The cool blue rectangle didn't blink away. It sharpened, edges trued, then wrote on itself in tidy lines.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Profession system bound.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Job panel unlocked.
Ash Vale's throat worked once. He kept his hands loose at his sides, like he was sighting down a misaligned barrel and any twitch would throw the shot wide.
New lines unfurled—simple, readable, a breath above the center of his vision.
[SKILL] lv1 Basic Unarmed — eligible base profession: Brawler.[SKILL] lv3 Basic Firearms Handling — eligible base profession: Gunsmith.[SKILL] lv4 Basic Mechanical Repair — eligible base profession: Mechanic.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Select your base profession.
"Right," he said softly to the empty shop. "So I wasn't hallucinating."
The panel didn't answer with a voice. It answered with more text, crisp as blueprint notes.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] This system assists the user in improving job-related skills and attaining peak professional achievement. After job transfer, you may gain profession XP from daily work and life to raise profession level and skill levels.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Raising skill levels increases work efficiency. Raising profession level unlocks core skills and higher transfer permissions.
[TRANSFER CONDITIONS] Upon maxing a base profession (max level 10) and meeting certain conditions, transfer to a Tier-1 profession becomes available.
[TRANSFER CONDITIONS] Example path: Mechanic (main) + Gunsmith + Unknown → Tier-1: Battlefield Mechanic.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Each profession level-up increases physical attributes to varying degrees, depending on profession type.
Ash glanced at the bench, the racks, the cracked mirror, the half-dead floodlight. This was his battlefield. He'd been fighting here for months with solvent and patience while the rot chewed him from the wrist inward.
"Brawler" meant punching the waste for XP. "Gunsmith" meant leaving the shop to test things where claws and bad decisions lived. "Mechanic" meant he could grind him versus the numbers without stepping past the door until he had to.
"Question," he said. "If I take one now, can I take the others later?"
A beat; then more text:
[SYSTEM PROMPT] After maxing the current base profession (max level 10), you may transfer into another base profession.
That did it. The math lined up with the way he stayed alive.
"I choose Mechanic," Ash said.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Congratulations. Current profession: Mechanic (lv1: 0/1000).
Something subtle clicked inside his skull, the way a relay warms when current finally jumps the gap. Threads of process he'd half-intuited for years tightened into cordage—leverage points, failure modes, the part of a jam that lied and the part telling the truth. His body didn't flood with strength; that would have been a joke. But the sand-in-the-gears of his fatigue eased a notch, a tiny subtraction of friction. He didn't feel stronger. He felt sharper.
He tugged his sleeve, checked the arm. No change. Fine. Clarity would have to be enough—for now.
The XP bar at the bottom of the panel sat there like a gutter that wanted rain. 0/1000.
"Then we make it rain."
He turned to the racks, flicked the floodlight's housing until its hum settled into cooperation, and snapped a new rag over the bench. "Nono," he called.
A squat shape in the corner, plugged into a salvaged charger, woke with a blink of two square displays like sleepy eyes. The little repair bot unfolded its arms, rolled its treads, and chirped. It had started life as a floor scrubber in some happier age; Ash had given it a new one with an armature, a pick set, and a habit of bringing him the right tool before he asked.
"Same drill," he said. "Tray one: pins and springs. Tray two: bolts. Keep the rad box shut until I call it."
Nono beeped affirmative, rolled to the trolley, and bumped it into position alongside the bench with a showy little wiggle of its casters.
Ash set the first firearm down and let the muscle memory run. Left hand led; right followed, numb but obedient. He broke the rifle into pieces, each part landing in a tray with a clink that joined the shop's familiar percussion. He cleaned the chamber; he polished the feed lips; he replaced a firing pin too worn to trust. He reassembled, cycled, and felt the action go smooth from gravel to butter.
The panel chimed—no sound, just a flash of text that landed where his eyes would go between motions.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] You repaired a homemade firearm (simple). Difficulty rating: Simple. You gained 5Mechanic profession XP and 10Basic Mechanical Repair skill XP.
The bar moved. A hair. A heartbeat.
Ash grinned despite himself. "Say that again."
He reached for the next piece, and the next. Nono learned his rhythm and matched it—solvent ready, patches cut, screwdriver swapped for punch and back again. With each pa-chunk of a bolt running true, the panel tapped him on the shoulder.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple. +5 profession XP, +10 skill XP.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: simple (higher-tier item). +10 profession XP, +15 skill XP.[SYSTEM PROMPT]Maintenance task: mid-tier component serviced (simple). +30 profession XP, +50 skill XP.[SYSTEM PROMPT] Repair complete: mid difficulty. +50 profession XP, +100 skill XP.
