The Warrior Mechanic

Taking down yet another person in a 1v1 match, Cael had climbed the rankings and now reached the Novice Rank.

[Title Upgrade!]

[Vault Rookie -> Vault Novice]

[New Ability!]

[Ability: Permanent Combat Sales]

[There is a 15% reduction in cost for repairs to the user’s exosuit. Skills within the combat section of the system skill tree are reduced by 10%.]

The system had granted him a title upgrade due to his achievement and now he had a nice ability to fall back on. The price reductions weren’t much, but it was going to be better than nothing.

His sales with the aero drone took 3,000 dollars in total, and this brought his total costs up to 28,000 so far. This was nothing, as he was left with a whopping 322,000 still left and ready for him to spend.

From countless matches in the vault, he had received a whopping 342 gears from his wins and losses. He also received a measly 79 gears from the items that he sold in the shop, and decided to call it quits on selling his rudimentary drone design.

He could tell that the sales weren’t as frequent, and he wasn’t receiving many followers or positive reviews from the new sold instances of the design.

[Merchant: WarriorMechanic]

[Star System: Cria]

[Followers: 10]

[Items Sold: 20]

[Innovation: 3.5/5]

[Price: 3.6/5]

[Quality: 3.0/5]

The ratings for his price and quality had remained the same but as for his innovation, it had dropped by 0.3. It wasn’t much of a surprise to him, since he had just been selling the same mediocre item repeatedly.

With 342 gears from the vault and 79 from the ExoTech Marketplace, he had a total of 441 gears to spend from the 30 gears that he had previously.

[Programming]

[Lv. 1 Code Surge] [i]

[Temporarily boosts programming speed by 10% for 30 minutes.]

[Cost: 0.5MP]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Lv. 1 System Scan] [i]

[Aiding the user in finding problems with code. Green zones of highlighted code have a low probability of containing issues, while red zones have a high probability of containing errors. The error could be in any zone but is very likely to be in a red/amber zone.]

[Cost: 0.5MP]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Rapid Update] [i]

[Performs minor patches/updates to a block of code to improve its performance.]

[Cost: 0.5MP]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Efficient Coder] [i]

[Decreases the time required to develop code by 4%]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Script Sage] [i]

[Provides the user with greater knowledge about the syntax behind the high-level ExoScript Programming Language.]

[COST TO UPGRADE: 80 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Binary Proficiency] [i]

[Provides the user with greater knowledge about the syntax behind the low-level EXO-86 programming language.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

The cost to unlock these skills was truly tiny. Compared to the massive amount of gears that he had, ready to use, buying a skill was nothing but from what he could see, it would be very expensive for him to buy, then upgrade skills accordingly.

The Level 1 Script Sage skill had helped him a lot with his coding, giving him knowledge of a lot of fundamental syntax in the ExoScript programming language, but it didn’t give much more beyond that level.

As for the other skills, they were also non-impactful to begin with but believed with sufficient upgrades, they would be of good use to him.

To begin with, he liked the idea of the rapid update. If his code wasn’t working, or just subpar, this skill could fix those issues without any intervention from him.

[Lv. 1 Rapid Update Unlocked!]

Following that, he unlocked efficient coder which didn’t do much to begin with, but would certainly be helpful in the future.

[Lv. 1 Efficient Coder Unlocked!]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Script Sage -> Lv. 2 Script Sage]

He had almost forgotten, and once he clicked the upgrade of this skill, he could feel his mind being filled with even more knowledge. The feeling was euphoric, just as he recalled it to be, and entered a complete trance.

He managed the overwhelming feeling slightly better this time, and didn’t just end up totally frozen. Instead, he tried to stop it from just making him lose touch with reality, but he still did want to relish this moment of pleasure.

After about a dozen seconds more, the feeling had vanished and Cael returned to looking at his several stat pages to decide what to do next. He felt like that was enough on the programming sides of things. With a total of 120 gears spent, he still had 321 to spend on other skills and his stats.

