In his previous life, Ethan Vance was a chief mechanical engineer who collapsed from overwork after spending three straight weeks designing propulsion engines. When he opened his eyes again, he found himself reincarnated into the year 3042—a sprawling sci-fi era where star systems, military dynasties, and corporate mega-empires were ruled entirely by Mech Technology. High-tier pilots maneuvered sleek, antimatter-powered Gundams, while the lower class slaved away in orbital shipyards.

Ethan was born as the youngest son of the prestigious Vance Military Syndicate on planet Neo-Terra. However, during his sixteenth neural-link evaluation, he tested with a pitiful 0.01% Synchronization Rate—the lowest in imperial history. To the galaxy, Ethan was an "incurable trash pilot" who couldn't even turn on a basic combat Mech.

What nobody knew was that his low score was caused by his consciousness awakening The Supreme Mech System.

[SUPREME MECH SYSTEM ACTIVATED]

• Host: Ethan Vance.

• Core Feature: Infinite Quantum Energy, God-Tier Engineering Blueprints, Absolute Tech Concealment.

• Passive Ability: [Scrap Masking] — Allows the host to retrofit any low-grade or broken Mech with God-Tier specs while keeping its exterior looking like completely worthless junk.

Having died from exhaustion in his past life, Ethan had zero interest in becoming a war hero or fighting for syndicate power. He happily accepted his label as the family failure, moved into the back corner of the Royal Mech Academy’s scrap yard, and spent his days taking six-hour naps inside his old, squeaky, twenty-year-old rust-covered maintenance rig named Scrap-01. While his arrogant elder brother, Austin, piloted the family’s legendary S-Rank Crimson Gundam, Ethan was perfectly content living as a ghost.

Eighteen years of bliss passed—until the day of the Imperial Academy Inheritance Duel.

The duel took place inside the Academy’s gravity-controlled colosseum before fifty thousand spectators, high-ranking admirals, and corporate tycoons. Austin was set to seal his position as the primary heir of the Vance Syndicate by defeating Commander Valen, a ruthless mercenary pilot operating an unyielding A-Rank heavy assault Gundam named The Iron Vanguard.

However, midway through the duel, Valen pulled a lethal betrayal.

VWUUUUUM!

Valen’s heavy Gundam unlocked a illegal dark-matter particle cannon, shooting a devastating beam that bypassed the arena's safety limiters. The strike shattered Austin’s Crimson Gundam, blowing off its limbs and leaving Austin bleeding and unconscious inside his crushed cockpit.

"The Vance Dynasty is obsolete!" Valen roared over the stadium speakers, his heavy Gundam stepping onto the ruined chest of Austin's mech. "Under corporate law, since your golden heir has fallen, the Vance Syndicate’s starports belong to us! Anyone else want to challenge me?!"

The arena fell into horrified silence. The academy instructors were blocked by a localized hacking field; the admirals couldn't intervene without violating the duel's ancient contract. Austin was dying, and the Vance family was seconds away from losing their entire empire.

Meanwhile, in the dusty maintenance bay underneath the stadium, the shockwave of the dark-matter cannon vibrated through the concrete walls, knocking over Ethan’s favorite thermos of iced coffee.

Ethan blinked his eyes open, looking at the spilled coffee on the floor. His lazy, sleepy expression slowly vanished.

"I spent three hours brewing that," Ethan muttered, taking a long, exasperated sigh.

Up in the colosseum, Valen raised his heavy Gundam's heat-blade, aiming it straight at Austin’s cockpit to execute him.

CLANK. CLANK. SQUEAK.

A hilariously pathetic sound echoed from the pit entrance of the arena.

Out stepped a battered, yellow, paint-peeled maintenance Mech with a dented hydraulic arm, a rusted front shovel, and oil visibly dripping from its exhaust pipe. It squeaked with every step it took across the polished arena floor.

The fifty thousand spectators stared in utter bewilderment.

"Is that... a scrap maintenance rig?" a cadet stammered.

"Wait, isn't that Ethan Vance?! The useless brother?!"

Valen turned his heavy A-Rank Gundam toward the squeaky yellow bucket, laughing hysterically over the open radio. "What is this? The trash brother came out in a literal piece of garbage to avenge his brother? Are you out of your mind, boy?!"

Ethan sat inside the cramped, squeaky cockpit of Scrap-01, leaning his cheek casually against his palm. He flicked a small toggle switch on his rusty dashboard.

[SYSTEM ENGAGED: SCRAP MASKING OVERRIDE]

• Output: 0.001% Quantum Core Output Initiated.

• Targeting: A-Rank Heavy Assault Gundam.

