Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

“This kid, he has great potential, but I don’t want to take on the rest of his group either, they all seem to just be side characters,” Cardenia muttered to herself as she continued watching.

It has only been 15 minutes since the second stage started, and her eyes continued watching an accelerated video of Ceres’ actions.

The viewers were all watching an accelerated version of the qualifiers, the VR world time compressed for easier viewing. The competition would have lost all its viewers long ago if it stuck to real-time, as it would probably extend up to three days long!

“If you want another kid to train, it’s Adrian Seras. I know Ceres thrashing his group was not a good showing, but with the proper instruction I believe he can become a monster too.” Senia leaned over, whispering to Cardenia who sat right next to her.

“Adrian has a good family backing so he has a more guaranteed education too – Ceres is a bit of a wildcard, we can’t guarantee that his methods would net him a win.” Cardenia contemplated it for a good while, continuing to watch the accelerated stream.

“What game are you guys playing? Let me play too.” A whisper tickled the ears of both Cardenia and Senia, shocking them.

Zachary laughed, taking a seat next to Cardenia. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting with you, your discussion and wager is probably the only interesting thing happening on this planet right now!”

“You may sit wherever you like, Prince Zachary, but I believe you’re not a participant in this wager.” Cardenia scowled internally, with a false smile on her face as she didn’t even give a glance to Zachary, trying to regain some dignity after being shocked that easily.

She resolved to maybe implant a few facial muscle controls in the future to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. The non-permanent kind, of course.

“I suggest you don’t pull such a prank off anymore Imperial Prince Zachary, my master has a weak heart and may be subjected to heart palpitations.” Senia did a slight bow with her head.

“Not what I heard from the party last month! But this kid you’re watching is indeed very interesting.” Zachary had an inbuilt multi into his body, allowing him to watch videos at rapid speeds while still remembering everything as though he watched in slow motion. “I would be willing to help you ‘grow’ him for the wager, this err… Ceres? If you don’t mind.”

Cardenia squinted at him suspiciously, causing Zachary to laugh. “I don’t have any ulterior motives Cardenia, all I want to do is to help you.” She scoffed, knowing that Zachary is only wanting her support to form a base in order for him to attempt the succession race.

The endings of anyone who supported the losing candidates were not pretty, and Cardenia didn’t exactly have the utmost confidence in the 561st Imperial Prince, Zachary Denar Loeric.

His brothers and sisters were much more accomplished, which will prove to be an uphill battle. It was very obvious that Zachary was definitely sucking up to her.

[It’s been a gruelling 15 minutes, which means a day in the second stage qualifiers! Thanks to the support of our sponsor Rawes Industries, the time-accelerated examination is going well.]

[Quite a few participants have been eliminated by the slovesa and other players too! The second stage will end by killing off half the players currently, which means reducing the number of players to fifty thousand! ]

[There is no point system, the objective is to simply survive! The participants inside do not know what the objective is, which makes their true nature comes out!]

Cardenia laughed internally, feeling a sense of excitement when she knew what Ceres was going to attempt to do.

***

“Wake up, it’s been five hours already” Erik nudged Ceres awake, who tried to wipe the sleep out of his eyes as he got up from the hard floor.

They were still in the commercial district and didn’t find a hotel or any residential room, so they had to settle for sleeping in a barricaded room that was relatively barren and had only one fairly intact sofa. Trissa, the only girl in the team thus far, was given the honour of sleeping on the sofa.

The four members of the newly formed Team Dumpling started to share information on the various buildings and areas they have scouted.

They marked fallback points and contingencies in the event of the team being split up. Ceres’ metal encampment was one of the fallback points which had a secret entrance that only the team would know about. It was stocked with food and water too.

“From what we gathered, this is a border planet, but it is the only planet of the system, which means exosuits must have been sold here or at least on display here. There would be a repair shop at minimum in the capital city.”

