Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

The surging horde of mawsies rushing the town gate far outnumbered the measly group of four guards and the captain. Ceres could already see some of the guards trembling, their hands tightly gripping the rifle.

The captain was busy checking a static turret emplacement, outfitted with four large energy cannons that began to stir to life. “That’s not going to be enough for the horde…” Ceres mumbled, his head swivelling quickly to come up with a plan.

“Hey, give it to me!” Ceres dropped his grodaw container on the ground and ran up to one of the nearer guards, tapping him on the shoulder to ask for the energy rifle. He was sure he could do a much better job than this obviously unprepared guard. What kind of town was this?

“Wha... who the hell are you?” The guard turned around, revealing a much younger face than expected. The guard seemed to be only 15 years old, reminding Ceres of how he looked like when he was young, apart from the equally pale skin that seemed to be common underground.

“Mercer, give him your rifle and head back to the armoury to grab another one!” The captain hastily ordered. The young guard nodded his head vigorously in agreement, finally realizing they needed all the help they could get.

Before the young guard left, Ceres grabbed him by the arm: “If you have a spear or a sword, bring it for me too - Bring all the spears and swords you have!”

“Are you crazy? You can’t expect to win in a melee against that many mawsie; No, not even one of them!” The young guard was startled but quickly nodded again in agreement.

Who was he to argue with a man who could leap 20 meters?

“Just do what he says and go! FOCUS, HERE THEY COME!” The captain roared, leaping up into the pilot seat of the defensive turret, with the heat emitted by the energy cannons visible through the vibrating air.

There was no more time for talking, the wave of mawsies was now almost at the first defensive barricade. However, they were suddenly deflected by a barrier, forty meters from the barricade.

It was about 5 meters high, the hexagonal patterns glistening with yellow sparks showing the protective energy grid deployed by the town. The barrier glowed at each of the impact points that the mawsies slammed into.

“In range! Open fire!”

The captain and the other three guards along with Ceres fired energy beams at the mawsies. The four energy cannons slammed into the mawsies, carving holes through their dense cobalt-blue shell. However, the injured mawsies continued to struggle and slam against the barrier, forcing the captain to spend time finishing off each mawsie.

Ceres had no trouble aiming despite the rifle having no scope, his vision seemingly enhanced enough to see each detail of the mawsies. “Wow, I’m shooting much better than I used to in the Shattered Empire!”

The cobalt blue armour of each mawsie was exceedingly hard to pierce with the simple energy rifles they had, seeing as they were able to survive in lava temperatures. Only the four energy cannons could do some serious damage, but they were not doing it fast enough.

Ceres tried aiming directly at their main body, but with little effect as their armour shrugged the weak energy beam off. “Looks like the elderly man was right about their armour being super thick.”

He observed where the other guards were aiming and noticed that they aimed at the joints of each claw and the base of the tail if it was exposed.

In order to effectively neutralize a mawsie, they had to hit each one a minimum of three times, but even then, the mawsie could still use its main body to charge forward.

With the sheer number of mawsies attacking, they would take too long to finish off every mawsie if they followed this method.

Already the barrier was showing signs of strain, the hexagonal grid flickering as the mawsies started to attack the barrier across its entire length. They bashed their claws against the barrier, forcing their body against it.

“Stop them from spreading out, the barrier won’t be able to hold! Hit the edges!” The captain ordered.

Ceres compiled, continuing to fire with precision. As his energy beams charred a hole through the joints of a mawsie’s claws, it shrieked and tried to retreat, but its aggressive brethren physically prevented it from moving back. Instead, it was squashed towards the barrier, forcing it into a fight or flight mode in which it chose to fight to the end.

The bodies of the neutralized mawsies were cramped towards the front, while the mawsies at the back started to crawl on top of them, attacking the barrier from an angle above as well.

At the rate they were stacking the bodies, the mawsies might be able to climb over the energy barriers!

The captain despaired as he watched the frail barrier start to disintegrate from multiple impacts. His turret began to overheat as well, the coolant system chugging with weird sounds due to the lack of maintenance.

How was he supposed to fight back against such a swarm with only four people? He began to consider falling back to the main door and letting it take the brunt. Hopefully by then the mawsies might get bored and leave.

Before he could give an order, suddenly he heard Ceres shout: “Open the middle portion of the barrier. Use the spare energy to strengthen the flanks!”

The captain turned and looked incredulously at Ceres, who now had dropped his rifle and carried five spears and three swords in his arms. Mercer, the young guard who had finally returned, took up Ceres’s previous firing position, keeping up the same rate of fire.