"You ruined my coffee, Valen," Ethan’s lazy voice echoed through the stadium speakers, sounding incredibly bored. "Apologize, clean up the arena, and get out of my sight before I get annoyed."

"Die, you arrogant bug!" Valen screamed in rage. He boosted his giant A-Rank Gundam forward, thrusting his hundred-ton superheated blade straight at Scrap-01's chest.

The crowd screamed, many closing their eyes to avoid watching the rusty maintenance rig get sliced into tin foil.

THWACK!

There was no explosion. No metallic tearing sound.

Valen’s massive, superheated blade stopped dead in mid-air.

Ethan hadn't even dodged. He had simply raised Scrap-01's squeaky, dented yellow shovel and caught the hundred-ton superheated military blade with one casual, effortless grip.

"C-WHAT?!" Valen gasped, his controls locking up as he slammed his thrusters to full power. The massive engine of his A-Rank Gundam roared, burning pure plasma, yet he could not push the rusty shovel back by a single millimeter.

Inside the maintenance rig, Ethan yawned, stretching his arm. "Your pilot form is terrible. Too much weight on the left servo, terrible balance."

Ethan casually squeezed Scrap-01's hydraulic joystick.

CRUNCH!

With a light squeeze from the rusty shovel, Valen’s A-Rank superheated military blade shattered into a million useless metallic fragments.

Before Valen or the fifty thousand frozen spectators could even process the impossibility, Ethan tapped the foot pedal.

[GOD-TIER SKILL ACTIVATED: KINETIC DISRUPTION IMPACT]

Scrap-01’s dented yellow hydraulic fist delivered a simple, straight, unadorned punch to the chest of Valen’s heavy Gundam.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

A golden shockwave of pure quantum energy erupted from the rusty fist. The heavily armored, A-Rank assault Gundam didn't just dent—its reinforced titanium plating, dark-matter engine, and weapon systems instantly disintegrated into fine metallic dust, launching Valen’s bare, unarmored ejection pod straight through the stadium roof and into the sky like a rocket.

The shockwave cleared, leaving a perfectly smooth, fifty-foot crater in the reinforced arena floor.

Scrap-01 stood at the edge of the crater, its dented shovel hanging loosely, a tiny puff of black smoke burping out of its rusty exhaust pipe.

SQUEAK.

The silence across the stadium was suffocating. Admirals, corporate executives, and students stared at the yellow maintenance rig as if looking at a cosmic demon disguised as a rust bucket.

Inside the cockpit, Ethan saw the thousands of shock-filled eyes locked onto him. He winced.

Ah... right. I used a bit too much force.

Ethan immediately slapped a big red emergency button on his console, causing Scrap-01’s engine to sputter violently and spew a massive cloud of fake black smoke across the arena.

"AHHH! MY BATTERY EXPLODED! THE CIRCUIT SHORTED OUT!" Ethan screamed into his headset with the most fake, panicked voice imaginable.

Scrap-01 collapsed sideways onto the dirt, completely motionless, pretending its engine had melted from a fluke malfunction.

Ethan closed his eyes inside the dark cockpit, letting out a satisfied breath. "Great. Now nobody will ask me to do extra shifts."

The official Academy report classified the incident as a "One-in-a-Billion Battery Short-Circuit Anomaly." According to the imperial tech experts, Ethan’s rusted maintenance rig hadn't delivered a god-tier kinetic strike; its overloaded anti-matter battery had simply suffered a catastrophic thermal explosion at the exact microsecond Commander Valen’s blade made contact, accidentally launching Valen into orbit.

I nearly laughed out loud while reading the news tablet under my blanket in the infirmary. Perfect. Imperial bureaucracy is my absolute best friend.

When I "woke up" from my fake concussion three days later, I put on my best traumatized, clueless expression. My father, Patriarch Vance, sat beside my bed looking at me with a mixture of disbelief and deep confusion. My brother Austin, resting in the adjacent bed with his arms in heavy medical casts, stared at me endlessly.

"Ethan," my father asked slowly, his brow furrowed. "Did you really just try to hit him with a maintenance shovel?"

I swallowed a mouthful of fruit gelatin, offering a goofy, innocent grin. "Dad, I thought the emergency brake was the horn! I panic-stepped on the pedal, the dashboard started smoking, and everything went black. Am I going to have to pay for the crater in the arena?"

My father let out a long, exhausted sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No... the Vance Syndicate will cover it. Just... go back to your scrap yard and stay away from military hardware."

"Yes sir! Gladly!" I replied, sinking deeper into my soft pillows. That was the easiest task I’ve ever been assigned.

