The Warrior Mechanic

Only a few minutes more, and a tall, intimidating figure arrived at the reception room. The entire room fell to silence upon noticing his presence.

This was the son of the family patriarch. Leighton Breckenridge. His hair was a rich auburn, unlike the other black-haired Breckenridges. His father looked more like them, with their midnight black hair, but had married a beautiful blonde from another major family within the Soburg Empire.

This gave their children their unique brown hair colour.

“Greetings my fellow Breckenridges. My father is currently discussing matters pertaining to the boarish tensions with Emperor Orson and the other nobles. For that reason, I will be the one leading this event.” He explained.

Cael could tell that he had been trained to talk in this manner. He made sure to keep his posture perfect, and rarely slipped up on his words. He spoke in an amazingly articulate and eloquent manner.

The family members were directed to a large, palace-like dining hall. Here, this is where they would be having a nice meal after the initial event would take place. As for now, they used this area to let Leighton discuss the rules.

Cael was well-versed with the rules, as they had already been addressed to the participants. However, there was no harm in just reiterating them here for those who weren’t participating and had possibly forgotten the rules.

The initial matches would consist of some 1v1 matches, with almost any type of weapon being permitted. There would be individuals on guard to stop the match before potentially fatal attacks could be delivered, but Leighton made sure to address that there was still a risk.

All these warriors had been taught to remain fearless in the face of death. It wasn’t exactly something that could just be emulated by something after being told to act in that way, but they knew it was a vital trait of a valiant soldier. To live and die by the sword.

The tournament bracket was revealed with a billboard that possessed an alluring golden hue. The first match was going to be between Kegan Breckenridge and another lower-level member of the family, Silas.

He was younger than both Kegan and Cael, but was seen as more talented and could possibly compete with them. Well, he was definitely able to compete with Cael before his recent improvements, but the others weren’t aware of them just yet.

Not much time was wasted before the fights were to begin, as they didn’t want this to be boring and drawn out. Even if this was a reunion between family members, they wanted to be enthralled and excited.

In a few minutes’ time, the two fighters stood ahead of each other in the sandy arena. Kegan possessed a similar exosuit to the one that he wore in the Fighter-Mechanic event. It was a midnight black, just like Kegan preferred, and had a shoulder-mounted rifle along with two wrist-mounted rifles.

“Those energy rifles are quite big for wrist-mounted and shoulder-mounted ones. I wonder where he’s getting the energy for them with such a thin suit.” Cael wondered, in deep contemplation.

He couldn’t help himself from doing this now, and he felt like he had to analyse almost every exosuit that he could get a good look of. From this distance, many ordinary humans wouldn’t even be able to view these exosuits in the same detail as Cael.

With mana came greater perception, which allowed people to perceive their surroundings properly when moving at superhuman speeds.

On the other hand, the silver-haired Silas had an exosuit that seemed to be modelled off the anatomy of a tiger. It was black, with red claw-shaped streaks across its body in several places. It gave the suit an intimidating, beast-like appearance.

The fingers donned superheated claws, and there were also powered gauntlets to make slashes even quicker and deadlier.

“May the match begin!” The announcer called out, causing cheers to erupt from the crowd.

Kegan lifted both arms, shooting forward a barrage of energy blasts – a complete abuse of his energy supplies. It forced Silas to stay away from him, though, and Cael deduced that this was exactly what he wanted.

Getting assailed by those superheated claws would be the last thing that Cael would want to happen to him.

Silas used his nimbler, swifter body to try and evade as many energy blasts as he could. It wasn’t a foolproof method of dodging them, though, and he was hit with several blasts from his imperfect movements. Kegan then launched two consecutive energy blasts from his shoulder-mounted rifle, with the final one slamming straight into Silas’ chest.

Swiftly after this collision, Kegan charged ahead and leapt toward his target, hurling his fist forward for a power punch.

Silas managed to slip past his incoming hit and activated his power gauntlet along with the superheated claws.

