Old Parker's Invitation
As expected! Discovering the glaring headline that Dominic Toretto and the others had made their move again to hijack heavy transport trucks on the California highway, Arthur Sterling sat back in his creaking kitchen chair.
He took a slow sip of his bitter, instant coffee, thinking back to how Mia hadn't appeared at all during this chaotic time.
His previous, lingering doubts about her sudden absence immediately vanished into thin air.
As one of the most famous, undisputed underground street racers in California, and arguably the entire West Coast region of the United States, Dom and his fiercely loyal crew were undeniably famous in the shadows.
Over the past few years, in California, the state boasting the strongest, most lucrative economy in the country, a highly coordinated series of violent truck robberies had been continuously occurring on the sprawling interstates.
Those bold highway bandits who dared to hijack multi-ton trucks at high speeds clearly operated as a precision-tuned team.
Because Dom and his adrenaline-fueled crew only strictly stole the valuable goods and went out of their way not to kill anyone, the terrified hijacked truck drivers basically all survived to tell the tale.
As a direct result of those surviving witnesses, both the California Police and the federal agents of the FBI had successfully collected a massive amount of highly useful information related to these elusive highway bandits.
Among the absolute most important pieces of gathered intelligence were the consistent reports from the shaken truck drivers, firmly stating that the masked highway bandits who robbed them not only coordinated seamlessly at a hundred miles per hour but also possessed incredibly impressive, almost supernatural driving skills.
Even their menacing, low-slung vehicles were clearly heavily modified for the specific task.
With so much critical information securely in the hands of the California Police and the FBI, the overall difficulty of their ongoing investigation had decreased significantly.
The primary reason Dom and the others hadn't been violently exposed and arrested yet was not only due to the constant, bureaucratic bickering and jurisdiction wars between the local police and the federal agents.
It was also heavily because Dom and his seasoned crew were sufficiently cautious, paranoid, and highly alert to the heat.
According to Arthur's meticulous, quiet investigations during this tense period, he had mapped out their operational pattern.
After Dom and his crew set their greedy sights on a certain lucrative shipment of electronics or goods, they would aggressively start gathering intelligence, carefully planning the hit, and continuously simulating their high-speed action routes and escape schemes.
During this meticulous planning process, they would very cautiously scout the asphalt terrain and begin heavy mechanical preparations for the robbery.
Until the actual operation officially began in the dead of night, not a single word or whisper would leak out from the Toretto house.
Afterward, heavily laden with stolen cash, they would also wait carefully for a long, quiet period of time, laying completely low to avoid the inevitable police sweeps.
Only after confirming the streets were completely safe would they finally start becoming active in the racing scene again.
So, the simple fact that Mia hadn't visited Arthur lately might be directly related to Dom's strict, overbearing restrictions on her movements.
But Arthur felt it was far more likely because Dom and his crew had a dangerous operation actively going on, so she had been partially grounded for her own safety and to prevent any accidental leaks.
However, after Arthur reached this logical conclusion, he didn't care too much about the temporary distance between them.
Because lately, he had been obsessively burying himself in improving his various system-granted abilities.
His intense attention had long since been entirely drawn to relentlessly grinding skill experience points to rapidly enhance his physical and mental strength.
Consequently, Arthur no longer felt the burning irritability and heavy gloom of those first few lonely days when he hadn't seen Mia's beautiful face!
Another grueling day's work finally ended, the golden Los Angeles sun dipping low over the smoggy horizon.
Arthur was, once again, the very last mechanic to finish washing the thick grease from his hands.
Recently, after his [Repair] skill successfully reached level 4, he found that to level up to the next master rank, he needed a full, staggering ten thousand experience points.
Moreover, as the skill level aggressively increased, the system's rewards began to scale drastically.
Fixing minor, everyday car troubles like loose belts or flat tires now yielded less than a third of the valuable experience points he used to get just a week ago.
Actually, Arthur had already keenly noticed these frustrating issues before.
But before the mechanical skill reached level 3, the diminishing returns on his hard-earned experience points weren't this blatantly obvious.
He just hadn't expected the sudden drop in efficiency to be so significant and punishing after the skill level finally reached level 4.
So lately, even if the dusty repair shop had absolutely no extra work on the official ledger, Arthur would take the initiative to actively find some complex repair jobs for himself.
Every single little bit counts, and he pushed himself to continue to gain more experience points, no matter how small the increment.