Two weeks passed smoothly. The commotion died down, and I returned to my holy daily routine: sleeping under the shade of my rusty rig, drinking cold coffee, and reading light novels while the rest of the cadets suffered through brutal tactical drills.

Until the arrival of The Imperial Fleet Inspection.

The capital planet of Neo-Terra was hosting Admiral Marcus—the supreme commander of the Imperial Border Fleet—who arrived on a massive, three-kilometer-long Dreadnought warship. The admiral’s goal was to evaluate the Academy's top talents and recruit young pilots for the upcoming border skirmishes against the Abyssal Pirate Syndicate.

To ensure my slacker status remained ironclad, I registered for the lowest tier of the event: The Logistics & Repair Drill.

While Austin and the elite cadets showed off sleek aerial acrobatics in their shiny A-Rank Gundams, I sat inside Scrap-01 in the rear maintenance zone, wearing heavy welding goggles, pretending to fix a loose bolt on an oil drum.

[SYSTEM PASSIVE ALERT]

• Detection Radius: 1,000 Kilometers.

• Host Status: Hidden under [Scrap Masking].

• Alert: 500 Stealth-Cloaked Signatures entering the upper atmosphere. High-yield antimatter charges detected on the Orbital Defense Grid.

I paused my wrench mid-turn, squinting through my goggles. Five hundred stealth signatures? Right above the capital?

Before I could even put down my wrench, the sky above the Academy shattered.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

A series of blinding purple explosions detonated across the orbital defense towers. The grand anti-orbital barrier collapsed like shattered glass. From the smoke, hundreds of pitch-black, insect-like pirate mechs rained down from the clouds, led by a towering, fifty-meter-tall monstrosity—an S-Rank Void Marauder Mech piloted by the notorious pirate warlord, Kaelen the Butcher.

"Hahaha! Die, imperial dogs!" Kaelen’s distorted voice roared over the emergency military frequency. "The Border Fleet's flagship is hacked! Today, Neo-Terra falls!"

Panic erupted instantaneously. The pirate vanguard opened fire, unleashing swarms of plasma missiles that flattened the spectator stands. Admiral Marcus tried to coordinate the defense, but a localized EMP pulse wiped out the communication arrays of all standard military Gundams. Austin and the elite cadets were paralyzed in their cockpits, their high-tech control systems completely fried by the EMP.

Kaelen’s fifty-meter S-Rank Mech strode through the burning wreckage, raising a massive twin-linked plasma cannon aimed directly at the VIP bunker where the Imperial Admiral and my father were trapped.

"Ending the Vance lineage today!" Kaelen cackled, charging the twin cannons with enough plasma energy to vaporize three city blocks.

In the rear maintenance bay, a stray piece of burning shrapnel flew through the air, hitting my portable cooler and shattering my last bottle of limited-edition iced tea.

I froze.

I looked at the puddle of iced tea soaking into the dirt. Then I looked up at the giant S-Rank pirate Mech towering in the distance.

A quiet, heavy sigh escaped my lips.

First my coffee... now my limited-edition iced tea. These space pirates really have zero respect for break time.

I casually stepped out of the maintenance shed, climbing up the rusty ladder into the cramped cockpit of Scrap-01. I didn't turn on the sirens. I didn't activate flashers. I simply turned the rusty key in the ignition.

SQUEAK. CLANK.

Scrap-01 slowly rolled out of the burning maintenance yard, its dented yellow shovel scraping against the pavement with a lazy, rhythmic sound.

"Hey! You idiot in the utility rig! Run!" a wounded imperial knight screamed from the wreckage. "That's an S-Rank Mech!"

I ignored him, rolling Scrap-01 straight into the center of the burning battlefield, stopping twenty meters behind Kaelen's massive S-Rank monstrosity.

I tapped the open radio channel, my voice sounding flat and utterly bored. "Hey. Big guy with the bug horns."

Kaelen froze, turning his giant S-Rank Mech around to look down at the tiny, dented, yellow maintenance rig dripping motor oil onto the scorched grass.

"A yellow trash bucket?" Kaelen laughed hysterically over the radio. "Did the Imperial Military send a janitor to stop me?!"

"You spilled my iced tea," I said calmly, resting my head against my palm inside the cockpit. "Pay me twenty credits for the tea, apologize to the janitors who have to clean up this rubble, and leave."

"Die, trash!" Kaelen roared in fury, pivoting his fifty-meter Mech and slamming a hundred-ton plasma-infused warhammer straight down onto Scrap-01.

The Imperial Admiral closed his eyes inside the bunker. Austin squeezed his eyes shut in horror, preparing to see his younger brother crushed into paste.

CLANG!

An impossible sound echoed through the burning valley.

