The Greatest Mecha-Chapter 64: Who Will Be The Legacy Disciple?

Alberta looked at Alto’s frame with even more intensity. "Nuh-uh, I was wrong, you have changed, measel. You look like a crisp biscuit."

Alto took it as a compliment and smiled, delighted to be in her presence. Still, he wondered why she had not paid him a single visit while he was hospitalized, and now she acted like she really cared about him. It filled him with mixed feelings, but eventually, he gave in to her quirk.

She took the words out of his mouth before he had a chance to speak. "It’s been a while, and a long one at that. No one told me you were discharged yet. So you’re back to work, I suppose."

Alto spoke in an even bolder tone than he initially envisioned, his voice crisp and unfaltering in its articulation. "About that, I’ve been actively thinking of doing something different and begin working with real mechs—well, with your permission, of course."

He would not want her to feel that he was being disrespectful after she had taken him in for the past three years. That was the last thing he wanted to do.

Alberta smiled at his words. She read his eyes like a book to confirm the authenticity of his words before saying, "Confident, I like that. So that’s what you’ve been doing for the past months? I was curious and getting a bit bored, I’ll have to admit."

"Bored?" Alto could not help but ask.

She smiled even deeper. "Currently, I have no need for someone who cannot back up their own words."

Alto said with utmost seriousness, "Try me, I’ll surprise you."

Professor Alberta nodded. "In all my years, I don’t think there’s plenty that can surprise me."

Charles Vans, who had been working, had paused his work to eavesdrop on them. The professor sighed, "If you notice, I don’t currently have a disciple, and that is because none of my aspirants have been able to complete my task. Most of them chickened out of it."

"I said... Try me!" Alto’s eyes were enough to tell her he meant the words he spoke.

She continued, "Across the collection of neighboring star systems is a planet called Zen Utopia, one of the biggest government planets in the galaxy. There will be a competition there seven months from now, and it’s brutal and above the standards of anyone in this dump. If any of you can beat hundreds of thousands of young mech designers and become one of the ten finalists, then you will officially become my disciple and receive endless benefits. It’s way better than being some dingy mech designer."

The concept of what she said sounded massive. He had not even heard of this Zen Utopia until now, and it sounded fancy to him. But if it really was as huge as she made it sound, he was even more eager to enter and try his skills against others his age. "Where do I join?"

Alberta burst into laughter at his words. She was always impressed by how he did not falter once. She had just declared something that would make even apprentice mech designers shake in their boots, and here he was taking the challenge like a man should. "Can’t do, kid. Even with my status, I can only open one slot, and Charles Vans has it. But since I am never impartial, as always, I will give you a shot." At the mention of this, Charles Vans frowned by his work desk. "How about you have a duel with Charles Vans, and whoever wins gets the slot?"

Alto did not need to look back to confirm; he could feel the eyes of Charles Vans piercing through his back. "Fine by me, but what of Eleven? Isn’t he going to participate?"

Alberta cocked her head with pride. "He pulled out of the challenge. I sometimes wonder what I’ll do with him."

It did not take long for the professor to set up the duel with Charles Vans. Not long after, they were standing side by side, and before them was a cluster of scrap metals and wires. It looked like a graffiti artist received inspiration from a nightmare that was never supposed to exist.

Alberta took her time to explain, "This mass of junk will be a capable mech when you are done reassembling it and building it back up. By the time you are done, you should have cleared up all the faults as best as you can. The one who can do this in record time will be graded by yours truly." Her explanation ended there before she vanished to go take a shower. Eleven looked at both figures with a bit of interest.

"What the fuck is this?" Charles Vans thought to himself. A drop of sweat trickled down the side of his forehead. Surely, if this was hell for him to look at, Alto would be in a real pinch. Charles Vans smiled at this fact, but all that changed when he looked at the time she had given them. It was one hour to reassemble a mech he had no idea about.

Identifying the parts and rearranging them to their original positions on the mech could take an hour itself. Surely she did not really mean that they would have to follow the time exactly, right? Charles Vans gulped, his composure leaving him for a few seconds. He decided to start going through the hellish work with as much confidence as he could muster. Best he knew, it was training he was meant to take to get better. He was very angry to hear that the professor, who he had idolized for as long as he had known what mechs were, would consider a nobody over him. He wondered if she had higher expectations of Alto than she did of him. In all his six years of serving her, she had not directly helped him, yet she carried this nobody on a personal tour outside the mech division. Charles Vans was determined to stop whatever witchcraft Alto had used on his idol, but first, he had to beat this near-impossible task.

After the first thirty minutes, the professor had returned in a set of new clothes—a blue jumper and pants. This was another of her outfits that showed she was more conscious of her looks despite her status. When she returned, she only needed one look at the two before she reached her verdict. While one struggled like any other normal person would, the second far exceeded her expectations. He carried no flaws in his technique and most especially his form. She smiled slightly and muttered to herself, "Well, what do you know, he managed to surprise me after all."

Forty-five minutes in, and Charles Vans, if not dripping in sweat, was soaked in it. The absurd task had destroyed him mentally and physically. He decided to have a look at Alto, expecting him to be passed out somewhere on the ground, but what he saw shook him to the core.

Alto stood there, his face unreadable, his form precise, his concentration undivided, his eyes zipping about constantly, always moving up and down. His forehead was not sweaty, his shoulders loose and not heavy like Charles Vans’s. Alto’s hands did not tap the holoscreen—rather, they danced in it, his fingers sliding and spinning. It was clear to anyone watching that he channeled his very soul into his work.

Alto’s mech design was more than half done. With his knowledge from the game, he was able to know what went where. Dismantling everything and working on the internals took a lot of time, but he soon got the hang of it. Now that he had dealt with more than half the components, the rest was easy. He used the designer’s eye to check for faults in the form of the work. Alto soon realized that the professor had thrown in a lot of excess parts to throw off the odds—something Charles Vans had lost track of.

By the time was up, Alto was done with a bit of time to spare, while Charles Vans had only just barely completed his design. The huge mech appeared to be a medium-class mech. The professor wasted no time in examining the work. Charles Vans’s mech came out with a 52% rating, and Alto’s mech design came up with an 87% rating. From that moment, it became apparent the huge gap in their skill levels.

Charles Vans held tight to his hair and pulled it out. All the memories he had of being next to the professor vanished. Come to think of it, they had only started to fade since Alto had appeared out of nowhere.

"No, no, no, no, I won’t accept this. This fool is nowhere near being better than me. I’ve been here longer." Charles Vans could not wrap his head around it.

Alto said nothing to comfort him. He simply looked at the professor, who approached Charles Vans and said, "You were inferior, and you only amount to this much. Your time has come and gone."

Charles Vans dropped to the ground and burst into tears, screaming curses—most of them directed at Alto. "My future, stolen from me—and it’s all his fault!" He shot Alto a mad glance, his eyes red.

Alto felt the need to recoil, but he simply looked away and said, "You only have yourself to blame."