The Warrior Mechanic

He punched open a hole in it, revealing the startled warriors behind. As Ezekiel’s teammates flooded toward this hole, it only got bigger and bigger, letting more people through.

Ezekiel viciously slammed into a warrior, before receiving a hefty punch from a similar punching weapon to his own. There was certain technology that could be installed to exosuits, granting them immense strength for short bursts, but this demanded a large amount of energy.

His exosuit was a dark scarlet red and had glowing red energy at its surface in certain areas.

He had a clunky exosuit, similar to Ezekiel, and had a similar physique to him. He was large, and clearly muscular. Most warriors that resorted to striking-based weapons were strong, and had amazing power.

He felt a little stunned by this attack but resembled a valiant warrior. His arms almost lifted in reflex, blocking the next punches to land on his person.

Just as another punch was thrown in his direction, he evaded it to see the glowing red trail of energy behind the man’s speedy fist.

With an open chance, he landed a straight punch to his adversary’s face, before Lazarro came charging in from out of no where.

Thrusters just behind his right fist rumbled as they shot forward his fist with immense speed. The fist hit the man right on his face and almost dropped him completely.

The scarlet coloured exosuit warrior blocked the next attack but he couldn’t block everything. Lazarro wasn’t as strong as him, but his exosuit granted him strength on his adversary’s level.

With that, he had much greater swiftness and technicality.

The man drove his fist upward, fighting with more anger and desperation. It was clear that falling victim to a man smaller than him was hurting his ego.

His punches were too telegraphed, so Lazarro could block and evade accordingly. He parried a punch aimed for his head, throwing an impactful strike right for his face.

His punch connected, shattering the man’s vice. Before he could even react, Lazarro pummelled the man with a rapid combination of full power strikes, which were too fast for him to properly react to.

With this small time window that he had been given to attack, he wildly swung out his arm. Lazarro dipped his legs slightly, allowing his fist and forearm to whip over his helmet. He only dipped as much as he needed to, leaving mere an inch or two between the top of his head and the man’s clenched fist.

Leaping forward, he pulled down his opponent and he soon fell to the floor, Lazarro then unloaded with several punches in a vicious ground and pound, making the red exosuit warrior lift his arms up to protect himself in reflex. With a final punch to his face, the man’s arms dropped to his sides and the fight was over.

His body turned into blue light and vanished into nothing.

“My drones got destroyed but they gave us this map. I relayed it back to our base and they’re getting the artillery adjusted correctly to hit the base.” Lazarro explained.

“Bro, what sort of wonders have your drones done? We might not be in the most advanced lobby, but they actually made it to the opposite team’s base before any of the others!” Ezekiel said, with surprise.

“I don’t even know; they were crazy cheap. Any sort of energy blast straight on would cook it right away, though.” Lazarro replied, even surprised himself.

Their forces were getting much closer to enemy lines and were reducing the opposite team’s numbers. Their shells and artillery were powerful, but they couldn’t fall behind such weapons forever. They took a long time to load, and using these shells meant that they could possibly be hitting their own men.

“Reinforcements!” A man shouted, with a group of about 5 fighters.

They all had different ammunition and even medical bots, capable of repairing both bodily injury and damage to exosuits.

Lazarro found the same girl that he had seen back at their own base. She had brown hair, currently tied back in a bun and had freckles across her cheeks, with hazel eyes.

“I just wanna thank you for your support with your drones. It was smart using a fast, shitty drone for a mode like this. These limited time modes lack real firepower.” She said, as medical drones assessed Lazarro’s condition.

“Uh, thanks?” He replied.

He was sure that was the right reply, but didn’t know how to take the simultaneous insult to his drones.

“Artillery’s aimed and firing! Stay away from the base!” A message called out to the troops.

They retreated, confusing the enemy forces slightly. They were pushing forward intensely due to their greater numbers, but suddenly started falling back.

“Wait, look at the sky!” A player shouted out in fear.

The players that heard this scattered like crazed livestock, but it was too late.

The base hadn’t had to use pretty much any of their artillery ammunition, and so could use everything that they had. The two enemy bases were lit up by the enemy fire and there was nothing they could do.

The noise was so loud that many had to remove their helmets to cover their ears. They hid behind trees and portable walls to keep themselves safe, and they could see the enemy team’s player count slowly but steadily dropping.

The count soon reached the single digits, and all the players that were left were the support-type players left within the base.

Even the main buildings of both enemy teams were ablaze from the heavy fire they received.

They could see the trembling players that remained in these burning buildings. They clearly lacked the power to do much, and the team pushed on to defeat these remaining players with ease.

With more than 40 players left on their side, the team had won by a landslide.

“I can’t believe we won so easily! It was due to those drones of yours, you need to get them repaired and ready for the next match!” Ezekiel insisted, as the three players were then transported to their very own lobby.

“Actually, let me get the drone, I wanna see how good it is for myself.” Preston stated.

“You know what, let me get one too.” Ezekiel replied.

“Well, he only has two left. They might’ve already been bought but I don’t think people would want to buy a support bot that is just going to be used in this limited time mode.” Lazarro explained.

His two friends seemed unbothered and went right to the WarriorMechanic profile, taking one drone each to add to their arsenal of usable support bots.

*****

Cael, lying still in his bed, just lifelessly gazed at his white bedroom ceiling. He didn’t even feel the motivation to move a muscle in his body.

“So, I’m really going to die. I wonder what it feels like, I hope it doesn’t hurt.” He told himself, as a tear then dropped down the side of his horizontal face.

Ding!

Cael had heard a bell-like noise from his merchant profile that floated right beside him. He brought the projection closer to himself, and it was like the breath had been taken right out of him.

“There’s no way!” He blurted out, lifting onto his feet.

[Merchant: WarriorMechanic]

[Star System: Cria]

[Followers: 3]

[Items Sold: 5]

[Innovation: 4.0/5]

[Price: 3.4/5]

[Quality: 3.0/5]

1850 dollars now rested in his bank account, which gave him a total profit of about 200. He just laughed upon seeing this, then started tapping his face and body.

“Is this real? Is this actually real?” He wondered, still doubtful.

[Quest Complete!]

[+100 Gears]

[+1 Basic Metals Package]

[+1 Basic Components Package]

His very own system started to show up panels of these notifications, and with just a single day to go Cael had been saved.

“I just want to thank whoever bought these items AND left reviews very, very much!” He said, before then looking more closely at his system panels.

Pulling them closer to himself, he was glad that he had received enough gears to unlock his schematic right away. He thought about maybe upgrading one of his stats but that wasn’t a priority right now.

Right now, he’d have to unlock the schematic so that he could get right back into his next design.

Looking at the basic components package, he was quite taken aback that it was a thing. If the package contained 100 kilograms of items similar to the basic metals package, there would be a significant amount of value in such package.

Low-level components were definitely more expensive than cheap, common metals, since metals could be mass produced with ease. As for components, it took care to

“System, what’s in the basic components package?”

[The basic components package contains 40 kilograms of basic components such as cheap sensory systems, actuators and mana cores]

Just as he finished reading this reply from the system, another notification popped up right away.

[New Title!]

[Beginner Merchant]

[User: Cael Breckenridge]

[Titles: Beginner Merchant]

[Strength: 3]

[Speed: 5]

[Durability: 3]

[Intelligence: 15]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Creativity: 3]

[Focus: 10]

[MP: 4/4]

[Skills]

[New Abilities!]

[Ability: Discount Mastery]

[The cost of buying actuator equipment has decreased by 5%]

[Ability: Market Savvy]

[The user receives a basic weekly report on the market, highlighting any trends in prices and demand.]

“This is new.”