There was no crushing sound. No spray of metal.

Kaelen’s fifty-meter Mech was frozen in mid-strike. Its massive, hundred-ton glowing plasma warhammer had been stopped completely—held effortlessly in mid-air by Scrap-01’s squeaky, dented yellow hydraulic claw.

"WHAT?!" Kaelen’s eyes bulged on his cockpit monitors. He slammed his thrusters to 100% overload, red warning lights flashing across his dashboard, but his massive S-Rank Mech couldn't push the tiny yellow claw down by a single millimeter.

Inside Scrap-01, I yawned, scratching my shoulder. "Your hydraulic distribution is garbage. Too much power in the shoulder joints, zero stabilization in the legs."

I casually flicked a small yellow toggle switch on my rusty console.

[GOD-TIER SKILL ACTIVATED: ANTIMATTER PULSE REVERSAL]

Scrap-01’s rusted front shovel gave a light, lazy flick upward.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

A blinding wave of golden quantum energy erupted from the rusty shovel. The hundred-ton plasma warhammer didn't just break—the kinetic reversal shockwave traveled up the arm of Kaelen’s S-Rank Mech, instantly ripping off its limbs, shattering its dark-matter core, and detonating the five hundred pirate mechs flying in the sky above in one-tenth of a second.

The sky cleared. The black pirate armada was wiped out of existence.

Kaelen’s bare, unarmored escape pod popped out of his destroyed cockpit, crashing face-first into the dirt right beside Scrap-01's squeaky yellow tire.

Silence—pure, suffocating, absolute silence—fell over the entire capital.

Thousands of surviving soldiers, Admiral Marcus, and my father stared out of the VIP bunker with their mouths wide open, looking at the dented, oil-dripping maintenance rig standing amidst the smoking craters like an ancient god of war disguised as a piece of junk.

Inside the cockpit, I looked at the thousands of stunned eyes locked onto me through the smoke.

Yep. Time for the classic exit.

I slammed the red emergency bypass button, causing Scrap-01's engine to cough up a massive cloud of black smoke, make three loud BANG noises, and tip over sideways into a mud puddle.

"OUCH! MY BACK!" I yelled into the open radio in the most exaggerated, fake voice possible. "THE GEARBOX JAMMED AND THE EXHAUST BLOWBACK HIT THE ENEMY! I'M PASSING OUT NOW!"

I closed my eyes, leaning back in my comfortable pilot seat for a well-deserved nap, leaving the entire Imperial Military in complete, mind-boggling chaos over the legendary "God in the Rust Bucket."

Following the pirate disaster, the Imperial Bureaucracy once again outdid itself. The official report declared that Kaelen’s S-Rank Mech had suffered an unexpected "Antimatter Core Backfire"—a fatal cascade triggered when a high-voltage discharge from a nearby maintenance power station accidentally collided with its weapon systems.

Naturally, nobody in the Imperial High Command truly believed that Ethan Vance, a cadet with a 0.01% Synchronization Rate, had single-handedly obliterated a pirate armada with a rusty shovel.

"The boy is simply cursed with statistically impossible luck," Admiral Marcus announced during an emergency debriefing. "He happens to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right exploding piece of junk."

I almost dropped my juice box in relief when I read the news. Thank you, imperial incompetence. You’ve guaranteed me another ten years of undisturbed naps.

Three months passed peacefully. The capital was quiet, the Vance Syndicate was rebuilding, and I was back in my sacred element: napping under the shade of Scrap-01, sipping cold iced tea, and catching up on light novels.

Until the arrival of the Imperial Capital Summit & Mech Exhibition.

Every five years, the four major ruling dynasties of the galaxy gathered on Neo-Terra to negotiate territorial borders and showcase their newest military technology. The climax of the summit was the S-Rank Sovereign Duel, where the young elite heirs fought to establish their faction’s dominance.

Because I was officially classified as a "disabled non-combatant," my duty was blissfully trivial: sit in the rear maintenance booth, monitor the spare battery packs, and wear a ridiculous oversized banner that read Go Team Vance!

The tournament proceeded smoothly through the early rounds. Austin, piloting a newly retrofitted A-Rank Crimson Mech, fought his way to the finals alongside Princess Selene of the Northern Star Empire.

Then came the final match—and everything went straight to hell.

Austin’s opponent was Prince Orion of the Dark-Sun Federation. He entered the arena operating a terrifying, pitch-black S-Rank War Mech named The Void Tyrant.

The moment the duel signal turned green, Orion didn't execute a standard maneuver. He slammed his mech's core into overcharge, deploying a banned, military-grade Dark-Matter Dimensional Web.

VWUUUUUUUM!

