Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

Ceres would have lost track of time if it was not for his multi-terminal. However, it was soon running out of battery after being used for more than two months.

During these two months, Ceres continuously challenged exactly 1 rank above him, trying to drag the fights as much as possible to get more practice in.

However, the rate at which the enemy would commit suicide was increasing as well, so the best he could do was drag it for three days at first.

Soon, the enemy would commit suicide the moment they lost the first fight, forcing Ceres to exit back to the room with the large stone monument, which he now referred to as the ranking room.

Paska was also continuously climbing the ranks, though Ceres noticed that the rate of his climb has slowed down a lot more, stalling around rank 30.

Right now, Ceres was at rank 40, so he may very well soon meet Paska.

“If I meet Paska, would it be a clone of him or the real person? I hope it’s the latter.” Ceres smiled as he carved glyphs and human words onto the wall of the ranking room. He had already filled up a quarter of it, making it something like an instruction manual of sorts.

“Hopefully if anyone else enters the temple, they would be able to read the glyphs and words as well.”

Ceres had improved leaps and bounds over the past few months. Based on his own estimation, assuming that the difficulty of the fights was linearly increasing, he should be rank 3 or rank 2 by now.

However, he knew that was wishful thinking. Most likely the individuals near the top of the list were bonafide experts in themselves.

The white door appeared in front of him, the weird voice already not bothering to ask him which difficulty he wanted. Ceres walked through it, the swirling vision no longer fazing him as he entered a forested valley, flanked by two towering mountains.

[Congratulations on reaching rank 40. WARNING: Multiple enemies selected.]

Ceres was shocked. He had always been fighting 1v1 for a long time, could he win against a group of slovesas this time?

A loud yell echoed across the valley before a rapid sequence of tremors shook the ground beneath his feet. “No way, this is way more than three or four of them! I want to leave!” Ceres tried to turn around and grab the disappearing white door.

[Dishonorable actions are forbidden.]

Ceres cursed under his breath. He quickly leapt, landing on the top of the tallest tree nearby and overlooking the valley. The two months of training had allowed him to control his body much better, enabling him to release bursts of energy whenever he needed it.

He could see in the distance that there were close to nine different high-rank slovesas, all hunting for him. They came in various shapes and sizes: some were like a rock golem while others looked like unknown beasts and monsters.

All of them, however, were huge in size – the smallest being 10 meters tall. “Perhaps I can use this to my advantage yet again!” Ceres noted that every slovesa he had fought always started out with a large body. Generally, their body was near the limit of what their core could handle in terms of movement and control, which was aligned with the simple notion of “bigger is better”.

Ceres quickly selected his target and began to enact his plan. Grabbing a few pebbles in his hand, he put 80% of his strength into it and flung it hard at the nearest mountain slope. The pebbles shot forth with astounding speed, breaking the sound barrier and colliding hard with the slope, causing a few loose rocks to start to tumble.

This led to a chain reaction, but it was nothing near an avalanche of rocks yet.

“What was that?”

“Over there, on the slope!”

“Get the alien! We shall climb the ranks together!”

Ceres sighed, knowing that the temple most likely had replaced their memories to think they were engaging in some sort of group trial.

He had tried to convince many of his opponents, but each time the temple always intervene at the last moment, resetting and purging the opponent’s personality.

However, he managed to collect good information. The slovesa that all arrived here were the royalty of some form – either the princes, princesses or kings of some sort of clan.

Some that he fought were even former emperors of the slovesa empire. It felt like he was battling ancient history, testing his skills and wits against prominent figures, albeit he had never heard of them before.

Ceres quickly ran towards the enemy, who were engrossed in making it to the mountain slope. His small size and fast speed caused him to shoot forward like a bullet, allowing him to easily catch up to one of the stragglers.

It was a six-legged scorpion-like body shape, but it did not matter the slightest as Ceres immediately accurately struck his hand forward into the end of its tail, crushing its core within his grip.

He quickly sneaked away as the scorpion’s body lost its cohesion, breaking apart into its smaller parts. The rest of the group did not hear a single thing, the continuous chain reaction of tumbling rocks covered the sound.

