Three days passed.
The faint scent of burnt plastic still lingered in the air as the sun filtered through the grimy workshop skylights. The clatter of tools had quieted, replaced by the hum of the old cooling fans and the occasional beep from terminals running diagnostics.
Rennick leaned back in his chair, letting his eyes rest on the nearly completed model of the mech on his screen. With the internal frame, musculature, and subsystems now fully designed, only three things remained: the armor, the sword, and the software.
Jean was passed out on the couch behind him, snoring lightly after a 17-hour work stretch configuring the power management systems. Rennick didn't wake him. The kid had earned it.
Opening a new tab on the Galactic Net, Rennick began browsing armor templates for medium-class swordsman mechs. He scrolled through dozens of models—sleek, angular, flashy, brutalist. Many were clearly built with aesthetics in mind, boasting shimmering finishes and aggressive, stylized visors. Some looked more like parade pieces than real battlefield units.
But Rennick's mind wasn't on market trends.
Instead, he thought of Caelum.
A peasant orphan turned knight. A man who wore armor not for ceremony, but for survival. Caelum wasn't the sort to care how his plate gleamed—only that it held firm against claws, blades, and flame. And yet, there was sentimentality there. The armor he received from the old lord of Westhaven, when he was first knighted. The sword gifted to him by his adoptive father and sworn brothers in arms.
Two relics. Two memories. And in the story, they endured.
After the fall of Westhaven, Caelum's plate had been ruined. But rather than discard it, he reforged it—stitched fragments of it into a new brigandine harness, lighter and more mobile, yet still protective. Those surviving plates had saved his life more than once.
"That's it," Rennick murmured to himself.
The armor he chose reflected that idea—a practical template, lightly plated for speed and maneuverability, with reinforcement in key joints and vital areas. It wasn't too flashy, nor too crude. Something a seasoned survivor would wear. He'd need to tweak the shaping, perhaps make the knee guards and shoulder plating more angular to match Caelum's silhouette from the story, but the foundation was solid.
He bookmarked the file and moved on to the sword.
Here, things got trickier. Melee weapons for mechs weren't just steel slabs—they were complex constructs requiring power distribution, material engineering, coolant systems, and in many cases, embedded servo controls for balance correction.
Rennick began sorting through sword templates designed for medium-sized melee mechs: long blades, bastard swords, reinforced monoblades, and vibro-edge variants. Some were practically chainsaws disguised as swords, while others focused on high-frequency vibration edges for armor penetration.
Still, Rennick kept thinking back to Caelum's sword—a plain-looking longsword, etched with runes he used to invoke magic.
"Yeah, well... I can't etch spells into metal," Rennick muttered with a chuckle, rubbing his temple.
But it gave him an idea.
He selected a balanced monomolecular longsword design—not too heavy, not too fragile—designed for precision strikes over brute-force chopping. It was simple, efficient, and modular.
"I can add the runes as cosmetic etchings," he said to himself, already sketching out a template overlay. "Just for the lore."
Even if it didn't grant magic, it tied the weapon to Caelum's legacy. That mattered.
He sat back, taking a deep breath as his to-do list shortened. Armor—almost finalized. Sword—chosen, with minor visual modifications.
That just left software systems, which he'd handle with Jean once he woke up.
He stood up stretching his back as he went to freshen up and make some breakfast. After pulling an all-nighter along with Jean while designing and redesigning some sensors and the reactor's power flows for the increased amount of complex musculature and other subsystems safely to not encounter the same problem which brought the mech to the state it came in his workshop.
He was famished and cooked up a simple breakfast consisting of rice, soup and some grilled fish, as he cooked the fish in the spices, oil and garlic, the pleasant aroma wafted to the workshop where Jean was sprawled on the couch, just starting to wake up from the sunlight falling on his face from the skylights of the workshop.
As soon as he registered the scent of food, his eyes shot open and rushed to the kitchen, "Is it ready, boss?" Jean asked, already drooling.
"Almost, go wash yourself first, you have drool on your mouth." Rennick said pushing him towards the washroom. Surprisingly, he didn't give a sarcastic reply this time and quickly ran to freshen up causing Rennick to raise eyebrow in slight surprise.
As they ate and talked about the project, Rennick said, "All there is left to design are armor, weapon and the additional software installations then, we can move on to the testing and simulations."