A suffocating, pitch-black barrier expanded over the entire stadium, cutting off all external communications and trapping fifty thousand spectators inside. The air temperature inside the arena plummeted, and the localized gravity spiked to ten times normal levels.

"A coup?!" Admiral Marcus screamed from the VIP balcony, trying to override the barrier controls. "The Dark-Sun Federation is launching an illegal planetary takeover!"

"Takeover?" Prince Orion’s voice echoed over the stadium-wide intercom, filled with dark, arrogant laughter. "No, Admiral. This is an execution! Fifty thousand elite imperial lives will fuel the activation of our Void Engine!"

From the dark clouds of the dimensional web, three hundred Class-A Stealth Mechs materialized, surrounding the arena floor. At the same time, Orion’s Void Tyrant unleashed a dark-matter laser beam that blasted Austin’s Crimson Mech into the concrete, pinning my brother beneath a pile of crushed titanium.

Princess Selene drew her ice-plasma blade, charging Orion, but a single pulse from the Void Tyrant’s gravity shield slammed her into the arena wall, spitting blood as her cockpit systems went dark.

The stadium descended into absolute terror. Nobles screamed, guards were crushed by the ten-times gravity field, and even the elite imperial knights were paralyzed inside their heavy armor.

Down in the rear maintenance bay beneath the spectator stands, the localized gravity field slammed down hard.

My lounge chair creaked under the weight. But more importantly, the sudden gravity spike caused my freshly delivered, double-boba, extra-sweet milk tea to tip over on my small wooden table, spilling its sugary contents straight into the dirt.

I sat there, looking at the spilled boba.

My left eye twitched.

First my coffee... then my limited-edition iced tea... and now my boba milk tea?

Is there a galactic cosmic law that requires every villainous takeover to target my beverages?!

I slowly stood up. I didn't feel the ten-times gravity. My body didn't even bend.

I stepped into the dusty maintenance yard, pulled a pair of dark sunglasses out of my pocket, put them on, and climbed into the rusty cockpit of Scrap-01.

SQUEAK. CLANK.

I turned the rusty key. The engine sputtered, spewed a puff of gray smoke, and the dented yellow maintenance rig slowly rolled out onto the main arena floor, its squeaky tires crunching over shattered glass.

Up on the arena floor, Prince Orion stood over the defeated bodies of Austin and Princess Selene, raising his massive dark-matter cannon to execute them both.

"Any last words, imperial scum?" Orion sneered.

SQUEAK. CLANK. SQUEAK.

A horribly out-of-tune, squeaky mechanical sound echoed across the silent, gravity-oppressed stadium.

Out stepped a battered, yellow, paint-peeled maintenance rig with a dented hydraulic shovel and oil dripping lazily from its rear pipe. It rolled straight into the center of the dark-matter barrier, completely unaffected by the ten-times gravitational pull.

The fifty thousand paralyzed spectators stared in absolute shock.

"Is that... that yellow scrap rig again?!" an admiral gasped from the VIP box.

Orion turned his massive Void Tyrant around, looking down at the tiny maintenance Mech in pure disbelief. "A utility bucket? You drove a utility bucket into a dark-matter gravity field?!"

I tapped the open radio channel. My voice echoed across the stadium, stripped of all goofy, clueless energy—sounding bone-chillingly calm.

"Hey, Orion."

"What, you suicidal trash?!" Orion roared.

"You spilled my boba," I said softly, resting my chin on my hand inside the cockpit. "I gave your faction three chances to let me nap in peace. You blew up my coffee, you shattered my iced tea, and now you touched my boba."

Orion burst into hysterical laughter. "Are you out of your mind?! I am operating an S-Rank Void Mech! I control gravity itself! Die, you delusional insect!"

Orion slammed his controls forward. The Void Tyrant fired its maximum-output Dark-Matter Extinction Cannon—a black laser beam wide enough to vaporize a battleship—aimed straight at Scrap-01’s face.

The spectators closed their eyes, expecting the yellow rig to be turned into atomic dust.

THWACK.

There was no blinding flash. No deafening explosion.

The massive, battleship-cleaving dark-matter laser beam stopped cold three feet in front of Scrap-01.

I hadn't even deployed a shield. I had simply raised Scrap-01's squeaky, dented yellow shovel and caught the planet-destroying dark-matter beam in mid-air using a single, casual grip.

"C-WHAT?!" Orion screamed, his cockpit monitors flashing red as his energy meters broke down. "MY DARK-MATTER CANNON IS AT 100% OUTPUT! HOW ARE YOU BLOCKING IT WITH A DENTED SHOVEL?!"

Inside Scrap-01, my eyes flickered with a deep, golden quantum light.