Swipe!

His swipe melted through the outer layers of Kegan’s suit, causing him great alarm. Cael knew that the slash wasn’t deep enough to cause any damage to his body, but the blades were so hot that one could easily feel some form of warmth on their skin from even a slash this shallow.

Another slash came his way but Kegan made sure to pull himself back as fast as he could, creating significant distance between him and Silas. In the process, he launched a quick energy blast, which hit straight onto Silas’ open chest.

From this exchange of attacks, the two continued to fight more defensively, not willing to carry on in such a reckless manner.

There were sixteen participating youngsters, and this would entail up to four matches for these warriors. The repairs they could make to their exosuits in between matches were terribly minor, mainly in the form of mana core replacement.

Silas was able to use his claws from time to time to cut at Kegan’s armour, but the range that the latter was able to utilise with his energy blasts was too great an obstacle for Silas to overcome.

His exosuit was in a much worse condition than Kegan’s, and Cael could see the vehement instructions coming from Silas’ father in the stands.

His name was Pierre, and he was a low-ranking member of the Soburg Empire military. He continued to tell Silas how to continue on in the fight, but a fighter couldn’t just perfectly follow commands in the heat of battle.

In the end, it came down to the training that they’d received previously.

Silas swung his claws at Kegan with desperation, but he was simply too far away. He received an energy blast straight to his stomach as a result, which broke through the inner layers of armour placed across his exosuit.

Grunting in pain, he received another few minor energy blasts in that same area from Kegan’s wrist-mounted blasters.

Kegan couldn’t help but smile with arrogance and victory as he could see the end of this fight was near.

Silas seemed to just fall under the pressure and couldn’t continue on properly. His mind was cluttered with intense emotions from his animated, primal style of fighting.

He was fighting as if he wanted just to survive, not to win. With his powered gauntlets permanently on, he continued to swing at Kegan with everything that he had left. He roared with every slash and ran straight after his opponent whenever he tried to retreat.

With such a one-dimensional style of fighting, it simply left him open to energy blast after energy blast, until one of the mediators deemed it enough.

An adult Breckenridge stormed into the arena, breaking up both fighters before the match could continue.

Waving his arms behind his head, facing Silas, Kegan was given the win. He screamed out with excitement, and waved toward his parents who were electric.

His brown-haired mother gave a sheepish look back to Cael, who was a few seats down from them. After Cael had managed to defeat him in the fighter-mechanic event, he could tell that his family didn’t have the best view of him.

He simply clapped along with the other Breckenridges, giving back a firm stare without moving any other part of his body. Continuing to stare straight at the woman, he could see that she was looking slightly more awkward, and broke eye contact with him as her son jumped back into the stands.

Giving a quick glance back to Cael, it was like she was unable to maintain eye contact with him.

“Will the following individuals enter the ring for the next fight. Cael and Zacharias.” The announcer called out.

Zacharias possessed black hair in a long ponytail, along with a decently grown beard for a boy his age. He took a few steps down the stands to then throw himself into the ring, but Cael wanted to enter in fashion.

From the seat he was on, he front flipped and elegantly landed straight into the ring, facing Zacharias powerfully.

There was silence from the spectators as he did this, and many were surprised with his ability to do this.

Jumping from such a height would require a certain level of mana for it to not hurt you. Even for those with mana, if you didn’t have enough, very long drops could break bones or potentially kill. It took a decently strong individual to handle drops at terminal velocity.

Zacharias just stretched arrogantly in the centre of the ring, as Cael approached. He was a few inches shorter than Cael and didn’t have quite the same physique but was still fearless when facing him.

From previous battles and showings of his strength, why would there be a reason for him to be scared?

His exosuit was a dark blue hue, and had two large shoulder-mounted energy rifles as his main weapons. Due to the energy demand of those two weapons, he wasn’t able to man himself with anything else in particular.

“May the match begin!”