Asharub_Pervez

Raen Solis has never known comfort—only rejection, debt, and failure. Trapped in a crumbling apartment in the lower districts of Velden, he survives by doing shady game-boosting gigs and digital scraps, praying each day won’t be his last.

Then one night, a sudden power surge from his worn-down rig knocks him out cold. When he comes to, a glowing interface hovers before him:

[SYSTEM LINKED: SKILL SHOP INTERFACE]
Any skill. Any mastery. For a price.

The Skill Shop System Runs on Cash

The Arkbound headquarters buzzed with a strange mix of energy and anticipation.

After days of groundwork, equipment began arriving—drones hovered in and out of the lot, crates were unloaded, and the once-empty floors now gleamed with rows of high-grade machinery. Circuit printers. Micro-assembly arms. AI-compilation servers. Everything Raen had requested was stacked into place with clinical precision. Saelyn had pulled no punches.

By the end of the day, Arkbound had transformed from a hollow shell into a legitimate robotics lab.

That evening, Raen called everyone into the glass-walled conference room at the building's top floor. The table was wide and simple, a holo-projector embedded in its center. Sunlight faded behind them, casting a soft orange hue across the skyline.

Raen stood at the head of the table, arms folded as he waited. Once the door clicked shut, he tapped the table. The interface lit up instantly.

"Alright," he began. "Let's talk about building a future."

He nodded at Korin, the robotics engineer. "Begin."

Korin leaned forward, pulling up the new schematics: NEAR v2. A more refined version of the skeletal robot they'd discussed. Smoother articulation. Reinforced chassis. Tool-adaptive fingers. Scalable architecture.

"This isn't just a tool," Korin said, his voice calm but passionate. "It's a builder of builders. An engineer's dream."

Raen took the floor again. "Saelyn."

Raen flicked the schematic toward her end of the table. "We'll need these parts. Can your network handle that?"

She scanned the list—and froze. "You want all this for just one unit?"

"But why only one?" she asked, still scanning.

Raen stepped forward, amused. "Because this guy," he tapped the rotating NEAR v2 diagram, "will build the rest."

The room was dead silent for a beat—until both Lira and Korin burst out in unison.

Raen rolled his eyes. "Stop acting like fools."

Raen smirked, voice sharp. "You think I'm sidelining you? You two are the backbone of this launch. Korin, you'll oversee structural assembly. Lira, I'll give you the core software—you'll compile it, test it, break it, and rebuild it until it runs like it's reading your mind. We need this thing perfect before it builds others."

The two nodded, slightly embarrassed—but excited.

Finally, Raen turned to Nyra, the company's new face, arms crossed in the corner.

"And you," he said, "get ready. You'll need to explain to the world what we're doing, without actually telling them anything. Investors, regulators, partnerships—it's going to get noisy fast."

Nyra cracked a smile. "About time I had something worth selling."

Raen stepped back, letting the rotating schematic reflect in all their eyes.

"This... is where it begins. Not in code. Not in parts. But here—when we decided to build something impossible."

The lights dimmed around the room as the schematics expanded into a full-scale blueprint.

Arkbound was no longer just a name.

Gears in Motion