I stared hard at the rusted metal chest in the corner.
My heart was pounding—thump, thump, thump—like the *Wrench's* engine when it was overloaded, heavy and loud.
The thick smell of machine oil in the air seemed to carry a hint of something long-buried, a smell of old times.
This was the only thing my parents had left behind.
For as long as I could remember, I had treated it as a taboo—a past I didn't dare touch until I was strong enough.
But now...
I looked down at my grease-stained hands, then up at the *Wrench*, stuck sitting there because of overheating.
I need to win.
I need to survive.
And I'll do whatever it takes.
Taking a deep breath, I steeled my resolve and strode toward it.
The lock was rusted shut; I couldn't find a keyhole at all. I tried to pry it open with my bare hands, but the damn hunk of metal wouldn't budge.
I scoffed, turned, and grabbed the massive wrench engraved with the letter "G."
This was the largest tool my father had left me. Made of an impossibly hard alloy, it had been my companion through countless days and nights of scavenging for survival in the scrap heaps.
I jammed the flat end of the wrench into the seam of the lid and, putting my entire weight behind it, pried down hard!
*Creeeeeak!*
A piercing shriek of twisting metal rang out.
The rusted latch snapped.
The chest was open.
A cloud of dust and dried grease hit me full in the face, making me cough.
My heart raced as I peered inside with bated breath.
What was I hoping for? A hidden military-grade engine? A data chip containing some world-shattering secret?
But reality poured a bucket of cold water on me.
The chest was filled with nothing but old mining tools.Heavily worn power gloves, goggles with scratched-up lenses, and a few faded miner's jumpsuits.
My heart sank bit by bit.
Disappointment.
A massive wave of disappointment washed over me.
I let out a bitter laugh. Vex, what were you even expecting? They were just ordinary miners who died in an ordinary mining accident. Did you really think they'd leave you some fate-altering treasure?
Frustrated, I rummaged through the chest, tossing the junk tools out one by one.
Just as I was about to give up, my fingertips brushed against something cold and angular.
I dug it out.
It was a cooling pump!
Its casing was a dull gray, with no commercial branding—just a blurred military-spec serial number. It was smaller than I expected, but it felt surprisingly heavy in my hand.
My "Engineer's Eye" instantly scanned its internal structure—intricate micro-piping, high-density cooling fins, and a power core based on phase-change conduction that I had never seen before.
This... the efficiency of this thing was at least ten times higher than the best cooling pumps on the black market!
This definitely wasn't something used in mining machinery!
My breathing quickened instantly.
With this, the *Wrench's* wild heart would never stall out from the heat again!
I almost wanted to hug this treasure and laugh out loud. My luck hadn't run out yet!
I carefully set the cooling pump aside, preparing to empty the chest completely to see if there were any other surprises.
At the very bottom, right where the cooling pump had been, I found a square object tightly wrapped in oilcloth.
Curiously, I unwrapped the oilcloth to find a palm-sized, ancient-looking data terminal.
Its casing was worn to hell, and the screen was covered in cracks.Hoping for the best, I found a spare power cable and plugged it into the terminal's charging port.
A miracle happened.
The terminal's screen flickered a few times, then actually lit up!
Most of the data was corrupted, reduced to unreadable gibberish. I forced myself to be patient, sifting through the surviving file fragments bit by bit, just like I was hunting for useful parts in a scrap heap.
Finally, I managed to recover a short, heavily encrypted engineering log.
The log was dated a year before I was born.
[Prototype cooling test failed. Instant peak core temp exceeded threshold. Data must be hidden.]
[Second test, adjusted energy circuits. Failure. Reactor sustained irreversible damage.]
[...The interference from Ghost Echo is growing stronger; it is attempting to rewrite our protocols...]
[...We cannot let it fall into the hands of the Empire...]
[...Ghost Echo... Ghost Echo...]
Ghost Echo?
The name hit me like a bolt of lightning!
I suddenly remembered!
Back when I was cracking the low-level code of the "Harvest-7" engine, I had discovered a hidden, undeletable stream of anomalous data!
Its tag was "Ghost Echo"! Ghost Echo!
This was impossible!
Absolutely impossible!
How could a farm tractor engine, decommissioned for who knows how many years, be connected to the encrypted logs in my parents' gear?
My parents... who were they, really?
Weren't they just ordinary miners?
Why would their stuff contain a military-spec cooling pump? Why would there be encrypted logs filled with terms like "prototype" and "reactor"?
And this "Ghost Echo"—what the hell was it?
Question after question exploded in my head like bombs, blowing my once-clear world into total chaos.
I had always thought my past was a blank slate. I was an orphan raised in a junkyard; my parents were nothing more than two blurry names.But now, this battered terminal was telling me that nothing was as I had imagined.
My parents, it seemed, were hiding a massive secret.
A secret... big enough for them to hide the clues like this.
I tried to crack the other locked sections of the log, but the encryption level was insanely high. With my current skills, I couldn't even make a dent in it.
I stared at the words "Ghost Echo" on the screen, feeling like I was falling into a bottomless vortex.
Before, I fought for money, for survival.
But now, I suddenly had a new purpose.
I had to figure all of this out.
Find out my parents' true identities, find out why they died, and find out what this "Ghost Echo" really was!
I rewrapped the old terminal in the oilcloth and hid it back in the deepest corner of the chest.
Then, I picked up the military-grade cooling pump, my eyes harder than ever before.
I turned and walked toward the *Wrench*.
Disassembling, modifying, wiring, calibrating... my movements were lightning fast. All the confusion and stray thoughts in my mind were channeled into the precision of my hands.
Hours later, once the new cooling system was perfectly integrated into the *Wrench*, I restarted the engine.
This time, there were no piercing alarms, no red warning lights for overheating.
All I heard was a low, steady hum, like a slumbering behemoth letting out a breath of satisfaction.
I slammed the power output up to 150 percent!
ROAR—!
The *Wrench's* heart let out a power-filled roar like never before!
In the cockpit, every gauge stayed firmly in the green. The core temperature reading was pinned, rock-steady.
I felt the surging power radiating from the machine, nearly overflowing, and a cold smile curled my lips.
Good.
Very good.It doesn't matter who my parents were, or what mysteries they left behind.
They gave me one hell of a gift.
A gift that lets me rip every enemy in my way to shreds.
The Royal Interstellar League...
Those high-and-mighty nobles, those self-important elites...
Are you ready?
I, Vex, am here to stock up.