Ceres Chaos [Exosuit Progression]

“Okay, this should be about a kilometre from Halyon right now.” Ceres activated the H.T. mode, trying to spot Halyon. Surprisingly he realized he could not, but he could see Oswa in the grodaw farm, trying to desperately herd back what remained of the grodaws.

The range of his vision was far shorter than he expected, about 750 meters maximum. Could it be trained? And why did he need to feel hunger? Ceres intended to solve all these questions here before embarking on his ‘domestication’ mission.

With Halyon currently tied to the top of the fishing pole just above the theoretical mawsie leaping height, it served as a good distance marker.

As Ceres walked back towards Halyon, he could see him glow in the distance through the cavern walls like a bright lighthouse. He truly was the perfect lamp post to gauge. “He really can’t control his emotions at all, can he?”

“What the hell have you been doing? I almost died! One of the mawsies almost leapt up to this height! You have to put me higher!” Halyon shouted from the top of the fishing pole, where he dangled.

“So you want to remain up there?”

“Yes… I mean NO! Let me go right now or I swear I’ll tell your mom, your father of all the bad things you’re doing to me right now.”

“You’re really running out of ideas up there. Don’t you know the violent Ceres was an orphan?” Ceres laughed.

“Oh yea, keep laughing outer scum, I’ll beat your puny rebel ass when I get out of here… Wait, come back, I was joking, it was just banter! Banter between friends, am I right?” Halyon switched from aggression to friendless in a split second, allowing Ceres to visualize the colour changes in H.T. mode.

Ceres slightly suspected that Halyon was either bipolar, or he was far too easy-going and just let anything that came to his mind blurt out. How did a person like this even get into the enforcers? Ceres found the Keepers’ selection process quite bizarre.

One small thing he noticed was how his hunger slightly abated when he got close to Oswa or Halyon, but intensified when he moved away from them. Ceres felt as though the unknown body modifications he received made him a groupie. Were his cells telling him to be a socialite?

Considering that he just ate food quite recently as well, he should not be feeling hungry at all, but this hunger did not stem from the stomach, but rather his entire body. He especially noticed the hunger would kick in a few minutes after he exerted any kind of strength.

“Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only converted…” Ceres pondered how was his body fuelling his increased energy consumption. When he was in the workshop he hardly slept nor ate anything while he worked non-stop. But when he was out here, the hunger kicked in almost every hour, and he did feel slightly tired.

Where did the energy come from? Ceres had a vague feeling it had something to do with H.T. mode. He found it hard to believe that it was not anything related, but he had to find a special place to delve deeper into it.

Ignoring the screaming Halyon, Ceres told Oswa about his plans before heading off into a cavern much further away, about three kilometres away. He left his heavy exosuit back at the base, while only carrying the spiked mace with him in case he got trapped.

They were slightly heavy and meant to be used in tandem with the heavy exosuit, but he was worried about going feral in the heavy exosuit and doing some real damage.

Before he got started, he slightly blocked the entrance to the cavern by moving some large boulders over. He was slightly impressed at his strength – he would have never been able to do this back during the competition.

Ceres recalled how he went feral when he first fell into the chasm, so he felt this was the right distance and area to do it. With the entrance partially blocked, it served as a self-barrier to prevent himself from breaking out.

“Well, even if I go feral, at most I’ll just dig towards one of the grodaws again. This time I’m aware of it, so it shouldn’t be too hard to control it.” Sitting down cross-legged, Ceres closed his eyes and began to relax, letting himself slowly focus on what was inside him.

The hunger within started to increase rapidly, much faster than when he attempted it with Oswa. Ceres opened his eyes and managed to spot Oswa and Halyon with the H.T. mode through the walls. “Holy shit, wasn’t the range 750 meters?” Right now it felt like he could see up to five kilometres if he wanted to.

He quickly noted the directly proportional relationship between the level of hunger and the range of vision. “So my body is hunting for the colours.. but why? Those colours are emotions, not food. And so far, humans remain the brightest source.”

