Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2054: Fixed

Ning, who could see the schematic glowing in front of her eyes and the step-by-step instructions the System was feeding her as she worked, kept his amusement to himself.

Naysha pointed at three components among the scattered parts.

"These three," she said. "The camera module, this microphone here, and that transistor."

The camera was a small, slightly bulky unit that had once sat above the tablet’s screen, the microphone was a tiny cylinder barely larger than a grain of rice, and the transistor was even smaller, a dark speck of a component soldered onto one of the inner boards.

She began removing each of them in turn, desoldering the transistor with careful, steady movements of Jason’s soldering pen, and placed all three on a clean cloth beside her, well apart from the rest of the tablet’s remains.

Then she moved on to the helmets.

These took considerably longer. A military helmet was a far more complicated piece of equipment than an old tablet, with sealed seams, layered padding, reinforced casing, and internal systems packed tightly together, and Naysha slowed down noticeably as she worked her way into the first one.

She took her time with each step, following the schematic closely and setting every piece aside in the order she had removed it so that she would be able to put everything back exactly as it had been.

It took her roughly ten minutes to open Ning’s helmet completely, and another ten to do the same with Jason’s.

When she was finished, she held up the damaged components so the two of them could see.

The camera and microphone from Ning’s helmet looked almost untouched at first glance, but when she tilted them toward the light, Ning could see a fine line where each connection had been deliberately severed, cut so cleanly that nobody inspecting the outside of the helmet would ever have known anything had been done.

The transistor from Jason’s helmet was worse. Its surface was cracked and faintly scorched, as though someone had pushed far too much current through it on purpose until it failed.

"Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing," Naysha said, setting the broken parts aside. "They didn’t touch anything they didn’t need to."

She placed the components from Jason’s tablet beside the damaged ones for comparison.

The difference in quality was obvious even to someone who knew very little about the subject. The tablet’s camera was an older and lower-resolution model, its microphone was less sensitive than the military-grade one it would be replacing, and the transistor was a generic part rather than the precise component the helmet had been built around.

But the sizes matched, which was the only thing that mattered for now.

"They’re worse than the originals," Naysha said, "but they’ll fit, and they should work."

She did not wait for either of them to respond. She seated the camera module into Ning’s helmet first, connected the microphone beside it, and then soldered the replacement transistor onto the board inside Jason’s helmet with the same steady precision she had shown throughout.

Ning glanced at the System interface floating at the edge of her vision as she worked.

<Repair complete: Camera input restored.>

<Repair complete: Audio input restored.>

<Repair complete: Display power regulation restored.>

<Repair Information Remaining: 0>

<Quest Progress: Repair 10 broken machines (7/10)>

He noticed the empty repair counter and the quest progress beneath it, and he suspected that Naysha had noticed both as well, though she gave no sign of it.

When the components were in place, she connected both helmets to a small power source from Jason’s tool case and checked them one at a time.

Ning’s helmet reported both the camera and audio as available again, with no warnings anywhere on its display, and when she connected Jason’s, the visor that had been completely dark only half an hour earlier flickered and then lit up with its familiar interface.

Naysha nodded once, apparently satisfied, and began putting everything back together.

The reassembly went far faster than the disassembly. Every piece she had set aside went back into exactly the place it had come from, every clip snapped shut, and every screw returned to its original hole until both helmets looked precisely as they had before anyone had ever tampered with them.

She handed Ning’s helmet to him first, and then Jason’s.

Jason put his on immediately, and Ning watched his face as the display came to life in front of his eyes. For a moment, Jason simply sat there without moving, and then he let out a long, shaky breath, as though he had been holding it since the moment he found the helmet dead on his bed.

"It works," he said. "It actually works."

Ning put on his own helmet and checked it as well. The camera feed was slightly grainier than before, and the audio carried a faint hiss beneath it that had not been there that morning, but both were working, and nothing about the helmet would raise any questions from anyone who did not take it apart.

"It does," Ning agreed, smiling. "That was impressive, Naysha. Thank you. I did not think you could do this when I called for you."

Jason pulled off his helmet and turned toward her, and for once, he did not seem to be searching for what to say.

"Thank you," he said, with more feeling than Ning had ever heard in his voice. "Really. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come. I’d have lost everything."

Naysha began packing the leftover pieces of the tablet into a neat pile and closed Jason’s tool case before sliding it back toward him.

"You can thank me by not letting it happen again," she said, though there was no real sharpness in her voice. "And I’ll owe you a tablet."

Jason shook his head quickly. "You don’t owe me anything. That one was already broken."

Naysha looked at him for a moment, then at Ning, and for the first time since entering the room, she allowed herself a small smile.