Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

Without any surprise, Maddy won his duel. The other participant was so badly burnt he was barely recognizable and most likely had to spend the next six months in a vat in order to heal, and even then, his skin and nerves will never return to the same condition, always requiring continuous medical attention.

What Erik said about Maddy’s objective resounded in Ceres’ head as he headed back to the Thorn Chamber.

Maddy’s goal seemed clear – get people as injured as possible and force them to rely on the Seras hospital. The examination council would foot the bill either way, so it was the Seras family’s way of grabbing as much public money as possible.

Ceres felt a bit disgusted that such a concept has been going on for so long and was only allowed due to the examination rules.

Frustration welling up inside of him, he had no other outlet than to vent it to Instructor X, who seemed to be enjoying his one-month stay in the Thorn Chamber so far.

“Wow kid you’re so gullible, do you really think the Loeric Empire as a whole wants to stop this practice?” Instructor X smiled as though he was teaching a three-year-old kid what the sky was.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret: Maddy isn’t the first guy to do this, and he won’t be the last. The graduation examination has but one purpose – to separate the best from the throngs of losers. And losers should stay exactly where they are, there are more than enough dead-end jobs to go around, somebody got to do them.”

“But they are actively destroying their own potential workforce! All these able-bodied people who could join the military properly instead of being wounded or suffering from post-traumatic disorder.” Ceres rebutted.

“That’s if you want to grow the military, but some people at the very top like to keep their jobs safe, if you know what I mean. The smaller the pool of applicants, the better it is for everyone. And no, despite whatever meritocracy you think exists here on this backwater resource planet, chances are you’re never getting out, forced to live here your whole life. Well, you got me though, so I’ll make sure you win and get out. You’re too good to stay here. You had me train you, after all.” The instructor nodded as though he was agreeing with himself shamelessly.

“Listen, Ceres, you were never one to think about all the politics or trends or how the country was run, you only focused on your goal of winning the competition since the start of the training camp, and that’s good enough. No individual can change this entire system on its head, so just get strong, be strong and maybe two hundred years down the line you can do something about it. How’s that?”

It was true, Ceres was somewhat of a training maniac and hardly focused on anything going around in the country. He didn’t even recognize the owner of the planet, nor had he cared about the Five Families College till the competition. That was how uncaring Ceres was about things that lay outside of his short-term goal.

But now that an overarching trend has been blatantly exposed to him through the mutilation of his friend Erik, it was hard for him to accept such things. Ceres could only treat Maddy as the manifestation of this evil concept and give it his all to crush him!

“I’ve looked at the videos, and it’s not looking good for you Ceres. Your sniper strategy might have paid off, but you don’t know what arena is coming next. Maddy focuses everything on how much damage his weapons can output with the least amount of resources consumed, and what type of damage matters a lot to him. His objective is to inflict maximum pain, which is the right thing to do for such a competition where killing isn’t allowed. Back in my day…” Instructor X lost himself in the ‘good’ old days of death duels, where people had to prove themselves by killing the opponent.

Ceres took the time to think about how he could counter such a battle style. Full defence? He didn’t have enough time to swap his speciality from light armour to heavy. Full mobility? It was risky, just a single hit would cause critical failure to the entire exosuit.

Maybe electronic warfare would be better to disrupt his weapons. Or maybe Ceres could counter it by going for maximum explosive damage. He was known as the ‘Bomber’ after all.

However. Maddy’s style was to utilize a heavy exosuit, which usually would be either a fixed siege type or a defensive knight. The exosuit would literally be like a mobile destroyer, brimming with close-quarter weaponry aimed at killing anything that came close.

Point defence, flamethrowers, shrapnel launchers. The exosuit featured four arms instead of the usual two.

Having more arms than the natural human body was tough on the nervous system, forming an additional burden, but Maddy has proven himself to be more than capable of using it.

To counteract the burden, the additional two arms didn’t have any hands but had weapons mounted to them instead, being more like an autonomous turret. The extra neural load required the exosuit to have a second processor within in order to handle it.

“The critical point is the second processor, with a single hit I can take out half of his weapons. He doesn’t have any thrusters either so going aerial might probably be good. But if the arena was a desert, I’ll be serving myself on a platter to him!”

It was a tough dilemma. In an actual conflict, the way to overcome such an obstacle was just simply to throw more damage at it. However, both Maddy and Ceres had the same time limit and only one set of equipment each, so they couldn’t throw more resources in.

Also, Ceres was a specialist in the lightweight category, meaning that stacking any more weapons would result in him moving much slower, losing the natural advantage.

“My main advantage over him is pure speed and distraction. He relies on overwhelming firepower as his advantage. It’s a direct battle of belief and I must win it!”

Instructor X finally got out of his rant, somehow able to listen to Ceres mumble to himself. “You’re on the right track kid. The only limitation you have is the time limit, as long as you can make it within three hours, everything is possible.”

He was right. There was no actual limitation on what you could attach to the exosuit, the restriction was time. Naturally, no special exotic or weapons of mass destruction banned by the Council were allowed, but it meant Ceres could make as many weapons or devices as he wanted.

“So if the speed of my repair is slower than the enemy’s, and his parameters are better, I either have to repair faster, better or make his ‘better’ parameters irrelevant.”

“Yes, you already said that last time kid, but how are you going to make his ‘better’ parameters irrelevant now? He’s going to do the same damage no matter what exosuit you run!”

