The Warrior Mechanic

Catching it on its side, Cael was thrown off-balance, and ended up receiving a perfectly thrown cut right to the side of his body.

The tip of the blade slashed straight through the outer layers of his armour, but he managed to catch the next attack with his shield before taking a slight step back in retreat.

Just as he expected, Samurai_cleaver chased straight after him like a lion after smelling blood. Picking the perfect opportunity, Cael thrusted his baton straight into the man’s helmet before throwing a swing straight to his chest in quick succession. The blunt force and the charge from his baton managed to let him break through the outer layers of his armour, while also knocking him back a step.

Even if this fighter was powerful and explosive, he possessed greater power and strength.

Samurai_cleaver remained still for a brief period; he almost seemed stunned that he had been hit in that way. Giving his head a light shake, he roared at the top of his lungs before grabbing onto his sword with both hands.

Throwing everything into his next shot, all Cael had to do was slip down to let the blade flow right over his head. Subsequently, he struck him powerfully with a hit from his baton, landing his hit right onto the side of his face.

As the warriors continued to battle, Cael only continued to rile up his opponent more and more. Not only did he outclass him in terms of skill, but his power also just wasn’t a match for his own.

Along with his own shield to take most hits quite well, he could use his intelligence to throw out attacks at just the right moment before returning behind the security of his shield.

After landing several clean shots from his baton, Samurai_cleaver was on the floor with half of his helmet broken off. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth, as he crawled away from the advancing Cael.

With a firm strike straight to the back of his head, he was out cold.

As for the other fighters, they had dealt with their opponents rather seamlessly and all 5 were sent to the lobby, while none of them had been defeated.

“Let’s go!!” Friso roared, amped up by the intense battle that they’d just won.

Cael chuckled from his strong battle spirit, with the others also excited from their win.

“it’s good you’re holding your own. We won’t be babying you if you can’t keep up in Zarcona.” Vanessa stated, as the others prepared to return to their own lobbies.

“Thanks?” Cael replied, not sure how to take her mixed comment.

Vanessa didn’t seem bothered with what he said or with how Cael reacted. There was simply no reply from her as they returned to the lobby.

Here, they continued their training for some time before returning to the lobby.

During this time, they continued to regularly train with each other if that was in the virtual game of the Vault or in real life. All of them were motivated to perform well in Zarcona, and Cael was already making significant improvements.

Constantly selling items on the market with Leon and playing in the vault, his steady income of gears grew significantly.

Soon, the day had come. The day that they’d be off to Zarcona. Cael made sure to inform Leon of where he was heading to. it meant that he couldn’t continue making physical models of Leon’s exosuit, but he made sure to bring his projector along so that he could continue with his work in the virtual TechForge environment.

Now, Cael wasn’t going to make any promises because he wasn’t sure how laborious his upcoming days were going to be.

Arlo reiterated to them that the institute were rather cryptic about what was going to go down, and they could not reveal the intricacies of their regime after being a part of it. This wasn’t a rarity when it came to exosuit cadet institutes.

All of them were battling it out to receive larger endowments from the government for their efforts, and to improve their reputations.

The five fighters stood at the main entrance to the school along with Arlo, with several suitcases. It was currently a Saturday, so the institute was quite quiet. However, there were some people that lived at the place, so areas like canteens and gyms remained up and running.

“The day has finally come, you all. The flight will be about 36 hours so I hope that you have taken some things with you to pass the time. Our flight will be with His Majesty’s Vanguard Space Initiative. I’m sure many of you have had luxury in your lives but this flight will be a good experience nonetheless.”

The Vanguard Space Initiative was a main space agency of the Soburg Empire. They conducted large amounts of space research, and were given tons and tons of money by the government to continue their operations.

Having strong connections with the military, another main task of theirs was to supply them with quality spacecraft and space transportation in the form of a makeshift spaceport airline.

Arriving at Carlo City’s spaceport, they arrived at a plane-looking spacecraft, that just looked extremely scaled up.

The spacecraft was certainly large enough to fit several of the very first commercial aircraft from earth inside of it. It could several hundreds of people for a single flight.

Here, as they walked toward the aircraft with some security officers by their side, soldiers filled the crowd that approached the spacecraft with them.

Many of them wore the customary camouflage uniform that Arlo was used to wearing, while others were wearing a similar that was only in shades of dark grey and black.

They wore special black military caps with white stars on them. These were the colonial officers of Zarcona. Many of them seemed very pompous and arrogant in their attitude; Cael immediately wasn’t getting a very good feeling from them at all.

However, he just filtered it out and wanted to have a good experience with what this flight was going to offer him. Arlo had been saying a lot of exciting things, so happily entered the flight and arrived at the room he was ushered toward.

Here, he arrived at a literal apartment room all for himself. There was a bed, along with a pocket-sized projector mounted onto the wall and a luxurious ensuite toilet. There was a desk just beside the projector, with some pens and paper to utilise.

Cael couldn’t have asked for anything more for a flight like this. With 36 hours, he felt like there was going to be quite a few things here to pass the time.

After strapping himself to his bed for the usual take-off procedures, Cael left his hotel-like room to explore the other areas of the spacecraft. Arriving at the end of his hallway, there was a balcony leading down to a garden-like area with a holographic spinning globe in the centre.

Aside it were flowing fountains and lush greenery, along with numerous shops and restaurants littered around it.

Heading straight toward a restaurant, Cael just decided to leap straight over the balcony to see what there was to offer here. Several other soldiers here acted in a similar way, using their powerful bodies to move in extravagant ways.

Behind a queue of colonial officers, there was a fast food shop called the Galactic Grill. There was a neon logo of a burger beside its logo, and Cael waited behind the queue of officers waiting for their own order.

He noticed several autonomous bots and other form of robotic technology operating at the back of the restaurant, which allowed for full meals to be conjured up in just 60 seconds at most.

This meant that even though the queue was quite large, it flowed in quite a seamless way. Cael arrived at the counter a few minutes after, ordering two full burger meals along with a large bottle of soda.

Cael found himself eating a lot more after training so much; individuals with mana simply exerted much more energy compared to those that didn’t.

Powering an exosuit and training for hours a day meant that some people ended up eating upwards of 10,000 calories each day. Cael wasn’t very large for somebody with mana, but he was still eating around 7,000 calories daily.

Finally reaching the end of the queue, Cael sat down in one of the resting areas of this ship and devoured his tasty meal. It was rather filling, and the fact that it was serving military men meant that the portions were insane.

People without mana would usually eat as much as Cael had just eaten in a whole day.

Cael then spent his time in some of the other places that were on offer. Cael wasn’t very attracted to the overly energetic, lively entertainment areas on the ship -not that Arlo would permit them to head there anyway- and he just spent his time in some of the shopping locations and other areas.

After returning to his room for some sleep, there were only a few hours after his awakening before the spaceship was soon to arrive in Zarcona, Lapra.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the ship has 60 minutes until it’s arrival in the St. Hubert Colonial Spaceport. Return to your rooms in 30 minutes for landing.” An announcer called out, with Cael hearing this through a speaker in his own room.