The Warrior Mechanic

Sultank charged at him and continued to throw haymaker after haymaker, trying to knock down Cael.

He didn’t want to abuse his power surge skill, but his stamina reset after literally every match that he took part in.

There was no harm in using it again, and he felt like he’d have to do so if he wanted to win here. Sultank drove his fist into his gut, making him wheeze as the air was knocked right out of him.

Crippled, he fell back onto a hand, and managed to receive another strike onto his open head. Sent rolling across the arena, he was seconds away from being defeated.

VRR!!!

His power surge was activated, and he launched himself up like he was on a spring. Throwing a full power right hand punch, he accurately connected and shook up Sultank. With his knees briefly buckling, this was his chance.

He continued with several tornado kicks onto his flanks, also landing spinning kicks to his face. Sultank tried to continue with his aggressive style but after receiving such heavy blows to the face, his co-ordination was gone.

Cael’s power surge granted him much greater speed, which allowed him to simply outfight this opponent of his.

He slugged his fists at Cael in the form of relentless haymakers, but none could connect. In the end, he received a punch while Cael was also sprinting right toward him. The weight behind the strike dropped him to the floor, while also allowing him to drop his opponent.

His body transformed into a cloud of blue particles, and Cael lifted his vision with confidence due to his spectacular victory.

[Match Won!]

[+9 Power Points]

[+8 Gears]

“Ooh, those are some nice gears!” Cael thought, looking at these notifications.

With this, he was given a total 131 gears from his several matches in the vault. His extensive session of 1v1 matches took him well into the evening, and the fiery orange sun was now totally below the horizon, leaving just its bright corona to linger over it.

The sky was steadily darkening, and Cael lifted his eyes to meet a crowd of over 25 people. He felt great shock from finally perceiving these individuals that had been watching him over all this time.

Cael couldn’t immediately understand why this had happened, and only a second later he was forced back to his lobby more quickly than usual.

In his lobby, however, was another person entirely. This individual looked like a divine being, giving off an enchanting glow. Their body was of a humanoid shape, but looked translucent in a way where their skin revealed a pure white light from within them.

Through the scarlet-coloured skin of this being, he possessed glowing white holes in his head that Cael believed were supposed to represent eyes.

Cael felt startled at first, but didn’t see a need to be. Whoever this unique looking being is, he knew there was nothing to fear in this virtual world anyway.

“Who are you? I didn’t invite you to my lobby.” Cael asked authoritatively.

The glowing individual only chuckled in response. His eyes remained fixed on Cael, and his demeanour was terribly bold. With a silent response, a smile cracked across his face.

“I think I’ll be the one asking questions from now on. Just to answer your question, I am one of the game’s developers. A code weaver.” He stated, with gusto and pride.

“A question I want to ask you is how you’ve been managing to bypass our impenetrable code and use a weapon in the 1v1 basic mode.” The ethereal being asked.

“I haven’t bypassed anything. I’m definitely not smart enough to break through the code for this type of game.” Cael stated.

His voice sounded truthful, and he simply tried his best to tell the truth to this developer. However, there was no need for him to hear of his power surge. He wouldn’t have to and didn’t want to reveal everything.

“That’s impossible and you know it. We heard of you from a long while ago released a new patch last night to try and stop you from doing this. However, you’ve managed to analyse the code behind the vault and bypass it in half a day!” The man claimed.

His voice sounded celestial and divine. It was like the weight of the world was behind each word he uttered.

“It’s not. I promise you that I haven’t even seen the code you guys use for this game. It’s not available to the public so how could I breach it?” Cael asked, trying to prove his innocence.

The man didn’t immediately reply because he’d made a clear point. Only a select few individuals, known as the code weavers, could even see the code, let alone manipulate it. They were highly esteemed programmers, earning salaries of hundreds of millions of galactic dollars for their work.

“I can’t believe it but I think I believe you. However you’re managing to beat this system, stop doing it. I don’t care if it’s not your fault, it’s against the rules to use supplementary equipment in 1v1 basic.” The developer ordered.

“Of course. Thank you for your understanding.” Cael said, with a bow of respect.

He felt it was particularly fitting from this coder’s arrogance, and the glowing man nodded before disappearing into a cloud of dimming white energy until nothing remained.

Cael made sure to quickly agree to the terms because he was not willing to lose such a useful source of gears. Without the vault to rely on, he’d be putting himself in a bad position for preparing for the Breckenridge event.

“That was quite the experience.” Cael thought to himself, with a slight chuckle.

Without his power surge to aid him, though, he’d have a very tough time in the following matches. There were countless times where he had to resort to power surge to claim victory.

Nevertheless, there was no need for him to sulk over something that was out of his control.

Even if this was a setback, he could work back up to eventually achieve the skilled rank. To help him do so, Cael realised that his body now allowed him to use a higher quality exosuit.

The virtual market was far more affordable than the real one, and $50,000 or so could give him a high-tier, amply quality suit. That would likely be above, or near the limit of what his body could properly use.

However, after spending so much on upgrading his stats and things, he struggled to find a way to get enough money for both a virtual and physical exosuit.

Therefore, he continued pumping out units of his swarm design. He decided to use smaller swarm sizes, consisting of 10 to 12 units. Additionally, he resorted to his Quick-Build skill to make the production quicker and more seamless. This allowed him to pump out the models much more quickly. During this process, as well, he had to begin designing the virtual exosuit that he would hopefully materialise for his family event.

He wanted an exosuit with an actuator system built for powerful strikes. Along with that, he wanted to make it as compact as he possibly could. This created an immediate trade-off for him to confront.

After a long, scrupulous search for actuators to use, he settled on a set of mediumweight exosuit actuators. They were modelled against the attributes of a gorilla, using stocky, power-inefficient pistons for the movement of the arms.

Using up more energy wasn’t something Cael looked forward to but tolerated it.

Swiftly arriving back home, he began applying his frame and actuator system. Cael’s hands flowed as he began working on the design and he could easily connect the wires around the intricate workings of the internal frame.

Along his way, he performed necessary augmentations to make this design as compact as possible. The total weight of the system slowly crept up from the circuitry and wiring on its exterior but a slow increase was exactly what Cael wanted.

Placing down the major internal connections, he tried his best to decrease their size, while placing them in more protected areas. Major damage to the internals of any system would be a death sentence for any warrior.

Following this, he chose a special alloy between Dresium and a heavier metal renowned for its strength, Husnium. It wasn’t commonly seen in the territory of the Soburg Empire, and didn’t have the best strength-to-weight ratio.

However, the alloy was advertised to account for this fact through the lighter Dresium integration. The molecular arrangement of the alloy allowed it to become even stronger than expected, with a smaller increase in weight.

Forming the armour plates for his exosuit, he meticulously did this to make sure that he wouldn’t waste any metal when actually forming the virtual model. This made it cheaper, and more compact.

After a few days of work, the design was finally complete. Cael felt surprised that he was actually behind such a model. Compared to his very first design, it was like night and day. With the higher quality exosuit components, he was sure this model would be above average.

Now that he was given the opportunity to give his exosuit a name, he wondered just what he’d call it. He liked naming his designs -especially combat-based items- on ancient Greek mythology. Here, a name popped right into his head.

[Design Complete!]

[Exosuit: WM Hercules I]