The Warrior Mechanic

The speed and agility of the bot was impressive since it would be classed as a low-tier bot. However, the framing and power efficiency was very, very poor.

It seemed like his focus on speed and agility led him to neglect other aspects of his bot and made it much less impressive overall.

Maintenance was a stat that was based closely on framing. If the support bot was to sustain damage, it measured how easy it would be to then be repaired. If a support bot had a very complex internal design that sustained damage, it would be very hard to sustain on the battlefield.

[Quest Complete!]

[+100 Gears]

[+1 Fabrication Ticket]

“Fabrication Ticket?” He wondered, looking at this reward.

[The user can apply this fabrication ticket to a design and, if the user has sufficient metals/ virtual metals, the design will be created.]

Cael placed his hands on his head, with a wide smile of total shock. He lifted up from his bed and looked at this system description incredulously.

“This can make my whole autonomous bot from just raw metals?” He wondered, totally surprised.

The majority of any bot was made of metal. Even the components would be made of metal, but it would just be complexly made for its special purpose.

With his basic metals package, he was sure that it was enough.

Seconds after receiving this message, a floating dark blue card appeared from one of his system panels. It then appeared in his hand, as a fabrication into real matter of some sort. Cael almost couldn’t believe it, as he touched it and felt it.

This was mass that had been created from nothing at all. How could this be possible?

Humans had found ways to bypass faster than light travel and manipulate space-time to transport things almost instantly. As for this, they could never find a way around the fixed amount of energy and mass in the universe.

However, this card just broke all these supposed laws, and he knew that if this card did what it was supposed to, this was only the beginning.

[Would you like to redeem this Fabrication Ticket?]

Cael accepted the offer almost instantly.

The card started to glow then turned back into a projection, before vanishing.

Ahead of him, a projection of his design appeared within his bedroom.

It remained still, and then started glowing more brightly. The blue projection slowly started to look less and less blue, then Cael heard a creak in the ground beneath where it was stood. A cloak of blue particles rose into the sky and vanished, while the autonomous bot remained stood there.

It looked up to Cael and met eyes with him, before looking back ahead.

He slowly approached the bot, extending his finger to touch it only to see that it really was here. The bot had been created. His very first autonomous bot had been made and was now a physical object that stood right ahead of him.

His autonomous bot had very little intelligence and didn’t have any speech device to talk like a human did. It was more like an ape that fought well that you could give orders.

“Okay, just stand in the corner of this room for a bit.” Cael said, pointing to the opposite corner of his bedroom.

The bot nodded its head with understanding, and walked ahead just as a human would.

“I did that.”

Cael thought, watching it trot along.

After fabricating his autonomous bot, this totally changed the game for his upcoming event.

Now that he had a hundred extra gears too, he could get his very first stat upgrade. This was something that he was looking forward to, now that this event of his was a mere month away.

[User: Cael Breckenridge]

[Titles: Beginner Merchant]

[Strength: 3]

[Speed: 5]

[Durability: 3]

[Intelligence: 15]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Creativity: 3]

[Focus: 10]

[MP: 4/4]

[Skills]

Looking at his stats, he didn’t immediately know what to make changes on. The first thing he knew not to change was his intelligence. Just from first glance, he could tell that it was far above everything else.

He felt like his focus was quite poor, but he attributed the high stat to his hours and hours of training that he would put into his body daily.

“What’s MP?” He asked his system.

[MP is a representation of how much mana the user has. Increasing MP can increase the power source for exosuits, while also increasing the power potential for the user.]

That almost sounded like a dream come true. This was a limit usually determined by one’s genetic talent, but if he could increase that stat, that would no longer be the case for him.

He placed his 100 gears into that stat and felt an outburst of wind from around him. This event even caught the eye of the autonomous bot that remained stood totally still in the corner of his room.

It wasn’t very intelligent but was like an intelligent animal. It could discern that something wasn’t right about what just happened, but just looked back ahead as if nothing happened.

[Stat Upgraded!]

[User: Cael Breckenridge]

[Titles: Beginner Merchant]

[Strength: 3]

[Speed: 5]

[Durability: 3]

[Intelligence: 15]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Creativity: 3]

[Focus: 10]

[MP: 5/5]

[Skills]

[Hidden Quest Complete!]

[Upgrade a stat for the first time]

[New Skill!]

[Mana Stream]

[The user can connect his mana to his surrounding support bots and exosuits through a massless stream of energy. The mana connection can pass through physical objects and has a maximum range of 15 metres. After 10 metres, the amount of mana that can be provided to the bot decreases]

Cael had never received such a thing from the system before, and he didn’t know that there was still stuff for this special system to show him. It made him wonder just how many features were built into this thing, since he had never seen this hidden quest after even months.

With this skill, this changed the game even more. If he could act as a power supply for his support bots, he could make them last longer and not even have to rely on their very own power sources. As for his WM-01 Valiant’s energy blasters, he was hoping that they would still use their own mana cores from the excessive power demand that they had.

[New Quest!]

[Combat Training]

[To become a warrior mechanic, you must achieve balance between your mechanics and your combat prowess. Follow this Novice Training Procedure.]

[Time to Complete: 30 days]

[Punishment: -2MP, -1 Strength, -2 Speed, -1 Durability]

“What?!” He wondered, looking at the punishment.

He was expecting death to be the standard punishment, but he still didn’t even feel happy that that wasn’t the case. He had 4MP beforehand, and he was known for barely even having enough mana to work an exosuit.

The connection between his mind and the exosuits he wore was always very poor, and this punishment would make it so that his mana would fall below what it was originally. With that, he might even be kicked out of his institute entirely.

Without the constant training and help from those teachers and assistants at the institute, he would take a serious hit to his strength. Just as his system explained, he needed balance between his growth as a mechanic, and an exosuit warrior.

If he lost his chance at joining a literal C-Grade institute -the lowest grade of institute- it would greatly disturb that balance. How would he be let onto the battlefield if he didn’t attend an institute?

“No, that can’t happen. Let’s get to work.” He declared.

His bedroom wasn’t exactly the best place for him to be training, and so he left the first day of his training to his subsequent training session in school.

Once he was given his first break, he swiftly entered his training uniform and went to one of the extensive training facilities of the school. He arrived at the four central skyscrapers of his institute, reaching one of the higher floors where various training facilities were stationed.

They were filled with students that were older than Cael, who were training to become proper exosuit warriors.

His institute was a C-Grade institute, so the various ‘talents’ in this place were just slightly above average exosuit users. They still needed to work very hard to get recognition, and those without as much talent were burdened with great stress as they questioned their ability to even perform as an exosuit warrior in the army.

Cael stood amongst various students punching at heavy punching bags with all their might. They were hundreds of kilograms, but many of these students had broken past ordinary human limits. Humans without mana would stand absolutely no chance against them in battle.

As Cael was stood, a robot like the TutorBot from long ago appeared. This time, it had more mass and resembled an attack bot more than anything. He looked around just to make sure that nobody could see this bot that appeared out of nowhere, and everyone just continued their training like nothing had happened.

“Alright, let’s begin.”