“This meant that we will have to make it to an industrial district that logically would’ve developed around here, 7 hours from where we are now by walking,” Ceres spoke quickly, with the rest of the team nodding.

Industrial districts were rarely established at the very centre of the city, which was where their current location was, the commercial district. They had to head to the edge of the city to potentially find more industrial buildings and factories.

“So, the plan for today is that we gather as much useful equipment as possible, especially those for communications. There should be a commercial multi shop here that sells terminals and wireless routers. We will each carry a multi and have two wireless routers to act as communication relays, one on Erik and one as backup on Trissa since Braton and I are melee fighters.”

Erik nodded, knowing that both he and Trissa have been using energy weapons that they found at a weapon shop nearby.

The team split up into the district, clearing up some of the leftover drones and scavenging for equipment and ammo. Ceres felt a bit wary, as according to Braton, there was no middle-class slovesa found controlling the swarm of smaller slovesa drones.

There is always a main controller for the swarm, which made Ceres feel uncomfortable in the area. “Maybe the simulation isn’t that good after all,” Ceres thought to himself.

Ceres picked up an energy pistol for himself, not wanting to throw away any more vibra-spears, while Erik and Trissa loaded up their energy rifles with additional energy cells and installed the wireless router onto their backpacks.

Braton used Ceres’ vibra-spear to carve extremely crude knuckledusters on his hands using the hardest slovesa shell he could find.

Slovesa cores were as tough as most reinforced metal armour, they just weren’t used as often due to the intense amount of radiation they gave off when excited.

Braton wasn’t fully immune to radiation poisoning, but his method of body strengthening somehow gave him radiation-resistant cells on his skin, allowing him to bear it for some amount of time before receiving radiation poisoning.

It was courtesy of the bodybuilding club in the Gladius, who were extreme in wanting their own bodies to be the ultimate weapon and defence, going to morally grey areas of modifications. Braton was no exception to this, though not yet near the tipping point of modifying his base genetic code.

Ceres never went anywhere near the cores, not having trained with the same boosters and enhancers that Braton did, who was adamant about making the body as strong as possible.

The team finally grouped up and set off, each of them stocked for the trip.

The four of them barely talked, each focusing on their surroundings as they trekked through open streets that had signs of other participants’ battles. “We’re probably going to run into other players soon, what should we do Ceres?” Erik asked.

“I don’t believe the objective is to kill all players, so we’ll try to convince them to work together. If we sense a potential betrayal or differences in how the second stage is, then we’ll walk off. We shouldn’t initiate the attack first, don’t forget the examiners are watching us and will judge our morals too probably.” Ceres replied.

Close to four hours into the trip, Braton who was leading the front of the team immediately stopped and raised a fist.

The team immediately hid behind their closest cover, keeping an eye out. Braton dropped behind cover, taking out his multi and typing a message out “Humans in front, group of three, armed.”

The team proceeded to perform their pre-arranged tactic of avoidance while keeping observation, moving opposite of the human team that seemed to be scavenging stores and broken cars for anything useful.

Ceres finally had a line of sight to them and noticed that their loadout was equally miserable to Adrian’s team, but they also had signs of bruises and limps that prevented them from moving effectively. Ceres’s team continued to avoid them and was about to be clear when they heard a loud scream.

The team stopped, continuously messaging on their multis. “Slovesa attacked them, help?” Despite having gone through several military drills where leaving men behind was part of the plan, their consciousness as fellow humans still tugged at them.

Ceres sighed. Based on the weakness of the team, it wouldn’t be worth recruiting them, and he wasn’t exactly feeling like a hero. He didn’t have a goal of chivalry, but he wasn’t going to impose his views on the team unilaterally.

“Vote? …. Okay, 3 Yes and 1 No, form up in attack formation C. Braton on point!” Ceres and Braton stood up beyond their cover, rushing towards the slovesa attackers with their melee weapons while Erik and Trissa went close quarters too, albeit at ranged distances where their energy rifles could reliably hit the enemy without hitting their allies.

