Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

Kieran hurriedly took off his exosuit, a dawn of realization hitting him that a bomb may have been planted on his exosuit.

As he threw away his exosuit to the ground and started running towards the team, he dived onto the ground, covering his neck as he braced for the explosion that never happened.

After a good 10 seconds, he turned around suspiciously, noticing that the exosuit didn’t blow up.

Gwen’s brain burned even harder, a flowchart of endless decisions running rapidly through her head. She immediately landed on the closest possibility! Gwen finally had a wide smile on her face as though she had solved an impossible math problem, declaring it to her team out loud.

“Haha, I finally found out the answer! It is the decapitation strategy, where the objective is to destroy the head! And how Ceres wanted to achieve that was to stuff a hidden bomb into the exosuit, as I am an exosuit repairer! Since it’s so hard to get good exosuits in this third stage, I would definitely want to repair it!”

“And as I repair it, a proximity or some sort of trigger will blow the entire exosuit in my face and kill me! I have seen through your ways. You may think to have fooled me into believing that you only employ large explosives that can blow up anything, but I know you are good at small explosives too!” Gwen smirked as the rest of the team finally caught on to the train of reasoning and now fully understood the situation.

Kieran finally rejoined the team in his basic clothes, though he still retained a knife. He was so afraid of blowing up that he even left his energy pistol behind. “So, what you’re saying is that there is a minor bomb inside that will kill a single person if someone tried to repair it?”

“Exactly and we’re now going to defuse the bomb by triggering it from afar! Ranged, form up and aim. I’m not going to leave an unexploded mine this close to OUR flag.” The team immediately got into a firing formation, with the defensive wall formed by brawlers who carried massive shields and the ranged riflemen who aimed their rifles through the gap in the shields

“It should only be a small explosion but keep your shields at the ready in case some of the debris hit us!” Some of the team members groaned at Gwen’s statement, feeling a bit restless at the overtly meticulous decisions, only barely gripping their shields.

“FIRE!” The ranged rifles shot both energy and kinetic projectiles at the exosuit, hitting it! But instead of a small explosion, an unexpected enormous exploding ball of fire blew out from the exosuit, causing a searing heatwave and shockwave on the shields that were also sent flying back, knocking the formation into disarray.

The shock in the air also gave a severe concussion to Gwen’s team. The explosion was so severe that no one on the team could have expected it. They had assumed that it would at most be a simple small bomb.

At about five seconds after the explosion when the air was still rumbling, fifteen shadows jumped forwards from all around them, ambushing Gwen’s team.

It was Team Zone 17, and they easily pushed past the defensive wall of the disorganized team of Gwen, who was hastily trying to gain some semblance of order.

Gwen was only slightly affected by the shock, thanks to her well-placed earplugs and mouthguard that prevented her from getting knocked out easily, having prepared them in the past.

However, the rest of her team weren’t so fortunate, farsighted or prudent enough to listen to her. Most of them were well-trained in combat but not for such unexpected scenarios that could be equivalent to a missile strike. How could any team formation possibly combat that?

The fight was hectic, with Gwen trying to reform the formation, but half of her team members were shell-shocked, reducing the effectiveness of all her previous plans. She never planned for half her team to be knocked out of the fight this early on.

Seeing as the battle was already lost from the start, Gwen shouted a retreat command, with them being chased by Team Zone 17 in various directions. The team members were even weaker individually when split up, causing the team to lose more than half their members.

Only Gwen made it out in her direction, causing her to be out of range with the remainder of her team. While she still retained enough points to enter the main competition, she couldn’t help but be frustrated at herself for falling into the trap.

She wanted her classmates who were also her team members to enter the competition successfully with her command ability and exosuit repair skills, but she had lost more than half of them.

She wasn’t an explosive expert, so she also couldn’t wrap her head around how Ceres stuffed a grenade in without Kieran noticing the abnormality in his exosuit.

Little did she know that Ceres was one of the fastest hands on the Glucose Rush game, and could smear a good amount of explosive paste between defensive plates in a split second.

“Hey, wasn’t it supposed to be a small explosion?” Braton asked as he continued chasing some stragglers with Erik, watching Trissa smile with glee as she chased way ahead of them through the rooftops, not flying in the open sky as it was too dangerous.

“You don’t understand Braton, Ceres always goes big for explosions. If he says small, it means slightly less than a warhead. But if he says big, now that’s a problem.” Erik replied, staring fondly at Trissa’s smile. Braton was a bit off-put by how much Erik was infatuated with Trissa, especially considering that he himself has never heard the girl talk before.

To be quite frank, Braton had not even registered that the girl existed at the orphanage before. He was surprised Ceres had even an inkling of familiarity with Trissa at all.