Ceres walked confidently to the front, forty meters beyond the barricade despite the energy beams flying past him from the guards. He stood right behind the middle portion of the barrier as he watched the squirming mass of mawsies try to lunge at him, sticking four spears on the ground headfirst in an arc behind him.

“That’s crazy, why would I open the barrier in any area!” The captain argued. Even if Ceres was able to run and leap that far, it did not mean the captain had unconditional trust in him.

What if Ceres failed? The guards would be immediately overrun, and the town would be defenceless.

“Trust me, we’ll funnel all the mawsie here and finish them! I’ll buy time for your cannons to cool down!” Ceres shouted back as he held one spear in his hand and examined it. It was a simple fibreglass nylon mix, with a base metal serving as the entire structure. A fairly ancient design, but serviceable.

It was a bit more sturdy than the lantern staff used by the elderly man, but might not hold up, especially in the way that Ceres was going to abuse it.

“No, no, no that’s stupid! You can’t hope to fight against them in a melee...” The captain was stopped by the elderly man, who finally recovered enough to stand properly.

“Trust the boy, he knows what he’s doing. If anything, you should have witnessed how strong he is.”

The captain knew that the elderly man did not trust people easily and also realized it was better than the guaranteed alternative of the barrier failing at the current rate.

“Lawson, drop the barrier at Section G8 and only G8! Open a section of two meters by two meters!”

“Captain, are you serious? Your defensive barricades won’t be able to hold them for long! Who is that idiot standing there anyway?!”

“Just do it! If anything, we’ll retreat to the town gate. Use the additional energy to bolster the edges of the barrier!”

The barrier began to split apart in the middle, a square-sized hole suddenly appearing to allow the mawsies to flood through.

The energy beams began to focus fire on the opening, which the mawsie were now scrambling to get through. The charred corpses piled up at the hole, forming a natural blocker of sorts and only allowing one mawsie could come in at a time.

Ceres readied himself in a fighting stance with his first spear, the four spears stuck into the ground like poles behind him. He breathed in deeply, exhaling loudly. “Come on, black-scale armour. If you’re going to show up, now’s the time!”

However, nothing happened. As the mawsies became to flood in, the captain only saw Ceres trying a bunch of weird actions and positions.

“Come on! Activate! Bankai! Let’s go! Engage! Friendship! SYSTEM!” Ceres yelled as many keywords as he knew from before as he tried every hand sign known to man through the millenniums of culture.

Despite his efforts, nothing occurred.

“Hey, what the fuck are you doing?! Look out!” The captain yelled, causing Ceres to finally re-focus, noticing that the fight was already ahead of him.

He watched as the first mawsie rushed him from the exposed barrier, shrieking as it lunged towards him with a leap!

The captain was about to close his eyes to avoid seeing Ceres get eaten, but instead, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped as he watched Ceres’ combat instincts kick in.

Ceres immediately dashed forward at the same time as the leaping mawsie, ducking underneath it while his spear struck the mawsie twice in that short instance. The first strike made a small dent, knocking the mawsie slightly up higher.

The second strike came in less than a second later and thrust deep within the mawsie, immediately killing it as it pierced through its central brain in its main body.

Ceres quickly swung the spear downwards to place the impaled mawsie down on the ground, while using his foot as a pivot to pull the spear out. The next mawsie was already rushing towards him.

This time, the mawsie didn’t leap at him, instead charging towards him with its tail nocked back aiming at Ceres. The pointed sharp spike on the tail glistened dangerously as it flickered through the air in a forward strike.

Ceres dodged the incoming tail strike to the side, using his spear to strike towards the joints of its limbs. With three rapid strikes, he disabled its left claw, foreleg, and hind leg, causing the mawsie to crash forward due to the loss of balance. While flailing, the tail swiped at Ceres, but it was easy enough for Ceres to move backwards to avoid it.

Leaving the disabled mawsie to the guards who were still firing into the now open section of the barrier, Ceres began to methodically fight every mawsie that came in one by one into the barrier. It was only on the fourth mawsie that his spearhead had finally lost its sharpness, snapping off in the middle of the fight.

With a swift motion, Ceres leapt backwards to grab one of the remaining four spears placed in the ground behind. Wielding it up in a perfect swift motion, he lunged forward, piercing the fourth mawsie.

The backup spears finally came in handy, allowing Ceres to easily continue fighting while the guards tried to do as much damage to the mawsies that were funnelling in. Soon the body count started to pile inside, the corpses of stabbed mawsies stacked around Ceres to form a sort of channel.

It was near the last spear when Ceres suddenly shouted back to the captain: “Close the barrier for three minutes!”

