Waking up the next morning, he woke up earlier than usual and immediately began making progress on both tutorials. It wasn't much but it was something nonetheless, before he headed to school.
In the morning, all of the students had backpacks on, running through the rural plains that surrounded Carlo City. The students ran in a line, and could see the enchanting skyline of the city in the distance as they followed a dirt path that seemed endless to Cael.
He was struggling to keep up with the group, trotting along at the back.
"Cael pick up your pace! We stay together as a unit. When you become a soldier, you'll have to do this 15 kilometre route twice over every day in times of war!" His burly teacher roared.
Even though he was right at the front of the group, he was loud enough so even Cael could hear.
"Yes, sir." He uttered, struggling to even get the words out his mouth.
"Gosh, I need to wear an exosuit under my clothes next time."
During lunchtime break, Cael would usually just spend time on his own, watching content relating to exosuit warriors and famous entertainment fighters. Not only were exosuits used for combat but also used for jaw-dropping spectacles.
As he continued with these tutorials, they just seemed endless. There was no extra information to tell him how far he was into these projects.
These were his very first quests and even though they had no punishment, he didn't want to start off this journey with this mystical system of his with failed quests.
If he failed these quests, how would he even have a chance at completing the next one?
Every time that he was given a break in school, or a chance to relax at home, he'd go full speed ahead with his project. It was easy for him to bring along his one-pound-heavy projector with him wherever he went so that he could continue with his progress.
14 days soon passed, and he was elated to find that the long-winded tutorials were coming to their conclusions.
"This is the end of the programming tutorial session! I wish you the best on your journey toward becoming an esteemed warrior mechanic. Your journey won't be easy, but this is the first step toward climbing the mountain. Don't let the challenges divert you off your path to glory. Progress is key. This is TutorBot signing out for good. Have a good one!" The robot declared, before vanishing.
He then finished his second tutorial quest, which had a similar outro message before the bot disintegrated into a collection of blue energy particles that then dispersed.
[Tutorial Quests Complete!]
[+20 Gears]
"Phew. That took everything out of me to complete. What are these gear things that I said I got?"
[Gears are the currency of the Warrior Mechanic System. The fixed conversion rate of intergalactic dollars to gears is 50 IGD = 1GRS]
It was a great asset to be able to convert between intergalactic dollars and this in-system currency, since he was sure it would have several perks. However, the conversion rate was awful, and his entirely monthly payment from the government would only give him a measly 60 gears.
"Wait, if I can convert dollars to gears, surely I can go the other way round, right?" He wondered, smiling as he felt like this quest reward had been a pot of gold in disguise.
[The user only has the ability to convert from intergalactic dollars to gears.]
This message totally lowered his briefly elevated mood, and it made sense.
From what he had gone through for these past two weeks, this system wasn't going to spoon feed him. He had encountered several challenges programming under his first tutorial, and was given a large volume of information surrounding assembly to try and digest in his second.
Just as TutorBot had told him, this journey would not be easy.
"Open stats."
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: None]
[Strength: 3]
[Speed: 5]
[Durability: 3]
[Intelligence: 15]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 3]
[Focus: 10]
[MP: 4/4]
[Skills] [expand]
As he gave his stats another inspection, he glanced more attentively at the skills section. Maybe, these gears that he had attained could help him in that regard.
[SKILL TREE]
[Programming]
[Manufacturing]
[Engineering]
[Combat]
[Metallurgy]
This skill tree of his seemed to be a bank of skills relating to these categories.
Judging from the fact that the metallurgy category had a slash through it, he guessed that that section was locked away from access for now.
Inspecting further, he opened the first labelled section, 'programming' with his internal monologue.
[Programming]
[Lv. 1 Code Surge]
[Temporarily boosts programming speed by 10% for 30 minutes.]
