Star Rank Hunter

Chapter 261: Bro! Let’s Team Up, Okay!

“Hey, you, yes, you! Come here quickly!”

Cillin walked over to the female racer whose face was unclear because she was wearing a helmet. He put down his water bottle and looked at her in puzzlement.

She sounded like a pretty young girl.

“I need you to check our flying car, and be quick we’re on a timer here!” The girl said before walking over and pulling Cillin to her car.

While Cillin was familiarizing himself with the racing cars in this repair point, Fleka had thrown a fitting overall that looked like what the other workers were wearing into his hands. After all, It was important to have protection when repairing a car or when handling things that shouldn’t be touched carelessly. If a person’s resistance was low, they might become sick due to exposure to localized radiation, hot metal gas leakage that was caused by human error or an inherent fault in the car, so on and so on.

The Sizer Family’s overalls were very expensive, any one of them could cost up to five digits. It showed just how wealthy they were.

Since the back of Cillin’s overall was marked with the words “Whirlwind Repair Point” and its designation code, the young girl had obviously assumed that he was a worker around here.

The flying car was shaped like a pyramid. The floor beneath it had automatically changed to give it better stability and mobility after landing.

The roof of the flying car was retracting while the girl was pulling Cillin. There was another girl inside the car, although she was sitting at the navigator’s seat rather than the driver’s seat. The other girl had already taken off her helmet before they arrived, revealing the gentle and pretty face of a fifteen to sixteen year old girl. It was quite unimaginable that a quiet girl like this — one who looked a little shy in the presence of strangers — would be the navigator of a racing car.

After Cillin was pulled all the way to the vehicle, the first girl ran a self-diagnosis test on the control panel. The number 8.2 was displayed after the test had run its course.

This repair point and workshop of Fleka’s was built on the plains, which was a better environment than most of the places on the planet. Since the main circuit was sealed off, racers could only practice at areas outside the main circuit. But the environment was so harsh that even a simple practice could impose risk on both the racer and the car. This meant that even the smallest problem with the car must be treated seriously, or the racer in question risked crashing before the race had even begun.

In general, all flying cars must turn themselves into a repair point for repairs if the self-diagnosis value ever fell below 9. It was agreed upon to be the safest threshold.

Cillin read through the test details before asking, “When did the number fall below 9?”

“It started falling after we entered the glacier zone, and after we came out it suddenly fell a lot faster than before. That’s why we changed our plans and came here directly, this being the nearest repair point. Sigh. So what’s the problem? How long will it take to repair it? We need to head back as soon as we can!”

It was almost evening in this area, so her anxiety was understandable. Flying here became much harder once night fell.

“Let me give it a look first.” Cillin said before reading and examining the functionality of various parts by tapping a series of commands through the control panel.

He discovered that the car was pretty well assembled, and it was installed with the latest main operating system there was. In fact, the matching main and sub operating system had been chosen based on the girls’ habits. Since male and female drivers had different habits and control methods, naturally that the operating systems that best suited either gender differed as well.

The two girls exchanged a glance with each other after they watched Cillin reading a bunch of symbols and characters they didn’t recognize one bit flashing by at indecipherable speed. This guy wasn’t just pretending, was he? He was flying through the pages so quickly that it was impossible to read.

They didn’t know that the ‘impossible’ was just Cillin’s average reading speed.

Cillin’s finger suddenly came to a stop. He read a certain line on the screen, tapped in a command on the control panel, and walked to the back of the car. He touched its exterior with his fingers, causing a perfect blueprint of the car to appear immediately in his mind. Basing off the mental image, he quickly found an unassuming bend at the back of the car, pushed sideways, and popped open a hood.

The girl wearing a helmet watched Cillin closely from the side to prevent him from potentially sabotaging her car.

After the hood was popped open, he swiftly dismantled the surface parts underneath it and placed them on an unfolded tool tray. However, his action agitated the girl beside him so much that she picked up the parts from the tray, then put it back down. “Hey be careful! You can’t treat these parts so carelessly!”

In her eyes, Cillin cared little for the parts he just dismantled. She knew that careless treatment of a part could damage it, and her older brother once told her that even the slightest damage on a part could reduce performance after it was assembled onto a car.

“Tobia!” The other girl inside the car called out in a quiet voice. After catching Tobia’s attention, the girl shook her head to tell her not to disturb Cillin.

If serious damage was done to their car due to Cillin’s negligence, they could always bring him to account and file for compensation. However, it was very much ill advised to disturb a repairman while they were performing repairs. If an accident did happen because an observer couldn’t keep their mouth shut during the maintenance process, the repairman was entirely in their right to put a portion of the blame onto the disruptive observer.

Tobia quieted down after she was reminded of the consequences. She let out a “hmph!” before staring closely at Cillin’s every move.

But by the time her attention was drawn back to Cillin, the latter had already finished dismantling one whole section of the flying car. Right now, he was typing something on the communicator around his wrist.