“Yo man, you really like her? She’s real good in combat, but she gives me the creeps bro. That smile she gives every time she’s fighting…”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I find her absolutely elegant, and she can swap to being cute too, you guys just haven’t seen it yet because… well. I... I don’t know if I can pull up the courage to ask her out.”

“Erik, she hardly responds to anyone, even you. I never heard a single word from her since we met, so I’ll say if you ask her out, the answer will be ambiguous at best.” Braton shrugged his shoulders and walked off.

“Fuck you.” Erik sighed as he continued looking longingly at Trissa. He was trapped in infatuation!

As Trissa finished off the last straggler by plunging the knife deep into the base of his spine and slicing it all the way upwards to the neck in one clean motion, Braton and Erik decided to treat that as just a VR thing.

They were quite sure that she was inherently a nice moral, decent girl.

Very nice and not weird at all.

***

“So, you finally stopped running.” Chad heaved as he stood in front of Ceres, who was also breathing hard. They’ve been at this wild goose chase for close to twelve hours now, only intermittently stopping at certain flags such as Gwen’s team.

They were standing in the middle of a church chapel that kept the aesthetics since a thousand years ago. Ceres was at the top of the altar standing behind a podium while Chad was at the church door, ready to attack.

However, Chad remains wary, knowing that Ceres had a headstart of a few minutes. The church could have easily been planted with small explosives - he had no idea how or what Ceres had in store, forcing him to stop and scan the area.

There was a control flag next to the altar, and its owners were now hiding behind the pillars and pews that were all pushed to the side near the windows.

They cowered as though they were watching the collisions between the two major gods, some of them staying at the ready to try and take advantage of any openings, while the rest prayed to the specific god that this church worshipped.

The statue being worshipped by those who wished to remain in the competition was an Ebsian God, which was one of the various deities that the Ebsian Church worshipped.

They were allowed to spread their religion through the Loeric Empire freely, which earned the Emperor a few major benefits in terms of technology and diplomatic support.

The spectators that were cowering out of sight viewed the event with mixed feelings and thoughts.

“Please, please please I don’t want to get kicked out, how do I explain to my parents the loss?”

“Maybe we can backstab whoever comes out onto! No way the winner will be unscathed, it’s our chance to win some points!”

“Oh my god, look at the size of Chad’s muscles, I’ll pay any amount to snuggle in them.”

The two opponents stared at each other. “The final flag, Chad. Ready for your first loss?” Ceres smirked, but behind the confident façade, he was racking his brains.

Having used the extra time he bought to place traps around the church wasn’t enough, seeing as he only had enough time for two.

On top of that, he was trying to figure out how to ignite the latent strength that he believes resided within him. He had managed to pull it out during the last fight with the middle-class slovesa, so he was attempting to decipher the conditions.

“I’m ready to smash your fucking face in!” Chad dashed, almost closing the gap immediately. But as he raised his right arm to punch Ceres face in, he saw a small smirk and a blossoming ball of fire from the podium.

It was a proximity mine laid by Ceres, ejecting projectiles and shrapnel only towards Chad.

But this time, Ceres too was caught in the explosion! In such an enclosed area, there weren’t a lot of ways Ceres could win, but by sacrificing himself and his position he could potentially deal damage without triggering Chad’s suspicion, which he did.

The two of them were sent flying opposite of each other by the explosion that shattered all the church’s windows and knocked out the pitiful owners of the flag that were cowering behind the pillars and pews, knocked out by the shockwave.

Ceres flew into the wall behind, creating a large depression in the metallic wall behind the statue.

Chad was the direct recipient of the blast, and even he couldn’t shrug that off, being blown out of the church away from the altar, crashing through the door.

He had not expected Ceres to be willing to blow up a mine this close to the both of them. "That’s borderline insanity!"

Thankfully, Ceres had more experience with failed explosions than Chad, letting Ceres avoid major shock damage from the explosion by twisting his body and having specific shock armour and padding in the internals of his exosuit. He was still hurt badly, but not as bad as Chad was.

“Condition one: be badly damaged” Ceres checked off a condition, like a mad scientist ticking off a checklist: filled with the effects of an unknown medicine on his own body.

He was still running the test on how to activate the same effect that he experienced during the middle-class slovesa fight.

Despite the surprise attack, Chad got up way faster than Ceres and stumbled through the church door about three minutes later, but blood was dripping out of his ears and his eyes were bloodshot red.

Ceres already had his multi-set to playback the audio recording from his fight with the middle-class slovesa, piping the sounds directly into his ears.

“Condition two: be reminded of the power of friendship” Another tick.

Despite this, Ceres couldn’t feel any fighting spirit welling up, especially seeing the miserable state that Chad was in.

Not even the ‘king’ could remain unscathed after an explosion to the face! At least Ceres was slightly sheltered behind the podium, which blocked a good amount of the blast.

