The Warrior Mechanic

He could find a few minor issues with the design, but he usually found many more with his own. The first word that came to mind to describe this model was elegance. He could certainly make some good sales off this product, and allow for Leon to get his very own traction from selling this model.

All he had to do was explicitly state that it was designed by him, and he would get the support that he wanted.

Cael made sure to get Leon to sign some necessary agreements. It made him feel like he was coming off as untrustworthy, but he reiterated to himself that it was business. Even if Leon seemed perpetually jolly and welcoming, people had ulterior motives.

He didn’t want to just let his innovative design get totally copied by someone else, and have him lose out on a lot of profit for it.

With that, the duo soon began their assembly. Cael began to work with his attack bot design and used the TechForge Simulation Lab to assemble the units for the ExoTech marketplace.

Both people were seemingly hard at work, and Leon had just as strong of a work ethic as him. They spent numerous hours daily spitting out these items, and the rewards came soon after.

Cael was allowed to see one of his test virtual drone models that he had assembled. Leon had almost made it exactly as it was in the design, and he could see the intricateness throughout the entire model.

Approving of such a creation, he knew he had put this responsibility in the right hands.

Cael had started with a relatively positive-looking merchant account; he had ample followers and his ratings were quite high for an individual seller.

With two people working behind the scenes to consistently and swiftly pump out these units, it wasn’t long before they started receiving some significant traction.

They received numerous sales a day, and each unit came with its own amount of profit.

As time passed, they slowly edged up the prices because of the demand they were receiving; they wanted to make sure that they were getting the very most out of their designs. Along with that, Leon was getting some attention from the sellers for his works.

Cael’s system was helping them quite significantly in this process; his Competent Merchant title came with the ability to bypass the code of the marketplace and push his products further up everyone’s search engines.

However, his system was artificially showing products up to people that may not have been very inclined to purchase his things. Along with that, any significant performance on a market like this almost always entailed negative reviews and criticism of some sort.

A handful of individuals were keen to give exaggerated, contemptuous critiques of their creations. Now, that wasn’t to say that these products were perfect, they certainly had a lot to improve on, but it sounded more like the reviewers were simply trying to put them down instead of lift them up.

Cael made sure to hand payments off to Leon’s bank account every week. Giving him the first payment after a week, he was more than delighted to receive it and gave Cael a heartwarming message as a result.

It just made Cael’s day that much better; he was aware of the situation that Leon was in and it felt great to give back to somebody that needed the money more than him.

He was already in a decent situation; the government gave him more money than he deserved to receive because of his background. With the extra profit coming in from the frequent sales from these items, it just made things even more seamless.

It didn’t take much time for Leon to create a whole swarm -a little over a day- and he managed to make 6 different swarms before the time was over. In the virtual marketplace, the creation process was quite smooth and creating the same thing over and over again made you more efficient over the repetitions.

With the several units that constituted the swarm, each one cost around 400 dollars to made. 10-drone swarms cost around $4,000 to make as a result, so Leon received half of the profit for his work. Transferring the $6,000 right away, Cael was surprised to see that he still had nearly $600,000 in his account.

For these numerous sales as well, he received about 100 gears from his system, along with another 100 for his sessions in the vault during this time.

With 200 gears to spend, he decided to dedicate it to increasing his mana. He had received several rewards to his mental stamina recently, and not so much was provided to his physical stats.

If he could increase those further, he would be on his way to even surpassing Blaine to be the strongest of his class.

He was already within the top few, and he could make a lot more progress with his system if he wanted to.

[User: Cael Breckenridge]

[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]

[Strength: 9]

[Speed: 8]

[Durability: 8]

[Intelligence: 23]

[Dexterity: 6]

[Creativity: 14]

[Focus: 17]

[MP: 15/15]

[Skills]

Placing both of his 100-gear stat upgrades into his MP, he started to realise that a lot of his useful stats would require a lot more gears to upgrade. These were his MP, focus, Intelligence and his creativity was going to reach that milestone soon.

In the meantime, he wanted to make sure that his other stats would be up to par.

Cael, during this time, started working on his swarm design to transform it into an attack-based model.

With the swarm co-ordinators also acting as sensors, it allowed him to focus more on allowing the attack drones to specialise in several forms of drone warfare. Some would resort to explosives, others would utilise energy rifles.

[Design Complete!]

[Name: WM Swarm Warriors]

[Type: Attack Swarm Drone System]

[Evaluation]

[Speed: 64/100]

[Agility: 73/100]

[Durability: 72/100]

[Firepower: 63/100]

[Range: 80/100]

[Overall Rank: 67/100]

Cael nodded with approval of this new design of his. Just as he intended, incremental improvements had been applied and he now had another form of swarm that could please other customers.

Getting to creating these virtual drones as fast as possible, he made sure that he was the only one creating these. He didn’t want Leon to see any of the intricate designs, like he had done with the basic swarm model.

Week by week, Cael continued to send Leon the money that he had made through selling his swarm model, and consistently received thankful messages from him. It always made him day to see how happy he could make him and was grateful for the opportunity that he gave him.

At the end of the day, they were both helping each other; Cael was also being gifted with Leon’s high work rate and apparent technical skills.

*****

Across the planet from Carlo City, in the smallish city of Flemington, there was a dark overcast, giving the area quite the darkened, gloomy appearance.

In a dense collection of decrepit, dilapidated apartment complexes, Leon rushed over to lean, middle-aged man on a sofa.

The distance from his bedroom to the living room of this place was so small that he could take only a few steps to fully cross the entire apartment.

“I have enough money to pay off your debt and this apartment now! I can pay for mum’s care!” Leon declared, filled with excitement and energy.

“That’s brilliant my son. I always knew you had it in you to do what I could not.” This man said, with his words getting broken as he continued his sentence.

“Leon, you’ve always been capable of big things and I’m sorry that your mum and I couldn’t make things work. It’s hard to succeed in this empire when all these people want is your money.” He said with praise, receiving a heartwarming smile from his son.

“I’ve always just wanted to make you two happy.” Leon replied happily.

Standing up to meet his son, he had a wide smile on his face, and glints of true respect in his eyes. Rushing over to hug his son, he gripped him tight and patted his back as tears grew in his eyes.

“You’ve done very well, son. You’ve done very, very well.”