4th July, Year 714 A.G.

After a long and mostly restless night, Leon finally woke up.

The events of yesterday still felt surreal to him. Witnessing deaths and witnessing a massacre were entirely different things, and the spectacle yesterday left a deep imprint on him.

Leon didn't know this part of himself before yesterday, but seeing the aftermath of the massacre truly flipped a switch inside of him.

He had nightmares of the girl with a mutilated leg screaming for his help all night and yet, there was nothing that he could do. He was helpless.

Leon sat on his bed, thinking. 'My plan has to change'.

It's human to make plans and be ambitious, but it's also human for plans to go awry and everything to go wrong.

What happened yesterday ruined most of his plans.

At the moment, Leon was still a pretty strong E Rank Ascended when the battlefield situation favored him but he was not satisfied with this.

After what happened yesterday, he did his research on the Extremist Movement and he learned that apart from the leader called the Demon of Ozempic, there are 4 more prominent members of the Extremist Movement.

And according to media speculations, all 5 of them were E Rank Ascended, and there were rumors of the Demon already being a D Rank Ascended.

After fighting against one of them already, Leon dared not underestimate them and this was why he felt apprehensive.

This time, he had no crew with him and even with the presence of the Gene Army, since he wasn't part of the army, he wasn't sure if he could rely on them.

Facing a force of 5 E Rank Ascended by himself was pretty much suicide.

He didn't have the confidence of surviving not to talk of winning, but this did not diminish his determination to see the end of the terrorist group.

If he could not eradicate them alone, then he had to be clever. He reckoned that he had to more proactively push the Gene Army into action and more importantly, he needed to raise his personal strength even more.

Before, he thought he had at least 20 days to work on himself for the finals of the combat sports tournament but after the live video from the terrorists, he realized that he most likely had just 5 days if he wanted to impact the fight against the terrorists.

This was the reason why he now felt a sense of urgency.

A lot of thoughts went through his mind on how to improve his current situation but his mind could not process all the thoughts, leaving his brain in a chaotic and unfocused state.

Leon was frustrated, the pressure was getting to him.

He paced around the room, and then he remembered that yesterday his System lit up with new notifications that he didn't pay attention to.

'Let me check them first'.

With that thought, he accessed the System HUD screen.

DING!

~----~

[You have gained +58 Ascended Essence!]

[Ascended Counter: 254/2000]

…

His eyes gleamed; he immediately connected this with the battle he fought against the terrorists yesterday.

And then, he focused on the final System notification.

…

~----~

[You have received a new Mission: Holy War]

>Participate in the Holy War of the Extremist Movement, either for or against them.

[Mission Reward: Choice Reward- Pick 2 from 5 random Racial Traits of the Demon of Ozempic.]

(NOTE: A mere E Rank Mechanist cannot completely eradicate the Extremist Movement, they're an international extremist religious movement. You can only halt their progress and curb their influence.)

~----~

Leon scoffed. 'Either for or against them?'

His choice was a no-brainer.

He also understood the System note as it was one of the things that bothered him after learning of just how big the Extremist Movement was.

He guessed that the Demon Ozempic was not the overall leader of this movement, he was just like a regional leader in the Southern Biome.

He believed that the terrorists have other settlements in other parts of this world, and that they likely have leaders too even if in recent months and years, they were more low-profile and less known than the Demon of Ozempic.

What puzzled him though was the mission reward. 'Pick 2 out of 5 racial traits of the Demon of Ozempic?'

This was the first time that he was being presented with this kind of reward for completing a mission by the system.

'How can a single Geneform have up to 5 racial traits?' His eyes narrowed in deep thought.

All the Geneforms that he already met mostly had just 1 racial trait, the Geneform racial trait, and then there's the rare case like Cell with 2 racial traits, but 3? 5? Leon had never heard of something like this before.

'Just where did these terrorists come from?' He frowned.

He didn't fully understand what having multiple racial traits meant but Leon knew that it was significant and it only put more pressure on him to improve and get stronger faster.

That pressure pushed him into action.

"Davis, project a blank drawing board for me".

DING!

Leon picked his digital pen and quickly started writing.

Since his thoughts on what step to take next were weighing him down, he decided to write all his options down in a scale of preference to know what to focus on and what to keep at the back of his mind.

[Tasks:]

*Get the services of a NetRunner.

*Find a way to fight against more Ascended to increase Ascended Counter, maybe through the tournament.

*Acquire a Projection Engineering Knowledge Scroll.

*Buy materials for the robot project, the VX-09 Emberfist Gauntlets, the other Grenade types, a new battery cell and engine for the sword drones.

*I really, really need money.

Leon looked at the list in front of him and his face twisted slightly. 'Sigh, I have so much to do'.

He missed being in a crew where he had crewmates to take care of different things and all he had to do was be a mechanic, but he also knew that those days were long gone and were not coming back.

Leon didn't know if he missed anything but these were the things he had pending that his brain could easily pick up right now.

After the battle yesterday, he slightly altered his vision of the sword drone blueprint.

When Leon devised the idea for a sword drone, he knew it was going to be a game changer but still, he didn't anticipate what happened yesterday.

What happened during the battle yesterday changed his perception completely of the potential of a sword drone.

Instead of just a combat tool, Leon realized that with the right materials, battery cell and enough horsepower, he could gain the ability of unrestricted flight!

In a battle of Ascended, he could not stress how important flight was.

This was the reason why despite how stressed he was yesterday, he kept it at the back of his mind to alter the sword drone blueprint.

