I turned to look at him with a no duh look on my face. When he stopped staring at the screen to glance at me, probably wondering why I was still silent. The moment he saw my face, I saw him wince and nod his head.

"this is definitely bad" he mumbled as he turned to look at the list of licences again.

"oh, thank goodness, these are the amateur licences, see the little ~ symbol at the end of the name? These licences are for the beginner engineers that have just joined the sect. They are not allowed to actually build the ship, so they only have access to licences with defects. It's meant to teach them to be observant and look for defects in their and any other designs they use. And most importantly, to always run their designs through the simulator before they build them." He happily told me as he relaxed and looked a little happy with his discovery.

"Yea… okay… but you missed it." I replied as I looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

I watched in real time as that hit him, the realisation that I was right and he had. I watched the colour drain from his face before he coughed into his hand and turned away slightly as embarrassment settled in.

"Yea, but more importantly," I continued as I turned my attention back to the blueprint table and changed the screen back to my design. "My ship is meant to be built and used to compete against some disciple of an inner sect elder. I was told last night that it starts today, I am assuming that means the design of the ship stage and the race won't take place today."

"uh, well, there are no races scheduled for today, so there is a fairly safe bet that the race won't happen today." He said as he frowned, looking over my design again.

"these licences were the best I had access to… are you saying there are ones that are better? And if you are, how likely would it be that the ass hat that challenged me has access to them?" I asked slowly as I considered my design.

"Of course, these are the beginner licences that the new engineering sect members have access to, those in the inner sect have access to loads more and far better ones. And I am sure I don't have to tell you that engineering core disciples like myself have access to even more and better licences. The likelihood of your challenger having access to the inner licences is fairly high, why challenge someone using a department that you are not familiar with, right?"

I let out a groan, muttering 'that's what I was afraid of' as I turned back to look at the blueprint I had designed.

"although…" he started as he stared at the blueprint for a moment longer.

He suddenly began mentally pushing my design into some sort of simulation and watching it get run through all sorts of tests. After a while, I noticed a little pilot guy walk onto the screen and up to the design. He then turned to look up at us and shrugged like he had no idea what he was meant to do with my design.

I watched Liu Runchu chuckle before he accessed my licences and slapped a cabin and life support systems onto my design, and then waved his hand for the illusionary guy to get on with it. The guy entered the ship and the simulation expanded, showing planets and large amounts of space. The design flew out of a space station and was soon put through a series of new tests that involved flying in a straight line. Another had all sorts of manoeuvres involved before the ship turned and headed for the planet.

I watched as the ship dove in and out of the atmosphere of the planet at all sorts of angles and speeds, chewing up a bit of time. I had gotten bored at some point and had sat down. I continued to sip on the bottle of water while I waited, Liu Runchu on the other hand was still staring intently at the simulation.

"Okay, I'm tired of waiting, is it amazing and will it win like I thought or is it the amateur scrap metal that the licences confined me to?"

I glanced up when Liu Runchu didn't respond right away and saw the ship dive into the atmosphere and the planet enlarged like the camera was zooming in.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"The ship is starting the planet-side run now." He said without answering my question.

I glared at him for a minute before rolling my eyes and getting to my feet. My mouth fell open when I saw the cabin had exploded and the pilot was shredded, but the ship was still going, flying through the test.

"What the hell!" I screamed as I pointed at the dead guy.

"What? Oh, the dead guy? He died a while ago, the cabin couldn't take the strain of the third tested angle and warped, as expected from the licences default, then the heat from atmospheric entry cooked the issue, that's when he died. When the ship exited the reinforced void tempered glass exploded sending shrapnel all about the cabin and tore him to shreds. Though fascinatingly enough, the ship is still able to function and follow the preset path, without the pilot, so I have been watching it go, waiting to see when it falters. In truth, I am very impressed with your design, and I am looking forward to what you do with the life support systems and cabin."

After watching the ship land at the first test pad and failing to open the canopy that was already gone, the ship just sat there until a message appeared on the screen declaring the simulation ended.