“You heard him, Lawson, do it!”

The barrier closed while Ceres hastily dashed back to the nearest guard, grabbing his energy rifle. “Hey, what the hell?” The guard complained, thinking that Ceres had given up on fighting at the front, but instead, Ceres ran back to the corpses of mawsies.

Ceres checked each corpse, estimating the amount of damage done to each of them. Soon he found one with its tail intact.

“Good, now to get to work.” Selecting a spear with a still usable shaft, he used a sword to carve out the pointed sharp spike on the end of the tail, before he planned to attach it to the end of the spear shaft, serving as the spearhead.

He didn’t have any proper repair tools on hand, but he quickly used the rifle’s energy beam to melt the shaft and the spike in a crude form of welding. The tail spike should be sturdier than the previous spearhead, allowing him to crush and penetrate the mawsie’s armour. All this was done in not more than two minutes.

As he waved his newly improvised spear around, he rushed back to the shocked guard, placing the borrowed rifle back into his hands. “Now I’m really ready to fight, open the barrier!”

***

“Thanks for the help, Kai, we would not have survived that.” The elderly man bowed in apology to the captain. It was obvious that both he and Ceres were at fault for bringing the mawsies towards town.

“Oswa, we’re all part of the same town. Of course I would help you! It’s more concerning of the fact that you two encountered that many mawsies on your path here. I swore there should only be more than five in the vicinity, not this many.”

Captain Kai gestured to the piled-up corpses of mawsies, which numbered more than a hundred. They had been fighting for more than an hour, with Ceres panting hard as he slumped against the first defensive barricade.

The other four guards surrounded Ceres, excitedly asking him questions about how he managed to fight like that.

“I did not expect to encounter this many as well. On my end, it’s becoming even more dangerous to bring the grodaws out grazing. More and more vicious wildlife is appearing nearby recently.” Oswa agreed while he stared at Ceres nearby.

“Well thanks to your kid, we survived this wave and scared off the rest. Most likely the mawsies will not be coming back till two months later when they have more numbers. We should try to nip this problem in the bud, we’re having difficulties in our other parts of the town too.” Captain Kai said.

“That’s why I brought him here. Apparently, he lost his memory but with the way he fought, he must be some exiled warrior from the surface as well. Let him help around the town for a bit.”

“Hmm, I’ll let the town chief examine him first before we accept him. The last time we accepted a stray miner, he killed himself by jumping into a lava river due to depression. More importantly, what do we do with all these corpses of mawsies? I never dealt with them before.”

Oswa shook his head. “I’m just a grodaw farmer now, I hardly ever come across this many mawsie corpses myself… Has anyone even accumulated this much over the last century?”

“WAIT!” Ceres yelled as he overheard the conversation. He got up tiredly, walking towards the two of them. “If it’s possible I’ll like to use these corpses myself if that’s alright.”

“What in the world could you use them for?” Captain Kai asked curiously.

“I believe I can derive something out from their armour to improve your weapons and barricade, perhaps even your combat armour,” Ceres explained, motioning towards his improvised spear with a mawsie’s tail spike at the top.

“That’s good, but hardly any of us can fight in a melee like you just did. Regardless, the mawsie corpses belong to the town now. You’ll have to bring it up with the town chief later.”

Ceres was about to rebut that he was the one who killed the mawsies but stopped himself. Though he was the only reason why the defence managed to win against the mawsies, he was also the main reason why he attracted so many in the first place.

If it was not for the town barrier allowing him to funnel the mawsies in one by one and the supporting fire from the guards, he himself might have died along with Oswa.

This meant that the town had every right to the mawsie corpses, but after hearing the conversation between Oswa and Captain Kai, he had a strong inkling the townspeople might not know how to use them properly.

Ceres was also interested in meeting the town chief, who he assumed must have some form of contact with the surface.

Every town should have trade routes, and Ceres assumed that this town was no different.

Though, the number of guards was truly pitiful, being only a captain and four teenagers serving as guards. How bad was the situation in the town that they only had 15-year-olds left to defend against such a brutal wave?

Ceres felt some sympathy for them, but it did not detract from his final goal: finding out what the hell happened after the fight with Chad. He still had no inkling as to how long ago it was.

A week? Two months? It was hard to keep track of time underground, and Oswa himself was unable to tell Ceres the exact official date right now.

“Ey, boss, haulers standing by. Wha you wan dem to do?” Lawson asked on the radio.

“Just bring the corpses in behind the town gate, don’t want any other wildlife getting ideas about rushing our barrier to feed on them... Let’s go talk to the town chief.” Captain Kai ushered Ceres towards the town gate.