Every worker in the repair point had a specialized communicator around their wrist. Not only did it allow them to communicate with each other, it could be used to send orders to the service robots parked at the warehouse as well. If a repairman had need of a certain part, all they needed to do was to enter the name and model number into the communicator to get a service robot to bring it over from the warehouse. This saved the repairman the time and effort of running between the warehouse and their workplace.

It didn’t take long before the service robot delivered over the parts Cillin needed to make the repairs. They were very simple things: a few double row wires, a few small parts, and a small cleaner.

Maybe it was because Cillin’s actions had piqued her curiosity, but the girl sitting inside the car had come out and sat beside Tobia, watching.

Cillin knew exactly what problem was plaguing the car once he had dismantled the surface parts. When the flying part was passing through the glacial zone, a single part in the thermostatic device had loosened up while the system was coming online. As a result, a tiny gap had appeared on the exterior of the car.

The gap might be tiny, but it was a flaw that couldn’t be underestimated considering the environment it was in. This single gap allowed cold air to slip under the hood, penetrate the loosened part, and freeze the original double row wires to the point of breaking.

The aged double row wires was one reason, the loosened part another, but the biggest reason behind the car’s failing was a lack of cohesion between the surface parts that were used to construct the defense mechanism, even if they were the highest grade parts there were.

One should ask only for the best, and not the most expensive.

The loosened part and the shattered wires weren’t located in critical areas of the car, so the self-diagnosis test hadn’t listed them as primary threats. However, after the wires had fallen apart, the special powdered substance on these wires had become charged with electricity and gotten stuck inside other parts of the car, triggering a large-scale magnetic decay and damaging the stability of the car. That was why the flying car had fallen below 9.0 rating.

Cillin used the cleaner to suck away all the powder sticking against the interior parts before installing the new wires. He also switched the original surface parts with the most compatible model. Unless the car got into a some serious collision, it shouldn’t come apart again.

The two girls watched as Cillin put back the parts together as easily as he would assemble toy bricks. But unlike his seemingly flippant movements, the resultant assembly looked firmly connected and secure.

Cillin closed the hood and went back into car to clean up the minor problems inside the main and sub operating systems. Ten seconds later, he pressed the self-diagnosis button.

After the test was completely, the value went back up to a pristine 9.7.

“Alright, this number should stay like this until you made it back to your base,” Cillin said.

Ah?

The girl named Tobia seemed to be in disbelief. She stuck her face in front of the control panel and stared at the big 9.7 on the screen. It didn’t look like it was going to change anytime soon. That was it? All it needed was a cleaning and changing a few unimportant parts?!

Tobia jumped into her car, turned it on and gave it a test. It really was fixed!

The entire repair process hadn’t even lasted ten minutes! Tobia’s originally estimated that the repair would take at least thirty minutes or so, but in reality her car was fixed in less than a third of that time!

The two girls sat inside their car, and the car roof covered their heads once more. The sealed, pyramid-shaped flying car rose into the air.

“Thanks!” Tobia’s voice came from a peripheral speaker.

“You’re welcome.”

By the time Cillin walked back towards the center of the repair station, the sky was darkening, and the people were getting ready to go home. Cillin also decided to stop working for now since he needed to visit Fleka’s place at night. As for his choice of a racing car, there were still twenty days or so before the official match. Cillin planned to familiarize himself with the racing cars first before making his final choice. Just because one needed to hone one’s skills didn’t mean that one had to stop working, and Fleka trusted in Cillin’s ability.

Before that though, he needed to find a navigator, although it didn’t matter even if he didn’t find a suitable one in the end he could handle it all on its own. And of course, it would’ve been nice if Wheeze was here.

Right now, Cillin was practically fighting all on his own. Perhaps Fleka would arrange a few people to coordinate logistics and repairs during a later date since the race lasts for a very long time. Accidents were obviously common in a race like this, so repair points were set on every section of the circuit, including the racing teams’ logistics and maintenance staff. If a racing car needs fixing or modifying, they would do their best to service the cars as quickly as possible. There was a time limit in this race, and all racers who were too slow and exceeded the time limit would be disqualified from the race. Moreover, disqualified racers would be unranked in the final result.

A racing team’s chances of winning was much higher than a lone racer’s. After all, the members of a racing team would have rapport with each other, and there was only so much an individual could do in a hectic race like this. Not even Cillin had absolute confidence that he could win a top 10 or something in this race, although finishing the race safely was a different matter.

Cillin didn’t care about ranking.

The final ranking was decided through total points. Every racer must follow the route planned out by the organizing committee strictly and reach all the checkpoints within the given time limit. A top 10 ranking would be listed at the end of every section of the race, and in descending order the leaders off the race would be granted 40, 30, 25, 20, 16, 12, 8, 4, 2 or 1 point accordingly. The total amount of points accumulated by each racer would decide the final result of the race.

Besides that, every racing car must finish their maintenance within the allocated time.

The faster a racer, the more points they earned, the bigger the lead they had over their competitors. After all, there was a 40 times difference between the amount of points earned by the first place racer and the tenth place racer. Of course, not all racers were all rounders who could perform well in every terrain. On that note, some racers were exceptionally good in certain terrains, so the tenth place racer of a certain circuit might be the first place racer in the next one.

