Chapter 96 - Consulting Elias.

Once he logged out, he opened his mail and visited the virtual room provided in it and sent a reply to Elias that he was already in it. The room was similar to the arena in the second floor of the gym. Soon, Elias and Leon also entered the room through the same door that the entered it.

Elias was a bit less than 6 feet tall and had a face about 60% similar to that of Ellie Edgerton and he shaved his head. As he walked in, he had waved his hand and a table appeared in the room with a whip on it. There was a knife attached to the whipping end of it.

"Hi Mr. Elias. I wanted to meet you for quite some time. I heard you were working on the samsara framework and wanted to talk to you about a few things," said Balthazar shaking his hand.

"Yeah. Sure," said Elias wondering why the kid was so excited as he gave way to Leon.

"Is this what you wanted?" asked Leon as he went to the table and pressed in a protrusion on the handle of the knife which cause the end of the whip to slip out from the handle of the knife. The handle of the knife had a thin hole that the whip's end was fixed into. He moved away allowing Balthazar to go and take the whip.

"Wow! You guys have the same weapon in store too," said Balthazar as he looked at the weapon. It was a combination of two weapons, a whip and a chain knife which could be interchanged and he had used both of them in vita-nova.

"Yes," said Leon. "You can use a chain knife too?" he asked surprised at the expression on Balthazar's face. Though he sounded excited his eyes didn't reflect the same. Balthazar looked quite casually at the structure of the blade and and the end of the whip as he was examining for faults and determining the mechanism.

"I can use it. It would be great, if I can get this for use," said Balthazar as he removed it from the table and checked it by attaching and detaching the knife a couple of times.

"Start the simulation. Let us see what he can do," said Leon to Elias. Elias waved his hand as a panel appeared out of thin air. He made some setting changes on it and loaded the simulation for the whip.

There were a bunch of circular targets floating in the air at various heights. Some of the targets were red in color and others in blue. "Get to the central area. It is marked by a cross on the floor," said Elias pointing to a place in the midst of the targets.

"The test will be as follows. First you need to aim for all the red targets in front of you. You will be evaluated based on the time take to hit all of them," said Leon. "As you finish the previous ones, we will go to the next test. You manage to finish the first three, I will allow you to carry a whip," he continued.

"OK. You can start now," said Elias.

There were about 8 red colored targets in front of him. It was an easy task for Balthazar who had practiced it for a year. He made two quick movements after unfurling the whip managing to strike all the 8 targets. It took less than two seconds for him.

"Hmm," said Leon as he observed Balthazar. "He isn't a novice and had definitely used it before," thought Leon as he saw the style and speed of Balthazar's attack. He quietly nodded to Elias indicating to go to the next test.

"Next, we have moving targets. Hit the red ones," said Elias.

This was also done in three swings. It hardly took one second more than the previous test. The speed of the targets wasn't high and it was similar to evasive movements, but it wasn't hard for Balthazar. He always liked the whip as he could easily change the direction of attack to counter such evasive movements.

"Next," said Leon.

"Same as before, but avoid hitting the blue targets," said Elias. He considered this unnecessary right now as he had already noticed that the blue targets weren't hit by Balthazar in the previous tests. So, this was a totally redundant test.

"Consider him passed," said Leon stopping Elias from starting the simulation. "Continue with the next ones, include all the scenarios for human and animals and evaluate," he continued.

"I am certified to use the whip now?" asked Balthazar immediately.

"Yes, but continue with the further tests. It won't take much time," said Leon. He wanted to gauge Balthazar's strength properly before he could inform Winston about it. He also wanted to know more about Balthazar. He was a weapons specialist which is a job which required one to be proficient with many weapons. He wanted to check if Balthazar is a promising candidate.

He already had Balthazar's military records which detailed his skills with guns and warframes. He considered Balthazar to be a decent fighter at close combat considering the way he defeated Max. Though many told him that Balthazar won merely because Max underestimated him, he believed that it took a certain amount of quick thinking to defeat someone like that. He considered this to be a necessity for a weapons specialist. Now, based on his proficiency with a whip, he wanted to determine Balthazar's talent for controlling the situation around him.

"Can I use the knife with it now? I would like to be certified for that too," asked Balthazar looking at Leon.

"Are you sure that you can use it in chain knife mode? I don't want to waste my time," said Leon. He was working with Elias to complete a training modules using the samsara technology and took time out of specially to certify him as Winston asked for it.

"I can do the first three tests. Maybe not as fast, but I believe that having a chain knife sometimes is very useful in making a strong sneak attack. So, I would like to get it done too," requested Balthazar again.

"Hmm," sighed Leon. "Give me the administrative privileges for the room. I will meet you after this is done," he said to Elias.

"I wanted to talk to you about.."

"We heard you the first time," said Leon cutting Balthazar off. "Focus on your evaluation. I will take you the room where we are working after the evaluation is done."

"I would prefer to go back to the game within the hour," said Balthazar.

"Just focus on the evaluation. It wont take that long," grunted Leon as Elias went out of the room.

