Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

The days flew past again as Ceres entered an even more hectic phase of training. He continuously threw himself into fights non-stop, challenging everyone on the ranking list apart from Goras.

Ceres still could not seem to grasp how Goras was so strong as to be able to flick half a forest apart, as his strength was nowhere near that level.

Was it even possible for a human being, even one as modified as Ceres to actually achieve that strength? He had heard of very strong humans before, courtesy of Braton’s continuous fanboy levels of gushing over the legendary bodybuilders of the Loeric Empire.

Braton used to force Ceres to watch a few of their battle videos, where they dropped themselves onto alien planets and struggled to survive with just their bare bodies alone. Ceres smiled to himself as he recalled how peaceful the days back then were. Life in the orphanage was so simple when there was a static goal.

Before he knew it, a large crystal rod came down and smacked him right on the head, causing him to yelp out in pain.

“Focus on the crystal you idiot! How the hell are you going to learn this when you’re barely focusing? Clear your mind and concentrate!” Goras shouted, but in reality, it was just a strong electromagnetic transmission from Goras’s core towards Ceres. That was how slovesa communicated with each other.

Ceres still had no idea why he could automatically understand slovesa words. The black goo in his body was way too amazing – maybe it had slovesa origins.

But that wasn’t the biggest mystery: instead, it was why Goras believed Ceres could learn such absorption of energy.

The official explanation was “It’s not that hard to learn, just give it a try”. Which was very suspicious to Ceres.

He had an inkling Goras knew something about the black goo inside his body, so he could not completely focus on the crystal in front.

He was sat cross-legged holding a purple crystal that pulsated regularly, trying to ‘feel’ the radiation energy that it emitted. After hours and even days of just sitting there with the crystal, he was not able to feel anything at all. Ceres tried to close his eyes and focus on his skin.

“Oh, oh I think I’m feeling it! I feel something warm, something warm in my hands!”

Another quick whack of the crystal rod hit Ceres squarely on the shoulder.

“Of course, it’s hot, that’s called infrared radiation and heat conduction. Do humans really not know this much about the laws of the galaxy?”

Ceres began to seriously concentrate, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not sense anything at all. Even swapping to H.T. mode or deepening his hunger state barely worked at all. “I think this is a dead end, I’ll try it again next time.”

Goras walked around him, observing him carefully. Ceres decided to try and ask him about the black goo, along with a description of the mysterious white box he had in which he suspected was the origin.

“Do you have a detailed image of the box?” Goras asked.

Ceres used his multi-terminal, which was conveniently recharged by a modified rock charger morphed by Goras. It displayed a holographic timelapse of the flowing inscriptions on the white box, which Goras inspected.

“Hmm… some of the slovesa glyphs are extremely outdated, used in the era of the tribes. But I only recognized three of them, the rest are not slovesa glyphs.” Goras peered at the flowing inscriptions.

“Does this mean the black goo isn’t a slovesa artefact of some sort?”

“It isn’t, but it somehow has similar properties. I can tell you’re like a newborn slovesa. I can only assume whoever designed the black goo had some sort of slovesa influence.” Goras pondered, pacing around the inscriptions.

Ceres sighed but was glad for the slight hint. Could it have been a top secret research project by the Loeric Empire of some sort, and he was a subject? How many other experimental subjects were out there?

He wondered how the Keepers could use the black goo. It seems they used the black goo in a much different form, keeping it within the spine rather than in their body.

Goras suddenly put his hand on Ceres’s shoulder. “Do you know how we reproduce?”

“Errr…” Ceres was caught off-guard by this question.

He examined the slovesa carefully, trying to see if there was anything… ‘sexual’.

All he could see were rough edges and sharp rocks made into a rock golem. He tried to look at Goras’s eyes for any sexual hints, but he felt like he was really just looking at rocks.

A sudden realization hit Ceres. “Look, we’ve only met for a few days, I don’t swing that way…”

A quick whack hit him right on the head again. “Don’t be stupid, why would I ever fuck a sack of carbon meat? Answer the question!”

Goras stared at him, waiting for his answer, but Ceres couldn’t think of any rational answers. He was not an expert in biology.

