"Mm. From the look of it, there's nothing wrong with it. It's in great shape," Old Homa said, patting the thick outer shell of Burkes No. 3. His metal prosthetic struck the metal armor with a crisp clang.
"As long as there's no problem, that's fine. It took a pretty nasty hit from that shot in the last match, so I was genuinely worried there might be some hidden internal damage," the mechanic, Bauer, said with a long breath of relief. Then his gaze landed on Jiang Qi. "By the way, who's this kid?"
"Him? Just a youngster I got to know recently. He's a little interested in mech fighting, so I brought him over to look around," Old Homa replied casually.
"Really? He looks unfamiliar to me," Bauer said, rubbing his chin. "He's not one of the gang, is he?"
The moment he heard that, Jiang Qi's heart skipped a beat.
But just as he was thinking about how to answer, Bauer had already looked away, as if he had no intention of dwelling on Jiang Qi's identity.
"Well then, old man Homa, I'll leave this pile of scrapped energy cores to you." As he spoke, he took out one of his hand-rolled cigarettes and passed it to Homa, even lighting it for him. "I'll take Burkes back first. Drinks are on me tonight."
"Fine, off you go." Old Homa took a drag on the cigarette and slowly exhaled a ring of smoke. "If you can, try to find a way to modify it a little further. It should still have room to improve."
"That's easy enough to say. I'll do what I can," Bauer replied with a grin. Then he pulled out a touchscreen phone and actually drove the huge mech straight out of the Mecha Club by remote control.
Old Homa took another drag, then turned to Jiang Qi in puzzlement. "Kid, why have you been staring at this pile of scrapped energy cores the whole time? Spot some kind of problem?"
"Huh? Ah, well..." Jiang Qi instantly felt awkward.
He had thought he was doing his best not to look directly at the pile of discarded cores, yet Old Homa had still noticed.
"Well, that is..." Jiang Qi thought for a moment before answering. "Actually, I was just curious. I've heard that every mech fight burns through a huge number of low-grade energy cores, and I was wondering why."
"Oh, that..." Old Homa stroked his beard. "That's basically the fatal flaw of a low-grade energy core array."
"A low-grade energy core array?" Jiang Qi echoed, confused. "What's that?"
"Mm. It's a bit troublesome to explain properly, so I may as well start from the beginning," Old Homa said. "But as payment for answering your question, could you help me gather all these low-grade energy cores and put them into that crate?"
As he spoke, he pointed to a wooden box nearby.
"Ah, of course!" Jiang Qi agreed without hesitation. He picked up the crate and quickly, deftly gathered all the scattered energy cores from the ground into it.
Watching Jiang Qi bustle about, Old Homa nodded to himself.
Once Jiang Qi had finished, Homa said, "Come on. I'll take you to my workshop and answer your question while we're at it."
With that, he headed out of the club.
Jiang Qi looked down at the box in his hands, packed full of damaged cores, swallowed, and then his gaze gradually hardened, as though he had made some kind of decision. Hugging the crate to his chest, he quickly followed after Homa.
After leaving the Mecha Club, the two turned into a side alley. Before long, Old Homa led Jiang Qi into an extremely spacious workshop.
The interior was huge. There was an armored off-road vehicle parked inside, along with a mech-fighting machine a full three meters tall. Even so, the place still didn't feel cramped.
"Well then, take a look at these two beauties. What do you think?" Homa said, jerking his chin toward the pair of machines in front of them.
"These are..." Jiang Qi's Appraisal ability activated at once, and a mass of information immediately appeared before his eyes.
[Heavytread SC-017 Heavy Off-Road Vehicle (Modified)]
[Status: Normal]
[Vehicle Integrity: 96%]
[...]
That was the information for the armored vehicle.
It also had various weapons mounted on it, each with its own separate information panel.
And on the other side...
[Raide No. 5 Mech-Fighting Unit · Prototype]
[Status: Normal]
[Unit Integrity: 94%]
[...]
"This is my armored vehicle, and that's my mech-fighting machine," Homa said with a smile, walking over to the vehicle and lightly patting the door. "Not bad, right?"
It was obvious these two machines were his pride and joy.
"They're both incredible," Jiang Qi said, nodding with wholehearted sincerity.
He had seen White-Claw Crow's ride before. Just judging from the configuration, most of the equipment on the off-road vehicle in front of him was no worse than what White-Claw Crow had.
And the mech-fighting machine standing here was also much better equipped than the Burkes No. 3 he had seen earlier.
"Right?" Homa said, looking pleased with himself. "But then again, both of these things are first-rate money pits..."
In the Wasteland, many things were expensive.
Fresh water, food, light industrial goods—and energy.
Deadwood Town had several large wind turbines and some solar panels, which counted as the town's primary sources of energy.
But obviously, neither wind turbines nor solar panels were something Deadwood Town could build on its own.
Those had all been acquired through trade with people from Bafeng City, and they were among the town's most important assets.
Of course, neither wind nor solar power could provide a stable electricity supply.
Fortunately, things like energy cores existed. As long as they were charged using the wind turbines or solar panels, they could then provide stable power for most household appliances for several days.
That said, low-grade energy cores were basically only enough for civilian electrical devices.
If you wanted to power vehicles or mech-fighting machines, then low-grade cores were lacking in both storage capacity and output.
In cases like that, the more advanced energy cores were obviously the more sensible choice.
But high-grade energy cores were not easy to come by.
They were rare to begin with, and on top of that, people from Bafeng City seemed to keep them under strict control.
Not only did they refuse to sell them outright, they also bought them back at high prices. As a result, many people who found one were unwilling to hand it over to the gang. Instead, they would secretly stash it away and look for a way to sell it directly through Bafeng City channels.
The result was that all varieties of high-grade energy cores had become one of the most precious categories of strategic resources in the Wasteland.
And in almost every gang, there were never enough advanced energy cores to go around.
To solve that problem, wasteland mechanics had no choice but to adopt a backup plan.
If quality wasn't enough, then make up for it with quantity.
Almost without exception, wasteland gangs chose to replace high-grade energy cores with a solution that used large numbers of low-grade energy cores arranged into arrays.
The method did work. At the very least, it solved the issue of total energy capacity.
But its flaw was also painfully obvious:
Its stability had major defects.
When the array was fully charged, things were fine.
But once more than a third of the stored energy had been consumed, stability would begin to decline.
And if more than two-thirds had been consumed, that stability would plummet off a cliff.
The lower the stability, the worse the imbalance inside the array became—and the more energy cores inside it would fail and burn out.
In ordinary use, such as powering an off-road vehicle, mechanics could reduce core loss by recharging frequently and keeping the energy reserve in the array high.
But in a mech fight, both sides usually fought at full firepower. They wouldn't stop until one side was no longer able to move.
In that kind of situation, who had time to worry about energy consumption?
Which meant that after a close match, both sides—win or lose—would inevitably suffer heavy energy-core losses.
And the moment he understood all of this, Jiang Qi immediately realized something:
As long as he could figure out where these damaged cores ended up, he might already be very close to solving his energy-core problem.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 120)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 100)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 100)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter89)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter86)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter63)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter75)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 53
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 57
From Junkman to Wasteland 35
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 26
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 27
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 26
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 26
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