Chapter 29: Chapter 27: The Second Stage!

"So, you want to hijack one of the inner schools and pump them full of resources to beat Five Families College?" Senia was startled. "There's no way you have enough resources to throw that many parties and pay for a whole school’s worth of kids."

"Senia dear, this is why you're still a secretary for the smartest person on this planet! I said top four in the exosuit category, right? So, all I have to do is find three kids and ‘grow’ them! In fact, maybe two might be enough, because Chad Athen currently is guaranteed a slot, while the rest is up in the air. Now finally watching the qualifiers is going to be exciting! During the second stage please pull up any promising exosuit repair participants, it's time to choose!" Cardenia smiled.

She knew she had a very short runway after the qualifiers were over, which was essentially four months until the actual graduation competition.

She had to find three kids and pay someone to do a massive crash course for them in order to ensure that only Chad Athen made it in.

"So, you finally found something worth your time on Athen, Cardenia." A remark came from a relatively handsome young male with slick back hair, except he was dressed in a formal imperial outfit of white and blue, pinned with a badge stating the Dynasty of Leoric.

The perfection of his face implicitly showed the amount of money put into the design of his genes from birth, along with numerous surgeries over the years to chisel it into perfection.

The emblem of the Dynasty of Leoric was a sword standing upright with a bonfire in the background. It was the logo that the First Emperor used in his rebellion and warmongering to unite the nearby planets into what is now known as the Loeric Empire.

Considering that the Dynasty of Leoric retained ultimate control over the imperial military to now and wasn’t afraid to purge criminals in mass, the meaning behind the logo still wasn't lost.

"My greetings to you, Imperial Prince Zachary, I didn't expect you to be here" Cardenia bowed, much more than what she did when talking to Oliver Athen previously. Disrespect to the Dynasty of Leoric could result in very 'unfortunate' circumstances, regardless of what number of prince Zachary was.

Cardenia was not too taken by the perfect look of Zachary, knowing that countless other imperial princes had the same look due to all of them being designer babies.

"Calm down Cardenia, I've already said not to call me prince, I'm only number 561th as of now. Only when I do truly have supporters then may I have a proper title and significant ranking." Zachary gave a gentle smile. "Have you forgotten my announcement of participating in the succession race a few months ago? I still intend to win your support for it, and now that I've heard your wonderful plan and you potentially earning the favor of the Athen family, I should try even harder, shouldn't I?"

Cardenia inwardly cursed to the high heavens, feeling as though she was just treated as a literal walking dispenser of political power. No wonder the previous representative of Athen committed suicide by walking out of an airlock.

She had just entered a political pit of a wager against Oliver Athen himself, and while she exuded confidence wholeheartedly, there was a tiny bit in her mind that was still unsure of whether she could actually win!

As a ‘true’ gambler, she decided to give it her all to win this.

"I will consider it more, this wager will take up most of my free time as you have heard. Perhaps we can continue this discussion after the competition is over."

Just as Zachary was about to pressure Cardenia more, the livestream for the qualifiers finally appeared in the middle of the ballroom and at the front. Everyone in the ballroom could also use their own multi to focus onto specific groups of students that they want to look at instead of following the main stream.

[It is finally time for the second stage of the qualifiers! As previously mentioned, the second and third stage will be conducted in series! This means any participant who cleared the second stage will immediately continue on to the third stage with no breaks whatsoever, or they will be automatically kicked otherwise!]

[With all the participants strapped in, the time now is 1700 hrs local Athen time, where the second stage will now begin! The details can finally be revealed to the viewers at home or elsewhere as to what exactly the format is!]

***

Ceres woke up in a devastated building. It was a collapsed apartment, and he was lying on the floor of the lobby, suffering from slight wounds.

The scenario felt so real that Ceres almost thought he woke up from another coma and that this was the orphanage destroyed. “What happened to Erik? Braton? Ardan!”

It’s been a month since the first stage of the qualifiers , the theoretical exam, and the four boys had bonded well enough to treat each other as real teammates, even though Ardan was not taking the competition this year.

They knew the qualifier needed to test both group and solo combat skill as well – hence the daily grinding on Shattered Empire and one-versus-one duels.

A few moments later he recalled that he had been waiting in the VR pod for the second stage to begin. He finally realized this was the first time in a long while that he actually felt a sense of isolation, which had been seemingly amplified.

“Thinking about my friends and getting emotional when in a disaster scenario, I’ll have to fix that.” Blaming his recent nerval jack procedure for the spike in emotions, he surveyed his surroundings.

The lobby was destroyed, with bits of broken furniture everywhere. Pieces of metal plates were seen scattered across the floor, some melted and some frozen. It felt like a great battle of war robots recently ravaged the place, not unlike how Ceres felt in some scenarios while playing Shattered Empire.

Except that this time, there was no pre-game lobby nor NPC shop to buy anything, he was alone and defenseless!

He had never actually experienced this, not even in Shattered Empire or when he first arrived at the orphanage, so this was brand new to him. He started to check what he had on him apart from his clothes, assuming that the second stage would’ve given him something.

Ceres hope he would find at least a set of tools, because there was no way he was going to cobble anything together without them. It will take him quite a while to make a simple knife and hammer just using the rubble around him.

Checking outside of the building, it seems that the rest of the area were also the remains of the high-rise apartment buildings. He was right smack in the residential district of some unknown city, but he hasn’t the slightest clue as to what the objective of the exam was.

To survive? To hunt? To defend? What was the scenario even? Are there other players or is this a solo test?

Ceres noticed piles of human corpses strewn across the street, mostly with a large puncture wound in the middle of their chest or with burnt flesh left on their shoulders that had a missing limb.