“I guess you guys find a female slovesa…? And then you rub together and grind each other rocks, making some sparks and shit… and then baby?”

Goras did the equivalent of a sigh, not even bothering to hit Ceres anymore. “Our kind has no gender, in fact, we have no reproductive organs at all.”

“How is that possible? Wouldn’t the species die out?”

“Just because we don’t have reproductive organs does not mean we don’t have a way of replenishing our young. Naturally, we have our ways. Seeing as you are having trouble feeling the radiation and sensing it like second nature, there’s no other choice.” Goras said with an air of expectation.

Goras led him to the ground floor of the crystal tower. The dummy statue in the shape of a generic rock golem slovesa that was supposed to be the enemy was waiting quietly in the arena as the two of them stopped right before entering it.

“Wait, wait I’m not ready to clear this. What are we doing here?” Ceres asked with a wary tone.

“The ground floor dummy is a ranged opponent. In order for you to feel the radiation and sense it, you must be involved in a battle. Every slovesa, when born, engages in a first-day battle, in order to awaken its ability to sense and feed off radiation. Failure to do so means absolute death for the newly born slovesa.”

Ceres gulped, knowing where this is going. Goras quickly made a small crystal helmet, stuffing it onto Ceres’s head before pushing him and stumbling into the arena. “I can’t see out of this shit. My eyes are the only thing that can see anything remotely close to ‘radiation’!” Ceres complained.

“Good. You are only allowed to dodge and reflect or whatever your weird carbon flesh can do, but no killing the opponent. I will personally stop you if you attempt to kill the opponent, so don’t even think about it.”

“Hold on, can I take some time to… OW!” Ceres had barely asked for a timeout before an energy beam nicked him squarely in his thighs!

“It’s already begun, lookout!” Another energy beam blasted him, sending him flying before collapsing on the floor in a shameful position.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you won’t die, but I don’t have human painkillers!” Goras chuckled.

Ceres let out an angry sigh, trying to focus on his hearing to predict the attacks and the movement of the enemy. Suddenly, the battle stopped before Goras came up and slapped additional stuff onto the helmet that blocked his ears too. “Don’t try to avoid the training! Focus!”

With the new helmet, Ceres had lost all sight and all hearing. He could only hear the blood thumping in his ears, while his vision remained completely black. However, he could still Goras’s voice, because it was not his ears that were translating the voice.

“I know you can still hear me, and that proves that you have what is needed to feel and sense radiation. I am speaking to you right now using radio waves, and you can hear it. This means it is very possible for you, or more specifically, the black goo to learn this ability.” Goras said.

Ceres realized that it was a logical conclusion. How the hell was he still able to hear Goras despite his ears being fully blocked? “The black goo within my body frame is actually absorbing and translating the radiation? But how?”

The battle resumed, with Ceres taking it a lot more seriously this time. This was probably the hardest fight he had in a very long time – being unable to see and hear took him way outside his comfort zone.

He tried to use his ability to sense emotions, noticing that the dummy statue had a core. However, it had zero emotions, instead permanently locked in a hostile state. He had been relying on his ability to predict attacks when training.

No emotional fluctuations at all were visible, making it hard to predict when it was going to attack. His vision could only let him view the core itself, he could not view the entire outline of the statue.

Ceres hence could not avoid the energy beams, even as his brain tried to compute the patterns. He had previously assumed the dummy was running some kind of automated program, but suddenly the pattern of the energy beam firing changed.

At times, when Ceres thought there was a specific cooldown to the energy beam, it would suddenly change as well. The energy beam varied both in time period and magnitude, making it hard for Ceres to get a good grasp on it. “I have no choice but to feel it before it comes!”

Ceres tried to meld with the black goo that was currently part of his body and protecting him in the form of the black armour but instead felt nothing, as though his body had always just been purely him. The energy beam continued to rain on Ceres’s body, pounding him and melting away chunks of the black armour.

The pain from his wounds began to build, but Ceres channelled the emotion to focus even more, trying to grasp at anything. Suddenly, it was this moment of time, when he suddenly just ‘felt’ something and moved his body to react. An energy beam went whizzing past, missing Ceres completely.