After everyone else had grabbed their jackets and left the garage, Arthur was in absolutely no hurry to leave the dark repair shop.
He had already received a quiet, subtle hint from Old Parker in the late afternoon and knew with absolute certainty there would definitely be a lucrative side job tonight.
Recently, Arthur's [Driving] skill, [Culinary Skill], and [Shooting] skill hadn't improved much at all.
It simply couldn't be helped; the cold reality of economics was holding him back.
The [Driving] skill consumed far too much expensive California fuel to grind aimlessly.
[Culinary Skill] required constantly buying a large, diverse amount of fresh ingredients and exotic seasonings, because the rarer and more complex the delicacy, the higher the experience points gained from the system.
And the lethal [Shooting] skill required consuming a massive, expensive amount of heavy brass ammunition.
Furthermore, gaining viable experience for this combat skill required accurately hitting moving or distant targets within a certain strict range.
So as the [Shooting] skill level increased, the required shooting distance would aggressively increase accordingly.
Therefore, after barely raising his [Shooting] skill to level 2 through thousands of rounds, Arthur found that he suddenly felt like a complete novice again, just like when he first transmigrated and touched a cold firearm for the very first time.
Lately, he had been seriously planning to go to a heavily stocked gun store downtown to buy a high-powered semi-automatic rifle to push the skill further.
All of this required a mountain of money.
So, Arthur didn't mind the illegal, late-night side jobs at all.
He desperately needed more money to systematically upgrade his various skills, and taking highly paid side jobs from Old Parker was currently the absolute only way for Arthur to quickly earn thick stacks of US dollars.
He could only silently blame his weak predecessor for being too financially useless, which made Arthur's starting point in this cinematic life a bit too frustratingly low.
Old Parker had gone somewhere in the city, making Arthur wait in the quiet, echoing garage for nearly half an hour before finally returning from outside.
"Damn it, hey, sorry, Arthur. I'm late getting back," the older man called out, stepping through the side door.
Old Parker had originally been genuinely worried that Arthur had gotten tired of waiting and had already gone home for the night.
Seeing the lean young man still patiently standing at the repair shop, the relieved smile on the older mechanic's weathered face grew even wider.
"Let's go. I'll buy you a couple of drinks to make up for it."
Arthur raised an eyebrow, his sharp mind already calculating the variables. "Parker, what's the actual situation today?"
"Get in the car. We'll talk as we go."
Old Parker waved at him with a tired smile, then walked over to firmly lock the repair shop's main steel gate.
Seeing Arthur slide into the passenger seat of his beautifully restored, old-model yellow Camaro and critically look around the pristine leather interior, Old Parker smiled.
He put the classic car into gear and said to Arthur, "You know, you should really buy a car of your own."
Arthur nodded silently; he had the exact same burning idea in his head.
But buying a proper car wasn't something you could just do on a careless whim in Los Angeles.
Even a decent, reliable used car would cost at least several thousand dollars upfront.
Then to repair it a bit to get it in better mechanical condition, or even close to the performance of a brand new car, would cost a fortune.
Even with Arthur—who now possessed incredibly advanced level 4 [Repair] skills—doing all of the heavy mechanical work himself, it would still easily take at least several thousand dollars in raw parts.
He currently had so many demanding skills that were incredibly expensive to upgrade and maintain.
Moreover, compared to settling for a basic used car, Arthur actually wanted to buy a brand new, aggressive chassis with massive modification potential, and then enhance it bit by bit himself.
During this intense time sweating at Old Parker's repair shop, he had seamlessly learned a massive amount of advanced modification techniques.
He had even cleverly picked up some highly illegal, underground modification tricks while doing the lucrative side jobs.
Therefore, Arthur was absolutely confident that by spending seventy or eighty thousand dollars at most, he could easily create an unstoppable street machine no worse than a luxury supercar worth hundreds of thousands.
But right now, he was entirely constrained by reality. He had absolutely no money!
"No money!"
Arthur didn't try to hide his financial reality and answered Old Parker directly, his tone flat.
Old Parker clearly understood the young man's struggling economic situation very well, so he smiled warmly and comforted him as they drove through the neon-lit streets.
"Don't worry about that. With your incredible repair skills and terrifying learning ability," Old Parker began, his voice filled with absolute certainty.
"Arthur, before long, you will surely become the absolute most famous, sought-after vehicle modification master in all of Los Angeles, maybe even all of California."
"When that time comes, kid, you'll have as much money as you could ever want."