He landed a kick to his abdomen, making him curl right over as a result. He then punched him in his helmet once again, making him stagger to the side.
With his body in such an awkward position, he struggled to remain on his feet after taking that heavy blow to his face.
He put out his hand to try and keep at least some distance between him and Cael but his attempt at doing so was futile. As Cael charged forward, he managed to just make his arm bend, which only slowed him down.
Crouching down slightly, Cael placed most of his weight onto his right foot to then drive his body up for a powerful, whipping uppercut.
His uppercut landed on his face, and the force behind the strike was too much for Preston’s mind to handle.
He lost the strength in his legs, and the match was over. Cael had been given the win.
[Match Won!]
[+24 Power Points]
[+10 Gears]
“Come on!” Cael thought to himself, while pumping his fist into the sky.
Upon returning to the lobby, Cael had a friend request from the fighter that he’d beat. This was quite surprising, because he assumed the fighter was young from his physique.
Most young exosuit warriors were arrogant and couldn’t stand to lose against somebody. Even if they could, they would never go as far as give such person respect.
Nonetheless, he accepted the request but decided to hop off the vault. Now, it was time for him to sell more of his drones.
He returned home after his evening in the Vault and continued with selling his items.
He sold his Vulture XR-1 Aero drones and managed to go through their production far more quickly this time. Also, since he had spent less time on the Vault, he could place more time into making these drones of his.
In a few hours, he had 8 drones listed on the market, alongside a package of metals and another package of components available for purchase.
He wanted to see if his items would get purchased, but it was simply too late at night. He fell asleep and woke up to every single one of his items being bought.
He had totally rinsed his packages, though, being left with no items to really work with.
His ten items gave him a total of 4,500 dollars in his bank account, along with 104 gears. With the 45 gears that he had received from his vault session, he had a total of 179 gears in his system, ready to spend.
Using the gears, he decided to simply increase his MP. Using his mana stream skill, he was going to be powering his support bots with his own mana so if he had more it to do so, he and his support bots would last longer in the fight.
[+1MP]
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Rookie]
[Strength: 4]
[Speed: 6]
[Durability: 4]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 3]
[Focus: 10]
[MP: 7/7]
[Skills]
With this money, Cael had to buy another support bot for his event. He couldn’t buy anything good with the money that he had, and could only afford some basic medical bot. It was good enough, and it appeared right from his teleporter.
It resembled a flying med kit, with a red cross across it.
With this, he signalled for the support bot that was stood in the corner of his room to liven up.
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“Come on, it’s your time to shine. You’re going to be coming with me today.” Cael explained.
The bot didn’t seem to totally discern what he was up to but was smart enough to follow him after looking at his hand signal.
The trip was going to be an overnight stay. They would spend a day doing the event, and the following day doing some more fun activities in the city. It was also the day where the students would get their results back, as well as detailed feedback on how well they actually performed.
Arriving at the airbus, Cael pocketed his med kit but his autonomous bot was forced to stand at the back of the bus with the rest of the autonomous bots.
“Hey there!” One of the robots said, waving at the incoming bot.
The WM-01 Valiant model remained totally solemn and didn’t even bat the robot an eye. It simply did as it was told and turned to face the front of the bus, stiff like a tree.
“I guess he isn’t that intelligent.” The bot then stated, before also looking at the front of the bus.
This robot was taller than the small, four-armed bot, standing at 6’0 tall. It didn’t have eyes but instead, a screen on the front of its face that could display useful information.
This was an urban control bot, and it could display things like blocked roads, as well as construction sites to just inform those that could see it.
The bus levitated across the ground and zoomed right to his school, and Cael took his small bags along with his autonomous bot.
He could see some more sophisticated autonomous bots, but they weren’t allowed military-grade, high-tier bots.
If they could get those, the exosuit cadets would stand no chance. The top tier of exosuits at the time possessed unfathomable skill and power. They could have the same strength as some of the most talented warriors, while having a level of technique almost inaccessible to humans.
These bots still had issues like power sources and susceptibility to things like hacking and signals meant to make them malfunction.
His classmates were huddled together, with Arlo standing before them.
“As you know, today is the big day. We’ve ramped up the training for this and I think that you all are ready. You have showed me significant progress and I want you to show off our skill. Remember what you have been told, and I promise that you will succeed.”
Before leaving, though, the students had to choose between a selection of basic level exosuits for them to use within this event. Of course, Cael was pretty much restricted to the lower tier exosuits because of his low amount of mana.
However, there were a few selections at hand. Some of the exosuits had heated blades, while others had items like powered gauntlets. Cael focused on mainly striking in his fighting style and decided to go with the exosuit that had a powered gauntlet across its right hand and forearm.
Each exosuit had only one basic weapon, and this was to make sure that the students couldn’t damage each other too badly.
The students entered a very large airbus, that was larger than even a coach. There was a large area at the back for the support bots to stand, and they left the large complex of buildings to head to an airport.
There were airports and spaceports. Spaceports were meant for interplanetary travel, but flights across just a planet were handled through airports.
They had special aircraft, capable of massively hypersonic travel to cross entire planets in as little as half an hour.
These aircraft would reach incredibly high altitudes so that they’d have to worry less about air resistance and things that would slow it down.
They arrived at the airport and could see planes blasting off into the sky at incredibly high speeds.
After going through a few layers of security, they were allowed on the plane, and it was quite a luxurious experience for Cael.
He hadn’t gone on a flight ever since his parents died, and he had never gone on anything as luxurious as this in his entire life. It was a totally new experience, and he was quite frankly loving it.
His seats were a golden-brown colour, while there was a fit-in projector to allow him to surf the web with ease.
The flight wasn’t going to be that long, but he would surely try and take advantage of the services to offer while they were here.
There were things like drinks and meals on offer, and Cael had some free money to spend on them. He had made some money from selling on the market, but he didn’t really want to spend too much now.
What he was thinking about, though, was what he’d be doing after this whole event was over.
After finishing the event, he could sell his autonomous bot for a few hundred thousand dollars, and with that massive amount of money, that would really kickstart his business. Instead of going for sensory drones, he could go for more advanced bots, like even virtual autonomous bots.
What he was thinking of, though, was making a new sensory drone design to use in real life. It was great to have an actual presence in the virtual world, but he also wanted to make a name for himself in the real world.
If he could make some credible products for real companies like farming companies or industrial firms, he could really build some respect up behind his name.
He also wondered if his system would reward him more for selling items that were real instead of virtual. Judging from the much higher costs of physical items, he was sure that that would be the case.
With even more gears coming in, he could progress even faster within his system, and that could propel him even further.
It would be like a positive feedback loop.
He was not only excited for this upcoming event now, but what was to come after it.
“Time to evolve.” He told himself, while sipping a cup of sweet, iced coffee.
The plane soon arrived in the prestigious city of Amburg. It had towering skyscrapers that pierced even the clouds. They were not only tall, but surprisingly wide.
The students rode another large airbus right to where they were headed, and arrived at a massive stadium. The stadium was located on the outskirts of the city simply because it was so unbelievably large.
It was like you could fit a whole village of people inside, and as the students approached it, it didn’t seem to be getting any bigger at all.
Many of the students were so awe-struck by the sheer size of this stadium, that they didn’t even notice the group of students that they were heading towards.
“Students, meet the fighters that you may possibly be fighting with today. Welcome the Amburg 8th institute.” Arlo explained.