"That means, I can go home today?" Jean asked raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah... I will just be tweaking and redesigning some stuff in Armor and sword." Rennick said nodding as he took bite of the fish and rice. File name: Tempered Path.
The sizzle of oil and garlic still lingered faintly in the air long after Jean had left, his cheerful goodbye echoing off the workshop walls. Rennick now sat alone at his terminal, eyes fixed on the open schematic labelled "Tempered Path."
Model Name: WG-1S Tempered Blade
Base Model: WG-01 Westhaven Guardian
The name glowed at the top of the file.
His posture was relaxed, but his mind was razor-sharp as he started on designing the armor for the mech.
He'd long since selected the Helix Armor system—not the most advanced, but modular, versatile, and cost-effective. Perfect for a mech that had to stand firm yet flow like a blade.
The armor lattice came first. Rennick built it in layers—alternating segments of ballistic composite and laser-diffusion alloys, each arranged in a honeycomb matrix for maximum surface resilience and energy dissipation. Beneath the outer shell, he laid a thin heat-resistant coating that would act as a conduit, channeling thermal energy to discrete micro-vents and the main heat sinks embedded at the mech's spine and hips.
The chest and abdomen received the heaviest treatment. Behind that armor lay the cockpit, reactor, and the primary fuel cells—vital organs of the machine. Mobility didn't matter if the heart stopped beating.
From there, he redesigned the shoulder plates—once a single solid mass, now segmented into overlapping armor tiles, like the pauldrons of ancient soldiers. Each piece could be swapped independently, simplifying maintenance in the field. It was a subtle nod to Caelum's story—his armor patched and repurposed, but never discarded.
The elbow joints and knee actuators were covered by flexible modular plating—light but reinforced—enough to absorb glancing blows without limiting motion. The limbs and back were shielded by a combination of interlocking plates and thin-flexible armor that allowed satisfactory articulation without leaving joints exposed.
But it was the helmet where Rennick spent the most time.
He studied medieval knight helms, their structure and silhouette, and began crafting a design of his own. The Tempered Blade, after all, wasn't adorned in pomp or vanity. His helm was simple—a smooth, seamless faceplate with an angular T-shaped visor, narrow and hidden, framed by subtle ridges shaped like weathered runes.
He wasn't trying to make the mech look impressive. He was trying to make it look resolute.
No crest. No plume. No snarling face-plates like a beast. Just a quiet, dignified helm. A warrior with no need for intimidation—only conviction.
The sensors were tucked behind the slit of the visor, linked to micro-vented dispersal nodes placed around the temple and jawline. They would allow for better field of vision while also managing heat overflow during extended battle.
With every segment he placed, every curve he shaped, Rennick kept returning to that image of Caelum—cloak torn, face calm, standing between evil and the innocent.
He zoomed out and looked at the full 3D render of the armor now encasing the skeletal frame.
Not too ornate. Not too crude.
Just like Caelum himself. Scarred but standing.
And then, with a quiet breath, he whispered to himself, "Only the sword remains."
He glanced toward the digital clock in the corner of the screen. Another day had passed.
But with armor now complete, the image of the Tempered Blade was beginning to solidify.
As he looked outside through the smeared glass of his window, Rennick noticed the sky had shifted to hues of deep orange and indigo. The sun was beginning its descent behind the distant hills, casting long shadows across the sloped farmlands. The wind had picked up slightly, rustling the tree leaves and sending a gentle creak through the old shutters.
Time had slipped past him.
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his eyes and stretching his sore back. Hours of uninterrupted design work had stiffened his shoulders, but there was also a quiet sense of satisfaction humming in his chest. The armor was complete.
He saved the file and let the terminal sleep. A soft whirr marked the system powering down, leaving the workshop in near silence.
Rennick stood and walked over to the window. He rested a hand against the cool glass and took in the scene—clouds floating lazily above a patchwork of shadow and gold, the lights of Tamaro city flickering in the far distance like stars rising from the ground.
The story of the Guardian had started to take shape but a blade still needed to be forged.
Caelum's sword—his symbol of resolve, of purpose reborn—was the final piece.
Tired from the long marathon of crafting the armor non-stop, Rennick turned away from the window and decided to take a break. He needed to rest his mind, clear his thoughts, and return sharp in the morning.
Tomorrow, he'd design the sword.
And with it, complete the soul of the Tempered Blade.