[SUPREME MECH SYSTEM: FULL OVERRIDE]

• Quantum Core Output: 100%.

• Skill Activated: [REALITY REWRITE - COSMIC DISMANTLING]

"Because your dark-matter math is terrible," I murmured.

I gave Scrap-01's hydraulic joystick a tiny, half-inch flick.

TICK.

A soft, golden ring of light expanded from the tip of the rusty yellow shovel.

There was no collateral damage. No massive explosion.

The moment the golden ring touched the enemy forces, the Void Tyrant, the three hundred Class-A enemy mechs, and the entire dark-matter barrier didn't just break—they were instantly disassembled into their raw atomic components. Armor plates, engines, weapons, and control chips dissolved into a gentle shower of sparkling, golden metallic dust that rained softly over the arena floor.

Prince Orion fell out of his disintegrating cockpit, crashing face-first into the dirt, staring up at the yellow maintenance rig in complete, soul-shattering terror.

The dark clouds cleared. The sunny afternoon sky returned.

The fifty thousand spectators, Admiral Marcus, Princess Selene, and my brother Austin sat in absolute, paralyzed silence, staring at the solitary, oil-dripping yellow maintenance rig standing in the center of the cratered arena.

Inside the cockpit, I felt the stares of fifty thousand people locked onto me.

I let out a long, heavy sigh, taking off my sunglasses.

Yep. There's no way I can blame this one on an exploding battery.

I leaned back in my pilot seat, turned on the radio intercom, and spoke in my lazy, nonchalant voice:

"Well... I guess my peaceful slacker life is officially over."

The silence inside the fifty-thousand-seat stadium was so heavy you could hear a single drop of motor oil hit the dirt.

There was no tricking anyone this time. No exploding battery, no statistical anomaly, no freak lightning strike. Fifty thousand spectators, high admirals, corporate tycoons, and Princess Selene had just watched a guy in a squeaky, yellow maintenance rig dissolve a three-hundred-mech armada and an S-Rank Void Mech into golden metallic dust with a lazy flick of a rusted shovel.

My father, Patriarch Vance, sat frozen in the VIP box, his wine glass slipping from his fingers and shattering on the floor. My brother Austin stared at my rig from his crushed cockpit, his mouth agape, his entire worldview completely shattered.

Inside Scrap-01, I let out a long, disappointed sigh and rubbed my temples.

Goodbye, peaceful naps. Goodbye, 12-hour sleep schedule. It was a good run.

I casually opened the creaky hatch of Scrap-01, stepped out onto the dented yellow shovel, and hopped down to the arena floor. Wearing an unbuttoned uniform, messy hair, and holding an empty boba cup, I walked over to Prince Orion, who was crawling backward in the dirt, sweating profusely in pure existential terror.

"Y-You..." Orion stammered, his voice cracking. "What kind of monster are you?! What S-Rank prototype is that?!"

I looked down at him, my golden quantum eyes fading back into their usual lazy black. "It’s not a prototype, Orion. It’s a 20-year-old utility rig. And you still owe me five credits for the boba."

Before Orion could answer, he fainted dead away from sheer psychological shock.

By the next morning, the entire galaxy had gone completely insane.

The Imperial High Council immediately issued a level-zero emergency decree, declaring me the "Grand Architect of the Empire" and granting me absolute military authority over all fleet divisions. News feeds across thousands of star systems broadcasted footage of the "Yellow Rust God," and corporate conglomerates offered trillions of credits just for a five-minute consultation with me.

I, naturally, locked the doors of my scrap yard maintenance shed, pulled down the heavy metal shutters, and hid inside my sleeping bag.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

"Ethan! Open this door right now!" my father’s voice boomed through the reinforced steel shutter. "The Supreme Admiral of the Imperial Navy is outside! The Emperor’s personal envoy is holding a golden medal! You can't stay in a maintenance shed forever!"

"Tell them I’m suffering from severe oil fumes!" I yelled back from under my blanket. "I'm on strike! I quit! Go ask Austin, he likes medals!"

CLANG. BZZZZT.

The reinforced steel shutter didn't break—it was sliced open with a high-frequency plasma cutter.

Princess Selene stepped into my dusty shed, wearing her pristine white-and-gold imperial pilot uniform, her sharp blue eyes locking onto me with a mixture of amusement and fierce determination. Behind her stood my brother Austin, his arms wrapped in bandages, looking at me like I was an ancient god disguised as a mechanic.

"Get up, Grand Architect," Selene smirked, crossing her arms as she walked over to my cot. "You saved fifty thousand people yesterday. You don't get to hide under an old blanket anymore."

