Chapter 677: Rock, Meet Foot

Axion-9 remained still as Grey Temolt’s examination record hovered in front of him.

The result hadn’t changed after repeated verification, and there was no branch error. Grey Temolt had finished the Dominion Class examination with one hundred percent accuracy, a number Axion-9 had never expected to see attached to anyone’s name.

At that level, accuracy was no longer as simple as identifying the proper raw material or understanding what a blueprint was meant to do. Dominion Class designs carried so many overlapping Commands, material alterations and Spirit considerations that recreating the intended answer meant following the original Mech Tech’s thinking almost perfectly from beginning to end.

A candidate could find a better solution and still lose accuracy if it wasn’t the solution the blueprint’s creator had intended. They could improve the Spirit pairing, strengthen the material balance or make the entire mech more efficient, yet the system would still deduct points if the reasoning drifted away from the original design.

The deeper the test went, the worse that problem became.

Dominion Class Mech Techs didn’t build while thinking about one interaction at a time, their minds were expected to hold enormous chains of consequences together at once. One choice in an alloy could be connected to heat tolerance hundreds of thousands of Faces away, the behavior of a secondary Spirit, a future Command activation and some weakness that might not matter until the mech had already been operating for hours.

Ninety-nine percent was enough to make most Mech Techs stop in absolutely awe. Ninety-nine point nine percent was the territory beyond normal geniuses.

Among the Para Bots, there had even been candidates so accurate that the Board’s system had been forced to extend the decimal display beyond its original range. Records of 99.99% existed, and the greatest minds of Axion-9’s Race had pushed that even farther into 99.999%.

Axion-9’s own name sat among them. But... one hundred percent had never been part of that conversation.

It wasn’t a matter of being more knowledgeable than the creator, or even more talented, it meant following their intent so completely that there was no meaningful deviation left for the system to measure. Grey Temolt had somehow done exactly that across an entire Dominion Class examination filled with blueprints and materials created by minds he had never met.

Axion-9 read the result again.

He had no idea how long he remained like that.

Other work passed through his systems in the meantime, several minor requests were answered automatically, and at some point the light outside the chamber shifted enough to suggest that hours had gone by. Grey’s result remained open all the while, sitting off to one side of his awareness like an error his systems refused to stop checking.

A new notification eventually pulled his full attention away.

—

[Dominion Class Mech Tech Listing Registered]

[Auction Headliner Updated]

—

Axion-9’s internal rings slowed.

He was already participating in the auction, though he had never intended to attend it personally. The completed Dominion Class mech he had submitted had been given the headliner position the moment his name was attached to it, which was exactly what he had expected. But now they were telling him that he had been replaced?

Axion-9 opened the updated listing, irritation beginning to rise before he had even seen what had displaced him. The feeling sharpened the moment the seller’s information appeared.

—

[Seller: Grey Temolt]

[Certification: Dominion Class Mech Tech]

—

Axion-9 stared.

Then every one of his external limbs began moving at once.

A communication line opened toward the auction house, followed by another toward a Board representative he knew had access to higher-level listing information.

"What did Grey Temolt submit?"

There was a short delay before the answer came back.

"Blueprints."

Axion-9’s mechanical eyes narrowed.

"What kind?"

"That information is sealed until presentation."

"I am the headliner."

"... Former."

"I am asking what replaced my mech!"

The response took longer this time.

"I cannot release another seller’s sealed listing."

Axion-9 ended the connection and opened another before the first had fully disappeared.

The second conversation went almost exactly the same way.

So did the third.

By the time he reached someone high enough within the auction network that he expected a useful answer, his irritation had already moved toward the point of irrationality.

"What did he submit?"

"Blueprints."

"I know that."

"Then I am not sure what else you expect me to tell you."

Axion-9’s rings accelerated.

"I submitted a completed Dominion Class mech. Grey Temolt submitted drawings, and somehow those drawings were evaluated highly enough to take the headliner position from me. I am asking to see them."

"You will see them when everyone else does."

The connection ended a moment later.

Axion-9 didn’t move for several seconds.

A completed mech represented the material cost, the construction, the integration and the proof that everything actually worked. A blueprint represented potential, something that still needed to be built by someone capable of understanding it, yet the auction house had still judged Grey’s submission valuable enough to put above a full Dominion Class mech built by Axion-9 himself.

His attention shifted back toward Grey’s certification record and that was when another problem surfaced.

Axion-9 pulled up the review chain and found his own authorization sitting near the top, the same one he had entered when Grey’s examination request first arrived. He had raised the passing requirement to 99.99%, intending to give Grey an impossible standard to clear, and in doing so had turned the certification into an objective threshold.

If Axion-9 had left the request alone, Grey’s examination would have entered normal review, where it could have sat for hours or even longer depending on who chose to look at it. There would have been room for secondary review, questions about the branch administering the test and any number of procedural delays before the certification became official.

Axion-9 had removed all of that. He had personally established the mark Grey needed to reach, and then Grey had reached it.

The Board system had certified him automatically the instant his final accuracy exceeded the requirement, and there had been nothing left for Axion-9 to approve or delay afterward.

A low mechanical hum filled the chamber.

He had tried to make Grey’s path harder and had instead handed him the fastest possible route through it.

Axion-9 looked between the certification record and the auction listing, irritation building all over again as the two problems fed into one another. Grey Temolt had cleared his challenge, gained immediate certification through the very rule Axion-9 had created, then used that certification to enter blueprints into an auction where they had somehow pushed Axion-9’s own mech out of the top position.

He rose from his station and travel systems began opening automatically around him.

Axion-9 hadn’t intended to attend the auction, there had been no reason to sit through hours of bidding just to watch people compete over something he’d already built. That had changed the moment Grey Temolt’s name appeared above his.

He wanted to see the blueprints himself. More than that, he wanted to know what Grey Temolt had possibly designed that an auction house believed was worth more than a finished Dominion Class mech carrying Axion-9’s name.