The exam that was supposed to be a few hours took more than half a day.
And the examinees only managed to leave their pods after the last match ended.
Some even had to be woken up after sleeping through the remainder of the time.
But there were those like Luca who managed to make the most of his time by looking at D-29’s newest collection of simulated blueprints.
If Luca had looked at this before, he likely wouldn’t have understood anything, but right now, he had begun appreciating the internals of each mecha.
Now, this was undoubtedly amazing, as a pilot was this interested in mecha manufacturing. And it would’ve been an ideal scenario had it not been for a certain guardian mecha who could only pray every time the new master exclaimed about a new idea.
While everyone else was probably resting their minds and bodies while waiting for the exam to finish, Sid was actually on the verge of a mental breakdown.
He’d been teetering for hours, in fact, and if mechas could sweat, he would’ve had buckets by now.
The ideas were really novel and, in fairness, would typically result in stat optimizations; he just couldn’t understand why it had to look like that.
So, when he was suddenly called over to discuss modifications, the guardian mecha felt like overheating.
"Modifications, Master?" Sid asked, hoping he was hearing wrong.
"Yeah, but I guess we can’t call it modifications since all we’ll do is patch those damaged areas. But hopefully, we’ll get that self-healing attribute."
Luca thought hard about this. While it’s been a while since he made progress on that front, he hadn’t forgotten his original goal of helping fix the guardian mecha.
But he was obviously unskilled in that department and didn’t want to accidentally damage Sid the same way his hands almost got eaten away.
His solution: Buy a modification blueprint from the Trove.
However, the little system and the anxious mecha didn’t know that and were both waiting for the Master’s following words.
"I once saw a self-healing modification blueprint and figured we could try using it."
Honestly, it cost a lot.
A whole 20,000CP for one mecha aspect. But Luca figured he could repurpose it, provided he got to actually learn the logic behind it.
D-29 nearly short-circuited, and Sid almost blacked out after holding it in for so long. But hearing their Master’s words turned off the light at the end of the tunnel.
It seems like they could go back instead of passing on.
That alone was enough to calm the mecha, which was so anxious he was ready to crumble. From that moment on, he just agreed every time the Master announced his ideas and possible color combinations.
It was not going to be used on him anyway, so he should be fine.
For now.
But that was another tale for the future, Sid, who hopefully knew better.
At this point in time, Luca had a sudden shift in his priorities as they got a prompt that the exam had ended and the virtual pods were about to open.
The little money grubber was back, and his identity as an avid researcher was shelved until the most critical item was secured.
His investments.
Luca nearly flew out of the virtual pod as he looked around, trying to see the leaderboards, which were surprisingly empty.
Huh???
Was this some sort of mistake?
It was actually Kyle who noticed Luca’s frantic behavior as the guy stared at the empty leaderboard and figured he would have to inform him before Luca started weeping.
"It’d be empty until they finish calculating the betting winnings," Kyle explained before noticing Jax’s odd behavior.
"What’s wrong?" Kyle asked with a raised eyebrow.
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