Reborn as a Mechanist with a God-Tier System-Chapter 248: A crazy gamble [2]
Leon was in the process of pulling off the greatest bluff of his life.
It was a great leap of faith, it was the craziest gamble of his life and it was born from a simple and crazy idea.
’No pain, no gain’.
’No risks, no reward’.
...
Minutes earlier, inside the data control center of Iron Reef.
Through the footage from his gadgets, even as he supervised the DDOS trap, Leon paid attention to the entire battle as the C Rank Quantum Shaper rag-dolled Ren Nora’s entire Lieutenant squad.
General Murphy was unlike General Sylvari Charr.
Compared to the C Rank NetRunner, the C Rank Quantum Shaper was less serious and more carefree, but this didn’t make him weak.
The nature of his powers gave him an air of invincibility.
Leon was multi-tasking, supervising the DDOS trap while paying attention and analyzing the General’s battle because just like every soldier in the rebel army, he was also fighting for his life.
No matter what happened, no matter who died and who survived at the end, all Leon cared about was that Ren Nora must survive.
Ren Nora must complete his Trial and that was the greatest priority in his head, this was why he did nothing when the rebel Lieutenants started dying.
It was not like he could do anything.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
He watched as the Federation General manipulated reality at his whims.
He watched as the Synth rewrote reality, manipulating time and gravity, moving like a force of nature rather than a man.
He watched as reality came undone everywhere the General went.
He watched as the Federation General treated D Rank Ascended like they were 5 year old children playing football with a man.
Seeing the powers of a C Rank Quantum Shaper, Leon felt true despair and fear as once again, he confirmed that at C Rank, Ascended become true demigods, truly breaking reality constraints.
But despite his fear, he never gave up hope, he never stopped thinking, plotting, and searching for loopholes to exploit.
From the beginning of this Trial after the Trial description, Leon knew that he was fighting an uphill battle.
From the beginning, he knew he was going to face battle situations where he didn’t even have the qualifications to join and survive.
For scenarios like this where all his powers that he took pride in were rendered useless and inadequate, the only way he could think of to survive was by using his brain and by searching for loopholes to exploit.
This was what led to his DDOS trap in the first place, the DDOS trap was a result of him exploiting the loophole in the NetRunner Class.
Unsure of how long the C Rank Trial was going to last, Leon tried to think of a way to stop or trap the C Rank Quantum Shaper but unlike against General Sylvari Charr, he found no way to trap a C Rank Quantum Shaper.
Unlike NetRunners, technology just couldn’t cut it against a high-ranking Quantum Shaper.
The lack of progress and direction in his plotting filled Leon with despair but even in his despair, he kept on thinking and that was when he got a crazy idea that could as well be a gamble, the craziest gamble of his life.
Hours earlier, yesterday, Ren Nora came to his tent around after 9 after which he meditated and made his final preparations for his C Rank Trial.
The time when Ren Nora attempted the Trial was approximately 9:38pm.
Leon didn’t have much experience of Ascended Trials apart from his own Trials but the only other Trial not his own that he’d actually gotten involved in, receiving a mission from the System to protect Talia, she ended up completing her Trial within 6 hours.
6 hours was the time limit for Talia.
Leon knew that the time limit for Trials was not set in stone, he knew this had no connection to Ren Nora’s current Trial, but desperate men often had a penchant of thinking outside the box or just being delusional.
Left with no other option, Leon could not help but hope... yes, he hoped that the time limit of Ren Nora’s current Trial would be set to 6 reality hours.
The reason why he thought of it was Talia’s Trial, and the reason why he hoped for it was that calculating from when Ren Nora started his Trial, it was almost 6 hours already.
It would be 6 hours in approximately 3:38am.
Leon gambled on the hope that Ren Nora would wake up around 3:38am.
This was not his usual style, this was not speculation based on facts but one based on hope, faith and despair.
This was a wild gamble and he only took this option because currently, he was out of options.
The reason why he intervened and stopped the General from torturing Major Kai to death was partially because he didn’t want to see the Major die.
But even if he let the Major die, it wouldn’t change anything because then, General Murphy could simply take the longer route, scouring every nook and cranny of this city and killing every rebel soldier.
Even if it took another hour or two, eventually, with the help of all the surviving Federation soldiers he would find Ren Nora.
And this was exactly why Leon took the gamble.
It was either 3:38am or not.
If the Trial doesn’t end in 6 hours, Leon doubted it’ll end in 7 hours so why not go for the jackpot?
This was the idea that gave birth to his crazy gamble and plan.
By the time he first got the crazy idea, the time was around 3:33am, meaning theoretically if his gamble was right, Ren Nora would complete his Trial between 5 to 10 minutes from now.
Leon’s plan was to meet General Murphy, stop him from killing Major Kai, and talk himself into a dominant position using his psychological understanding of the General to lead him to the tent where Ren Nora was in his own terms.
The reason why he dared speak in such an uncultured manner to a C Rank Ascended was because he’d been observing the General since.
Unlike General Sylvari Charr, Murphy was more psychopathic and carefree. He was like a Cat, he loved playing with his prey, he loved excitement and thrill and he was not someone that loved following standard pattern in anything he did.
This was why based on his psychological profiling on him, Leon believed that if there was any C Rank Ascended he could talk to anyhow and survive, then General Murphy was the one.
Again, this was a gamble but Leon willingly took it.
What gave him the confidence to even gamble so high in the first place was because of his Temporal Anomaly trait that made him immune to ADE corruption plus the ChronoSystem.
The combination of the two gave Leon slight confidence that even if he failed this Trial, he could attempt it again which gave him a tiny room for error.
Leon was exasperated. ’Are all D Rank Trials this hard or it’s just me?’
He didn’t want to fail the Trial, but it was this leverage for error that gave him the balls to attempt such a reckless plan.
And if his gamble was wrong and in 6 hours Ren Nora was still not done with his Trial, he would accept his fate and fail the Trial.
This was Leon’s choice, this was his gamble.
...
Step... step....
As Leon walked through the once bustling but now desolate city with a C Rank Ascended trailing behind him, he felt like he was walking to the gallows.
He could feel his hands subtly shaking in dread, he could hear his uncertain heartbeat but Leon knew it was too late to turn back.
’It’s now or never’.
