Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

The exam was structured into an hour-long questionnaire that students simply had to 'think' the answer in order to score points. Ceres was drawn into a VR room that had a simple setting for different natural backgrounds.

Athen had a simple brown savannah environment to it for the entire planet apart from nearer the poles, so he stood in the middle of a familiar vast plain field with sparse vegetation.

The very first question appeared in the sky in bold red letters, creating a striking contrast with the blue sky: [Which Dynasty is the owner of the Strathon system and subsequently the planet of Athen? BONUS: Who is the representative in charge of planet Athen?]

Ceres scoffed, knowing that the examiners placed the question to reinforce that it was somehow the 'good graces' for the Dynasty of Hawthorn and its representative Cardenia Hawthorn for allowing a backwater mining planet such as Athen to be allowed to take the examination.

As soon as he thought about this, the question was replaced with a large red word [CORRECT]. Lucky for him, he didn’t reveal the fact that he didn’t know how this ‘Cardenia Hawthorn’ person actually looked like at all.

There were quite a few other remote planets that were less developed and owned by the Empire and didn't have any examination scheduled, so participants had to travel to another planet to take the exam.

This naturally filtered a lot of poorer people who couldn't afford the fare to travel, ensuring a continuous source of cheap labour to terraform and work on those remote planets before the rich people from the inner worlds settled, thriving off the hard work of the lower class.

It didn't matter too much to Ceres that he was considered a low-class or an 'outer', because as long as he surpassed everyone else in the competition, he was going to climb the ladder. He wasn't particularly selfless to help everyone in the lower class, considering he couldn't really help himself now.

"Can't help others when I can't even stop myself from falling into a coma randomly. Focus!" Ceres thought to himself. Focusing on the questions, he answered them readily in rapid succession, using details that he skimmed and learnt through his school education and his multiple museum trips over the years.

As the exam hit the fifteen-minute mark, suddenly a massive slam was echoing throughout the virtual plain that Ceres was in. He looked behind him and saw a massive, supercharged thunderstorm coming towards him, crackling with energy and approaching extremely fast.

Despite knowing it was virtual, he knew touching it would mean a world of hurt. Just because it was fake didn’t mean the VR pod could not induce pain in his nervous system and brain!

Forcing him to start running away, the timer was still ticking down, prompting him to answer questions while escaping. He realized that this was still part of the exam and not a malfunction of the virtual environment.

[Explain how the emperor rules the Loeric Empire administratively]

"The emperor provides a charter or license to certain Dynasties, those Dynasties own various systems, which their representatives take care of planets and in turn hire locals to run planetary and city administration."

[Describe in simple terms the composition of the Loeric Empire's military arm]

"The main bulk is the imperial military, which has the space navy and ground army departments. Other sections include an espionage, logistics, recruitment and training arm, all of which serves the imperial military.”

“The main force used is the navy's warships, which are generally formed with frigates as the main class, with mechsuits and starfighters forming the minority in space. On the ground, mechsuits and atmospheric bombers are used to perform pinpoint operations. The Loeric Empire's main battle plan is precision firepower."

When the timer showed thirty minutes left, the storm started to speed up, forcing Ceres to begin a light sprint instead. A large ravine appeared in front of him, where monsters of all shapes were climbing out of the gaps to attack him.

They were of various types usually seen in the wilderness of Athens such as pock-marked vultures and sabre-hyenas, which all clambered after Ceres, covering the land and air behind him in a seemingly endless net.

Ceres had to fight off quite a few of them while continuously answering questions. The questions were also getting harder over time, forcing Ceres to take a few hits while contemplating.

[Explain the specific role of a knight mechsuit in orbital combat in your own words]

"The knight mechsuit’s job is to carry enough deployable barriers to provide temporary cover for other ranged mechsuit configurations and warships, allowing them more advantages in open space combat. The knight mechsuit can also serve as a bulwark, preventing other melee mechsuits from slicing through the barrier or passing through using its blunt hammer.”

“The knight mechsuit’s role is purely defensive but can serve an offensive purpose by pushing the frontline closer to the enemy warship or mechsuit lineup. It can also be equipped with a spherical barrier type that prevents starfighters from taking potshots at them. Barriers can be used as temporary shielding for atmospheric insertion if necessary for damaged warships."

Ceres was scratched by the long canine tooth of a sabre-hyena, forcing him to end his answer then and hope it was good enough.

There were no more simple true or false questions towards the end. Questions were open-ended and most likely subject to the whims of the examiners or whatever algorithm was marking the answers.

At the forty-five-minute mark, the storm and monsters disappeared suddenly. The environment disappeared, causing Ceres to fall into nothingness. As he looked down, he saw that he was in freefall, falling in the middle of an atmospheric battle between warships.

His body was gradually covered by a generic imperial navy spacesuit. Anti-air flak and starfighters were swarming below him, firing on each other.

"This is actually more amazing than it is scary," Ceres thought to himself as he took in the magnificent destruction of capital-class ships and the torrent of energy and kinetic weapon fire flying around him.

A few near misses gave him the chills but made his adrenaline rise even higher and higher.

The questions were still appearing in front of him, somehow retaining their clarity as though they were directly projected into his eyes. Ceres had to answer all these questions while freefalling and seeing all the near misses.

It was way more realistic too due to his current high peak NIER level of 1.8, but it also allowed him to think way faster than he could normally, with the data streaming faster and faster through his nerval jack.

