Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

M.G.Driver sorry for the delay. delay explained in ch4 of the black market litrpg. thanks for reading

Ceres still hasn’t decided on a battle plan. He did not know which was better, defending the temple or defending the town, and he was not sure who would be attacked first as well. “If the backers are truly Bee Strathon, then their firepower must be immense.”

While the town was currently gearing up for a potential fight, there was an increasing voice of dissent against the defence of the temple led by Misa.

She advocated with conviction that the town came first and that temples were not the end of everything especially since they were not religious fanatics like the Chosen.

“There is no reason to protect the temple and lose more lives!” Misa declared again at the next meeting of the town, where a larger proportion of them nodded. The messenger they sent to the town had yet to report back, but the attack could come anytime now. Whoever was posted at the temple would bear the brunt of the attack.

The meeting was a complete disaster, with various voices all trying to talk over each other. The situation was becoming tense, and as an outsider, Ceres did not fight nor argue.

He did want to retain access personally to the temple, but he wasn’t going to drag others into the fight if they didn’t want to.

“The key issue is lack of information. We don’t have a good early warning system.” Ceres explained as he sat with Halyon and Mercer during lunch.

While he personally did not eat nor have the need to eat, the other two did, and it was good to take a mental break once in a while.

Mercer nodded. “Due to our lack of experience and technology, we can’t develop a good enough network of scouts. Even information from the temple requires people to ferry messages back and forth. It’s quite unfeasible to try and transmit wirelessly as well due to the density of the stone and soil. We would have to lay out a lot of repeaters along the way.”

Both Yan and Mercer had learnt a lot from Ceres over the past week, becoming more and more like proper engineers. It was aligned with Ceres’ plan to not leave the town in a lurch. Someone had to take over his designs and manufacture for the town, and he internally had already designated Yan as his successor, whose talent had surprised him.

“We could design a sort of ground penetrating radar, but we don’t have the technology for it right now, it would take months to make such a device on our own.” Mercer continued musing.

Ceres’s thoughts suddenly latched on to the concept of radar. He personally did have a form that allowed him to detect enemies through walls, seemingly only fading with distance. “Halyon, how far was the range in order for you to control your drones when you were a Keeper?”

“Hey, I’m still a Keeper, just without my exosuit and without any help. Also, without any drones.” Halyon cocked his head up proudly.

“Shut up and answer the question.”

Halyon sighed, tapping his finger on the table. “If within line of sight, about 10 kilometres. Otherwise, maybe 5?”

Ceres almost choked. That was a ridiculous range of control.

However, the fact that it was facilitated by the black goo gave him a slight amount of hope. He did not know what was exactly in the drones, but the existence of the Keepers gave him a practical solution that the black substance in his body could be used over long distances.

All three of them were aware of the black goo, having seen it before. Halyon so far acted normally, but deep down he still could not fully absorb the fact that he had been wearing such a creepy disgusting exosuit for a good amount of time.

Ceres quickly drafted up a plan in his head. “I need to run a few experiments, meet me at the workshop later.” He quickly left, leaving Mercer and Halyon wondering what weird stuff was Ceres coming up with again.

Later at the workshop, Mercer and Halyon entered to see an empty chair with straps attached. “Good, you’re here. Bring the chair and we’ll do an experiment outside the town.”

Ceres brought a toolbox, radios and a few repeaters as the three of them left the town, heading to a nearby cave. Ceres easily avoided any of the mawsies who were still lurking around, and they consciously avoided him too. They had a clear memory of being bullied by him in the past, so they did not dare antagonize him anymore.

Placing the chair in the cave, Ceres began to strap Halyon, who was still wondering what was happening. “Hey, what the hell?”

“Mercer, Halyon, you two stay put,” Ceres ordered as he passed Mercer a radio for short-range communication.

“But what if the mawsies come back?!” Halyon complained.

“Mercer can deal with it.”

They separated, with Ceres continuously keeping his H.T. mode on and laying down repeaters to keep the radio communication alive. When he reached two kilometres away, he checked back, confirming that he could still see Halyon.

He was not entirely sure how much his range had improved after the temple, but he was planning to find out. The last time, his limit was two kilometres, but that was before he absorbed the black goo from the Keeper’s exosuit spine and before absorbing the chaos core from the temple.

Reaching five kilometres, he turned around, noticing that he could still see Halyon. It was only at about 7 and a half kilometres in he finally was not able to see Halyon clearly any longer.

“Mercer, come over to me and take the device.”