Ceres was surprised at two facts: one, he managed to dodge the energy beam. Two, he managed to even perceive the energy beam missing him.

He quickly took off his helmet and shouted happily at Goras who was typing away on a crystal terminal: “Hey you see that?! I did it! I di..”

Another energy beam hit him squarely in the head, knocking Ceres face down to the ground.

Goras wasn’t facing him, sleeping in a corner. “Sorry, what? I wasn’t looking. Do it again.”

The next few days, Ceres got better and better at sensing the energy beams before they were even fired, able to detect them upon charge-up time within the dummy itself. Goras nodded in acknowledgement as he watched Ceres dodge energy beams despite being blind and deaf, knowing that Ceres had achieved it.

Goras eventually allowed Ceres to destroy the dummy, leading him out of the tower. With his newfound sense of radiation, the city of crystals overwhelmed him, leading him to realize that most of the crystals were radioactive in nature.

Any normal human who had spent some time in this kind of crystal city would suffer from intense radiation poisoning, yet Ceres was okay.

Ceres huffed and panted as Goras gave him time to acclimatize to the surroundings. It wasn’t long before Ceres managed to treat it like a subconscious sense, just as natural as breathing.

“Don’t think for a moment that you are immune to radiation from now on. Even a mythical class slovesa cannot hope to contain a star. There is an upper limit to how much energy your body can absorb, just like how there’s a limit to your stomach.” Goras warned.

“Then how do I know my limit?” Ceres asked as the two of them walked away from the crystal tower.

“We’re about to find out.” Goras led him to a crystal dome building, inside which there was a singular circular platform with multiple spikes of crystals aiming at it. The tips of the crystals aiming at the centre of the platform were equidistant and spaced out from each other, covering the ceiling and walls.

Ceres gulped. “Those crystals, they’re going to shoot energy beams? I’m supposed to dodge right?” Goras pushed him onto the platform, standing in the middle of a marked location.

“If you dodge, how would you know your body’s limit? Previously I mentioned about our reproduction sequence – this is one of the stages where we determined the future potential rank of the newborn slovesa.”

Ceres suddenly felt crystals growing onto his legs and onto his arms from the platform, locking his limbs in place. Goras ‘smiled’: “Just a precaution. It’ll just be a tickle.”

Ceres was about to voice his contrary opinion when the crystals began to emit a continuous energy beam. It was really a tickle, and he could barely feel anything on his body. Instead, the black scale armour was the one that was absorbing the energy, not his human body directly.

Ceres still felt like the black goo was a completely different being to him, so he could not wrap his head around the potential fact that it was something akin to a brand-new versatile organ integrated into his body.

“This is taking too long, I got a show to catch.”

The intensity of the beams began to skyrocket, causing Ceres immense discomfort. The beams barely changed positions on his body, and soon it began to feel like there were multiple hot iron sticks that were burning off his skin, despite it being the black scale armour that was burnt.

“Fuck, my nerves are now connected to the armour?! GORAS STOP! ARGHHHHHH!”

Goras didn’t reply, but the intensity did not change. Ceres knew his body was absorbing the energy, but he was definitely about to hit his limit! Soon, the black scale armour suddenly started to break apart, disassembling into patches of black goo that fell off the armour, revealing his protective suit from the town below.

The suit quickly melted, and the energy beam hit his raw skin directly, causing Ceres to scream in agony.

Other parts of his body became hit directly as well, and the smell of burnt flesh began to fill the dome while Ceres writhe in pain, before blacking out after screaming for 10 seconds.

“Well, looks like he could absorb a bit.”

***

“ARGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH” Ceres screamed as he shot up wide awake before a rock hand slapped his face back down onto the floor.

“Shut up, idiot. I’m watching something good right now.” Goras shouted back. Two of his heads were directed at a crystal terminal that was showing a news show.

Ceres rubbed his aching face as he got up, noticing that his body was completely naked. His protective suit was laid on the floor to the side of him, already burnt to pieces. However, his body wounds had healed completely - it was as though he never got burnt in the first place.

