehe, but we kept all the explosives safe.”

“And we leveled up a ton. Heh heh.”

Stubborn idiots.

At least they were alive. That was enough.

Off to one side, I spotted Dong-cheol’s arm.

“What’d you save that for……?”

Fair enough to say that.

Less than half of it remained.

The Basilak’s acidic mucus had dissolved the rest.

“With the right equipment, it can be restored.”

“……Really?”

“Yeah. So if anything gets cut off, always keep whatever’s left.”

Good enough.

Yeah, as long as they were alive.

Dong-cheol was still in danger though. Even with the injections, without proper trauma treatment soon, he could die for any number of reasons.

So I said it.

“Both of you, come with me.”

There was only one way.

Raising their Levels.

Each time a Level went up, the body grew stronger, and the mysterious energy seeping into the lower abdomen increased. That would help protect their bodies.

And if my hunch was right, hitting Level 10 would earn them a reward.

“Ugh, it hurts, but gotta do what the boss says. Cough-”

Cha Yu-ra supported Dong-cheol.

They’d had the injections, so they could manage this much movement. I’d been through it plenty of times in my past life. The stuff worked better than you’d think.

I attached a Loader Back to the Turk.

‘No troops here, as expected.’

A Bio-Defense Structure was visible.

I knew its range precisely.

On top of that, the Basin’s terrain sloped downward from the outer edge to the center. No need to get close; the explosives could simply be rolled down.

“Press this and it’ll roll down.”

It wouldn’t be perfectly accurate.

But the explosive force was calculated with that in mind.

“One at a time.”

Tap.

Park Dong-cheol and Cha Yu-ra.

And me. We split the work between us.

Ting.

Safety pins pulled, the explosives rolled down.

The Bio-Defense Structure couldn’t react. Because it was designed to detect Core Cells and bio-signals.

Rumble, rumble, rumble. Thud.

All seven landed in the exact right spots.

Then we each pressed our switches.

Keeeeen-

A faint hum.

And then.

KA-BOOOOM-!

A massive explosion swept through the Basin.

Even bigger than expected.

Beyond the Bio-Defense Structures, over half the nest’s buildings were destroyed, including the Spawn Sacs and the Heart Core.

-You have gained a large amount of EXP.

-You have gained a large amount of EXP.

-You have gained a large amount of EXP.

.

.

.

-Level up.

-Level up.

-Level up.

-Level up.

-Level up.

My Level shot to 14 in an instant.

The EXP haul was substantial.

The Card Reward prompt appeared.

Just as I thought, one was given every five Levels.

And then.

-The Party System has been unlocked.

That message appeared.

We instinctively understood how to form a party.

“Everyone hit Level 10?”

“Yeah! I did!”

“Me too! Something called ‘Party’ showed up.”

It was definitely a game-like system.

You shake hands and say something like ‘party invite’ or ‘join party.’

‘It must be for sharing EXP.’

And now.

This nest was finished.

No units being produced, and every worker had burned to death. The two remaining Spawn Sacs were bleeding out steadily, so there was no coming back.

Thud.

I slumped down on one side.

I was in better shape than those two, sure, but the trip here had been anything but easy. Knowing they were alive let the tension finally drain out of me.

‘Let me check the reward cards first.’

The others were checking their cards too.

-Reflective Armor: Upon being hit, reflects impact damage within a certain radius.

A counter skill.

No mana cost, from the looks of it, so did it trigger passively? This was practically screaming at me to fight with my body.

-Technician: Gain EXP from repairing, modifying, crafting, and operating machines.

Something new.

Probably because I’d been working with machines nonstop.

I checked the next skill too.

-Remote Control: Expend mana to remotely operate machines.

Another tech-related skill.

I hesitated for a moment.

But the choice came quickly.

‘Early game, it’s always EXP. No question.’

Anyone who’s played games knows this.

How critical income is in the early stages.

And EXP is considered the best of all.

-You have selected [Technician].

And just look at this.

An entire nest wiped out.

Plus, the mineral deposits were ours now.

So what comes next?

“……Is this an occupational disease?”

Was it a powerful instinct?

Or a compulsion?

I wanted to build a base here. There were clear reasons for it, sure, but more than anything, it just felt like something I had to do.

An occupational disease I genuinely never saw coming.

All these rich resources, just sitting here untouched? As a Construction Robot Worker, that was simply unthinkable.

‘……To find the exit gate, I’ll need a radar anyway. Setting up Turrets for defense along the way, building up safely to tanks, then heading for the gate, that’s the right plan.’

All of that required infrastructure.

Building an entire base from scratch, in other words.

Obviously not easy.

But it was what I’d done for thirty years in my past life. With enough resources, this Turk could raise a city from barren wasteland, manufacture tanks, and launch ships.

‘And even nukes, at that.’

It would take time.

But the further along it got, the faster it would go.

The one thing I lacked was manpower.

“……”

I looked at Park Dong-cheol and Cha Yu-ra.

Yeah, getting workers out of them would be a stretch.

Teaching them to pilot a Turk alone was a hurdle in itself.

‘Honestly, raising them as combat troops makes more sense.’

They were already combat-oriented anyway.

And right now, my Level was 14.

The strength I could feel in my body. Not just raw muscle, but stamina, senses, everything. I could tell I’d gotten stronger across the board.

Enough to clear three meters in a standing jump with ease.

With a proper running start, probably five.

‘And on top of that, a reward every five Levels.’

Those were more impressive than I’d expected.

Levels were clearly important.

And once base construction began, Levels would climb steadily, and we’d all grow stronger.

Combat troops?

It was obvious they wouldn’t take long to reach the caliber of elite soldiers I’d seen in my past life.

“Dong-cheol, what skill did you get?”

I asked.

He explained.

“Something called [Meditation]. Looks like I sit still and it replenishes mana and stamina. I need to do it for a bit.”

Not bad.

No [Regeneration] or anything like that, it seemed.

But having some kind of survival or recovery skill was essential.

This world was more brutal than it looked.

Hoo-

Dong-cheol crossed his legs.

With long, steady breaths, a bluish energy enveloped him. It didn’t seem to heal wounds, but the bleeding stopped and his complexion stabilized.

“……Yu-ra?”

“Mine’s [Precision Shot]. It amplifies range and has a charge-up. The damage scales with charge time, I think!”

A sniper skill.

Perfect fit for her.

I didn’t know how much damage it could deal, but if the scaling was significant, she’d essentially gained an incredible weapon.

‘A railgun is still a firearm, after all.’

……Of course, I couldn’t build one right away.

But our overall combat strength had clearly gone up a notch.

‘So the skills and actions you’ve taken before really do change what options you get.’

Vital information.

And then.

“Help me hook up the Loader Back.”

“Got it!”

First, we needed to get back to the base.

Load up as much as we could carry.

‘We’ll need the supplies to get the med bay running, too.’

The extraction itself wasn’t difficult.

But before that.

Ting-

An Incendiary Round.

FWOOM- WHOOSH-!

I set the remaining structures ablaze.

Not as dramatic as the earlier explosion, but they’d burn down slowly. Once all the bio-structures were gone, the contaminants would clear as well.

‘Now it begins.’

Time for the Construction Robot Worker to do what he does best.