Cillin exhaled deeply. Three more days of practice, and he would start assembling his flying car. After that, he would drive around and familiarize himself with the environment.

On the same night, when Cillin walked into Fleka’s personal workshop, he ran into Naimi, whom he hadn’t seen for the past couple of days grinning like he was afraid no one would notice he had good news to share.

“Cillin!”

Naimi, who was shaking his legs hurriedly jumped off the large box he was sitting on and broke into a run towards Cillin. The excitement on his face was very silly and dumb looking.

Naimi didn’t care that he was grinning like a buffoon, however. He gave Cillin’s arm a pat after he reached him.

“Bro! Let’s team up, okay!”

Cillin: “...”

What’s going on?

Then Fleka walked over and explained the reason.

Not long ago, after watching a few practice races for a few days straight and getting into a small argument with some young nobles, Naimi had contacted his father. After making a passionate plea to logic and emotion at first, then crying, throwing a tantrum, begging, and finally discarding his shame altogether, Naimi finally got his father into letting him participate in the race, under one condition: he could only race as a navigator, and not a racer. The reason behind this condition was that a racer was twice as likely as to get into an accident than a navigator.

Naimi refused to accept his father’s condition at first, but it was a take-it-or-leave-it offer. In the end, he accepted it. Then, he recalled Cillin was participating in the race and that he hadn’t found a suitable navigator yet, so he ran all the way to Fleka’s house and roped his uncle into helping him. He was sure that Cillin would agree if Fleka spoke to him.

“Naimi might be an underachiever in school, and he looks like an unreliable person, and he’s never had a serious moment in his life, and he laughs a little like an idiot, but he has dabbled with flying cars and races since a young age. Also his ability to analyze is pretty good,” Fleka said.

At first, Naimi’s eyebrows were about to fly off his head when he heard Fleka’s criticism of him. Uncle, you’re my uncle aren’t you? How can you disparage your own nephew like this!? He figured out what Fleka was doing though near the end.

Mm, this is tactics! This is what you call bow first puff later! I knew my uncle is smart!

Nodding in satisfaction, Naimi turned to stare at Cillin with hopeful eyes: you’re a sinner if you don’t say yeeeeeees…

Cillin felt his eyes twitch. A very, very long time later, he finally agreed to take Naimi as his navigator under the uncle and nephew’s gazes.

“Hehe, hehehe…” Naimi started laughing like an idiot again. Fleka shot a glance at his nephew, shook his head and looked at Cillin, “He really does have some real talent; his father held him on his lap while driving even before he was weaned. It’s just that his family had never allowed him to participate in a highly risky race until now.”

Cillin had accepted Naimi only because Fleka was the one who asked it. But when they started assembling their racing car, he had to admit that Naimi was actually a person of talent.

Naimi had offered a lot of practical suggestions when Cillin was designing their flying car. In a flying car race, victory wasn’t decided by just a powerful engine, a high quality energy block and expensive parts. The flying car must also be able to adapt to all kinds of weather conditions and unexpected situations. Moreover, the racer and navigator’s ability to adapt, drive, analyze and cooperate with one another etc in face of obstacles or dangers were also sorely tested.

After a few days of rapport building, Cillin could say that he was starting to know Naimi a little better than before. As a member of the Sizer Family, Naimi definitely had outstanding talent when it came to flying cars. Of course, exactly how far he could develop inborn talent was another story.

“The first checkpoint is Rainbow Heaven, also known as the First Rainbow. Here, the main circuit is split into seven different tracks of each color. However, the tracks will intersect each other often, and no one knows what kind of obstacle awaits at the end of each track, or even how many vertical or horizontal curves each track has because it’s randomized. If you’re lucky, you may make it out of Rainbow Heaven early and proceed to the next circuit. If you’re unlucky, you may be delayed for longer than average. Again, the choice is purely random. The tracks starts changing from the other end after a car enters the circuit, so not even the designers know which route will save more time.

The first ranking list will appear the racers made it through the course. This is a circuit of pure luck designed to remove pre-race hesitation and reduce analysis paralysis, as some racers may not be able to come to a decision and blame themselves later for making the wrong choice. A lot of racers will discuss amongst themselves and vote for the kind of colored track they’re going to race on beforehand so no one will argue after the fact. So, what color are we choosing, Cillin?”

Cillin thought for a moment. Like Naimi said, this was pure luck. Everyone who got into this race had real skill, so luck was the deciding factor of the first — and temporary — ranking list. So, what color should they choose?

“Let’s choose the first color we see when we open our eyes, on the day of the match.”

“Er, whose color are we going to choose though? My head’s all blurry everytime I wake up. I can’t really remember the first color I see.”

“I’ll choose.”

“Okay!”

Naimi unfolded the preliminary design sketch again and continued, “We need to choose the right tyres, or we’ll be blown away by the hail. That section of the circuit is best traversed on ground. I suggest we use narrow studded tyres because it increases ground pressure and gives better grip…”

When they were done discussing, the final blueprint of their racing car was finally decided. However, Fleka had a strange look on his face when he saw their final design.