[Explain what is an extreme-class warship, and why it is not feasible for the Loeric Empire currently to achieve]

"The extreme-class warship is a ship that's the size close to a moon and requires approximately an entire planet’s worth of engineers and researchers to design. On top of that, plenty of exotic metals and minerals are needed to reduce the gravitational impact that it has in its surrounding, which may involve tidal pulls on planets intended to be conquered rather than levelled. “

“The gravitational presence can also act as a distortion to space jumps, which also requires a heavy amount of exotic materials to modify properly. A large effort to make systems redundant is also needed to ensure that the reduction in gravitational pressure is consistent.”

“A stockpile of said material is also required for repair. Currently, any jumpdrive that can open a tunnel for an extreme-class warship is controlled solely by S-class states. The competency and amount of personnel needed to crew such a ship are not feasible as well."

The battle raged on around Ceres, as he crashed into the surface of a capital-class warship. Dodging the incoming fire as best as he could, he ran along the surface with the magnetic boots of his imperial navy space exosuit.

The adrenaline was causing him to lose focus on the questions that were coming in, as he ducked into the exposed interior of the damaged warship, running through bunkers and arsenals full of hostile enemies that were designed to move slower than in real life.

It was still an exam, after all, not an accurate representation of reality, in which case Ceres knew he would've been killed immediately.

As he found an escape pod to leave the ship, the timer hit the final ten minutes. [Explain the Loeric Empire’s current diplomatic state with its neighbouring star nations and 'others'. What potential threats are there?]

"The Loeric Empire has been performing intermittent wars with the Chenum Republic on a recurring timespan of two decades, while it is permanently hostile to pirates and criminals in the Beyond, and the slovesa in the 'south' and 'west'. It has good diplomatic ties with the Ebsian Church, while it is lukewarm with every other star nation in the Melsura Star Sector."

"Potential threats include the continuing wars with the Chenum Republic, the slovesa incursions, infiltration by other C-Class states such as the Varen Consortium and the Kriles Dominion for the purpose of subversion as well as diplomatic and economic pressure from the dozens of other D-class states for our continued accumulation of arms and military power. An alliance forming amongst them is also possible. A war between C-Class states may also involve the Loeric Empire into taking up a side."

Ceres essentially regurgitated what he learnt in the museum trip and school, not actually bothering to care about such mundane stuff as politics. Politics had never affected his life, and he's never seen a reason to care about it since growing up. He didn’t need to know it to win the competition.

He hit the ground in the escape pod, trapped in the middle of no man's land between trenches of fortified twenty meters tall mechsuits pounding each other with shells and energy beams, while barriers deployed by knight mechs regularly got melted.

Crawling out of the escape pod while keeping his head down and laying flat without moving, he continued to answer questions as hellfire rained over him.

As the timer reached the final minute, a surprising bonus question with no points granted hit him that he never expected to see in such an exam.

[What's your life's current motto?]

Ceres couldn't answer for a good thirty seconds. Beyond his short-term goals of winning the competition and cracking the box, he has legitimately not taken the time to seriously sit down and consider what he wanted to become in the future and what he wanted for himself. He's been following Uncle Dawn's advice to 'embrace the chaos' and take things one step at a time. He could only think of one thing that had burdened his mind ever since he went into a coma.

"...To not fail at what I set out to do."

***

Ceres stood up out of the VR pod, sweat dripping down his back. Mental exhaustion started to kick in, as he was operating at his peak NEIR level of 1.8 for an hour, a staggering result of his dedication to training.

He looked around and noticed that at least 40 students from his orphanage had already left the testing hall. "Hmm looks like only a few people made it to the end, but I still can't be cocky yet, could've answered the questions wrong."

He then noticed a large holographic floating list in the sports hall where all the examination pods were. The remaining students were staring at the list, Erik being amongst them. A few recognizable participant names were shown at the very top of the ranking list, most being only recognizable by their family name and their school.

Most notably, Ceres recognized Chad Athen being at the very top of the list, having answered the most number of questions within the one-hour period.

The number of questions each participant got depended on how long they took to answer each one of them. It seems like Chad was way ahead of the pack, being a whole fifteen questions ahead of the next highest participant, claiming the top position easily.

"Wow, Ceres look! You're in the top 100!" Erik smiled at Ceres, waving at him.

"You're way better than me Erik, you're top 50! Where's Braton though?"

"Think he's lying around rank 90,000 or something" Erik replied, unsure as to whether Braton would be kicked out in the first stage.

[The first stage qualifiers are over, and you can see the ranking list planetwide. It seems that the top participant this year is Chad Athen, who declared previously that he wouldn't lose to anyone! And he has absolutely delivered on that statement during this stage, smashing the other participants!]

[With the completion of the first stage, we shall now remove more than 66% of the participants! This means that out of the 300,000 students, only rank 99,999 and above can participate in the second stage! Over the course of the next stage, we will continue shrinking until there are only 3072 participants in total, 1024 for each category!]

The participants had all selected a preferred category before taking the competition. This meant that that could be more participants in one category than the other currently.

Lucky for Ceres, the exosuit repair category had the least number of participants, which meant he had to fight through fewer odds. The only downside was that Chad Athen had also selected exosuit repair.

In the distance, Braton was jumping out for joy. He had barely given any solid answers, merely trying to bluff his way through the exam. His only saving grace was the physical ability to survive all the scenarios thrown at him, which bought him the time to answer the questions to his best ability and not get knocked unconscious.

Ceres, Erik and Braton had all trained in Shattered Empire, their main VR game that helped to steel their nerves in simulated warfare. He knelt on the ground, thanking whatever god that had helped him, promising to offer a dumpling later as a sacrifice.

Braton grinned to himself as he got up. "Now the hardest part is over!"