Ceres recalled the three dragonflies that he used to have, but he couldn’t bring them in for the competition as it was considered ‘external help’.

Hence, he had not been using them for the competition. But what if he made them within the three hours? Could he use them for something? “Looks like I’ve landed on a winning strategy!”

***

Two days later, it was the duel between Ceres and Maddy for the quarterfinals! The two of them walked onto the stage, with the arena packed to the brim.

The mutilation done by Trissa as well as the circulating videos of Maddy’s actions during the group stage had hyped this match up to its limit, only slightly under the simmering hype of Chad vs Ceres.

It was probably the highest-viewed stream of the competition too so far, as well as the number of bets.

999 Casino Athen was so grateful that they even sent a VIP membership invitation to Ceres and Trissa, though he had been out of contact during the last two days of training.

The arena roared as the two participants took their position behind their assigned workbenches, with three random exosuits of the weight category being assigned to them. Ceres stared at Maddy, who was grinning widely.

“A pity neither of your friends made it past the quarterfinals. It is quite a shame that none of you will get past this stage. This is the limit of your abilities after all.” Maddy sneered as he cracked his hands, warming them up for repair.

Ceres had been trained to deal with insults and was able to control his emotions when repairing. He had been practising it ever since he duelled Adrian Seras in Glucose Rush.

But this time, he let the words hurt him directly, fuelling the fury that he had been keeping bottled up from when he first watched the video of Erik being mutilated.

He had also been out of contact for the last two days, not knowing that Braton and Trissa had lost their respective quarterfinals.

“I managed to pull out that strange nerval strength from within me before with the power of friendship, I know this time I can do it. The fucker is right in front of me, it’s now or never!” Ceres gritted his teeth and ignored Maddy.

Maddy continued jeering at him, but Ceres closed his eyes and focused on what he had been practising for the last two days. The full schematic of the three dragonflies appeared in his mind, the chip and wing design along with the metal casing all engraved in his memory.

As the timer counted down to zero, Ceres let the fury overwhelm him, creating a sort of silent simmering of rage boils under his skin. As his emotions reached a new height, he whispered to himself.

“Alright Ceres, time to prove you’re the main character of this fucking novel. Do it once more like the practice. Once more, with feeling.”

[The climatic duel is about to begin! This time, the arena location setting will be in the same city that the group stage was held in! Will Ceres get revenge for the mutilation of his teammates, or will Maddy prove that he has the right to do anything within the rules? Don’t look away, their repair skills will be put to the test in 5…]

Ceres took a deep breath, his eyes still closed. He expected it to be a different arena than the desert, and he had already three plans ready for the city arena, thinking hard about which to pick. Maddy thought that Ceres was trying to flush the emotions out of his mind, so he continued talking. “You probably think I’m scared by what your dear Trissa did, Ceres. The truth is..”

[3! 2!]

“I don’t even remember the name of your friend whom I tortured!”

At the count of zero, Ceres opened his eyes, blazing with fury as he immediately dashed to the chip and metal printer, using one hand for each while inputting the design rapidly.

His hands were reaching a blur as he typed on the monitor rapidly, pushing out memorized command after command in a swift manner, almost reaching Leonard’s levels of speed.

He let the anger drive him but still kept a relatively clear head, moving on to choosing the exosuit.

Maddy was caught off guard by the sudden movement but grinned as he too worked fast, not worrying about whatever Ceres was making. “There’s no need for me to counter him, he should be the one panicking now about how to counter me! My exosuit strategy is foolproof in a one-on-one scenario!”.

Without surprise, Maddy chose a defensive knight exosuit from the three random types and started stripping away all the defensive plating, intending to stuff as many weapons as possible into it along with two extra arms from another exosuit.

This way he wasn’t worried about not having the type of exosuit he wanted from the three random ones provided, as he would always strip them down anyway.

Despite Maddy’s assumption, Ceres was hardly panicking. He was following his own strategy too, perfected over the last two days. After choosing the exosuit, he started to overclock the metal printer, removing its safety limiters and maximizing its speed.

He also performed a rapid visual inspection of the printed chips, manually fixing many of the defects caused by the original chip printer while modifying its parameter. He was churning out an ungodly amount of chips, and even after an hour, the audience couldn’t figure out what the result meant to be.

[I can’t even begin to imagine what is Ceres working on, that’s way more than the number of processor chips needed for the exosuit, he has about fifteen of them right now! Maybe those are smart bombs, but the chips look a little bit too complicated to be worth it. Is it really okay to spend close to an hour on this?]

However, right at the one-hour mark, finally the audience could see what he was making. He was making three large dragonflies at the same time.

The dragonfly was about the length of a human hand, equipped with an optical camera and a laser welder, with a wireless battery that could keep it running for close to ten minutes continuously. It also had a single tiny claw arm that could magnetically pick up screws or lay components. It was essentially a versatile builder drone.

Ceres kept the emotions rumbling in his heart, focusing on the sadness and hurt that he felt from his friends failing and Erik being hospitalized. The emotions made him focus more on his work instead of derailing him, as he channelled the drive it gave to his exosuit and dragonflies.

As the first dragonfly became ready within five minutes, it took off and flew to the metal printer, carrying the casing for the other dragonflies over.

[I don’t believe it! Ceres is attempting to build an assembly line right here! He’s making automated drones to expedite his exosuit repair!]