Ceres released his hand’s grip, revealing the slovesa’s dying core that was pulsating red.

“If only I knew how to absorb radiation energy, I would be able to harness all this wasted energy!” Ceres still did not manage to figure out how to absorb energy properly, but he did learn a few more tricks.

When looked at from another perspective, Ceres was effectively gripping a heart that was still alive and conscious.

Soon, one of the slovesa noticed that their numbers have decreased. “Where is number 9? Where did he run off too?”

“He was right behind me!”

“Look, its his body. The enemy alien killed him!”

The slovesa all became much warier, watching their surroundings intently. Luckily, Ceres was far and away, hiding deep in the forest. He had already suffered before at the hands of the slovesa’s infrared radiation, which might be more broken than his ability to scan for emotions.

“Well, my scan can penetrate almost anything though!”

Ceres waited it out, and sure enough, the group had started to drop their guard. Another interesting thing Ceres found out was that slovesas needed to rest as well – he had assumed they could operate at peak power all the time, but seems like it was too good to be true. Such a perfect being did not exist, or at least Ceres had yet to meet them.

The forest had no day or night cycle, an artificial environment created by the temple – Ceres bid his time and waited for the right opportunity to strike out.

Soon as the slovesa began spreading out their net further away from each other, he decided to take a risk and attack two at a time.

With his brain and body perfectly in sync, he could utilize every little bit of juice he had in his system, allowing him to run at breakneck speeds for a good amount of time.

Despite being more than a few kilometres away, he reached them in less than two mins stealthily. He would have gone even faster if it were not for the potential sounds that would alarm the slovesa.

Though Ceres was now less than 300 meters away, the two slovesa with rock golem-like bodies that towered at the same height as the trees could not sense him. They moved carefully through the trees, fully focused on the fake implanted mission the temple had given them: kill the alien.

Ceres nocked back his arm, the black-scale armour forming his hand into a spearhead while his forearm was the shaft! He lunged out with force, striking true directly at the nearest slovesa’s core and piercing it in one shot.

This piercing shot was the culmination of his two months of training, his super move. Ceres had a real edgy name for it too that he would have liked to yell, but it was far too cringy even for himself to hear.

The slovesa cried out as Ceres used his two legs and kicked to pry his embedded spear hand out before launching himself at the next slovesa, who immediately attempted to swing a punch at Ceres.

The punch barely missed Ceres, but Ceres grabbed onto the side of the slovesa’s extended arm, leaping on top of it and running directly along the length of the arm.

“Get off me, you dirty alien! It’s here, kill him!” The second slovesa let out a loud cry right before Ceres pierced its core hidden in its shoulder. The two slovesa bodies quickly disintegrate, breaking down into piles of rubble while Ceres could already feel the remaining six slovesa tracking him with their infrared vision.

“Well, looks I won’t need to practice anymore with this rabble.” Ceres grinned as he confidently charged towards the incoming six slovesa. With his ability to see through the core, he could accurately target and take out each slovesa in one hit using his super move.

Within a single minute of intense fighting, Ceres had already taken out all but one of the slovesa! “No, I cannot die here! My descendants are counting on me! ARGH!” The last high-class slovesa yelled, an indiscriminate force exploding around its rock golem body.

Ceres deftly leapt backwards out of range, noticing that he had to move back more than a hundred meters to avoid the explosion. “Interesting, I’ve never seen another slovesa other than Grisao who managed to evolve during a fight!” Ceres looked forward to what would be the final outcome of the evolution.

The explosion caused a large crater in the forest, ripping out trees and plants alike in all directions. At the centre of it all, a whirlpool of broken slovesa bodies was formed around the evolving slovesa core. “I am the greatest king of all the slovesa! No one can match my power!” The core yelled out.

Ceres scratched his head at the thought of that. “Wasn’t this guy merely rank 31? Paska is even ranked higher than him, how can he be the greatest king of all the slovesa?” Suddenly, however, a human-shaped body lunged at Ceres in the form of a rugby tackle.

He quickly dodged out of the way, intending to pierce the core of the body with his right hand formed into a spear. However, his eyes could not see any existence of a core. “What the?” Ceres stabbed forwards and pierced through its body, but its limbs bent over backwards and wrapped around Ceres’s arm.

