[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 79: Student Life

For a few hundred cols, Klaus allowed Ves to ask him questions about his life on Leemar. While Dietrich boarded the ship and stared at the horizon while sipping a beer, Ves found a random piece of scrap and sat down next to the owner of the boat.

"First off, what's up with the boat?"

Klaus shrugged. "As I said, the students have to build their own accommodation that either floats in the water or flies in the sky. The catch is that we have to salvage or fund the process from our earnings in Leemar. The LIT practically runs on an internal credit system that everyone calls leems. Without leems, I can't purchase components off the internal market or buy access to the scrap yards where I can salvage broken parts."

It turned out the transaction they just made already got logged by the sophisticated AIs that ran and enforced the internal credit system. The ten thousand cols Klaus received automatically got converted into ten thousand leems under his student account.

"I see." Ves nodded. "So the rich guys can't simply buy everything available by using their parents' pocket books?"

"Hah! You wish. Antigrav clothing is an exception. There's exclusive classes and facilities available only to fliers. A walker like me can dream about getting access. Even if I scrape enough leems to buy a suit, I can't afford the fees those places charge anyway. Trust me, the moneybag students have lots of ways of earning easy leems."

That sounded remarkably ineffective to Ves. Back on Rittersberg, as long as Ves paid his tuition, he had nothing to worry about, so he put his full efforts into his studies.

"I know what you're thinking about. You think I'm so busy crawling on the ground picking up scrabbling for tiny amounts of leems every day, when I could have gotten an easy time back in the Terach Republic."

"Eh, busted."

Klaus smirked and gestured to his ramshackle ship. "I built this boat with my own two hands. While I might be grovelling and scraping for leems, I still have my own pride. Despite the intense competition, I'm still able to stay afloat. Do you know that seventy percent of first year students drop out within the semester? It's a brutal life out here in the archipelago, but those who can tough it out get more than just a diploma."

As Ves stared at Klaus, he recognized the peculiar fighting spirit in his eyes. The LIT evidently fostered a peculiar mentality. "I guess the diploma helps open a lot of doors as well. I envy you and your chance to study exotic subjects that I haven't been able to touch back at home."

"That's right. This is Leemar, one of the centers of mech development in the star sector. You can't find many other places in the local sector that can match the sheer amount of R&D this place pumps out every day."

Too bad Klaus declined to go into deeper detail on the things he learned. Evidently, the LIT strictly punished any students who blabbed about the things they learned to outsiders.

"So do you have any tips for the open competition tomorrow?"

"Heh, good luck with that." Klaus smirked. "You can't imagine how many people are competing. I don't even think the masters are serious in watching out for a promising disciple. How else can you explain that out of fifty thousand hopeful mech designers, the masters only apprentice an average of three or four out of them all?"

"You think they have ulterior motives?"

"Sure I do! I'm guessing that they want to gauge the overall state of young mech designers from the Komodo Star Sector over time. They record everything you do and put it all in a database for further study. I even accessed a part of that database for a research assignment. You can't imagine how much bullshit they put into paper. I bet they even know how many nose hairs you have."