I peeked out from under my pillow, glaring at her playfully. "Princess, I saved you guys because he spilled my milk tea. I didn't sign up to become a galactic landmark."

Austin stepped forward, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Ethan... I... I'm sorry for calling you useless all those years. I had no idea you were... well, capable of rewriting reality."

"Austin, please stop," I groaned, throwing my hands in the air. "I'm not a hero. I'm just a guy who hates overtime! I spent my past life working ninety hours a week until my heart stopped. In this life, all I wanted was to fix loose bolts, drink iced tea, and do absolutely nothing!"

Selene sat on the edge of my cot, a soft, rare smile breaking across her usually icy face. "Well... you can still do nothing. But from now on, you're doing it as the most terrifying pilot in the galaxy."

Before I could complain further, the alarms across the entire capital planet blared in a frantic, high-pitched scream.

WEEEEE-OOOOOO! WEEEEE-OOOOOO!

[SYSTEM EMERGENCY ALERT]

• Dimensional Breach Detected: Class-X Planetary Threat.

• Intruder: The Leviathan Flagship — World-Eater Astaroth (Level 10 Planet-Destroyer Mech).

• Location: Upper Atmosphere of Neo-Terra.

The air temperature inside my shed spiked dramatically as a dark purple shadow eclipsed the sun above the capital. A massive, five-kilometer-long bio-mechanical warship shaped like an abyssal dragon dropped out of warp space, crushing the planet's atmospheric defense grid under its sheer gravitational weight.

It was the flagship of the Void Legion—a legendary rogue fleet that had wiped out three outer star systems during the Dark Era.

The capital fell into instant chaos. Imperial Dreadnoughts scrambled into the sky, only to be swatted away like flies by the World-Eater's dark-matter tentacles.

A booming, mechanical voice echoed across the entire planet’s atmosphere, vibrating through the teeth of every citizen:

"Humans of Neo-Terra! Surrender your world and your Grand Architect, or watch your atmosphere burn into ash!"

Austin and Selene's faces went pale. They grabbed their sidearms, preparing to run toward the launch bays.

I sat on my cot, rubbed my face, and let out the longest, most tired sigh of my entire life.

Unbelievable. Another one?! Do these galactic warlords have a tracking chip on my break time?!

I stood up, pulled on my grease-stained work jumpsuit, and stepped out of the shed into the dusty yard. I didn't head for a high-tech fighter or a sleek S-Rank Gundam. I walked straight up to Scrap-01, grabbed the rusty door handle, and climbed into the creaky seat.

SQUEAK. CLANK.

Scrap-01’s engine sputtered to life, throwing a cloud of gray smoke into the air as its dented yellow shovel lifted slightly off the ground.

"Ethan!" Selene shouted, running up to the side of the rig. "What are you doing?! That's a planet-destroying flagship!"

"I'm going to go fix the sky," I muttered, resting my elbow on the window frame. "Because if the atmosphere burns, my iced tea is going to get warm."

I engaged the quantum thrusters. Scrap-01 didn't just drive—it shot straight into the sky like a yellow meteor, breaking the sound barrier in a fraction of a second, leaving the entire capital below staring up at a rusty maintenance rig flying straight toward a five-kilometer cosmic leviathan.

The yellow rust-bucket launched into the upper atmosphere like a streak of golden lightning, breaking the sound barrier with a sonic boom that shattered clouds for miles around.

Up in the void of lower orbit, the five-kilometer-long bio-mechanical flagship World-Eater Astaroth hovered ominously, its dark-matter tentacles writhing in the vacuum of space. Inside its bio-organic command bridge, the Void Legion's Supreme Overlord, Lord Malakor, smirked as his radar picked up a single target ascending from the planet below.

"A defense interceptor?" Malakor sneered. "Deploy the Dark Plasma Barrier! Melt it into cosmic ash!"

The giant leviathan warship fired a planetary-grade dark-matter beam—a terrifying crimson laser wide enough to swallow a fleet of battleships—aimed directly at the incoming projectile.

Inside the cramped, squeaky cockpit of Scrap-01, I didn't even blink. I reached out, grabbed the rusty gear shift, and kicked the foot pedal straight to the floor.

[SUPREME MECH SYSTEM: QUANTUM INERTIA OVERDRIVE]

• Shield Status: [Scrap Masking Field] active.

• Energy Conversion: 100% Kinetic Reversal.

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The planetary-grade laser collided with Scrap-01’s dented yellow shovel.

Instead of vaporizing the utility rig, the massive beam split in half, bouncing off the rusted metal surface like water off a duck's back. The reflected energy beams sliced through two escorting Void Dreadnoughts nearby, detonating them into massive fireballs in the vacuum of space.

