The Warrior Mechanic

The two exosuit warriors charged at each other, with Colin using his double-barrel energy rifle to try and bring the fighter to a stop. Unlike Cael’s hypothesis, his opponent ran forward with amazing speed, but not because of the stride speed.

However, each stride he took was far longer without causing a drastic decrease in his stride frequency, making him significantly faster overall.

The two red energy blasts shot in his direction but he dropped down to evade such blasts.

With his swiftness, he managed to land two weak but quick blasts from one his wrist-mounted rifles, following up with 3 from the other energy rifle.

Before the third blast could reach Colin, though, Ardito received a straight punch from one of his powered gauntlets. With very little weight added to the arms of the suit, his fists whipped through the air like bullets.

Using his powered gauntlets, three quick punches landed on Ardito’s helmet, before he was given the chance to properly block and handle the attacks. Ardito didn’t seem bothered or stunned by such punches, though.

He simply followed the plan that he had laid out from himself, and fell into a rather deep crouch. He then span around while shooting his right leg forward and -enhanced by the large components in his lower leg- the force behind the attack was much more powerful.

The kick caused Colin to slid back, while gritting his teeth as he has landed a straight shot onto his person.

The two fighters continued to battle not just with ferocity, but elegance. Their resolution and utter desire to win could be seen through their intense conflict, but none of them submitted to their flaring emotions.

They continued to rely on the techniques that they could, while putting as much effort into each one as they could.

The minutes passed, but the crowd -including Cael- were not bored. Each second was a spectacle, and it wasn’t like these two fighters were having to fight purely with their own mana and stamina.

With on-site mana cores to act as extra power sources, they could then fight more intensely for longer periods of time. However, without any breaks, it wasn’t long before their intensity was slowly declining.

From afar, Ardito launched a few energy blasts, that managed to land on Colin. His exosuit was heavier and had higher energy demand, meaning that he couldn’t perform as well as he was doing a short while before.

Seeing his chance to win, Ardito decided to run in. The crowd became quiet and watched the fight on intently as the victor was going to be decided very soon.

With some of the last of his mana, Colin shouted and launched two -so four- consecutive blasts from his energy rifle, that had now become somewhat cumbersome.

The blasts landed right on Colin, with the final one scorching through some layers of his armour and forcing him to a knee. Hissing from the burning pain of the attack, he determinedly steeled through the pain as he saw how many spectators had eyes on him. It was clear a loss was not an option for the boy.

He continued forward with his powerful, long strides and landed a sequence of punches onto Colin’s black exosuit. Following this combination, he landed two jumping tornado kicks straight onto his chest.

With the heavily amplified force from his exosuit, the fighter was launched back and nearly off his feet entirely. He grunted from the pain he could feel in his torso, and Ardito continued his intense beatdown until Colin could barely fight back properly.

He shot another pair of blasts from his heated energy rifle, making the barrels red with heat. Ardito had seen this coming, however, and simply let the energy rifles fly up into the sky. Before they could exit the stadium though, they hit into a translucent barrier that kept the projectiles of battles caged into the arena.

Stomping onto his chest, Colin was slammed into the gridded arena floor, and the force behind the strike cracked it apart.

With a mixture of downward stomps and punches, Colin was struggling to fight back and could only land the occasional punch with his powered gauntlets. However, with his limited energy supply, the gauntlets couldn’t operate at their very maximum power – even for single strikes.

Ardito was tired of how this fight was drawing out and looked at the referee that scurried over to the current battle. He assessed the condition of Colin, as he received attack after attack until his arms suddenly fell by his side for just split-second.

He’d been out.

Grabbing Ardito and pulling him away, he waved his hands, and the fight was over. Colin and Marcel of the Stohan Empire had been defeated, giving the win to the Alnwick-Lentini duo.

Cael was expecting that this would be the outcome. Since he had only heard of the Alnwick family for the first time that same day, he couldn’t comment on Harry specifically. As for the Lentini family, he was a lot more versed with them since they were a noble family of formidable exosuit warriors.

They had several leading roles in the empire’s military, and even had jurisdiction over some of the colonies scattered across their section of the galaxy.

“There we have it, folks! First, as a preliminary reward for these two fighters, they will be given a fast pass into the main part of the Premiership tournament in the next edition, since they will still be young enough to participate if they choose to do so. Ardito Lentini and Harry Alnwick will be given a reward of $75,000 each for their efforts, with all other participants receiving a customary $2,500, all funded by the emperor, himself.”

“Come on! That’s got to get me something nice in the vault!” Lazarro called out with excitement.

The crowd clapped, in awe at the emperor’s benevolence. Cael already had quite a sum of money to rely on but was still grateful for the reward he was given. Alongside this, he didn’t quite understand the reverence for the kindness of the emperor. He wasn’t exactly a tyrant, but he refused to believe that the citizens of the empire’s colonies were treated in similar ways.

Their land’s resources and people were still exploited to further benefit the central empire’s components.

The two finalists received gleaming golden medals, directly from the emperor himself. As for Ardito, he received a special golden medal, with a ring of glistening diamonds. Both medals were given to the warriors, who received intense applause from the surrounding crowd.

After the ending ceremony, Cael was off back to Saevis.

Taking the same flight that he had done before, he was back on Saevis within about a day’s time. Exhausted and jetlagged, he was finally happy to be back home in his cosy bedroom.

It wasn’t long before his eyes shut, and he fell into a deep slumber after the lengthy tournament.

A few hours passed, and as he woke up early on the Saturday morning, he was met with an odd notification. This time it didn’t come from his system, but instead, came from the projector that he’d bought from Cria Flights.

“What’s going on here? Breaking news?” He asked himself, looking at the massive panel that appeared.

As his eyes began to focus after his nightly sleep, he was shocked by what he saw. He jolted up from bed, throwing the covers off his body in shock.

On the panel was a conference held between the Emperor of Soburg, along with the King of the State of Verboram. The first conference between humans and boarmen in decades.

They were in a dimly lit but expansive conference room, surrounded by hundreds of officials spectating the event.

“Ladies and gentlemen here we have footage of the live meeting between Emperor Orson and Obak Rukkon of the State of Verboram. They are here with their noble associates to discuss the events that transpired in Amburg recently with the emergence of Gorkag, a Gor- caste boarman.” A news reporter announced.

Within the name of each boarman was a prefix that denoted their ‘caste’ within society. Gor- was the lowest level caste, reserved for the weak, working-class members of boarish societies. Ruk- was a prefix reserved for the most talented and respected individuals, like the Obak (basically meaning king) that sat before them.

The Obak wore expensive-looking, radiant silk with several intricate, gold-coloured embroideries. He wore a thick, heavy-looking necklace embellished with crystals of gold, diamond, and otherworldly crystals more scintillant that any other found on Earth.

Surrounding the seated Obak were several others wearing similar, but more toned-down outfits, but at the outer ring were stood boarmen of lower classes, that wielded weapons like spears and swords, along with large gauntlets. They wore similar armour to what Gorkag had worn before and looked on edge as they stared at the other soldiers that guarded the human nobles.

Both collections of guards looked on edge at they stared at each other. Silence befell the group, and the air was so thick that many of them remained frozen.

“Rmph!” A boarish guard grunted, causing the human guards to all lift their weapons in reaction.

There was a simultaneous whirring of exosuits as these heavily decorated, trained soldiers prepared themselves to attack.

“There’s no need to do that now. Lower your weapons.” Orson commanded, lifting his right hand calmly.

In this group of soldiers was Leighton, who begrudgingly followed his father’s orders and lowered his fist, while giving off glares of disgust and abhorrence at the group of boarish soldiers.