[Looking for an exciting job? Tired of working at desks all day? Come over to the Bee Strathon’s recruitment centre for a chance at a mining job! Explore the depths of the planet with competitive company insurance and friends you make along the way! All recruits are assigned with a personal exosuit too! Sign up today!] A commercial advertisement was playing, and Ceres could sense Goras really enjoyed it.

Ceres sat up to watch the crystal terminal as well, realizing he had not watched a single news show since he woke up from the coma. “How the… how the hell do you have a reception this deep underground?”

Goras groaned. “We used to rule the planet! Of course, we had special mineral veins that help to transfer the electromagnetic radiation down to the ground. Can’t lose connection underground, can you?”

[Welcome back to Athen’s Hot News! Where we bring you the latest development in every part of Athen!] A stunning female news presenter was displayed on the screen.

[The University of Athen has made stunning progress in its attempt to revolutionize the stimulant industry. Just last week, Professor Dekil earned a patent for the combat stimulant X-12 that would be mass-produced here in Athen for the military. “The University of Athen is a dream come true for researchers like us – I would have never been able to achieve such results elsewhere, not even the University of Strathon.” Professor Dekil said.]

[Major Derfas, head of the enforcer department has already publicized that the enforcers would be purchasing the first few batches of the stimulant as well. “The strength of criminal groups has been increasing over the years. Our enforcers have been hard at work in order to completely overwhelm the playing field, especially with the recent introduction of the Keepers. With the addition of this combat stimulant, our enforcers will be able to protect the order of this society better.”]

[He’s not wrong in saying that! None of the enforcers can still catch the Inner Ripper, an infamous criminal who is famed for killing his victims in the most brutal ways, with the special favourite of carving illegible words into the back – but all the victims are from the inner zones. This only proves that the outer zones are breeding grounds for hyper-violent humans, and should be policed as such.]

[New prisons are being built in low planetary orbit to contain the increasing number of dissidents and criminals. The prisoners in recent are disproportionately outers – in fact most of the prisons have only outer prisoners. Currently the only prison that is fully functioning is Haui’s Moon. Henry Lesion, deputy head of the enforcer department is leading the initiative in making sure crimes in the outer zone stay down and has been doing a remarkable job. Prisoners currently are put to work as well, ensuring that they are not a drain on resources. More on this later.]

[The competitive exosuit tournament is here! Five years since the dissolution of riots, pre-existing riot teams have been fighting hard for an official tournament to show their chops. Now you can watch legendary riot teams battle it out in the new stadium built in Zone 5!]

[Speaking of five years, last week was the anniversary of the Ceres Riots. Led by the infamous violent criminal leader Ceres, Oliver Athen gave a speech at a memorial service remembering all those who died in Zone 1. “Athen as a planet, always had the potential to be something more, to be something great! Yet, allowing people freedom of speech and movement resulted in this tragic event, where thousands died for the sake of one boy. Until we as a people can prove that our violent tendencies can be suppressed and live properly in a merit-based society, I will do my best to make sure that this tragedy does not happen again – whatever the cost.”]

“This is amazing, how do you humans come up with such great stories?!” Goras was enthralled by the news. To the slovesa, human society was extremely interesting, as though they were watching an ant’s nest.

“Huh? This isn’t a drama show, it’s the news! It’s actually happening!” Ceres was increasingly dissatisfied with how the news was portraying him and the outers.

Since when they were considered hyper-violent? Why are all the crimes pinned on them? The anger began to build in him, and the black armour automatically emerged and covered his body.

Ceres was promised a good future, and a good life when he won the competition, but instead he became the blame for all of this.

Was Halyon right in saying that he was truly the cause of all the violent uprisings? As he continued watching the show, seething with rage, the final breaking point was when he saw Leonard Athen escorting Oliver out of the memorial service.

He finally recalled his true goal – get to Rockhold and get answers. Ceres did not mind the training, as he needed to practice with his body for future fights, especially if the Keepers were hunting him down.

However, playtime was over.

He stood up in anger, heading to the exit. “I’m done playing around training. Time to get out of here and get some answers.”