The Warrior Mechanic

The quest had specifically detailed for him to sell ‘copies’ of his designs. This allowed him to go down the virtual route, cutting down costs significantly.

The entire swarm of 15 drones came out to around a cost of $24,000. The items used within them were mid-tier and so, the system hadn’t given him any resources that he could use in the assembly process.

What followed were a few exhaustingly long sessions of assembly, as he handcrafted the individual drones that made up this swarm unit.

Using the virtual platform, the metal forging process and internal manipulation was much more manageable, and he could do this practically anywhere where he could have privacy.

His hands moved with immense dexterity compared to his capabilities. It just made him try to comprehend the skills of the most venerable mechanics of the galaxy. He could only imagine how impeccable their designs would be.

With 15 drones in a few days -mainly a weekend- of hard work, he swiftly placed them on the market to have the highest chances of selling them. He only had days left to complete this quest, so could only resort to luck to make it out on this one.

After finally listing the items on the market, Cael took a well-deserved break from the intensive work that he’d been putting himself through. During this time of break, the designing process of his exosuit commenced.

Powered gauntlets would be a necessity, but he didn’t shy away from the other weapons that were on offer for him to use.

He could resort to superheated daggers, or even powerful energy blasts to possess lethal firepower. Upon thinking about himself donning such a suit, he struggled to foresee himself fighting in such a manner. He’d much rather utilise his fists and another supplementary weapon to allow him to still fight in a similar manner.

The very next day, Cael was surprised to see that his items sold. he wondered who’d done this but couldn’t immediately do so due to the marketplace system’s layout.

He felt delighted to see that he received another follower, and then his system appeared with a following notification that he was even more delighted to see.

The notification of his quest’s completion.

[Quest Complete!]

[Title Upgraded!]

[Competent Merchant]

[New Ability!]

[Ability: Free Rider]

[The cost for running a merchant account on the ExoTech Marketplace and ExoTech Marketplace: Vault Edition.]

[New Ability!]

[Ability: Algorithm Manipulator]

[On the ExoTech Marketplaces, the user can manipulate the display algorithms so that their items appear higher up on displayed lists than they should do. This allows for more views on products.]

Cael liked the idea of these two new abilities. The first one wasn’t all that great but was nice to have. He wondered how the system could just make the payments for him but then again, it seemed like the system could do anything it desired.

Luckily, his swarm units were counted as individual items, and not the whole swarm together. Making 225 or so drone units just to complete the quest would’ve been literally impossible without some form of automation.

He did have his Quick Build skill but was able to manage without resorting to it. Then again, he would fall back onto using that skill whenever he could tolerate using a rudimentary assembly process.

The Quick Build skill saved him time -allowing him to increase his supply output- but each unit would receive a slight hit to its quality.

With the ability to unlock and upgrade more skills, he had a lot more to do. He spends a few minutes analysing where his weak points were, and identified his lack of skill when it came to armour assembly, along with compartment organisation.

No matter how he organised his components, his greater skill with managing internals meant he could almost work with anything he was given.

However, that wasn’t going to get him to form stellar, quality designs. In the future, he was hoping to acquire contracts from massive firms and even private militaries to expand his firm.

To do so, he had to make sure that he was up to par with his competitors.

[Combat]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Gauntlet Overdrive]

[The user can increase the maximum power output of a powered gauntlet by 25% for 10 seconds. Causes a significant drain to one’s mana.]

[COST: 0.5MP]

[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Mana Shield]

[The user increases the durability of the armour plates of their exosuit for a duration of 30 seconds. Gives the exosuit a slight glow. Causes a significant drain to one’s mana.]

[COST: 0.5MP]

[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Flow State]

[The focus and dexterity stats of the user increase by 40% for 25 seconds, allowing for greater perception and battle intelligence.]

[COST: 0.5MP]

[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]

His system had granted him a 100-gear reward for completing the quest, with 90 extra gears for selling the swarm. With 190 gears to begin with, he unlocked mana shield along with gauntlet overdrive.