Suddenly, Ceres had a ridiculous thought. What if his body was converting emotions into energy? Were emotions even tangible in the first place? If it wasn’t, why could he perceive it in the first place?

Following that hypothesis, the reason why he was not hungry in the town was that he was surrounded by humans. The H.T. mode was directly pointing him towards the sources of emotions, which was why he even tunnelled towards the grodaw back when he fell into the chasm.

Ceres quickly took out an additional mawsie skewer that he kept previously, eating it and seeing if it satisfied the hunger. He visibly saw Oswa disappear from the vision range, while the hunger subsided a fair bit. “It works! But why do I feel like it’s not enough?”

Waiting for another half an hour, Ceres saw Oswa’s light come into view again, despite him not moving. “It seems food is not very effective, and my body somehow thinks emotions are the best source of energy!”

The ramifications of this were huge for Ceres. If he were to enter a city with millions of people, would he not have infinite energy? Just like how he did not have to eat nor sleep in a town of a hundred people, he could potentially work non-stop.

Forget that, he could remain in peak combat form all the time. Would his body be even more enhanced than what it was now?

However, Ceres noted the downside of what would happen when he was alone. His hunger would turn him feral, causing him to potentially attack sources of emotions. He might even attack another human if he came across them alone.

“And who knows if my rate of energy consumption would remain the same. The human body’s metabolism sometimes slightly adapts to the intake of food, and I have no doubts that it would be similar. It could be a never-ending exponential need”

Ceres also did not like the fact that H.T. mode’s range was dependent on an external variable of how many people there were around him.

What if he needed to fight the enforcers in the city in the future? Could he not rely on the vision due to all the interference from other humans? He had to quickly figure out a way to train it to remain at the maximum range possible without turning feral as well.

For now, Ceres decided to do a time test. How long would it take before he reached the verge of becoming feral? He sat quietly and waited. As time passed, he began to think more about what happened so far.

Since he arrived in the chasm, he had been on a somewhat breakneck pace. He felt completely out of place, thrown five years into the future.

According to what Halyon had told him, apparently, he has been vilified by all the inners as the reason for the mass riots. Ceres had yet to figure out why did he even collapse in the final fight.

Too many confusing things were happening from his point of view. His friends missing, Oliver Athen was in charge of the planet instead of a Hawthorn, Cardenia and Senia disappeared, and himself stuck with a weird body.

Then, a group of subterranean dwellers he had never even heard of before led by his instructor, feral human tribes called the Chosen who were apparently religious coupled with Keepers that could control up to five autonomous ‘partners’ using a secret technology.

What in the world was even going on? Ceres couldn’t make sense of it all.

Previously he had always been one-track-minded, solely training and focusing on winning the competition. Life was so much simpler back then. Now, he was somehow considered a public enemy by the inners. Could he even return to the city anymore?

Ceres feared for his friends. If he was considered a public enemy, then what about those related to him? The orphanage? The Gladius?

Ceres felt some sort of hint that someone or something was pulling the strings all around him. For now, his aim solely rested on Oliver Athen.

From everything he had gathered, it seems that Oliver Athen and his Five Families were the ones who came up on top.

The story he heard from Oswa further verified that they might have done something similar to other original colonist families in the past. Was this all part of a political ploy to remove rivals?

Ceres wondered if they were originally targeting Cardenia instead of him. Was he just a scapegoat that just got caught up in the wave? He didn’t feel it was so likely, otherwise, why would the enforcers and Keepers put so much effort into catching him?

Perhaps it was to make sure he remained silent, but why did they not kill him in the last five years? Was some other force like the rebellion hiding and protecting him?

Ceres did not think that was plausible – he had hardly heard anything about a ‘rebellion’ when he was in the competition.

So if no other force was hiding and protecting him, why is he not dead? In fact, it looked as though he had gotten a significant boost in almost every aspect of his body. It did not make sense for Oliver Athen to declare him dead yet keep him alive for five years straight and even improve him.

“Halyon mentioned me being ‘Drone C’, but why would I be called a ‘drone’? Unless…” It finally clicked in his head – he must have been somehow related to the ‘secret technology’ that the Keepers had developed.

