Bincheng City, night.
The midnight streets were deserted.
However, the sign for the 'Anything Can Be Modified' Modifier Shop was still lit.
Inside the shop, figures moved, and a detached voice spoke:
"Boss Su, your lease is almost up, you can't delay any longer. If you can't pay the rent, we'll have to reclaim your shop according to the rules."
"I don't know how your Modifier shop can stay open without even a single modification core..."
"Oh, don't you worry, I'll definitely get you the rent within this week!"
...
Finally, he saw the rent collector off.
Su Chen returned to the cashier counter and sighed, looking at the empty street outside the door.
This was not Earth, but the Star God World, a world where racing was highly developed. However, what sped across the tracks were not ordinary race cars, but a type of fantasy creature called Mecha Girl.
They usually looked like human girls, but on the track, they could transform into supercars.
He had been in this world for three months.
He had thought that the money he earned from hard labor before would be enough to support the Modifier shop. Now it seemed he had thought too simply. What if he was the top racing Modifier on Earth? No one in this world knew him.
When he first transmigrated to this world and learned about fantasy creatures like Mecha Girl, he was truly startled.
But soon, the surprise turned into excitement.
As a Modifier, he was also a car enthusiast.
Who wouldn't want their race car to turn into a youthful and beautiful girl?
Holding the steering wheel during the day and pigtails at night, wouldn't that be wonderful?
He had thought it would be easy to acquire a Mecha Girl of his own, but after learning more, he was deterred by the extremely high barrier to entry.
A driver's license, that was the most basic requirement.
Secondly, Mecha Girl could only be obtained through allocation by the League Academy, distribution by clubs, or self-funded purchase.
And buying a Mecha Girl required a large sum of money; the rarer the Mecha Girl, the more expensive she was.
Furthermore, even with money to buy a Mecha Girl, it wasn't enough; some high-grade Mecha Girl also needed to approve of their potential owner.
These three requirements alone had already blocked ninety-nine point nine percent of people.
So, he made a painful decision and decided to solve the money problem first.
He had hoped to quickly accumulate wealth with his superb modification skills, and even gain the favor of many Mecha Girl... but due to his lack of fame, no Mecha Girl came to him for modifications in the two months since he opened the shop.
Drivers did come to visit the shop, but upon discovering he had no license, they turned and left.
In this world, a Modifier's license could only be obtained through strict academic assessment; where did he have the time to go back to school now?
No academic qualifications, not even eligibility for the exam.
He was now a 'blacklisted' person, with excellent medical skills but no license to practice!
【<Main Quest 1.0> Modify a Mecha Girl. Quest Reward: Activate Talent.】
"Dong—!" The twelve o'clock chimes rang out.
A line of mysterious text refreshed in his mind on time.
He propped his chin with one hand, tapping his fingers idly on the table, and sighed again, "Buddy, couldn't it just activate directly? Why all these twists and turns?"
This was the golden finger that came with his transmigration.
It was called a system, but it had no system interface and couldn't be communicated with. Yet, it had a quest prompt that appeared every night at 12 AM.
Another transmigrator would have activated the golden finger long ago.
But he was still stuck at the first step.
"Where am I going to get the rent? Continue moving bricks at the construction site?"
Su Chen frowned, pondering.
Earning money through hard labor to maintain the Modifier shop was not a long-term solution after all.
The most urgent task was to activate his talent, and he absolutely had to find a Mecha Girl to modify. But this kind of thing couldn't be forced; Mecha Girl were battle maidens with considerable combat power. Knocking one out with a club, tying her up, and forcibly modifying her was simply not feasible.
"It seems there's only one way..."
Su Chen narrowed his eyes and took out a whiteboard from the warehouse.
As a top Modifier, he shouldn't be doing something that lowered his status.
But he had reached a dead end.
He could only try to cure a dead horse as if it were alive.
...
North Street at twelve o'clock was cold.