Therefore, he moved on to manufacturing, which he would have to actually worry about in the physical world with his new ongoing quest of selling his first physical items.

[Skill: Lv. 1 Microscale Manipulation]

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

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 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 UNLOCK: 40 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.]

[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]

It actually started to annoy Cael that he decided to ignore these skills of his. They seemed quite useful, and the first skill was most certainly screaming out to him.

Assembling the internal frame and intricate internals of these devices was a very hard thing to do.

All of his designs possessed very poor internal designs, and this problem was only exacerbated by his poor assembly skills. This was not going to improve his knowledge of internal wiring and framework from what he could see, but helping himself to better assemble those sections of bots and exosuits would only aid him.

[Lv. 1 Microscale Manipulation Unlocked!]

He also liked the look of his Quick-build skill.

Once he had formed a better virtual design for use, he could cut down the amount of time it would actually take for him to create the needed models to sell them. With time running down for him, he had to cut the amount of time he needed wherever he could.

[Lv. 1 Quick-Build Unlocked!]

Spending 60 more gears, he was left with 261 gears to spend in other places.

[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. 1 Combat Specialist]

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

[COST TO UNLOCK: 30 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 UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Skill: Lv. 1 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.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 30 Gears]

From these skills, he was liking the idea of unlocking the combat specialist alongside internal design. Internal design was going to be his go-to skill, and he was convinced that it would be better for him to actually upgrade the skill.

This was one of his weakest points when it came to design. He was lucky to have been granted with somewhat impressive intelligence, which then allowed him to analyse designs much better than average.

However, there wasn’t much intelligence could do to help one understand the intricacies of internals. It simply came down to knowledge and experience, which were two things that Cael lacked.

[Lv. 1 Internal Design Unlocked!]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Internal Design -> Lv. 2 Internal Design]

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

The starting word, ‘marginally’, had been removed from the description but there was nothing else of importance there.

Cael felt a similar feeling to what he had felt before, being in a trance-like state. The trance didn’t last anywhere near as long, though, and he believed this was due to the smaller volume of knowledge that he had assimilated.

Upon pondering about improving the internals of a design, he could feel like he could do a lot more. There were special techniques that he had learned from this skill, and he couldn’t wait to apply his newly found knowledge to his designs.

He had spent a total of 110 gears just to unlock this skill to level 2, and decided to move on to the next skill that he wanted to unlock. He had 151 gears, and this was about enough to get a skill and upgrade one more. He didn’t want to do more than that, because he didn’t want to waste all of his gears.

If he was suddenly given a schematic or something from the system, it would be good to make immediate progress in that field, since his last schematic required gears to be unlocked.

However, he was definitely going to use the far majority of what he had stored up.

[Lv. 1 Combat Specialist Unlocked!]

[Skill Upgraded!]

[Lv. 1 Combat Specialist -> Lv. 2 Combat Specialist]

Upon unlocking this skill along with its upgrade, he entered his euphoric state once again. His mind was starting to become more resistant to its originally overwhelming effects, because it didn’t seem to put him out of action for anywhere near as long.

He could still feel his mind being filled with new information, but he wasn’t just restricted to staring forward and not moving a muscle.

With these two skills unlocked, he felt better prepared for the long road ahead. Spending another 110 gears, he was left with just 41 ready for use.

He could’ve bought two more skills with that money, but he didn’t want to waste everything.

Upon closing the system’s skill tree, a notification appeared right in front of me.

[Sufficient Skills Unlocked]

[Metallurgy Unlocked!]

[Metallurgy]

[Lv. 1 Alloy Mastery]

[Improves the user’s ability to form alloys of metals that are functional and an improvement based on the component metals.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 45 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Heat Forging Proficiency]

[Allows the user to better utilise heat to forge metals with a greater control over its properties.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]

[Lv. 1 Impure Metal Boost]

[Gives the user knowledge on adding impurities to metals to augment its properties, or possibly grant them new strong suits.]

[COST TO UNLOCK: 40 Gears]