Ceres recalled the intense reaction he felt when he touched the Keeper’s exosuit spine. Something must be hidden inside that exosuit – Ceres had to go back to the workshop and pry it open immediately. The domestication mission could wait till later, this was far too important to ignore right now.

Ceres tried to stand up, but suddenly realize that he felt much heavier. When he looked down, he almost shouted in shock. His entire skin was now encased in some sort of black glossy scale armour, made out of black goo that slowly seeped out from every pore, solidifying into layers that rose up higher and higher. It was the black-scale armour.

“This is the same as when I fought the Keepers in the research lab!” Ceres recalled the bblack-scalearmour he had. Right now, the black goo was in the process of hardening all over his skin, though Ceres hardly felt anything. In fact, the black goo felt perfectly like a part of his body, as though it has always been there.

Instead of trying to stop the process, Ceres watched as the black armour finally took proper shape, stopping below his neck. While it retained the overall humanoid shape of Ceres’s body, Ceres noted that it was not a perfect replica. The arms, chest and legs looked like scales, while the rest seemed to be made of rounded metal.

Sharp short hair-like spikes jutted along the forearm, while his hand became like claws, each finger with a deadly tip that glinted in the light. The scales on his legs were much larger, and they seemed to flow in tandem with Ceres’s heartbeat.

On his back, Ceres felt something like heat radiators, but he could not exactly see what it was, only knowing that his back felt extremely cool yet protected.

“Am I some sort of warrior arthropod now?” Ceres did not have a mirror, so he planned to head towards Oswa’s house to get one. Completely forgetting about the time test, he picked up the mace and was about to begin making his way back towards the partially blocked entrance when he suddenly stopped, realizing that the mace that was meant to be used in tandem with his heavy exosuit felt as light as a feather.

“Right, I should test out my strength…” Ceres smiled as he put the mace to the ground, positioning himself properly before throwing his full-strength punch at a random large stone in the middle of the cavern.

The punch was so fast and strong that the air rippled visibly as his fist hit the rock with a large BANG.

It was not enough to demolish the rock but as he stared at the fifty-centimetres deep crater that was formed by the punch, Ceres was more than satisfied. Right now, his absolute strength was much more than what he had when he fought the mawsie horde.

Ceres was about to throw another punch when he suddenly felt dizzy, his vision continuously swapping between normal and new.

Was he going feral? Ceres quickly took out whatever food he brought with him and ate it to stave it off.

He clambered hastily over the partially blocked entrance, making his way back to the grodaw farm. With every step he took, however, the hunger started to yearn more and more.

***

Halyon wasn’t having the time of his life, but he was enjoying this period of peace much more than when Ceres was actively using him as bait. He seemed to have become content with being continuously tied up at the top of the ‘fishing rod’. A sudden loud rumble through the cavern shook him awake from his content suffering.

“Weird, what was that loud bang just now anyway? It sounded like some sort of earthquake or plate shifting… Ceres is that you?”

Squinting his eyes, Halyon saw a human in dark black scale armour stagger towards him. He assumed it was Ceres, but why does he look like he was possessed by some sort of insect? Halyon could not really get a good look at the man, as the human’s face was pointing downwards. He recalled fighting Ceres in the research lab, but for some reason this black-scale armour was different…

“Hey, you alright? What’s wrong? Maybe if you let me down, you’ll feel better… Yes, that’s right, come here and untie me…” Halyon beckoned to Ceres, who stumbled towards him in a daze.

But as Ceres got closer and closer to the base of the ‘fishing rod’, Halyon started to feel a bit weird. Suddenly, his’s eyes directly stared at Halyon, causing Halyon to scream!

“AHHHHH! GET AWAY FROM ME!” Halyon screamed, struggling furiously against the rope with sincere effort. Ceres’s face was now a web of black blood vessels, which seemed to pulsate in rhythm, culminating in his eyes which have already turned dark, forming a contrast with his brown skin.

As Ceres got even closer, Halyon finally fainted from shock, dangling lifelessly. Ceres finally chuckled to himself: “I should really get a mirror.”