The soldiers who made mistakes were, after all, a minority, and those skilled in mechanical repair were even fewer. The pile of damaged mecha weapons from experiments and research had grown into a small mountain—it had truly reached a point where something had to be done. Old man James Cooper finally put aside his work and stormed into the front-line command post, roaring furiously. Only then did the army agree to send people over. Unexpectedly, the chubby guy with the mechanical repair auto-arms was also dragged into the lab by the old man, purely by accident.

Seeing the chubby guy acting as if he belonged there, the research staff were all very curious: Had this guy made such a huge mistake? Or was he simply assigned here by the command post specifically to handle lab repairs?

When chatting with William Carter, they would also ask out of curiosity. But there was no way the chubby guy would admit to something as embarrassing as running away twenty-one times! Especially since there were a few beautiful women among these curious folks. The chubby guy’s steadfast refusal to confess only made everyone more convinced of their own guesses.

……

Ethan Brooks was one of the beautiful women among these curious folks. This beautiful girl, only twenty years old, had an astonishing talent for science, but she had one obvious flaw: her hands-on skills were terribly weak! Whenever she did experiments, her flustered, scatterbrained, and utterly lost manner gave everyone in the lab a headache. After a few minor accidents that shouldn’t have happened, the lab simply assigned her two operators to turn her theoretical discoveries into experiments and bring her designs to life.

Now, even two people weren’t enough for Ethan Brooks, and she soon set her sights on the chubby guy, who was wandering around idly after finishing his repairs.

“Hey, chubby, come here!” Ethan Brooks called out in the hall.

Thanks to his glib tongue and eagerness to please, the chubby guy was already very familiar with her.

He immediately put down his work and ran over as fast as he could. He knew that in this “prison,” the one person you absolutely couldn’t offend—besides James Cooper—was this woman!

This beauty, with her sweet and innocent face, was the youngest researcher in the lab and was almost unconditionally doted on by the tech maniacs. As long as she put on a pitiful look, even the hardest requests would be accepted. This highly gifted tech beauty was the darling of all the eccentric old men and middle-aged uncles.

“Here I am, here I am! What do you need? Just say the word, hehe.” The chubby guy wore his usual goofy grin.

“I’m swamped! Come help me!” Ethan Brooks didn’t stand on ceremony, grabbing the chubby guy and pulling him straight into her private lab.

The moment he entered, the chubby guy was dumbfounded. Although he’d been in other researchers’ studios before, he’d never seen one like Ethan Brooks’s.

This room, almost half the size of the outer hall, was less a studio and more like an ancient military museum. Whether it was the furnishings, the displays, or even the mechas and weapons being assembled, everything was designed in a retro style.

In the huge display cabinets along the walls were classic firearms from ancient Earth: the Maxim machine gun, MP38 submachine gun, Mauser 1896 broomhandle, Browning, Mauser 98, M1 Garand rifle, M16, AK47, and so on.

In the center of the room sat more than a dozen ground combat mechas, most of which bore traces of ancient armored vehicles in their design. There was even a short mecha whose top-mounted energy cannon looked exactly like the turret of an M1A1 tank.

At the very back of the room, a stunningly beautiful humanoid mecha left the chubby guy speechless. This wasn’t just a mecha—it was a work of art. Made from an unknown alloy, with external armor that the chubby guy couldn’t identify, the entire mecha shimmered with a pale blue glow. Its streamlined body and bold, muscular contours made it impossible to look away. The folded wings on its back were puzzling—what kind of mecha was this? Ground combat? Aerial? Space?

“This is a transforming mecha.” Seeing the chubby guy circling the machine, Ethan Brooks explained from the side.

“A transforming mecha?” The chubby guy sounded deflated.

These mechas, which flourished before the New Era 2000 of the space age, were basically synonymous with uselessness. Modern high-end personal and combat mechas had completely abandoned those design concepts. Nowadays, mechas were highly specialized; aside from minor transformations for walking, there was no need for full-body transformation at all.

The biggest flaw of full-body transforming mechas was that they were useless! For example, a heavy ground combat mecha that needed thick armor and weighed dozens or even hundreds of tons—if it transformed into a ground-based fighter jet, it would just be a target for others to shoot at. Extra parts, extra weight, a wastefully oversized engine, and a body shape that couldn’t possibly meet aerodynamic theory—all were unsolvable problems.

If ground combat mechas couldn’t adapt to aerial combat in the atmosphere, then what about aerial mechas?