Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

The fight didn’t last very long after, especially when Ceres got his hands on a proper weapon - the vibra-spear. The spearhead could easily cut through the basic stone of the slovesa, allowing him to make quick work of the remaining four.

The high vibrations emitted by the spearhead made any stabbing or slicing job much easier.

“My first tool and proper weapon, with additional backups in case I break it, was this the welcome gift for the qualifiers?” Ceres still didn’t know what the format of the second stage was, and he had received zero notifications about anything since he woke up an hour ago.

He decided to use the vibra-spear as a knife, using another vibra-spear to cleanly slice off the handle to his desired length. The now vibra-knife could then be used to carve or slice metal pieces of his choice. He didn’t even need to saw vigorously.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to craft out an exosuit, but I should be able to make some rudimentary light armour plates that could help at least blunt the impact of stabs.” It was a bit harder to control the vibration from the spearhead with the short handle, but Ceres gritted through it.

As he started to craft custom metal plates formed to his body, which he intended to strap using fibre, he recalled the large tusk hole found in the corpses. “No, I can’t fall into the trap of adding more armour, it will make it harder to dodge!”

It was about a good six hours later when he finished forming the light armour, which was essentially metal plates with holes at the corners, strapped with fibre strands he stripped from branches in the mini garden.

It had two shoulder plates and a metal chest plate tied together, while the leg plates were basically strapped to his legs, only covering the front. Together with his armguards that barely covered the wrist and elbow, he had zero protection from any attacks from the back.

“This should keep my mobility up, but it is really uncomfortable to wear.” Ceres wanted to find additional fabric if possible, but he could only find blood-soaked clothes all over the place. If he wanted real materials he needed to scavenge deeper into the collapsed apartment and search each room.

As he sat down to take his first meal since waking up here, he placed his vibra-spear and knife upright against a short wall. The vibra-weapons only vibrated upon heavy movement from their user, amplifying the vibrations it receives.

“What is the purpose of the second stage? What are they testing? It’s already been more than six hours since I came here, and I recall them saying that the exam was expected to last for only 5 hours.”

Ceres could see the local star in the sky setting on the horizon and he didn’t know what to expect during the nighttime.

Do the ‘large’ monsters only come out at night? Why aren’t there any other players? Such question dominated Ceres’ mind, but he shrugged it off as much as he could and continued making his base as secure as possible.

He started by fortifying the broken windows and the entrance of the lobby, forming a barricade around the walls of the lobby. There wasn’t much he could do about some parts of the collapsed ceiling, but as long as he had something like a defensive wall, it was something that he could work with. Rebuilding or patching the ceiling will take much more effort.

Securing the wall and laying down some traps after a short three hours, he sat in the middle admiring his work while drinking his water. In the short ten hours since he came in, he had earned five vibra-weapons, made simple light metal armour and fortified the lobby wall.

It looked from the top as though Ceres was living in a building encampment with metal spikes surrounding it, jutting out from the walls and windows. He particularly made sure to use the vibra-knife to make metal plates jutting in ragged lines as much as possible, hoping to hurt the monster with it where necessary. He even had a few traps prepared against humanoid enemies that were smarter.

Ceres was about to get ready to climb up to certain apartments to scavenge for more tools when he heard footsteps outside his barricade. “Slovesa again? I feel like the second stage is tower defence or something!”

He hid in a tiny corner of the lobby near the entrance of the lobby, surrounded by furniture with the vibra-knife and spear near him, ready to lunge out if they broke through the defensive wall.

***

Cardenia was not having the time of her life. In fact, she was absolutely appalled at what she was watching. “How are any of these students good? Barely half of them could defeat a single slovesa in combat! Stop showing me the dregs Senia, show me real students who can win the wager for me!” She started to worry whether she could even find any kids at all to ‘grow’ for the wager.

“I’ve been showing you those near the top of the provisional ranking. Naturally, they won’t be as good as Chad Athen, but they are the closest inner students in terms of potential that are not part of the Five Families College.” Senia said.

“There is one student that may interest you, he has applied for the examination through a different school but was the classmate of Chad Athen for a good while.”

“Interesting, pull him up on the screen” A holographic video stream appeared in front of Cardenia, showing three participants cautiously probing what looked to be a metal encampment. A green diamond tag appeared over one of the participant’s head, [Adrian Seras].

“Isn’t the Seras Family part of the university proposal and Five Families College?” Cardenia couldn’t understand why would Adrian participate in the graduation competition through another school.

“Adrian has a very competitive drive and has always been overshadowed by Chad when they were friends and classmates, giving him the motivation to try to dethrone his friend from another organization,” Senia explained.

“If he were to do it under his original school of Five Families College, his reputation would have plummeted assuming he won against Chad. By publicly declaring himself as a competitor from a different school, he has no risk of his reputation dropping or causing the Five Families College reputation to drop.”

Cardenia nodded, feeling a bit of expectation rising as she started to watch the video stream more intently. At first, it seemed like the metal encampment was a feature of the second stage, but as she looked closely, she noticed more and more human design, as though someone had recently shaved and polished all the sharp edges.

