The Warrior Mechanic

Upon checking the profile of DRAKEDRAGON, it turned out that he was at the top of Skilled I. They had gone up against quite a skilled team and so, were rewarded for even just their efforts in trying to face them.

****

Across the planet, in Carlo City, Cael remained in his room, simply checking over the raw design of his exosuit and his sales.

He had started off with only a handful of sales, making him uneasy as time was ticking.

However, the sales rate only increased as he received quality ratings from his exosuit. He hadn’t received any special worded reviews, but Cael hoped that its phenomenal power had bought the hearts of his customers.

Eventually, on the very last day active for this quest, Cael sprung up to his feet in joy to see that the quest was finally complete.

[Quest Complete!]

With 30 items sold for $12,500, a hefty sum of $375,000 was transferred into his bank account.

[Merchant: WarriorMechanic]

[Star System: Cria]

[Followers: 35]

[Items Sold: 65]

[Innovation: 3.8/5]

[Price: 4.2/5]

[Quality: 3.6/5]

From his insane ratings, it was clear that his price was his best trait. If he just made enough money to cover costs and get a little extra, he could keep himself ahead of the other smaller firms he was competing with.

[Quest Complete!]

[+100 Gears]

[+1 Focus]

[+1 Creativity]

[+1 Standard Metals Package]

With these metals, Cael’s interest was piqued. He was used to the basic packages that he had received before, but it looked like this one would be a step above that.

“What’s different with this package?” He asked with his internal monologue.

[The standard metals package is a package, with 50kg of real metals, and 50kg of virtual metals. Each section of the package contains mostly common metals, with about 20% rarer, higher-grade metals or alloys.]

Now that he had access to proper metals from this package, he could definitely decrease the costs of his next physical creations in the future.

He lightly pumped his fist to the sky upon getting this reward, and just sat in his chair to relax. Cael was pleased to find that he no longer needed to put in hours and hours to complete any quests right now, but he wanted direction.

He had been relying on his quests to keep himself going, but what missions did he actually want to complete out of his own will?

It was a tough question, but Cael wanted to expand his business and better his reputation as a mechanic. He would try his best to get many of his WM-EX 1 models on the market to keep his profit up.

With $375,000 to work with, he was sure he could keep on doing that for some time.

Going on the web, he searched up ways for mechanics to get their names out. He was somewhat new to this life of his still, so he didn’t really know how individual mechanics rose and established themselves specifically.

Upon researching, he felt drawn to a certain competition. It was called His Majesty’s Youth Fighter-Mechanic Event Series, which consisted of two tournaments that allowed mechanics and warriors to come together and co-operate.

It was held in the Soburg Empire’s capital, Oseron. It would make him have to go off-planet, to the Capital Planet, which was simply called The Capital Planet or TCP for short. It housed the capital city, but its whole territory was generally seen as part of the Oseron metropolis.

The main capital city had 104 million people living in, but everyone used the various airports across the continents of the terraformed planet to work in the heart of the city, and its outskirts.

The planet was rather small but had a dense population of 4 billion people. These inhabitants were mainly the upper class of the Soburg Empire. The most privileged individuals.

Many of Cael’s fellow Breckenridge relatives lived on this planet.

The basic tier spaceflights from Saevis to TCP costed around $15,000, well within his budget.

If he could perform well here, he was seeing that it would get him a lot of attention and respect. He read up on forums about stories of individuals performing well in the yearly event and getting hired by large, interplanetary manufacturers as a result.

Others even expanded their businesses, just like he intended to do.

Yes, this was going to be his next step.

As he thought of this competition, he just thought about how he could finally prove his Breckenridge relatives wrong for their negligence over his life. The only way he even had any involvement with his relatives was through their parents. With them now dead, they saw no use for him.

If he could get a successful business, and become a powerful mechanic, he could prove all of them wrong! The famous talents of the Breckenridge family would have to humble themselves and praise his efforts for once!

These thoughts made him smile, and only made him even more driven to succeed in this upcoming event. Failure or ill performance was not something he’d be willing to accept.

Researching further, he arrived at the official website for the tournament, which detailed a qualifying stage that was going to open in a 30-day time.

Once the qualifiers were over, the main event would begin a mere 3 days after.

Cael was approaching the end of his schoolyear, but he would need to take time away from the institute if he wanted to participate.

Here, there was a basic description of what the qualifiers for the mechanics would be.

Students would start off with a form of the TechForge Simulation Lab, that would be provided to them at the beginning of the event through a teleporter. There was no need for people to go to TCP just yet. The qualifiers would be held from the comfort of everyone’s homes.

They would be handed a package of metals, and components, along with a few select libraries that they could use to make code for and construct an autonomous bot.

This wasn’t the only step, though. After your autonomous bot was designed, it would be transferred to a vast terrain, with 10,000 other autonomous bots to compete against in a battle-royale style battle.

What made this even more challenging was that the participants wouldn’t know what type of planet their autonomous bot would be sent to.

Therefore, they would have to try their best to craft with sufficient adaptability to function in various environments.

This exciting event made Cael smile as he continued to read the description. He couldn’t wait to show off his skills there, but his smile faded upon reading the final statement.

Out of the estimated 10,000 participants on each planet, only 100 would be allowed to participate in the main event.

1% of mechanics would make it through.

“1%?!” Cael thought to himself, shocked by this terribly low figure.

Was he in the top 1% of mechanics now?

The good thing was, he’d be competing against people either his age or younger than him so he was in the best position in that regard.

However, he had only been doing this for a few months. Those without mana likely would have spent countless years perfecting their craft.