"fascinating, a design that will take the ship home and safely land even with no crew. This is groundbreaking, how did you do that?" He asked as he spun around to look at me.

"i… uh, well you see, I tied the navigational systems in with a computer that runs all the calculations for me because I was getting tired of doing that and after a while the computer needed thrusters for some of its calculations, so I tied them in as well, then the calculations got bigger, and before I knew it the entire ship was tied in to the computer as it ran the calculations to insure everything worked accurately and as I had intended it to." I said slowly like I wasn't sure if I had made a carousel fuck up or not.

"Holy shit!, are you telling me you built an AI to run your ship?"

I was halfway through a shrug when he turned and grasped the table as fast as he could. I saw menus appear and vanished before he stopped at a menu that was one mental click away from opening the source code of the onboard computer.

"If I open this and look, I will know how you did it. If I know, then I could build my own AI and be able to sel-" he was cut off by a booming voice from the room's entrance.

"Open that and your head and body will leave this room separately! Even if it was written by a Federation Dog, we do not invite dishonour into our sect!"

I turned to see a man in his late 20s standing in the doorway with his hands behind his back like he owned the room.

"Master, I would dare open it and bring dishonour to you… I was just-"

"Just don't! It doesn't matter, the only person in this room that doesn't know she just wrote a code that would purchase this sect ship twenty times over is the dog that wrote it. The rest of us are righteous sect members that don't bring dishonour to ourselves and our people by committing theft!"

He turned to look at me as he made a tsk sound and shifted his weight to the other foot, almost like he was pissed that I had been the one to write it instead of his disciple.

"a federation dog writes something that has alluded even me the core elder of this sect ship's engineering department, the irony." He chuckled for a moment after before letting out a sigh.

His hand waved over his left wrist and the blueprint table behind me made a loud 'DING' sound, causing me to glance over my shoulder at the table.

You have received a gift! 1 temporary licence containing a mental lock program.

"Use that and lock down your source code, by doing that only you will be able to access it, even if you sell the design, only you will be able to open it, anyone else will cause it to burn itself into so much molten slag… Ya know, if you recode this program just right, then it could even cause the ship to explode, but I would never recommend that."

"No, of course not." I replied with a slight smile on my face before giving Liu Runchu a look to suggest he should leave so I can get back to work as I moved back to the table to do so.

However, instead of leaving, he turned to look at his master as if he was asking a silent question. I let out a sigh when he didn't leave and was about to slap the mental block on the code and wait for later to go over it. However, something caused me to hesitate, screaming 'if this guy's other licences had problems, then what does this one have?' I couldn't push it away, and I couldn't access the mental locks code in front of them, so I saved the blueprint and decided to take a third option.

"Not to be rude, but I have spent an entire day to get this far. I am not sure how much time I have left before I am locked out of the table. Could I kindly ask you to let me get back to work?"

The elder gave me a weird look like I was telling him to get out of his bedroom but at the same time feeling obligated to do so. Liu Runchu on the other hand gave me a beaming smile and a half bow before walking over to the elder.

"See you later, I am looking forward to seeing the finished design, once you have finished it. If your current work is anything to go by then the race should be interesting, even if you are a novice engineer going up against an inner sect engineer."

I smiled politely back to him as the door closed, gently waving my hand goodbye. The second the door was closed, I quickly navigated to the mental lock code and took a serious look at it. A frown slowly crossed my face. I had very little experience with coding, mostly just shit that I needed to enter in to get a system to work correctly. Actual coding was beyond me, but something about this code didn't look right, something was telling me this was very wrong.

I decided to start with what I could understand and go from there. My finger slowly tracing the code as I imagined what it would do. It was almost two hours later when I finally noticed what was throwing me.

"The asshole has built a back door into this" I mumbled as I started to feel angry and insulted.

"Fine, you want to play dirty, then I can play dirty too." I growled and tossed the mental lock into the trash, deciding I couldn't trust any of it.

"I can't build a mental lock that keeps everyone but myself out. However, I can build a trap to the lock that lets everyone in." I said with a slightly evil smile crossing my face.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.