Mercer quickly headed over, taking what looked to be a simple black circular enclosure. Ceres then ordered him to slowly step towards Halyon. The device was a container for some black goo mixed with Ceres’s blood, and Ceres was hoping he could find out something with it.

Mercer moved towards Halyon, and despite Ceres staying in place, his vision of Halyon was not improving. However, he could tell the difference in the strength of the black goo.

With a few more repeated tests, he finally noticed that the black goo would react to Halyon’s emotions, and he was able to see it clearly. Testing the range in which he could see the black goo, it so far seems to be infinite in nature. Even after moving all the way back to town, he could still sense the ‘strength’ of the black goo.

Using a quick combination of Mercer and Halyon, Ceres began to develop a quick empirical solution on how to determine if there was someone passing by, or if it was just a group of mawsies.

He even brought out a few of the domesticated mawsies who had regrown their limbs and used them to characterize the reaction of the devices.

“This is a pretty rough detection sensor, and it’s not that accurate. At least I will be able to detect lifeforms movements at an infinite range, or maybe the limit to the range is larger than I am able to test.” Ceres reasoned with himself.

He decided to make a dozen of the devices, loading them onto the supply convoy which was headed for the temple. This would be yet another test to see if the new devices work at that range.

When he explained the functionality to Mercer, Yan and Halyon, they were all shocked. It seemed to circumvent all logic and physics so far, but then again Ceres was effectively a superhuman to them. Ceres trusted the three of them with his information, not like he could hide it any longer after all that he had done for them.

“Wait, so you sense emotions?” Mercer tried to understand the effect of the black goo in Ceres.

“I can inflict them as well. Mercer, the fear you felt when fighting me in the temple was due to that.” Ceres suddenly invoked fear in the three of them, causing them to rapidly stiffen up.

Mercer tried to say that it was super cool, but his throat had already clamped up due to fear. Ceres quickly released it, also noticing that the level of fear invoked in them was all different. It was as though the resistance was different for every individual human.

He did not know what determines the level of resistance, but Yan showed the highest resistance. He was not planning to test them though too much though. Except for Halyon.

Rather than being turned off by the weird ability, the three were extremely interested, having never seen anything about this. Not even the well-known transcendents of the Loeric Empire had such an effect.

“Since the black goo is the one that invokes the emotions, can your devices invoke those emotions too?” Yan asked curiously as the three of them discussed the implications excitedly. It was like they were pioneering a new field of science all on their own.

Ceres never thought about that, so the group quickly form a test, leaving a device next to the sleeping Zhang who was taking a break in his house. “Okay, what emotion should I try?” Ceres asked them as Yan quickly ran away after planting it.

“Give him fear, make it a nightmare! I want to see him sweat.” Yan grinned with an evil expression, a little of her childish streak showing.

“No, make it a happy dream! Why are you so bad to your own dad?” Mercer rebutted.

“Make it sexy, give him a wet dream!” Halyon chuckled, while Yan gave a disgusted face.

Ceres decided to go with fear, focusing hard on the specific device, not particularly interested in seeing the paranoid expert be turned on.

He could sense a flow of energy from his body towards the device. He stayed like this for ten seconds straight, though there was no reaction.

“Ceres, are you sure that its wor..” A loud scream suddenly interrupted Mercer, as Zhang ran out of his bed, yelling in fright and waving his hands wildly while streaking naked. “The world is ending! I have seen the future!”

Yan laughed happily, while Mercer frowned. “Ceres, what the hell did you do?!”

“You know, It wasn’t a very good test to try it on a sleeping person.” Ceres facepalmed as Captain Kai immediately arrived, trying to calm Zhang down from running any further.

They repeated the test, but this time with a few unsuspecting townspeople.

It was a resounding success, though Ceres could tell that the energy expended was increasing with distance. It would be extremely tiring for him to continuously invoke the emotion at such a long range such as from the town to the temple.

“Did we just invent a new weapon?” Yan asked excitedly. “It’s an emotional mine!”

***

[Manager Ulson, priority report: Queen’s Guards have sent a detachment out on an unknown mission to protect an unverified ruin.]

Ulson was laughing while eating his lunch, watching an old video of his former colleague being interrogated by the company. “That’s normal, there are hundreds of ruins around here. It’s a former slovesa planet after all."

[Sir, they are heading in the same direction towards the temple. We expect them to arrive in a week.]

Almost spluttering his food out, he quickly wiped his mouth. “What?! How many of them?”

“It looks like it’s going to be a small group, about three of them. Only one of them has an exosuit.”

Ulson quickly tapped a few buttons on the holographic interface on his office table. “Get me Commander Steele on the line now!”