Neon lights reflected on the asphalt, cutting the late-night street into mottled light and shadow.
Xing Meng walked alone on this empty street, her thin coat pressed tightly against her body by the cold wind.
Under the streetlights, her shadow was stretched long, merging with the dark silhouettes of distant tall buildings.
Stumbling past a Modifier shop, the cold light shone on her pale face.
She stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the girl reflected in the glass, her eyes like frozen lake water, reflecting no light.
Xing Meng silently stared at herself.
Scenes from the morning couldn't help but flash through her mind.
"Xing Meng, I'm afraid I won't be able to pass the graduation race..."
"Master, there are still a few days until the graduation race, we still have time to prepare, don't give up so easily..."
"I gave up easily? Isn't it because your performance is so poor?"
The woman in the driver's uniform slammed her fist onto the coffee table.
Her voice trembled, hysterical, the words spewing from her mouth colder and more cutting than knives.
"If only your performance were a little better, I wouldn't even be able to pass, let alone become the laughingstock in my classmates' eyes."
"Master, I, I will work hard to train myself, I..."
Her cautious words were still cruelly torn apart, followed by an even fiercer storm: "What's the use? Can it help me pass the assessment? Can it help me graduate? Can it improve my performance in a short time?"
"I... I can..."
"Alright, then go improve, and if you can't improve, don't come back to see me. Get out—!"
The door slammed shut with a 'boom'.
Everything came to an abrupt halt.
The only way for a Mecha Girl to improve her performance in a short time was through modification, by replacing her with a better modification core.
The money required for this could be astronomical.
But she and her master were only students at the League Academy, and most of the money they earned was spent on daily maintenance, with no spare cash for modifications.
Xing Meng spent a day running to various Modifier shops with the little money she had left.
Those Modifiers went from enthusiastically introducing various modification cores to looking indifferent and disgusted in just a few seconds after she pulled out her money.
She had too little money; she couldn't even afford the lowest-grade modification core. She couldn't get credit either; Modifier shops didn't accept any credit, telling her to leave if she had no money.
After a day of running around, she was exhausted and hungry.
The exhaustion was mental, and the hunger was due to a lack of nutrient fluid.
Perhaps after a few more steps, she would have no choice but to find a place to lie down and hibernate, waiting for the patrol tow-Mecha Girl to drag her away.
In front of her was a newly built Modifier shop; she remembered it used to be a supermarket.
The shop was small, looked a bit old, and there wasn't even a single modification core on the shelves.
So what did this Modifier shop sell?
Did the owner not do modification business?
Xing Meng pressed her face against the glass window, the soft flesh on her pretty face squished into a flat, comical shape against the glass.
Through the floor-to-ceiling glass, she saw a handsome man, presumably the owner, hanging a whiteboard at the entrance.
After the owner turned and went back into the shop's warehouse.
Only then did Xing Meng carefully move to the Modifier shop's entrance.
She had been rejected by Modifier shop owners too many times and was afraid of being scolded, so she didn't dare to appear in the Modifier shop owner's line of sight again, lest she be scolded again for not having money.
She had almost given up on modifications.
Until she clearly saw the large, flowing characters on the whiteboard at the Modifier shop's entrance—Free Modifications.
There was also a small loudspeaker hanging on the door.
The loudspeaker 'hissed' twice, then suddenly blared out a rhythmic, mesmerizing voice: "Bankrupt! Bankrupt! The unscrupulous owner ran off with his sister-in-law!
Originally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions in modification fees, starting today, not 998, not 98, not even 9 dollars and ninety-eight cents!!!
Clearance sale! Suicide sale!!!
All modifications free, totally free!!!!"
...
...
【Disclaimer】 The world in this book is a fictional world; any similarities are purely coincidental.
Mecha Girl are fantasy creatures; please do not use carbon-based life forms' thinking to interpret and study any of their characteristics.
Agree to the above terms, and welcome to the Mecha Girl Era.
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