The Warrior Mechanic

In about an hour’s time, he’d be called to the stadium’s main arena to begin the event. As for the time before then, he was given the luxury of trying out the different services that the stadium had to offer. With a million people that could be in the stadium at any one time, there were numerous restaurants, entertainment areas like indoor basketball courts and the like.

The area was filled with nerdy people was Cael assumed were mechanics just like him. They waited in the halls and different commercial spots available, anxiously waiting for the event to come.

It was a miniature resort, with almost everything that anybody could want here. Getting an energising meal with a shot of caffeine through a sweet cappuccino, he felt ready to go. Cael had been liking drinking coffee a lot more recently, due to his system’s lack of care for his sleep schedule.

The tough quests would send him into deep hours of the night to try and complete them, which would decrease his focus, as a result. Caffeine was just what he needed to give him a boost for the following day.

The 60 minutes of rest came and went, and Cael felt startled upon hearing the alarm. It all came down to this. Even during these 60 minutes, he was struggling to take his mind off the following event that would take place.

With his skills, he believed he had received at least a few years of education’s worth on mechanics. Especially for internals, he felt like he would be ahead of the bunch. However, the bottom 99% of the mechanics that wanted to enter this tournament were already gone.

How was he going to fare against the top 1% of those youth mechanics that were competing?

Arriving at the stadium arena, he saw a large grass field, with a square gridded arena for the students to walk onto. The surrounding stadium held hundreds of thousands of people that screamed and cheered as the numerous aspiring mechanics flooded out onto the massive arena.

Looking at these emerging students was the Emperor himself, on an elevated platform. He was stood in glamorous golden attire that had intricate embroideries laid across it, with diamond jewellery that scintillated under the blazing Oseron sun. His chest was also littered with several gleaming medals, as well.

Just looking above, Cael could see that several energy rifles were aimed not just at the students but at the stadium as well. If anybody even as much as tried to assassinate the emperor, they’d be dead shortly after.

Cael could see that many of the mechanics were discomforted by the heat, but Cael had mana. His body was more robust and could take the temperature more easily. The heat wasn’t exactly relaxing, but it didn’t bother him much, either. Along with that, he received a lot of glances from the surrounding mechanics due to his impressive physique. He was nearing 6’1, and had a lot of muscle mass for a person without mana, while having little fat to cover such muscle.

His physique was the norm in placed like cadet institutes but when surrounded by those lacking mana, it certainly wasn’t.

About ten thousand of them stood facing the emperor, and the crowd came to silence as he lifted an arm.

“Thank you all for coming! As you know, this will be the beginning of the Fighter-Mechanic Event! To begin, I will brief the mechanics on what is to come. Don’t worry, you all aren’t alone here. In a short time, we’ll bring the fighters onto the field to give them a debriefing before you all collaborate.” The emperor announced, making the crowd roar chaotically and frantically.

Clearly, these people were here for the fighters more than for the mechanics.

“Anyways, let’s get into how this whole event will play out. Firstly, our opening event will see direct collaboration between the fighters and mechanics. There will be a 1-to-1 pairing from each fighter to each mechanic. This will be skill-based, so you match up with somebody about your own level.” He explained.

“Then, the mechanic will have to create an exosuit to meet the demands of their fighter associate. In the fighting arenas under your seats right now, several battles will commence in the form of a bracketed tournament. With 10,000 accepted players, we will need to assess the quality of your exosuits to make this work. We need the number of participants to be a power of 2 to let the bracket work and so, we’ll need to cut down the participating fighters to 8,192 from 10,000.”

“It isn’t a very tough bracket to make it into, but just know that you all are the very best, competing against the very best. Don’t think that you can cruise your way through this stage.”

With this, the mechanics were sent off the arena, and were then directed to large indoor rooms located higher up the stadium.

They were sleek and futuristic, with central screens that had holograms, and its own images displayed on it that could be touched.

Each table had a display of the TechForge Simulation Lab, and there would be translucent shields appearing to stop sound from passing through to neighbouring teams. With 10,000 mechanics hard at work here, they needed to economise, so the space wasn’t very expansive for a single person.

There were a few minutes of silence as the mechanics awaited their collaborators. They had many different ideas on the type of exosuit to make but without a fighter to model around, they couldn’t make any conclusions.

A few minutes after, Cael’s room saw several people that looked a lot more like him physically, enter the room. Most of them were slightly younger than him from what he could see but had great muscle mass and athletic physiques.

As a group of these similar-aged warriors revealed themselves, one of them was directed toward him.

The room was practically silent, until he entered his section of the room.

“Hi there. My name’s Lazarro Di Fonti. What’s yours?” He asks.

“Cael. Cael Breckenridge.” He replies.

“Oh, right, I think I’ve heard of that name before from somewhere. My dad’s an exosuit warrior so someone in your family might be in the military with him.” Lazarro pompously stated, with a chest puffed up with pride.

“Yeah, my family’s involved in the military quite a bit.” Cael replied.

“Cool…”

“…”

"..."

“So, where should we begin?” Lazarro asked, trying to break the silence as he rested on a metal wall beside Cael.

“Well, what would you like your exosuit to be like? Tell me how you fight and the weapons you’d like to see, they have pretty much everything here.” Cael replied.

“I’d like a mediumweight exosuit. Too heavy and I feel too slow then with light ones, I can only tap and not really wallop people.” Lazarro stated, emphatically.

He then gave a detailed description of his desires. Cael could see the meticulous thought that had been put into his wanted design, as he almost gave him a blueprint to work with in just words.

Besides just a mediumweight exosuit, he wanted a shoulder energy rifle along with powered gauntlets. For close range, he could resort to his fists while also keeping the enemy at bay with his ranged energy rifle.

With that, their idea was set, and all that they could do now was wait patiently until they could begin.

A few minutes later, a panel shot upward from the rectangular projector screen. It displayed a time, with a 180-second timer. The process would be completed in 2 3-hour blocks, where the mechanics would be allowed a refreshment break in between.

Even if they could share ideas during this time, many mechanics were very reluctant to reveal their ideas. All they could vaguely see were the other designs through the translucent barrier.

[Fighters are permitted to leave the area but must not communicate with any other teams. Any form of communication will result in immediate disqualification.]

Lazarro wanted to see how his exosuit would turn out, but that certainly didn’t require him to be present for all 6 hours of creation. He just decided to be there for maybe the last 20 minutes or so, to see the suit fleshed out.

“I think I’ll just go, so you can focus and all. I’ll see you in the refreshment break.” Lazarro said to Cael, nodding at him before he left.

“Hmm, he looks a bit like a fighter too. That’s cool.” Lazarro thought, walking out the area.

Just as he was walking toward the nearest restaurant, he stopped upon processing his statement once again.

“Warrior Mechanic?!” He blurted out, getting very concerned and odd looks from those that walked around him.