The Warrior Mechanic

The glow from the enlightening sun gleamed off the metal equipment within this training room, giving it an enchanting appearance. Here, Cael stood in place, listening to his new robotic instructor given the title ‘WarriorBot’.

“Hello user. My name is WarriorBot and today I will be teaching you some martial arts techniques that will not only maximise the power that you can output in your attacks, but also minimise the damage that you take. A style that takes into account the best of both worlds? It sounds impossible, right? Well, let me show that it’s not.” He explained.

The bot then walked slightly away from where he was previously stood. In front of him, then, a virtual punching bag appeared that was just about as large as the other punching bags in the room at the time.

Cael just chuckled upon looking at this happen, still surprised by the magical abilities of this system of his.

A muscular teenager beside him struck a punching bag before looking forward. All that he could see was Cael looking straight at nobody, laughing.

“Weirdo.” He mumbled, before continuing his training.

The warrior then began going through some of the first training combinations that he would be learning. The style was based off basic boxing attacks and movement. It required exceptional footwork, and monstrous power.

The style took advantage of the way one’s vision would be diverted when powerful attacks landed on their head. It also predicted the attacks that a warrior would throw back, using defence as almost a part of one’s combination.

The only downside to this fighting style was that it required a large amount of energy. The user of the style could not stand still at all, only if they were a good distance from their opponent.

After watching a few of these combinations, the punching bag vanished, and the warrior bot instructed Cael to try and perform these combinations himself.

Cael approached a free punching bag, and made the first stance that he had seen from WarriorBot. It didn’t feel very alien to him, since it was based quite a lot on boxing. The forearms were lifted and right to the body, but the only difference was that the forearms had to be kept closer together and more firm.

It felt a little weird since it threw off his balance slightly, but it wasn’t a big issue. Fighting styles could be perfected through hours and hours of pure training. At least, that’s what his teacher Arlo told him.

The first combo consisted of a simple jab, followed by a right straight. Following that attack, you would step back from your opponent then to the right. After doing so, the combo would finish with a powerful swinging kick right to the opponent’s midsection with their left leg.

The combinations weren’t hard for Cael to get the hang of. Cael didn’t have the ability to house much mana in his body from his genetic talent, but this didn’t mean that he was worse at learning battle technique.

His fighting technique was actually superior to a lot of the members of his class, but his lacklustre strength and speed made such skill useless.

The following day, Cael tried to continue his training and followed the program just as he had done on the previous days. However, at the end of this workout, WarriorBot continued on talking. He was about to turn off the tutorial and continue where he had left off from the previous day, but he seemed to be talking about his next form of training.

“As another part of this training, we need you to have practical encounters with enemies. As a result, you will be given this temporary pass to access the Vault while you are continuing with this program.” The WarriorBot explained.

After hearing this, a special card appeared in his palm. It was a hologram, similar to the fabrication ticket that he had used before, except that it had account details written on it.

“Log in to a vault virtual pod and you should be able to hop right in and begin practicing the Cyberjutsu martial art right away.” The bot explained.

Cael felt like this was almost a dream come true for him. He had never been rich enough to afford such equipment, but that was what set the disadvantaged apart from the privileged. More talented people were richer and could afford systems like the virtual pods for the vault to make themselves even more successful.

Those without a large amount of mana or even without mana altogether wouldn’t have access to that same equipment, having their progress further hindered.

The vault was known as one of the most valuable ways to train as an exosuit warrior. The battle modes were more utilised by the lower-tier exosuit warriors and mainly exosuit cadets, but its several training facilities were used and praised by militaries galaxy-wide.

These came in several different plans, giving different levels of access to its users. The prices for its services were high, since there was simply so much demand for it.

Without any competitors, it allowed the vault to function as a complete monopoly.

Luckily for Cael, his school had some spare virtual pods that students could use given that they had their own license.

Vault licenses were indefinite, ongoing payments, but the one-time purchase for virtual pods wasn’t a big long-term cost at all.

The pod was silver, and allowed the user to sit in and let their limbs remain suspended and firmly tied down. Once they placed on their virtual headset, there would be a connection to one’s mind and the system so that they would enter the virtual realm of the Vault.

A room of these vault pods was a few floors below Cael, and it didn’t take him long to reach one. It was now the evening, and the students here were mainly just older students who had better work ethics than the younger, more immature students.

Cael snugly fit into one of these virtual pods, and just looked at the system with surprise.

He couldn’t feel like he was in this device, and he only dreamed of having it after he had lost his parents.

They had their own virtual pod systems, but of course the Breckenridge family acquired most of their stuff before Cael could get his hands on it.

He memorised the basic details on his projected card, then threw it into the air. Since it wasn’t a material object, the card kind of just floated in the air and didn’t bring any attention toward the teen.

Cael’s mind was transported to the Vault, and ahead of him was a special log-in screen.

[License ID: ]

[Password: ]

He put in the credentials, which was basically just a random assortment of letters and numbers.

[Tier 1 Basic License Activated!]

[What username would you like to have?]

This question made Cael think for a little, but he knew exactly what he was going to pick.

[WarriorMechanic]

[ERROR: USERNAME TAKEN]

“Goddamn it.” He cursed, before just adding random numbers to the end of his name.

[WarriorMechanic7914]

[Welcome to the Vault!]

The panel that was surrounded by nothing but a black area vanished and revealed his physical body, that had been scanned by the virtual pod system.

It was almost indistinguishable from reality, and Cael could see him standing on a weird circular platform.

He was stood in a room with grey walls, with several panels that surrounded him. Some were advertisements for support bots and consumer goods, while others seemed to be more related to the vault itself.

The largest and closest panel, though, was a button that led to matchmaking in the solo mode.

He could queue to matchmake and then fight another person in a terrain of his choice. He clicked the button, then saw that there were two options that he could take.

One was unranked, while the other was ranked.

Unranked was made for more casual play, while ranked was a tiered system where each user would play users of their same rank. They could rise ranks by performing well in matches, but also fall from performing poorly.

The system used to measure this was power points, that placed a user in the power ranking.

The lowest rank was called the rookie rank, and this was where Cael had been placed automatically, with his grand total of 0 power points.

Specifically, he was Rookie I, and to advance to the next rank, Rookie II, he would need to acquire 100 power points.

“So, let’s get to work then.”