The repeated the same tests for the chain knife mode and Balthazar had a managed to pass them. As he told before, he didn't have the same speed as a chain knife would have different dynamics than a whip. The knife would be a lot heavier than a whip and hence, it had more momentum the remaining part of the chain. This made it very hard to change the direct of the knife's edge. The heaviness of the knife also allowed a person to make swift attacks from weird angles.

Leon considered him to have been certified and continue with the test. The test included humans, animals and also obstacles. Soon, the speed and toughness of the opponent was increased. The whip wasn't a weapon that could cut through metal easily and it has to be aimed at vital points to make successful attacks. The chain knife could be use to cut through minor armor.

The tests checked his application and all such minor details. The test automatically kept loading till Balthazar surrendered as the number of targets kept increasing in number and toughness.

"Not bad," said Leon ending it. The tests for both chain knife and the whip took about forty minutes. "You are better at using it as a whip," he continued. "An opportunistic style of fighting meant for surprise attacks is you forte. I will allow you to use the weapon. You can collect it tomorrow from Ellie along with the rest, but I recommend training with it more. I will provide the training scenarios too. Come let us go meet Elias," said Leon as he messaged a password and opened the door of the room.

"Use the password, I connect this room to the Elias's workshop," said Leon as he moved out of the room. Balthazar immediately followed him and used the password to pass through the door. The room on the other side was also very large, but the thing that made it different was that there were about 15 to 20 personnel in that room and were all working on samsara framework. The room was filled with tables, screens and chairs like a common office.

"Come in," said Elias as he saw Balthazar and Leon enter the room. "How was the evaluation?" he asked Leon.

"He is quite good, but one could always use more practice," said Leon. "You better start working based on the requirements, I gave. We already have a client who needs it," he said pointing to Balthazar.

"Quite good?" asked Elias surprised looking at Balthazar. "A positive comment from Leon was a rare thing. You seemed to have impressed him," he whispered in Balthazar's ear.

"So, what did you want to talk with me?" asked Elias as he directed him to sit on one of the chairs as he took a seat beside it.

"Richard Shrike would have possible contacted you. Mainly about the warframes and other scenarios which he probably mention," started Balthazar.

"Yes, he did. Was that idea from you?" asked Elias.

"Yes, I would be really glad if you manage to create the warframes for combat. But I wanted to know if there was any chance,"

"Let me stop you right there. I have already heard of it from Richard. It is for the competition for the position of the elder, right?" asked Elias.

"Right."

"We need to spend a lot of time on it. We don't have much resources for this as most want to believe that little could be done with somnium technology other than normal training. I would have helped you, if I could get more people working on it," said Elias being as polite as possible. He was irritated by the fact that he was being asked the same thing again.

"Does this kid think that his request would have more priority compared to Richard's request just because his the patriarch's grandson," thought Elias. "Even Winston couldn't change much to this without giving a proper reason to allocate more members to work on Samsara framework."

"I suppose you need something to convince the elders that more man power on Samsara framework would be worth it," said Balthazar.

"You can do that?"

"How about I put in a suggestion to you that would help you to exactly that and in return you help me with my little problem?"

"I am all ears, kid," replied Elias.

"Despite the advancements in facial recognition and all that, camouflage also improved. So, we always required human observation and patrols to respond to attacks. There are always blind-spots and mistakes which could be improved upon and these patrolmen could be trained," said Balthazar.

"I fail to understand your words. That is just more work and I doubt we would be able to created programs that would help do that," said Elias. He was more confused after hearing Balthazar.

"No. No. Such things are best learned by ones own experience. I am suggesting something different. It would also help a bit to reduce the required workforce. What I am suggesting is to integrate the feeds from the various cameras and sensors into the somnium technology. We always have a few people monitoring the camera views. The patrolmen have shifts. How about having the patrolmen who are resting to use somnium technology to operate the cameras. Not only will it remove the need for a separate camera crew, but observing the patrols from a different view point would also make them realize any blind spots and other issues in patrol patterns."

"That might be feasible," said Elias as he began to think about it. "We could multiple people superimposed at a same point and view the camera feeds from a virtual room," he continued.

"Yes, there are bound to be a lot of benefits one could obtain through this," said Elias. "But I probably would need to discuss it with a few others before I propose it."

"Yeah. Sure. Something like this needs to be discussed and pros and cons determined before proposing it. Take your time, but not too much," replied Balthazar smiling at Elias.

"Yeah, it wouldn't take much time for that. We would probably come to a consensus by evening. It also doesn't require much work while we can use it as an excuse to get more men for work on the samsara framework," said Elias. "You thought this out quite thoroughly didn't you?" asked Elias.

"Heh. Heh. I didn't put much time into it but felt it was a good thing to do," replied Balthazar. In fact, he didn't really put a thought into it. Two years from now, this would be used at a number of places. It was a method which kept correcting its mistakes continuously, making it exceedingly difficult for thieves and assassins to navigate through secure areas. Due to this reason, he had started to search for other jobs in his previous life and found a job at Rudra's gaming workshop.

Moreover, since the cameras feed is received by trained personnel in real-time, they also tend to move the view a bit randomly. Sometimes, they move it based on their instincts and any sounds which hear or not hear. In short, any one with the aim to infiltrate couldn't find a proper pattern among the cameras movements. This caused it to become quite popular in the following years.