Cael didn’t want to shoot himself down, though, because he knew that he had his system. He had practically made months of progress in weeks, and years of progress in months as a result.

That would change the game for him.

With $375,000, Cael started to think. The system had explained to him previously that he could change 50 intergalactic dollars into one gear.

Maybe, he could use a large portion of these funds to improve his base stats and buy any skills that he’d need to perform as well as he could.

[User: Cael Breckenridge]

[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]

[Strength: 3]

[Speed: 5]

[Durability: 3]

[Intelligence: 16]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Creativity: 5]

[Focus: 12]

[MP: 7/7]

[Skills]

[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]

[Lv. 2 Internal Design]

[Lv. 2 Combat Specialist]

[Lv. 1 Alloy Mastery]

[Lv. 1 Compacting]

[Abilities]

[Ability: Lv. 2 Discount Mastery]

[Ability: Market Savvy]

[Ability: Extra Profit]

[Ability: Permanent Combat Sales]

[Item: Free Repair Ticket]

With all these skills, he wanted to focus on 2 main things. Firstly, he wanted to increase his base stats. He hadn’t done that very often, and wanted to do so, to make sure that he could have a great opportunity to perform in the qualifiers.

Along with that, he’d have to improve his skills, primarily his engineering skills. The virtual environment didn’t need exceptional assembly, but he needed to have great designing abilities to work with what he was given.

He also wanted to improve his ability to manage internals, since that could give him an edge over other mechanics as inexperienced as him.

He wanted to convert $25,000 dollars at first, receiving 500 gears for him to utilise.

[Would the user like to convert $25,000 into 500 gears?]

Cael confirmed this with his mind, and he saw the amount in his bank account instantly decrease.

With 100 gears from his two quests, alongside the gears that he had received from individually selling the exosuits, he had 1,184 gears in total. Unluckily, his physical drones only received gears from the quest he had received, which was basically the equivalent of him being rewarded from his sales.

Cael began getting to work on his system, trying to improve it as much as he could.

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 2 Internal Design -> Lv. 3 Internal Design]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 3 Internal Design -> Lv. 4 Internal Design]

Upgrading this skill so much made him stand totally still from doing so. His mind almost fell blank for a few seconds, before he tumbled to the floor after receiving this information.

The upgrading of his Internal Design cost a massive 720 gears, 180 for the first upgrade and 540 for the second.

[Engineering]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Modular Design Proficiency]

[Increases the user’s proficiency with modular design.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Reconnaissance Design]

[Improves the user’s ability to create and knowledge behind support bots designed for reconnaissance missions.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Combat Specialist]

[Improves the user’s ability to create and knowledge behind support bots and exosuits made for intense combat.]

[COST TO UPGRADE: 200 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 High-Efficiency Systems]

[Allows the user to better manipulate designs and the assembly of different components to better utilise the power from power supplies.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Compacting]

[Improves the user’s ability to decrease the amount of wasted space in designs for support bots and exosuits.]

[COST TO UPGRADE: 80 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 4 Internal Design]

[Marginally increases the user’s proficiency at designing and improving on designs for the internal circuitry and components of exosuits and support bots.]

[UNABLE TO UPGRADE – INSUFFICIENT SKILL UPGRADES/UNLOCKS]

He wanted to upgrade it again, but as he looked at this message, he was quite bummed out.

However, he realised that he had a much greater understanding of how internals worked. He could imagine different neat ways of assembling components to minimise space, but also improve maintenance.

With 464 gears remaining, he spent quite a lot on the skills ahead of him.

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Compacting -> Lv. 2 Compacting]

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 High-Efficiency Systems]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 High-Efficiency Systems -> Lv. 2 High-Efficiency Systems]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 2 Combat Specialist -> Lv. 3 Combat Specialist]

With 84 gears left, he didn’t have enough continue in gears, but he definitely had enough in dollars.

Taking out $40,000 to utilise, he was given 800 gears off the bat to continue his upgrading spree.

[Assembly]

[Skill: Lv. 2 Microscale Manipulation]

[Increases the user’s knowledge and proficiency with manipulating miniature components and parts of mechanical designs.]

[COST TO UPGRADE: 180 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Quick-Build]

[Assembles the basic frame of virtual exosuits and support bots, based from the user’s schematics, with perfect accuracy.]

[COST TO UPGRADE: 180 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Circuit Routing Proficiency]

[Marginally increases the user’s knowledge and proficiency with assembling the wiring and circuitry within exosuits and support bots.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Armour Fitting]

[Marginally increases the user’s knowledge and proficiency in assembling armour shells for exosuits and support bots. Decreases the chances of holes appearing in final models.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 30 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Scarcity Crafting]

[Improves the user’s ability to work with limited, mediocre resources to form improved, functional designs.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 30 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Eagle Eye]

[Allows the user to pick up on misalignments and inconsistencies within a design and physical model more easily for 30 seconds.]

[COST: 0.5MP]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 Steady Hands]

[Improves the user’s hand steadiness, which can aid in assembly in almost all aspects.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 40 Gears]

Now, this was some stuff that he wanted.

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 Scarcity Crafting]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Scarcity Crafting -> Lv. 2 Scarcity Crafting]

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 Armour Fitting]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Armour Fitting -> Lv. 2 Armour Fitting]

[Skill Unlocked!]

[Lv. 1 Circuit Routing Proficiency]

With all these skills now his, he had a total of 320 gears spent, so he had 564 gears remaining. He didn’t want to waste all the money that he had stored up as capital, because that would just be a waste. Many of the skills that he really wanted to upgrade wouldn’t even let him continue upgrading them for very long at all.

Here, he then moved on to his stats to begin upgrading them.