He slumped back into his bed, and just laughed as he looked at his clear, white ceiling.
Rushing into his workshop to pick up the remaining items, he listed them on his merchant profile and the farmer was quick to sweep them all up.
The 15 drones were gone, and a total of 300,000 dollars arrived right into his account. He had actually made 15,000 in profit, which wasn’t much but it was something nonetheless. All he was happy about was that he had maintained this capital of his, that he can now place into other fields like the creation of his exosuit.
Upon receiving this message from the ExoTech marketplace, he was swiftly met with another panel from his system.
[Quest Complete!]
[+100 Gears]
[+1 Intelligence]
[+1 Focus]
[+1 Creativity]
[+1 Schematic]
[Schematic: Titan Upper Body Actuator System]
[An upper body system made for exosuits that is designed for raw power and strength. The system is heavy and has a lot of power consumption along with heat output but has a very high force output.]
[Gears to Unlock: 0/400 Gears]
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]
[Strength: 3]
[Speed: 5]
[Durability: 3]
[Intelligence: 16]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 4]
[Focus: 11]
[MP: 7/7]
[Skills]
“Ooh, some nice rewards here.” He thought, reading the message.
He felt excited by the schematic that he had been given in specific. With his new exosuit design, he could hopefully slide this system right into it. If the strength of this system gained popularity, he could even go on to sell off the actuator system design himself.
However, he wasn’t exactly sure if this would be a high-quality system. It wasn’t labelled as basic and low-level, like the bipedal system he had received, but it wasn’t exactly embellished or glorified either.
The system had described the system as having a ‘very high force output’, which was certainly something that he needed.
Therefore, he placed 100 gears right into the progress of unlocking this system and intended to place every extra gear that he would earn right into unlocking it. He already had a bank of 380 gears for him to work with, and he unlocked the schematic right away.
With 80 gears left, he had to find a way to quickly improve his ability to conjure up designs. Therefore, he looked towards his engineering skill tree for answers.
[Engineering]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Modular Design Proficiency]
[Increases the user’s proficiency with modular design.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Reconnaissance Design]
[Improves the user’s ability to create and knowledge behind support bots designed for reconnaissance missions.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 3 Combat Specialist]
[Improves the user’s ability to create and knowledge behind support bots and exosuits made for intense combat.]
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
[COST TO UPGRADE: 180 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 High-Efficiency Systems]
[Allows the user to better manipulate designs and the assembly of different components to better utilise the power from power supplies.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Compacting]
[Improves the user’s ability to decrease the amount of wasted space in designs for support bots and exosuits.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Internal Design]
[Marginally increases the user’s proficiency at designing and improving on designs for the internal circuitry and components of exosuits and support bots.]
[COST TO UPGRADE: 200 Gears]
Cael felt quite frustrated upon witnessing the sheer exponentiality of unlocking skills. The number of gears that it would take for him to improve on these items increased dramatically, and the rate at which they would increase seemed to grow with the same explosiveness.
However, compacting seemed like a skill to have for this process. Heavyweight systems always had weight as an issue. One’s first instinct would be to stuff it with high power actuators and items, but weight grew more than strength.
Even if you built the strongest exosuit in the world, if it weighed a tonne, it couldn’t do very much. The battle between strength and weight was a hard and complex issue that required hours of deep contemplation along with simple trial and error.
[Lv. 1 Compacting Unlocked!]
With this new bank of information set into his mind, he could tell that his designing abilities had improved.
Looking back to the TechForge Simulation Lab, he could see that there were many improvements for him to make.
There were needless gaps and extensions in the suit, and he felt like he could shave off the weight of this exosuit by at least 5%.
He wiped his hands together as he got to work and entered a deep state of focus. It was like his mind only brought attention to the information in front of him that was necessary.
Any sort of white noise coming from the streets didn’t even register in his brain. He was totally in the zone.
Hours passed, and he had multiple sessions of work split across several days.