The three participants started discussing amongst each other, while a red diamond tag appeared in the building, letting Cardenia see who was within the encampment. “1 vs 3, looks like it's not going to end well!” Senia remarked, feeling bad for the young boy who was trapped in the collapsed lobby.

The three participants only had basic weapons and no armour, and they had no way of breaching the wall too. However, they found a small gap at the entrance of the lobby, which could only fit one person at a time.

Cardenia smirked to herself: “Looks like I found my first candidate.”

***

“I really don’t want to go in there Adrian, what if we get jumped by slovesa again?” Estra didn’t want to go first into the narrow gap, hoping that Adrian Seras, the ‘leader’ of this group and Keil, the other member would take his place.

The three of them were from separate inner schools but had met each other in the same area, causing them to fight each other. They only formed a group when a sizeable amount of slovesa forced them out of their area into this new place.

Adrian sighed, “I already went first into the previous building, and you’re still making me go first. You’re not going to get far into the competition like this! Fine, I’ll go first! Don’t come in until I say it’s clear”

Estra immediately brightened up, vigorously nodding: “That’s great Adrian, with your skills and leadership, as long as we control this defensive position, we can survive anything!”

His ego being stroked, Adrian puffed out his chest and walked confidently into the narrow gap. He could still walk straight through the gap, but it felt somewhat claustrophobic for him too as he went through.

Keeping a tight grip on his metal sword, he came out the other side of the gap, noticing that there were remnants of someone being here before. There were footsteps and clearly arranged materials in the middle of the lobby, putting Adrian on high alert.

As he scanned the lobby in greater detail, he heard a stumbling sound behind him, making him swivel and bringing his sword to bear. “What the fuck, Keil? I told you not to come until I say it’s clear?”

“Fuck off, Adrian, I know you were planning to leave us outside and control that narrow gap plus all the resources inside the building!” Keil snarled. “Estra, come in!”

“I wasn’t planning to do ANY of that, and we haven’t cleared the place yet!” Adrian hissed at Keil, who ignored him because he noticed at least two vibra-spears near the back of the lobby. “Goddamn, look at that!” Keil immediately rushed over to the vibra-spears.

“Oh no, you don’t!” Adrian dashed after Keil, grabbing him from behind, and making them both fall forward and roll onto the ground in a scuffle. After a few punches and various curses thrown at each other, they separated from each other with the vibra-spears in the middle, huffing and panting while they eyed the other warily.

“We each take one, Estra doesn’t get any, okay?” Adrian suggested, to which Keil nodded. But just as Adrian was about to reach and grab the spear, Keil suddenly grabbed Adrian’s hand “Wait! Something’s wrong! Where’s Estra?”

It was only then Adrian realized that it had been more than a minute since Keil called Estra in, but they had hardly heard his voice or seen him enter.

Looking at the narrow entrance, they finally saw him, except that he was standing rigidly in the middle of the gap, his body slumped to the side and blocking the entire path with blood flowing from his neck

Adrian and Keil moved together cautiously as two towards Estra, holding their weapons at the ready. They both instinctively felt that the vibra-spears were a trap; if they took it who knew what would happen, especially now that Estra had died for no reason.

Adrian had this sinking feeling that he was in a larger trap that was this entire metal encampment, but he steeled his nerve and got closer to the entrance. Was the slovesa hunting them?

As they neared Estra, they realized that his neck has been slit cleanly, causing him to choke on his blood to death silently.

While Adrian and Keil were twenty-year-old and barely adults, they had played Shattered Empire and already saw dead human corpses on the streets of the second stage. Any participant who is afraid of blood or corpses shouldn’t be trying for this competition at all!

The sudden and silent death of Estra still placed a great amount of tension on both of them. “What do we do now? Are we fucked?” Keil whispered, his eyes darting around as he tried to pick up any slight details of where the assailant is. The clean slice on the neck alone signified to them that it was a human attacker, as slovesa were much more brutal.

“The assailant is near here since he killed Estra, and he’s planning to block the exit with the dead body. Most likely us moving any deeper into the encampment is his plan, so instead, we stay here and try to extract the body. Being in the narrow gap is dangerous too, so I’ll cover your back while you enter the narrow gap and remove the body towards my side. This way there’s no way he can get to you before me.” Adrian smirked, believing that he had outsmarted the trap-setter.

Keil grabbed his metal longsword and entered the narrow gap, planning to dismember Estra’s body. It was a VR simulation, so chopping the body would be fine, though a bit gruesome. But before he lifted his sword to chop, suddenly metal plates started to fall from the top of the wall into the narrow gap!

“Keil, watch out!” Adrian shouted as he turned behind to look into the narrow entrance, but that split second allowed a shadow that glinted in the darkness to slice his neck without even giving Adrian a chance to block.

As he started to choke on his blood while trying to cover his neck with his hands, his eyes locked onto his attacker, recognizing him as the boy he taunted in the museum months ago.

“I died to that outer...?”