[Patching....]

A video feed opened, showing the commander on the screen. He had a dark gritty face with a cleanly shaven military cut. The background of the video feed showed an increasing number of blinding lights, the aftereffects of multiple laser shots and cannons going off.

[You got thirty seconds.] The commander grunted with a dismissive tone.

Despite Manager Ulson theoretically being his direct boss, there was a sort of unspoken culture and divide between the armed forces and the business departments.

Even Ulson did not dare to throw his weight around fully with the veteran commander, but this was a matter of utmost importance. His luxury starship was at stake after all.

“We have a good lead on a fully functional slovesa temple, and we need ten squads to head there right now!” Ulson was on the verge of shouting, revealing his impatience. If the Queen's Guards got there first, he would have lost the edge and the right of the first claim. Any action taken after would be considered a violation of the treaty between them and the Queen.

The commander’s eyes squinted. “Three, no more.”

“Three squads is fine as well, I need them back here and deployed within six hours.”

“Three men."

“What...?”

The communication line cut off, leaving Ulson agape. Despite his anger at being disregarded, he did not dare to retaliate. He could only sit back in his chair and tap his finger impatiently, hoping for the best.

[Sir, would it not be advisable to contact the military for assistance?]

“Don't be daft, the military would never agree to us exploiting the ruin for its exotic metal. If we inform them of it, they’ll swoop in and not leave a single bit for me. It’s better to keep this under wraps.” Olson anxiously explained as he quickly sorted out the logistics. “Get a dive pod ready immediately.”

***

Paska was fidgeting with his leg as he sat on a stone bench. He was back with the Chosen, and it's been more than two weeks since he received his upgrade. His staff was fully repaired as well, and his artificial skin completely covered his cybernetic implants.

At his feet was a bruised male, who had a symbol on his forehead indicating he was part of the first tribe that tried to rebel during the temple attack.

Paska had spent the last week solidifying his authority and gathering more warriors, though he was unable to gather enough due to the lack of respect he had earned for failing to claim the temple.

Many tribes lost faith in him, fleeing away out of his reach. Paska did not have the time to chase down such people, completely invested in reclaiming the temple. He could barely wait any longer, wanting Bee Strathon to send their troops immediately.

He could already imagine the terrible damage he would inflict on the town, with dozens of fully equipped Bee Strathon soldiers killing them all. He recalled Ceres’s strength and was more than excited to see him get trampled on. “This is what you get for looking down on me!”

Paska did not know that the town already had a rough idea of who was backing him, completely still in the dark and assuming that he had the jump on the town.

Suddenly, the cave he was in began to shudder violently, as the sounds of digging became louder and louder. The Chosen warriors who were gathered outside panicked, wondering whether it was another collapse or earthquake.

Soon, rocks began to fall from a very specific spot on the ceiling, dropping onto the floor as Chosen warriors dived out of the way. Eventually, a large hole appeared, revealing a sizable drill that was aimed to fall right on top of them.

The drill broke through and crashed right in the middle of the cave. Unlike the horrified tribal soldiers, Paska was beaming from ear to ear, quickly running up to the drill, which had a pod attached to it. A large pneumatic airlock opened with a hiss, revealing three medium-exosuit Bee Strathon soldiers who nimbly leapt out of the pod onto the ground.

“Are you the leader?” One of the soldiers asked while the other two scanned the area, their hands already holding rifles in battle postures.

“Are you the advance party?" Paska asked. “When are the rest coming?”

“Why would you need more soldiers? Aren't your own troops strong enough to fight? If we combine our forces, we can take over the temple easily.” The soldier replied. "Round them up, we’re going to move over to the temple right now."

“Wait, this isn’t enough to defeat them! They have an extremely strong fighter amongst them, I’ve told you already.” Paska hastily grabbed the soldier’s arm, preventing him from moving off.

The soldier’s eyes locked with Paska. “Well ask yourself this. Can you defeat either one of us one-on-one?”

Paska took a good look at their exosuits.

The gear was all extremely clean and seemingly powerful. Multiple grenades and equipment were packed into various slots on the exosuit, as well as their heavy bulky rifles that Paska knew could blow a hole through him in a single instant. Even if he had the staff, it would not be enough.

He sighed before shaking his head.

“Well, there’s your answer. Let’s move.”

The soldiers ordered Paska and his soldiers to move out, while the rest of the Chosen were utterly confused. Who were these outsiders and why did it seem that Paska knew them? However, due to the controlling nature of Paska, the remainder knew better than to speak out against him right now.