It was not a structural altering, it was just a material change to use far more stronger and potent materials in crafting the sword drone.

Like yesterday showed, using the sword drone to fly could not last more than 3 minutes at a time due to the power drain. That was far too short.

Leon needed it to last at least a few dozen minutes.

He focused on this first as he erased the contents of the blank digital board and with the digital pen, he drew the blueprint of the sword drone.

He altered the materials, replacing them with far more expensive but significantly stronger parts that would make the sword drone not just deadlier but far more mobile with more horsepower.

After that, he focused on the task list again that he already saved, focusing on the robot project.

He highlighted it.

"I need to stop procrastinating," he thought, eyes gleaming. "I need to complete this blueprint today!"

Unlike his other projects, the robot was still just an idea, Leon was yet to turn it into a complete blueprint.

This was because to him, it was supposed to be his magnum opus project as an E Rank Mechanist and he didn't want to botch it but now, he realized that procrastinating and wasting time was not going to help him.

Leon erased the board again and with the digital pen, he started meticulously drawing a basic sketch of a chassis of a robot.

The first prototype of the robot that he drew was humanoid with 2 thick legs, 2 hands, and a square-shaped head. It was 10 feet tall.

'Now comes the difficult part, arming the drone'.

Looking at the square-shaped head that he drew, Leon's black eyes narrowed as he thought. 'I can install and hide a powerful weapon inside the head!'

His brain whirred as he quickly looked through all his weapon blueprints, then he narrowed done on one. 'The Terra Nova 71'.

Offensively, the Terra Nova 71 Rifle was one of the strongest weapons in his repertoire with its dual shooting states. Its addition to the robot blueprint alone would evolve it into an offensive powerhouse.

Integrating it to the robot would require a lot of alteration to the original Rifle blueprint, but Leon felt that he could modify it to turn it into the hidden weapon of the robot.

With the digital pen, he drew an arrow leading to the head of the robot and tagged it- [Terra Nova 71].

After that, he focused on the other parts of the robot chassis.

When he first thought of a robot blueprint, he never envisioned an armored robot wielding melee weapons like swords and the likes.

He was not confident in his ability to design a perfect carbon-fiber musculature that would enable seamless and flexible movements like Synths.

If the first iteration of his robot wielded melee weapons, it would just be a foolishly big and cumbersome machine.

What he envisioned was a heavily armored artillery powerhouse that could take a lot of damage and deal even more damage back to enemies.

So, looking at the two hands of the robot, he made his decision. 'Both hands should wield the QX-07 Air Gun as the robot's primary weapons'.

His decision was influenced by certain factors.

First, the Air Gun was only his second powerful ranged weapon that was not a bomb. Besides, compared to an Electromagnetic Pulse Gun, Air Guns drain far less power meaning it could help conserve the battery levels of the robot in combat, making it last longer in battle.

Looking at the legs of the robot, Leon thought of creating an electromagnetic gadget that enabled anti-gravity to give it flight capabilities but he immediately scrapped the idea once he thought of the energy consumption.

His brain whirred. 'Instead of an electromagnetic gadget for the legs, I can instead create a wheeled mobility system!' His eyes flashed.

'That will increase the mobility of the robot, and I also need to integrate a system for it to seamlessly switch between the wheel form and normal form to easily transverse uneven terrain'.

By the time Leon drew all his ideas, adding them to the robot sketch, it no longer looked plain as it looked more fleshed out now.

He smiled but he wasn't satisfied yet.

He observed the sketch for a long time, then his eyes lit up with a new idea.

He looked at the crotch area of the robot and his eyes gleamed. 'That should work!'

His idea was to turn the crotch area of the robot into a hidden weapon compartment just like the head, and his weapon of choice was his grenades.

After creating so many grenade blueprints, Leon didn't want to waste them without integrating them into his robot.

He intended to create a compartment inside the robot to store different types of grenades, and then connect it to a spring gadget through which the robot can launch the grenades at different targets.

'Davis can take care of the longitude and latitude calculations when throwing grenades'.

Of course, he also wanted to install a chip on the robot through which his A.I could have control over it when it was not under his direct control through Drone Control Matrix.

By this point, Leon was already getting excited.

For the next 2 hours, he took his time to observe the sketch, fine-tuning it, modifying it to be more feasible and efficient.

He added extra slots by the ribs, back, and chest area of the robot that would integrate hidden kinetic pistols.

And then, he added one last compartment to the sketch.

Leon called it the 'f*ck you' compartment.

It was a compartment at the torso of the robot just like the grenade compartment, but this time Leon intended to put his jury-rigged bombs inside.

It was the final resort of his robot, its ultimate trump card when cornered.

He intended to put at least 5 to 10 jury-rigged bombs inside the compartment, rigging it in a way that if the robot ever fought a losing battle that it couldn't survive, instead of his robot to go quietly, it would go with a bang.

By detonating 5 to 10 jury-rigged bombs at once, Leon was sure that the robot would become capable of generating so much power to heavily injure even a D Rank Ascended.

And if it was a paper class like NetRunners, there was a chance of the robot killing a D Rank Ascended if he couldn't escape on time.

Only after this was Leon truly satisfied with his design and his System finally lit up with a new notification.

DING!

~----~

[You have created a new Blueprint: Robot v0.1]

[You have been rewarded with +50 Data Points!]

[Current Data Points: 62]

…

[Give your Blueprint a Name!]

~----~

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