"WHAT?!" Malakor screamed, his bio-monitors flashing crimson. "A rusty construction rig just deflected a planetary cannon with a shovel?!"

Before the alien crew could recalibrate, Scrap-01 breached the leviathan's inner defense perimeter. I didn't draw an antimatter sword or fire a tachyon missile. I simply raised Scrap-01’s dented hydraulic fist, charging it with pure, concentrated Quantum Energy.

"Listen up, alien dragon," my lazy voice echoed directly inside the minds of every Void Legion soldier across the fleet. "I’m giving you three seconds to turn this flagship around and pay for my broken maintenance shed."

Malakor roared in fury, "Insolent insect! Fire all point-defense cannons! Destroy him!"

"Option B it is," I sighed, pulling the hydraulic lever back.

[GOD-TIER SKILL ACTIVATED: ATOMIC DISINTEGRATION DRIVE]

Scrap-01’s rusted fist delivered a single, unadorned punch straight into the core armor of the five-kilometer flagship.

TICK.

A microscopic golden ripple expanded from the point of impact. In less than one-hundredth of a second, the localized laws of atomic bonding completely dissolved. The five-kilometer bio-mechanical warship, its dark-matter engines, and the thousands of alien mechs surrounding it didn't explode—they simply deconstructed at the molecular level, transforming into a harmless, glowing aurora of golden cosmic dust that drifted harmlessly around Neo-Terra's atmosphere.

Lord Malakor’s unarmored escape pod popped out of the wreckage, floating helplessly in space while his screens displayed a single message from my system: [INVOICE: PROPERTY DAMAGE & OVERTIME FEE - PAID IN FULL]

The sky above Neo-Terra cleared, revealing a brilliant, clear blue horizon.

On the ground below, millions of citizens, high admirals, Princess Selene, and my brother Austin watched through high-powered telescopes in absolute, stunned silence. A utility rig had just solo-cleared an apocalyptic alien armada in under two minutes.

Three days later, the galaxy had officially accepted its new reality.

The Imperial High Council issued a universal decree, legally declaring Ethan Vance as the "Sovereign Architect of the Known Universe." All corporate conglomerates, military syndicates, and outer-rim factions signed an unprecedented galactic peace treaty, swearing never to initiate military conflict again—mostly out of sheer terror that the "Yellow Rust God" might get annoyed and punch their star systems out of existence.

To honor my request for peace, the Emperor built me an isolated, orbital space station above Neo-Terra. It featured zero-gravity lounge chairs, an automated boba milk tea fountain, a high-tech workshop, and a giant skylight for optimal sunbathing.

On a warm afternoon, I lay on my plush lounge chair, wearing dark sunglasses and a comfortable hoodie, sipping a fresh cup of double-boba milk tea while reading a new light novel.

SQUEAK. CLANK.

The door to my private lounge slid open. Princess Selene walked in, wearing a casual sundress instead of her sharp military uniform, carrying a tray of freshly baked pastries. Behind her walked Austin, looking relaxed and free from the pressure of being the family’s sole heir.

"Enjoying your forced retirement, Sovereign Architect?" Selene teased, sitting on the bench beside my chair with a warm, genuine smile.

"It’s not retirement, Selene," I replied lazily, pulling down my sunglasses to offer a soft grin. "It’s strategic long-term energy conservation."

Austin laughed softly, setting down a crate of limited-edition iced teas next to my table. "You know, Ethan... for eighteen years I thought you were just a hopeless slacker. Turns out you were just waiting for everyone else to stop making noise."

"Hey, staying quiet takes a lot of effort," I said, popping a boba pearl into my mouth. "Do you have any idea how hard it is to dial down infinite quantum energy so I don't accidentally vaporize the planet when I drop a wrench?"

Selene chuckled, leaning her head against my shoulder, her hand gently lacing through mine as the warm light of the distant stars bathed the lounge in golden hues.

"Well," she whispered, looking out at the peaceful, quiet galaxy below. "The universe is finally at peace. No more pirates, no more coups, no more world-eaters. What are you going to do now?"

I pulled my sunglasses back over my eyes, settled deep into my velvet cushions, and let out a long, satisfied breath as the quiet hum of the space station lulled me toward sleep.

"I’m going to take a three-week nap," I murmured softly, a peaceful smile resting on my lips. "And if anyone wakes me up before next month... I'm rewiring their Gundam's horn to play alarm ringtones forever."

Selene and Austin laughed softly, leaving me to my quiet sanctuary. The galaxy was safe, the villains were gone, and the Supreme Mech Architect finally achieved his ultimate, uninterrupted slacker dream.