From the middle of the whirlpool, two more human-shaped bodies rushed out towards Ceres, while the remaining rubble coalesced into a larger human-shaped body. “Be honoured that I have taken your form, alien. Today you die!” The slovesa had reformed into a class that was even higher. Ceres did not know what it was called, but it was definitely something he had never experienced before.

Ceres could not shake off the body that had wrapped around his right arm. He also noticed that only the larger slovesa was the only one with the core, while the other three were like puppets.  “It’s drone control, but instead of controlling mindless drones, it can make similar copies of itself!”

All middle-rank slovesa were able to control a drone swarm, like the ones he fought in the qualifiers. However, this was the first time he had seen bodies comparable to a high-rank slovesa being controlled remotely. “Hold on, this is crazy similar to the Keepers right?”

Ceres recalled his fight against the autonomous drones of the Keepers and the description given by Halyon.

Could his black goo also make something similar? Right now, however, he had to run.

The two puppets gave chase while the puppet already entangling Ceres’s right arm tightened even more. Ceres’s speed was hampered by the additional weight, forcing him to dodge attacks from behind. He tried to use the entangled puppet as a shield, but it hardly fazed the two puppets.

Two energy beams hit the trees nearby him as Ceres weaved through the forest, trying to buy time for himself to come up with a counter solution. He turned to see the larger slovesa hovering higher, stretching out its glowing hands which were the source of the ranged energy attacks.

It felt like he was fighting a proper squad.

As the two puppets caught up, he swung his entangled right arm at them, hoping the entangled puppet could smash them. With the speed of Ceres’s swing, the force was so great that it immediately broke both the attacking puppet as well as the entangled puppet, freeing Ceres’s right arm.

He quickly moved away before attacking the remaining puppet, when suddenly the two broken puppets’ bodies reformed quickly and lashed out at him too.

Due to this error, he was quickly trapped, with each puppet grabbing onto a limb and locking him down. Ceres could still move a bit, but the weight of the three puppets slowed him down a lot.

“You’re dead meat!” The larger slovesa mocked as he charged a ranged attack on his palm, firing it at Ceres. Ceres used one of the puppets to block the attack, which disintegrated the puppet.

Soon, however, with a flick of its hands, the larger slovesa managed to form another puppet from nothing but the ground.

“Is that all you got?” Ceres grinned, unfazed by the supposedly new evolution of the slovesa. He immediately flicked his arms, shattering the grip the puppets had on him before leaping forward.

Ceres had doubted from the beginning since he entered the ranking trial that the replicas the tower had been creating were actually representative of real slovesa. Most likely if he fought a slovesa of the same class in real life, he would have died instantly.

It was even worse for the puppets, who easily broke apart with a single precise punch from Ceres. No matter how many puppets were created, Ceres continued charging forward, closing the gap with the larger slovesa.

“Why won’t you die!?” The larger slovesa roared as he summoned a large wave of puppets, attempting to block Ceres.

However, Ceres simply landed on the ground with two feet planted firmly, before launching himself forward with his hand formed as a spear. He pierced through the wave of puppets in the blink of an eye.

Ceres smirked as his spear hand touched the surface of the larger slovesa, but instead of penetrating through and crushing its core in one hit, the larger slovesa’s body suddenly expanded outwards, as though its body had undergone some form of disassembly in stasis.

Ceres was pushed backwards onto the ground again, while the slovesa core changed positions slightly.

“You think that’s going to save you?” Ceres laughed as he jumped up again, twisting his body and aimed downwards with the acceleration of gravity - this time striking way before the larger slovesa even had time to expand and move its core again.

The spear hand pierced through the core, causing it to shatter as all the puppets broke down into rubble as well.

“Whew, that was fun. No way I’ll survive that in the real world.” Ceres was aware the replica enemies were maybe only half or less of their true strength. “I still have to train a lot more if I really want to fight a high-class slovesa one on one.”

[Winner: #40w29soima @*(#U#[email protected] Enter the r29021ed d00r if you wa29381nt to leave]

Instead of the usual world-swirling effect he experienced before returning to the ranking room - a blood-red door appeared in front of him instead.