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“There’s probably either a large animal or multiple of them, not sure what type or size, but it’s better to not leave the building if necessary. What type of animal can burn off an entire arm though?” Ceres didn’t ponder too long, knowing that anything was possible in the VR world.

Hunkering down in the destroyed lobby, he started to scavenge for food and water, while keeping a keen eye out for any material that could potentially serve as a knife or a hammer, no matter how crude.

Ceres grew up in the workshop next to the electrical trashyard, giving him the scavenging skills necessary to survive in the collapsed high-rise apartment. What other people saw as trash; he saw as treasure.

He began to collect materials that fit his expected dimensions for his knife. Not wanting to simply use a piece of glass wrapped with cloth, he found a nicely cut piece of the metal blade that could act as something closer to the machete. The main problem now was making the handle, which should theoretically be made of stone and hollowed, with a screw or some form of strong adhesive to attach the knife to the handle.

Ceres was starting to lose hope amongst the rubble that was purely made of reinforced concrete and other carbon composites. The closest thing to a weapon he had apart from the piece of metal was a rugged steel ‘wire’ that cleanly snapped off the wireframe of the building.

The wire was about the size of a walking stick, which was okay for blunt attacks, but he wasn’t planning on beating a large monster to death, especially with the assumption that it had tusks the size of a human chest.

Luckily, the signs in the lobby indicated there was a mini garden that was connected to the lobby, which may have both fibers to act as a string or wood and smaller pebbles that can act as the handle.

Ceres cautiously made his way over, moving from the middle of the lobby where he woke up and his materials were, to the back of the lobby, opposite the entrance. The door to the mini garden was jammed, keeping the door only slightly ajar, forcing Ceres to squeeze through the gap.

Just as he squeezed through the gap, he looked up and saw three smaller figures, squatting next to a human corpse. The room was like a greenhouse where the ceiling had yet to collapse.

The ceiling seemed to be covered with soot, making the interior darker than expected during the day, forcing Ceres to squint.

They barely looked human with their silhouette under the dim light, or at least had the outline, and Ceres was just about to ask them if they were alright before he felt a sudden urge to dodge.

His body seemed to move under a foreign influence that felt like Ceres but not exactly, making him jump backwards as two unseen spears fell from the top. The spears were not ordinary spears but had an inbuilt resonating metal that allowed it to vibrate at high frequencies when someone held it!

It was a vibra-spear! A lot of resilience was needed to hold such a weapon, which wasn’t a problem for Ceres who spent his years in a workshop with various drills and tools.

“What was that? I never had my instinct kick in before! I must be getting super good at fighting!” Ceres thought to himself as he took a good look at his assailants from above, who were perched on palm trees right next to the door.

They were slovesa! Silicon-based aliens who were essentially living rocks. Ceres had already seen one in the museum trip, but he didn’t expect for the test to involve them!

 

They were a major threat to the Loeric Empire on its border systems to the ‘south’ of the galactic 2D map, but to think that they would throw such enemies into a qualifier stage.

They essentially looked like humanoid rock golems with tails, except they had no head and their ‘face’ was in the center of their body, where their brain resided close to their heart, defended by their metal-like skin that could be more than fifteen centimeters thick.

This made most slovesa look stubby with no head, an enlarged boy with two limbs, two legs and a tail that could act as a third leg when needed. Higher class slovesa could assimilate more rocks to form more limbs, but when trying to disguise themselves from afar, they would always adopt a humanoid form to fool the radar and other sensors based on outline!

Lucky for Ceres, the slovesa seemed to only to have recently matured, meaning they were of roughly slightly lower strength than an average human male. And Ceres wasn’t anywhere near average strength thanks to Braton’s daily insistence on sparring.

“Wow they really want to knock as many people out as possible, don’t they?” Ceres cursed as he held the steel wirepole at the ready.

He regretted not attaching the spare piece of metal to the tip of his wirepole to form a spear, which he didn’t do due to a spear not being his main weapon. A short sword was more his style, though he did have basic mastery of the spear thanks to the continuous playing of Shattered Empire.

The two slovesa dropped down to their vibra-spears and launched at him after picking it up, while the other three ran towards him. Ceres focused his battle instinct, relying on simple dodges and rapid thrusts to keep the two slovesa at bay.

“This steel wirepole isn’t going to hold up if I try to block, and if I stall any longer the other three will join!” Every time he parried the vibra-spear, the vibration caused his palm to hurt badly and lose tension on his grip. He had to end it fast!

Putting his NIER level to 1.8 for a split instance, he focused his vision on the closest slovesa and immediately delivered three rapid stabs: two to the chest and one to where the core should be. Instead of penetrating through though, Ceres could only knock away the slovesa away from him, sending it sprawling into the three that were running towards him from a distance, buying himself more time.

The second slovesa rushed him at the same time, forcing Ceres to retract his spear and counter the enemy’s spear thrust with his own parries. The very second that his enemy launched a strong forward thrust, Ceres ducked and used his right leg to trip the slovesa’s footwork, causing it to fall forward.

As it fell towards the ground, he reached towards his back and grabbed the metal blade in his hands, causing cuts to form on his palm.

With the slovesa knocked down facing the floor, Ceres jumped up and used both his hands to lift and stab the metal plate downwards into its back, aiming directly at the supposed center of its body. He stomped onto the protruding edge of metal plate once, forcing the metal plate to completely penetrate through the slovesa!

Ceres immediately ducked as two vibra-spears pierced his previous location, rolling off the body and picking up the dropped vibra-spear from his first kill. Feeling the inherent subdued vibration of the vibra-spear in his hand, he smiled deviously.

“Now the fight’s even!”

 

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