With only a week left for him to complete the quest, the design was complete. He span the exosuit around, exhausted from his hours of hard work. The stars and these panels were the only things illuminating his room, along with the lights of the windows within his captivating view of Carlo City.
This gave his pale skin an enchanting gleam, while the light also gave his hair a shiny, glistening appearance.
Zooming in on certain parts, he inspected the design in complete silence with his chin resting in one of his hands.
He continued to give this item a close look, and zoomed out, nodding with satisfaction.
The job was done.
He didn’t think much about the name of this, and just kept a similar naming scheme to his WM-01 Valiant.
[Design Complete!]
[Name: WM-EX 1]
[Type: Heavyweight Exosuit]
[Evaluation]
[Speed: 54/100]
[Strength: 70/100]
[Power Efficiency: 35/100]
[Agility: 45/100]
[Armor Integrity: 72/100]
[Framing: 33/100]
[Maintenance: 36/100]
[Overall Rank: 46/100]
The actuator system certainly lived up to its name and had incredible strength output. The actuators were thick and heavy, while also requiring mana cores on the sight of the exosuit to act as power sources.
He could also see the improvements in his framing. It was still below average, but he had gotten better. That’s all that mattered in the end.
He deployed two powered gauntlets as the main and only weapons of the system, making it made almost solely for hand-to-hand domination.
Now he’d have to get to assembling the numerous exosuits. All he could do was sigh upon realising the large volume of work that he still had left ahead of him.
With his new skills in assembly, and after experiencing such in the real world, the virtual assembly platform felt like a walk in the park.
He even smartly utilised his quick-build skill, which automated the easier assembly parts like applying the shells and integrating larger, simpler components.
His skill was still Level 1, so it wasn’t doing all the work for him, but it was certainly providing great assistance.
After every item that he made, he would swiftly place it on the market, hoping for them to be swept up once again.
The costs for each exoskeleton model were not cheap. He was lucky that it was in the virtual world, but each suit still went for 11,000 in terms of cost, so he listed them for $12,500 each.
His hands now moved with elegance and swiftness when he assembled the items. He wasn’t invincible and felt boredom slowly creeping into his mind as time passed.
*****
Lazarro, sat in his virtual pod, felt a sense of boredom as the Total War limited time mode was now gone from the Vault. His sensory drones gave himself a sense of excitement in the game that he hadn’t felt for a long time.
The success that he received with it was quite insane, and he also saw others within the Soburg Empire soon equipping themselves with the handy item too.
Of course, now that the mode was gone, he had no use for the practically armour-less item.
In other modes, against items with greater firepower, a single shot simply rendered the item useless. Its protection was appalling, and higher-grade energy blasters fired with such speed that its agility meant very little.
His friends felt the same sentiment, and they just weren’t playing the game as much as they just had been.
He just opened the ExoTech Marketplace, looking for something else to buy.
Endlessly scrolling through the items at hand, either they were out of his pricing range, or they just weren’t quality enough to capture his attention.
However, upon scrolling through exosuits for a good few minutes, he leaned up in his chair upon seeing a panel displaying the most recent item from WarriorMechanic7914.
“Hold up, Ezekiel might like this.” Lazarro realised.
Revealing the basic display that showed the exterior of the exosuit, he swung it around and inspected the overall rating that this exosuit had been given.
“Alright, this isn’t actually half-bad!” Lazarro wondered.
It looked like the overall skill of this seller had grown so much in such a short amount of time. Before, he imagined him to be some beginner mechanic with pretty much no knowledge of how to design technology.
However, he could tell that this design was a step above a mechanic of that level.
[TheManLazarro: Ezekiel, are you trying to run up some arena 3v3? WarriorMechanic7914 has got a new exosuit that fits you quite well.]
[iron_juggernaut: I’m liking the look of this. I hope my parents can get me this thing this one time, because I do not have the funds for that.]
With his friend’s interest piqued, he was hoping to see how him and his friends could operate in the 3v3 mode of the Vault.