He fell into it. The work narrowed his world to surfaces and tolerances, to thread pitches and the fine line where metal wanted to align. The floodlight turned the solvent sheen into a pale halo on steel. The wind outside the door lost interest. Time only mattered by the heat building in his fingers and the weight easing behind his eyes as the tiny XP taps accumulated.
When the last admin rifle clicked into place and ran smooth, the panel flashed a new note.
[SKILL]Basic Mechanical Repair leveled up → lv5.
He flexed his hands, shook out the right arm, and felt the lag shorten—not gone, but less insulting. The numbness remained; the rot didn't care yet that the math had changed.
He checked the bar—Mechanic lv1: 0/1000 → 95/1000. Not much. But the numbers had agreed to move. Numbers that moved could be made to move faster.
He cleaned the bench and let his gaze drift to the back wall, to the shelves that belonged to his dead master—things the world had called scrap that a proper mechanic called inventory. Stacks of gears, half solutions in the form of well-made parts that had outlived their machines. A dust hood covered a shape that was more idea than object.
Ash walked over, lifted the hood, and brushed away grit with the back of his wrist. The Chain E-Saw lay in its cradle, a brutal handheld with paired guide spurs and a housing scored by hard work. Beside it: a shotgun with a selector mechanism big enough to thumb in gloves, its barrel thick with concentric reinforcement. The finish carried the gray of old lead and bad weather. The tag wired to its trigger guard, in his master's crabbed hand, read: Dual-Range Shotgun (Silver Stag).
The core unit that made the party trick happen—switching spread and range without swapping ammo—had long ago died, eaten by time and the same slight that ate everything here.
He brought both pieces to the bench and set them down with the kind of care you gave to a friend fresh out of surgery. Nono rolled up, pinged a question mark on its screen.
"We're not just fixing today," Ash said. "We're reviving."
He flipped open his notebook and sketched the shotgun's selector path from memory: the way the chambered load met the variable choke, the rotary sleeve's detents, the porting. His head felt clearer than it had any right to, lines right where he needed them, no hunting for why a choice had felt smart last time he tried it. The transfer had done that—not magic, just a nudge that made sense add up faster.
He angled the Chain E-Saw toward him and ran a finger along the track. "You first if the botched core needs a custom cut," he murmured. The thought of taking the saw to a legacy piece would have made his master swat him with a rag. Today, it just made him measure twice.
"What do you think?" he asked the blue panel without looking up. "If I fabricate a new core and tie it into existing geometry, does that count toward…?"
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Profession XP is awarded for valid repair, restoration, or fabrication tasks within the Mechanic scope. Difficulty and novelty affect yield.
"Thought so."
He stripped the shotgun down, cups catching pins and bearings so Nono didn't have to chase them across the concrete. The selector sleeve resisted, glue and oxidized oil making poor arguments until heat and patience outvoted them. The oldest parts were the most honest; they told you exactly why they failed once you cleaned off the excuses.
Ash logged measurements, checked tolerances against what his hands remembered, and marked three places where the geometry betrayed the core. The core itself—cracked ceramic lattice, coils spalled to green powder, terminals blackened—went into the rad box. He'd need a new heart for the thing, one the shop could actually feed.
The panel stayed politely silent, as if it respected that this part wasn't about prompts.
He wiped sweat onto his shoulder and leaned back. The arm still hung heavy, but the mental edge remained—a steady current instead of a spark. When he let his eyes flick to the corner of the panel, the bar edged to 103/1000 from incidental steps, planning passes, and a mid-tier maintenance loop he'd run on Nono itself. He snorted. "You're generous with planning XP. Good. We'll take it."
He crossed to the parts cabinet he'd scavenged from the admin's storeroom back when they still pretended they didn't notice. He pulled drawers until the smell of old oil and paper cuts filled his nose. Coils. Ceramic rings. Sleeves that could take heat and not flinch. One by one he set candidates on the bench in a line, rejected two, kept four.
He paused, palm on the bench, and let the decision settle. The rot hadn't budged; the health bar in his head stayed a concept the panel didn't bother with. But the path in front of him looked like his path. He could walk that.
"Alright," he told Nono, "we start with a dummy core—proof the geometry—then build the real one if the numbers don't scream."
Nono beeped, already clamping a scrap sleeve for him. The floodlight buzzed approval.
Ash reached for the first component and stopped just long enough to understand that this was the first time in months he'd reached forward without feeling like he was falling.
He set the sleeve into the vise. The shop seemed to hold its breath with him.
"Let's recreate a heart," he said, and brought the tool down.