The two fighters slowly approached each other, and both seemed timid in their style. They held tight guards, but Cael seemed lighter on his feet, and less nervous in this battle.

Cael didn’t feel nervous or frightened when battling. He had gotten so used to taking losses that he would always just try to do his best, regardless of the outcome.

His opponent threw a sluggish jab, that Cael could easily slip his head by. It was just a reflex to him, and he watched his metal fist soar past his face. In this same motion, he landed a punch of his own, to his opponent’s face.

His punch was much quicker than his opponent’s and landed right on the mark. He was grateful for this strike of his, and a sense of pleasure washed over his mind. It was very satisfying to have punches landed in the way that he had intended them to.

Focusing on using the cyberjutsu style, he crouched down low and stepped away swiftly to dodge any incoming attacks. His opponent just used a fundamental jab and straight combination, that didn’t get anywhere near the crouched fighter.

With his body still low, Cael started to improvise slightly then swung out his right leg. He aimed right for this guy’s ankles, and managed to sweep him right off his feet.

As he began to fall, Cael lifted to then punch him in his descending face.

user11235813 was already thrown off balance by the initial attack, so he could do nothing about the second one. He was shot onto his back and was forced to perform a backflip to return to his feet.

As the two continued their battle, Cael could tell that he had the edge. He was faster and stronger than this fighter and had much better technique.

The two fighters had used a decent portion of their stamina and weren’t looking to overexert themselves. They circled around each other on the gridded arena, just trying to feel out their opponent to see any openings to capitalise on.

user11235813 flicked out a light jab, but Cael read his movements like a book. He could see his shoulder moving forward before his arm extended and he tapped his extending fist down with his right hand.

He then landed a devastating punch to the man’s helmet, before driving his right leg into his abdomen.

The attack bent his torso, and he could see that his attack rattled him. In reaction, just like any inexperienced fighter would do, he just wildly swung at Cael to try and punch him in the head. However, Cyberjutsu prepared the fighter for situations like this, and his arms were already up, blocking his head.

His opponent’s right fist landed on his forearms, then Cael snapped right into action. He swivelled his body around so that he also faced where his opponent was facing, and placed the man’s right arm on his right shoulder.

Pulling his body over, he hurled him right over his shoulder, vehemently slamming him into the arena floor.

With this powerful takedown, the entire game had changed. Once somebody was on the floor while their opponent was still up, it only spelt trouble.

He thrusted down his fist and put all of his weight behind the strike. His fist landed right on the man’s helmet and cracked it slightly.

The punch brought his opponent to a complete stop, then his body turned to nothing but blue particles.

[Match Won!]

[+21 Power Points]

Cael was elated by the amount of design points that he gained from this win. If he could just get some more wins, it was likely that he would be up a stage of this game’s ranking system in no time!

There were a few more days left before it was to begin, and Cael was keeping his eyes open when it came to the weekly reports on the market.

[Market Trends Report #9]

[Overview]

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[Demand for seafaring bots and mining support bots increase. No noteworthy decreases in demand for other markets.]

[Seafaring Bots: Large ore deposits have been located on the planet of Scarr of the Soburg Empire. Many of these ore deposits are under liquid water.]

[Mining support bots: Ore deposits of Scarr have been found across the planet’s many islands too.]

Cael couldn’t jump on any of these trends just yet, but after the event he was hoping that he could do so. His autonomous bot had been made practically for free and consisted of many expensive components.

If he could sell it off, he could possibly make a serious mint right away and kickstart further developments and designs. Some autonomous bots sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars on the low end and could reach into the millions and tens of millions for higher tier ones.

With his autonomous bot, he could possibly sell his bot for hundreds of thousands of dollars. With a price tag like that, he would have a large pot of money to work with. He could possibly even buy advanced 3d printers to allow him to physically create his future designs.

Cael had received a few more wins here and there, mixed in with a lot more losses, and his design points reached a total of 114 after a win.

Several panels within his lobby of the Vault appeared after reaching this milestone.

[Rank Upgrade!]

[Rookie II]

[New Item!]

[Free Repair Ticket]

This was quite the useful item that was handed to him by his handy system, which meant that he could allow his exosuit to be automatically repaired without any cost.

Repairing an exosuit in the vault was not an easy task. You would have to buy the right components to replace the broken ones, then integrate those items into the damaged exosuit. Many people would just pay to let the vault automatically repair the exosuit for them, but Cael was ready to handle those repairs himself.

It was just good to have the repairs handled in a quality way, since he would likely do a poor job of repairing his exosuit by himself.

Before he could enter another match, though, a panel appeared within this lobby. The panel didn’t resemble the other ones, and this was because it was coming from his system.

Even though he was within the vault, system panels appeared in front of him just like in real life.

[New Title!]

[Vault Rookie]

[New Ability!]

[Ability: Reward System]

[The user receives a reward of gears from winning a match in the Vault. More gears are rewarded for better performances.]

“Oh, I definitely like the sound of this!” Cael told himself.

This totally changed the game now. Before, he was just going to use the basic exosuit and focus on training his skills, like was intended in his combat training tutorial. However, now, he could actually get some extra benefits from not just playing but performing well.

Right now, he had a basic metals package and a basic components package that was untouched. If he could sell some of the items in there, then get some better components for his exosuit, he could give himself a better fighting chance.

The exosuit had no extra weaponry attached to it and so, a source of power wasn’t really an issue. What his exosuit lacked though was powerful, quick actuators. If he could just get better parts of an actuator system and incorporate it into this exosuit, he could make his exosuit slightly better.

[Exosuit: Vault Starter Suit]

[Evaluation]

[Speed: 25/100]

[Strength: 21/100]

[Power Efficiency: 60/100]

[Agility: 25/100]

[Armor Integrity: 22/100]

[Framing: 15/100]

[Maintenance: 23/100]

[Overall Rank: 20/100]

From the analysis of this starter suit of his, he could rule out anything to do with maintenance, framing and armour integrity. The framing of the suit would be nearly impossible to improve, since he had very little skills in that department, while the quality of armour meant nothing in 1v1 matches.

He searched on the virtual ExoTech Marketplace and eventually found some actuator systems that interested him a little. He also had a 5% discount on every item he could see in the market due to his system, which was a nice touch.

Using his merchant account, he decided to sell 10 kilograms of his components, along with 25 kilograms of the metals from his components and metals package, respectively.

This gave him about 2,000 credits for him to immediately work with, which was helpful. Exosuits in the virtual marketplace weren’t anywhere near as they were in real life, which meant that he could actually hope of getting some form of actuator system.

He found one that focused on mainly strength, and it was going for 2,000 credits, which was 1,900 for him. He swept up the system then left the vault for now so that he could work on improving his exosuit system.

It was the late evening now, and the sky now possessed a darker blue hue. The sun had fully set, only managing to get its glowing orange corona over the horizon.

Cael remained in the pod but freed up his limbs and used his pocket projector to begin messing around with his virtual exosuit.

in the TechForge Simulation Lab, he opened it up and this let him right into the actuator system that laid beneath the skin of his suit. He analysed it deeply and felt a little rusty from focusing so much on pure combat in recent days.

He hadn’t been forced to make any new designs or products, but he had the resources to do so.

“I’ll get some things on the market tonight. I already have a lot of components and metal so if I can make some basic stuff for clearance prices, I could make pure profit.” Cael theorised, while gazing at the exoskeleton of his exosuit.