Chad walked slowly towards Ceres, his brawler exosuit frontal defensive plates burnt from the explosion and punctured by the various pieces of shrapnel that lodged themselves in.

The back of the exosuit was crushed by the impact when he flew out the church door! “I am a proud member of the Athen Family! How dare you insult me and my family! I am not someone a weak fucker like you can defeat through petty tricks like this!” He wasn’t thinking straight, not realizing that Ceres had been purposefully taunting him.

Ceres remained stoic, trying to induce the fighting aura that he remembered from before. “Why the fuck isn’t it coming out? Didn’t Erik say it was my power of friendship?” Ceres felt that his entire fantasy of being the main character who can summon massive power at a critical juncture collapsed in his head.

He had actually believed seventy percent of it, especially when he watched the replay of his own fight. If that wasn’t a hero moment, what was it? But it was all gone now! “Where’s my fucking superpower? I had it before!”

As Chad slowly inched over to Ceres, Chad’s smile grew wider as he made it back to where the podium previously was. “Out of tricks?! You can forget about joining the main competition because I’m going to end your run right here and now!”

Chad lunged forward in a flash with his fist arm nocked back, ready to launch a devastating punch! The air rippled from the movement, while Ceres desperately tapped a button on his multi to activate his last trap!

Another blossoming flower of flames erupted right under the both of them, but it wasn’t fast enough to stop Chad’s punch from nearing Ceres’s face. Ceres tried to dodge but his brain screamed that it was far too late.

Both of them were destined to be severely hurt here – Chad to the second last mine, and Ceres to the single punch!

But as the second placed mine beyond the podium was exploding, the VR world suddenly froze, with Chad’s fist a sliver of an inch away from Ceres’ nose, both frozen in their movement positions.

Even the bystanders who were just watching in awe as the titans clashed in front of them had their faces frozen, their mouths agape at the ensuing shockwave that was the combination of Chad’s punch through the air and the explosions by Ceres’ mines.

Chad and Ceres couldn’t move a single muscle, their bodies locked, and Ceres had an inkling this wasn’t his superpower. Since when was he able to freeze time? This was a VR world, so it must be whoever was controlling it.

[ All participants, the number of current participants have fallen within the 3072 slots needed for the main competition. To this effect, there is no reason to continue running the qualifier stage. If you are hearing this in the VR World, you have qualified for the main competition!]

Ceres was stunned. What was even the point of the points system? Wasn’t it supposed to last longer? Ceres held absolute certainty that he would’ve come out on top of Chad, despite the fist being right in front of his face.

Chad too cursed in his head, swearing at whoever paused the VR World.

They must have been watching this fight to choose this very moment, it was too much of a coincidence.

Across the VR server map, a good amount of relieved students faced their deaths in a frozen state right in front of them, only to be saved at the very last second to enter the main competition.

Which idiot was controlling the examination even? Too many confusing questions popped up in Ceres’ head.

Naturally, Ceres was a bit too inexperienced to understand the intricate details of ticketing, marketing and advertising that was the main source of revenue for this competition.

How could they ever let the two stars of the show knock each other out that early?

***

[Well, the end of the third stage ended with a cliffhanger! Ceres vs Chad, the two will definitely meet again head-to-head in the main competition! I regret to state that all bets of either side winning with 999 Casino Athen will be lost as it was considered a draw! Please look forward to the next round of bets a month later! Please read the terms and conditions before requesting a refund.]

[In the main competition, will Gwen make a comeback in the exosuit repairer category, or will Chad continue to retain his position as the ‘king’? Or maybe Ceres will be the dark horse and blow up the competition? Stay tuned after this short 1-hour commercial break, where we will have a deep dive into the performances so far!]

The restaurant was filled with a mix of boo and cheers, as many had betted on Ceres to win, while some of the more pessimistic ones betted on Chad to win! Nobody had expected a draw, and especially such an unsatisfactory ending at that!

Still, a small subset of viewers, specifically those at Mrs Qiu’s Dumpling store were happy that none of the main four Team 17 were eliminated, working together as a functional team and making it to the main stage.

Ceres was definitely the star of the show, pulling away Chad from the playing field and using him to accelerate the killing of multiple participants, inadvertently making the stage end earlier.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones killing, though they did do a significant amount of damage to other participants.

Ceres’s kill count was in the hundreds, but Chad’s was in the thousands. By doing this taunting and subsequent chase, he reduced the chance of his team being eliminated by Chad as he was the only target.

But Ceres didn’t expect the stage to end so fast, especially not before killing Chad. He actually believed he had a chance if he managed to activate his superpower again.

The various diners went into a more talkative mood, discussing the various videos and clips that were now being circulated amongst the public.

A great deal was focused on the cliffhanger of a duel between Ceres and Chad. As they chatted over the next half hour, finally the main stars of the show entered the restaurant.

Team Zone 17 had made it past the qualifiers!