The Warrior Mechanic

Even though the workshop was now cool as he was hard at work, a drop of sweat trickles down the side of his face.

His demeanour exuded sheer focus and tenacity, as he started to build his drone from the ground up.

“Damn!” He cursed, after misplacing a connection between some of the wires.

He was not perfect and couldn’t form the design in the exact same way that he had intended in his blueprint.

From the TechForge Simulation Lab, he had a projection of the design beside him to work off, and he would constantly switch between the drone in his hands, and the panels around him to make sure he wasn’t deviating too far from the design.

This could result in an even better product, but it was most likely that the bot would not perform as well as the intended design. Most designs were made that way to ensure efficiency and weren’t easy to improve on the fly.

Cael found himself working tirelessly for hours on end. The beaming sun had long gone past its zenith and was now approaching the horizon. Cael couldn’t even tell that this was the case. He never even lifted his eyes to look at the sole window of his makeshift workshop.

Cael swirled around the design in his palm, as the core structure was complete. The thrusters were connected just as he intended them too, with 4 thrusters aimed downward and 2 aimed up to provide greater manoeuvrability.

The design wasn’t perfectly symmetrical on the exterior like his design was, and the internals certainly weren’t impressive. However, it was a great start.

Cael now knew the basics of how to get this design done -having done it once before- and spent the following days churning out these designs.

He used his 3d printer to form the frames and used his components at hand to assemble the drones nearly fully.

Now, he had fifteen skeleton-like drones, that resembled sheared sheep. They were functional, but just looked slightly off.

Now what was to come was the armour plating. Once again, the construction of these plates was rather easy. All he had to do was slot the ingots into his 3d printer and the following process was seamless.

With the needed armour plates, he slowly and scrupulously assembled the shells of these drones. During this time, Cael also took his spare time to play as many matches within the vault as possible.

Taking out 3,000 dollars of what he had been supplied, he used this money to place some Vulture XR-1 Aero models on his merchant profile. They weren’t getting as much attention any longer, but he just wanted to get some passive sales and gears as a result.

The following Saturday had already come and he now had 15 full drone designs.

The fifteen models weren’t visibly identical and that was an issue. However, the differences were minimal and unnoteworthy.

During this time, he had been looking for people to take on these drones, but many were reluctant. Firms would either come up with excuses as to why they didn’t need the item, like not having the funds now or already having functioning security systems.

Others were harsher and ate into his model, critiquing and mocking its lack of armour, even though he had painted its main use for security.

This was more of a pending issue, and so he could move onto his exosuit design.

This was purely virtual, so his workshop wouldn’t be of use for the time being.

[Market Trends Report #14]

[Overview]

[Advancements in heavyweight systems have led to competition between the Soburg Empire and the militaries of neighbouring states. Lightweight systems have received a fall in demand.]

[Heavyweight Bots: The demand for these bots have increased because of decreases in the weight of robust armour plating and increases in power efficiency of actuator systems. This has increased competition between major militaries, further increasing their demand.]

[Lightweight Systems: No advancements have been made in the field, but eyes being taken off these systems and placed onto heavyweight bots have made them less profitable. Profit margins have decreased for suppliers of this good across the Soburg Empire and neighbouring nations/star systems.]

It was good to hear that the heavyweight bots were still in good fashion.

Since the exosuit would be virtual, he could spend a little more on higher tech equipment to make a more advanced model.

He had no exosuit designs to assess, but he had an idea of what even the internals of an exosuit would be like. It was odd, since his system had artificially filled him with this useful knowledge.

He was grateful, however, as it saved him a lot of time trying to work from the ground up.

He was looking for a frame and systems made for a heavy, powerful exosuit. He could see that was what was popular, and he was looking to possibly make noteworthy profits with his design.

He established the frame, made of Dresium and another higher quality alloy. Then, he found a quality actuator system and began to assemble it onto the frame accordingly. Once again, his speed slowed substantially as he touched up the frame with utmost care.

He could feel that he was getting better. He wasn’t exactly faster, but his movements were smoother and more precise.

For the arms, he was hoping to use powered gauntlets. Most heavyweight warriors wanted to harness their strength by utilising items that would maximise it as much as possible. Having powered gauntlets in each arm, he was sure he’d be pleasing the demographic he was aiming to sell to.

He simply received many rejections, and it was rather disheartening. However, it wasn’t like he could stop.

Cael stood ahead of a panel, with several outgoing messages to different firms. He kept the firms to his own planet, but he felt like he had plunged into a sea of pure disinterest.

He’d spent a lot of time working out his costs so that he could keep the prices of these drones to an absolute minimum. It costed him $15,000 each to purchase the components and metals for the drones. This amounted to a 225,000-dollar cost just off the production.

Additionally, he had spent $60,000 to create his entire workshop and so, he could say his total costs were at around $285,000.

Dividing by 15 gave an individual cost for each drone around $19,000. To just make back what he had spent, he sold for $20,000. He wasn’t looking for any form of expansion as of yet. The first mission would be to make sure that he could break even, while building up respect and credibility.

In this field, he was competing against established corporations, that abused economies of scales to keep their prices to an absolute minimum. If he wasn’t blinded by profits, he could hopefully compete with their confusingly low prices too.

It was like no matter how hard he tried to gain the attention of these people; they simply wouldn’t bat an eye. They would give him excuses that he was quite frankly tired of being forced to tolerate.

He contemplated changing his approach, but what other options did he have?

Cael, with his hands on his waist, just looked to the floor of his room and bit his lip as he mused over the situation at hand.

Ring!

His head instantly jerked up like a punch was hurdling toward it. A notification was present.

A company had replied.

They went by the name of ‘Horizon Harvests’. They focused on the growth of vegetables and were quite small.

“Hey there, Cael. I would just like to say that I am quite impressed with the drone of yours. I haven’t got the best budget, but your prices are very reasonable. I would like to see how well your drones operate. If they meet my standards, I’ll be looking to buy the whole lot.”

Upon reading this, Cael clenched his fists and pumped them to the sky with joy.

“Yes! Finally!” He thought to himself, nearly brought to tears.

The punishments of his quests haunted his mind like a bad dream. It was something he just couldn’t take his mind off and how could he? His life at that moment was modelled around completing those quests.

Cael continued a conversation with this man, and he was given an address to his farm. Luckily, they were on the same continent so there would be no need for him to utilise any airport to reach him.

All he’d have to do was resort to some of the highspeed train link systems across continents.

Some of them even managed to cross under the sea and connect continents together, but this was only if they were close by.

It was much cheaper to simply send planes over vast oceans than to strugglingly develop underground rail links.

Cael sent a single of the drones through his teleporter to the farmer. It arrived in an instant, and all he could do was play the waiting game as he received no response.

He wanted to be economical with his time and opened panels to continue his design for his first exosuit, but his mind was stuck on the current matter.

He simply threw the simulation lab’s panels to the side with the wave of his arm and was focused on the conversation open with him and the owner of Horizon Harvests.

“Oh yeah, I’m really liking the look of this. I’ll buy all of those through the teleporter right now.” He replied.

Cael, with a beaming smile across his face, read the text again as he felt like he was dreaming, because this most certainly felt like a dream.

His hard work had paid off.

It was all over.