There were only a few attackers, which were quickly killed off by Ceres’ well-equipped team. The battle hardly lasted more than two minutes. The three humans they just saved were unconscious save for one.

“Are you alright? Who did your team fight previously?” Ceres asked the conscious survivor, while the rest of Ceres’ team didn’t bandage the injured, merely checking for their pulse. While the rest voted to save them, they weren’t about to jeopardize their own resources for potentially nothing.

Each member of Team Dumpling is an orphan, and they knew perfectly well that self-survival came before everything else.

“We didn’t fight anyone! We were ordered to come out here to scavenge!” The girl cried, causing Ceres to be extremely confused.

“Did the examiners order you? How did they relay the order? I never heard of an exam order being given out?”

The girl shook her head vigorously, tears still streaming down her cheeks. “The other participants grouped up and beat us till we obeyed them, forcing us to collect resources for them!”

Ceres was shocked, immediately checking the girl’s arms and legs for wounds with his eyes.

The girl was heavily bruised, her entire arm almost beaten blue-black. He didn’t recognize the uniform that the girl was wearing. “Which school are you from?” Ceres asked.

The girl finally took a good look at her saviours, exclaiming “I’m from Zone 20 Military Orphanage, I’m an outer too! Please take me with you away from here! The inners were beating me up! They are from the Five Families College! You guys are outers too, aren’t you? Bring me with you!”

Ceres suddenly stood up, an air of righteousness permeating from him. “Team, plan O is in effect. Which way did you come from? We can bring you along and run the other way.”

The girl cried, hugging Ceres: “Thank you, thank you so much! My name is Maise. You can take anything from me and my team!”

Ceres motioned for Braton to lift the other two unconscious team members, who finally wrapped their wounds in a bulky bandage before carrying them each with one arm. Ceres put Maise on his back, piggybacking her and moving off in her direction.

As they slowly walked towards Maise’s direction, Erik and Trissa formed the front and back respectively, each with their rifle at the ready, scanning the open windows of the buildings along the open street as they walked along the side.

The team got closer to the industrial district over the next hour, with Ceres learning more about how the inner students bullied any outer students they came across from Maise. Apparently, the inners had formed a large group to dominate a single area, forcing any outer caught within to work for them.

A strong feeling of anger started to build with Ceres and the rest of the team as they continued to listen.

Finding a safe spot inside a factory warehouse, Ceres finally put down Maise and started to bandage her up with self-made bulky bandages when they were in the commercial district.

Braton and Erik continued to treat and bandaged the less serious wounds of the two unconscious members.

Due to how beaten up the members were, they were essentially covered in various sizes of bandages, all handmade by the team.

“These bandages seem a bit too big, are you sure you made this bandage properly?” Maise asked, a bit suspicious of the slightly enlarged bulges on the bandage around her waist and legs.

“Sorry, we never learnt first aid during my school, so this is the best we can do.” Ceres smiled grimly while finishing up.

“Alright, Maise, you okay to walk? I can’t keep carrying you on my back in the event you get attacked. Let’s take a short break and prepare to move..” Just as Ceres was about to continue, the warehouse entrance was forcibly opened!

10 participants wearing light armour and various weapons such as wrenches, fireman axes and energy pistols rushed through the door, surrounding them. Ceres and the team were caught off-guard, with Ceres falling flat on his butt in shock. “What..? I swear there was no one around!”

The 10-man group formed a triangle formation around them, with 4 at the entrance of the warehouse and three at either side.

Maise smirked as she and her now-conscious teammates got up, walking towards the four participants at the door.

Ceres had a look of betrayal on his face, while Trissa was continuously shivering with anger, but her face had a weird smile that seemed a bit creepy, as though she was mentally shocked by the betrayal.

“Who knew outers were so easy to trick!” Maise and the rest of her team laughed. “You even wasted all these medical resources on us, thanks but we didn’t need them!”

Team Dumpling was betrayed!