[Cost: 0.5MP]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Lv. 1 System Scan]
[Aiding the user in finding problems with code. Green zones of highlighted code have a low probability of containing issues, while red zones have a high probability of containing errors. The error could be in any zone but is very likely to be in a red/amber zone.]
[Cost: 0.5MP]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Lv. 1 Rapid Update]
[Performs minor patches/updates to a block of code to improve its performance.]
[Cost: 0.5MP]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Lv. 1 Efficient Coder]
[Decreases the time required to develop code by 4%]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Lv. 1 Script Sage]
[Provides the user with greater knowledge about the syntax behind the high-level ExoScript Programming Language.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
[Lv. 1 Binary Proficiency]
[Provides the user with greater knowledge about the syntax behind the low-level EXO-86 programming language.]
[COST TO UNLOCK: 20 Gears]
Cael felt gravitated toward moving on to the combat category, but he knew that it would be beneficial to try and improve his other skills first.
This quest of his demanded that he learned how to design an entire support bot in 16 days time. With his current skills, his chances of doing so were small.
He then analysed these skills, that all had the exact same price on them. He only had 20 gears to spare, though, and he'd have to make his choice wisely.
The first three skills seemed to be special supernatural abilities to help with his coding. The cost behind each skill further validified his deduction. It used 0.5MP, which he assumed was the mana running through his body.
However, he wanted to actually advance his skills for now, and not use gimmicks to help himself with this upcoming quest of his. As a result, he activated his level 1 script sage skill. This would increase his knowledge behind the ExoScript programming language that he'd already built a small foundation on from the tutorial.
[Lv. 1 Script Sage Unlocked!]
Upon seeing this first notification, Cael didn't feel much. He looked down his body but in seconds, a euphoric sensation washed over his mind. It was almost like he entered a trance-like state, simply standing still and lifelessly gazing at his ceiling.
His mind was being filled with new information that he had never known before. After about a minute of entering this weird state, his mind started stabilising.
He could perceive things around him more clearly and shook his head upon feeling that.
"That's unlike anything I've ever experienced before, that's for sure." He stated internally, holding his head.
Now, his mind was filled with a bank of information unlike before. He knew a lot more about the language than he had done previously and felt like he could have a much better chance of writing the code for his future support bots.
With this extra ability, he'd have to find and alter a design in 16 days, or he'd be a goner. He knew that this system was real, and it wouldn't be beneficial to call the system's bluff. Now, he knew that this system could directly alter the knowledge in his mind, so how could it not kill him?
This make his spine chill upon realising that his life would be decided within 16 days time.
"No, I should use this punishment to worse my socks off. Let's get to work." Cael insisted, revealing his pocket-sized projector.
"As the saying goes, 'The only thing standing between you and outrageous success is continuous progress'."
Instead of using it like a computer, he simply sat in his chair and surrounded himself with projections. He used his hovering keyboard that was just above his lap to type on these several websites, while then using his hand to navigate.
He first looked over different support bots most common in this era of technology. Cutting edge technology was practically the same across all human civilisation, with richer states having similar technology while smaller nations like the Soburg Empire had slightly less capable tech.
There were sea-based bots that were used as navy support bots, maritime border control and even just to build bridges.
However, these were full fledged autonomous robots that resembled humans in mind and body. Those would cost millions of dollars to construct or around 800,000 at the very lowest.
It would be cheaper for him to literally build full exosuits.
He then moved onto cheaper, more niche fields such as factory support and farm support. These fields still utilised humanoid support bots that acted autonomously to act as security, and to also add a bit of intelligent manpower to their ranks.
However, Cael was not looking specifically in that direction. Instead, he felt more inclined to looking at the sensory drones that were used. These were small devices that patrolled an area, using several sensory devices to pick up information and relay it back to those on-site.
It could manage crops and detect any defects in them with high quality cameras, or even alert workers or other support bots if threats were found. They were used often on farms for these two reasons and were much smaller devices.
Their price range was a lot more manageable to Cael and didn't give him heartache when looking at it.