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 Mana Shield]

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 Gauntlet Overdrive]

It was almost as if the system resonated with his style of fighting. He desired using his fists to overpower his opponents and with gauntlet overdrive, that heavily catered toward his style of fighting.

Only costing him 60 gears, he had an extra 130 gears, along with a large amount of money to use for spending. He didn’t want to eat into all his capital -he did have a business to run and enlarge- but he also didn’t want to get stomped in this upcoming event.

He was hoping that his exosuit and skill upgrades wouldn’t cost him over half of the money that he had, but that was a very vague, pie in the sky estimation.

[Skills]

[Skill: Power Surge]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Script Sage]

[Skill: Mana Stream]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Rapid Update]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Script Sage]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Quick-Build]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Microscale Manipulation]

[Skill: Lv. 4 Internal Design]

[Skill: Lv. 3 Combat Specialist]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Alloy Mastery]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Compacting]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Scarcity Crafting]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Armour Fitting]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Circuit Routing Proficiency]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Gauntlet Overdrive]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Mana Shield]

[Abilities]

[Ability: Lv. 2 Discount Mastery]

[Ability: Market Savvy]

[Ability: Extra Profit]

[Ability: Permanent Combat Sales]

[Ability: Free Rider]

[Ability: Algorithm Manipulator]

Most of the level 1 skills would cost him around 80 gears to upgrade, with the level 2 skills being around 160. The higher skills had variable upgrade costs, but they all vastly higher than 160, being more than 2x greater.

He didn’t want to leave those skills at just level 1 -of course- so he continued on with taking out $20,000 for 400 gears and increasing them to a sufficient level.

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Mana Shield -> Lv. 2 Mana Shield]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 2 Mana Shield -> Lv. 3 Mana Shield]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Gauntlet Overdrive -> Lv. 2 Gauntlet Overdrive]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 2 Gauntlet Overdrive -> Lv. 3 Gauntlet Overdrive]

With these skills to start off, he would go back to increasing the combat skills’ utility after at least a bit of training.

He could tell that his level 4 internal design was at play a substantial amount when it came to his internals. Compared to proficient mechanics, he wasn’t all that great but when comparing it to his other attributes, it was a stellar attribute of his.

He aimed to improve his armour fitting to make his exosuit more compact, along with compacting and circuit routing proficiency. The skill came hand in hand with internal design, but still had its own perks.

Circuit routing fell under the umbrella term of ‘internals’, but was a specialised branch that many mechanics placed copious amounts of work into refining this strategy. Microscale manipulation could also help with this, and he wanted to make sure the strength-to-weight ratio of his exosuit would be elite.

Following this, before he made any upgrades to his mechanical traits, he wanted a clear idea of the exosuit he wanted to create. The first, basic weapons that he wanted to utilise would be the powered gauntlets. They were a standard weapon for warriors like him, and pretty much a must-have.

He relied on his own punching strength and needed to maximise that to be a formidable fighter.

However, Cael was feeling innovative recently. With his greater intelligence, knowledge, and creativity, he constantly thought of new ideas and creations that weren’t properly seen on the market.

Of course, many of them weren’t present for a reason like it possessing a glaring fault that made it unviable for combat use. However, he continued to think of a weapon that could be great for his use, and he then thought of his power surge skill.

He could greatly increase the power output of the weapons that he utilised, along with gauntlet overdrive. That quest would have to break the very laws of physics, since it would be almost generating energy from out of nowhere.

To appease Cael’s scientific, calculated mind, he convinced himself that the quest would be drawing energy from some unknown source.

The first word that popped into his mind was the ‘Extreme Blade’. He envisioned a dagger placed within the wiring of his gauntlets, where he could utilise power surge and the gauntlet overdrive to provide the weapon with sufficient power to fuel it.

It would be similar to a superheated blade, but would just be much, much hotter.

He could use insulation materials and other equipment like liquid cooling to make sure that he wouldn’t feel much of the heat, but this could make stabs and slashes more deadly.

He clearly wouldn’t be going for the kill when fighting these warriors, but a human body would feel extreme heat from a mile away. Using an extremely hot weapon could get his opponents to back away and not act as confidently.