Chapter 38: Chapter 36: Special Training!

The party was on! Ceres, Braton, Erik, Trissa and the rest of Team Zone 17 had made it! Cheers and drinks were flung across the restaurant, creating a lively atmosphere.

As Ceres and his team entered the restaurant, the ‘weirdo’ group of pristine clothes stood out entirely in their view. Two ladies were sat at the table, their dumplings cold and untouched over the course of the last few hours of the third stage.

Not worrying about them, Ceres joined in the festivities, drinking and laughing with local residents who wanted to brag that they knew him, even though he only barely had a recollection of fixing their stuff in Uncle Rigor’s workshop over the last few years.

Reminding himself of the workshop where his journey of an exosuit repairer began, he recalled the mysterious white box, feeling an extremely strong impulse to return to it and crack it.

“I never really had this feeling before, only other people had displayed it but only when near the box? Maybe to properly activate the superpower, I have to talk to it! My time has arrived!”

As he started to zone out into his delusions of being a superhero, the ‘weirdo’ group actually approached him first.

While the local residents were still cheering for Ceres, they also noticed the weird outfits and mannerisms of the two ladies, raising suspicion and murmurs between them as they tried to figure out who they were.

Lisa got up of her observation spot at the back of the kitchen, slowly inching over to the family’s heirloom sword hanging on the wall as a precaution.

The elegant lady stood with an air of presence that couldn’t be easily ignored.

“Well done, Ceres! You have definitely proved yourself worthy undertaking my... err...secret clan’s training! As for the rest of you, your show of solidarity has impressed me! Let me treat you all to three rounds of drinks on me!” With a swipe on her multi’s screen, the ‘suspicion’ immediately turned into cheers, while Mrs Qiu quickly grabbed the shocked Lisa into the kitchen to work on the impending tide of orders.

No one who orders the entire restaurant a round of drinks could ever have bad intentions at all! The local residents forgot about what they were even whispering about and all cheered for the lady.

Ceres was knocked out of his daydream upon hearing that. Secret clan? Did that even exist anymore? Most groups of people he had heard about were known as societies, mercenary groups or maybe even guilds, but definitely not ‘clans’!

And training? Ceres right now was a training fanatic for his goals, and he stared intently at the elegant lady who was much older and taller than him.

“Well then, before the drinks arrive, I hope to have a small chat with young Ceres outside away from prying ears. This master’s secrets cannot be divulged easily!” The elegant lady quickly beckoned for Ceres to follow her outside along with the strict lady.

He looked at his friends, who shrugged, knowing that elegant lady is either legitimate or a crackhead who watched too many martial holo-dramas. Ceres decided to go with the flow and see where it would lead him. He wasn’t someone who immediately said no to trying new things!

The two ladies whispered to each other in hushed tones, making Ceres more and more suspicious.

“Cardenia, why are you even the one doing the recruiting? I should be the one doing the talking, you jumped my entire script!” The strict lady whispered angrily.

“I don’t want to waste time, once I reveal who I am he’ll immediately agree on the spot, no need to beat around the bush!” The elegant lady smiled.

At a nearby alleyway, the strict lady deployed a small circular device around them, which caused the surrounding air to sort of shimmer, creating a sort of field that blocked sounds and electromagnetic radiation both ways!

Outsiders would look into the alley and only see an optical illusion.

The elegant lady swivelled to meet Ceres directly, removing her non-existent disguise and taking out an emblem. Ceres recognized the emblem as the Dynasty of Hawthorn’s, that could only be activated by the original members!

“Well, enough of the charade. The ‘clan’ is actually the Dynasty of Hawthorn, and I am inviting you to take part in a special training camp designed for the people of Athen. You are the first candidate chosen to participate in this prestigious programme! What do you say? Yes?” The elegant lady looked at Ceres expectantly.

Ceres was left stunned. He was a great planner in controlled battles in the VR world and military drills, where the rules of engagement were very apparent, but in general society and political intrigue he was even lower than an amateur.

However, the common sense in him triggered a sense of wariness about this. This sounded exactly like the usual scams he received through his multi, claiming that he was the chosen one of some forgotten alien kingdom and had to deposit a thousand L-credits in this non-suspicious account to retrieve his formal documents in order to claim the ruins!

The elegant lady ignored Ceres’ suspicious expression and nodded at the strict lady to follow up. “The special training camp will be held at a private facility in the orbital habitat of the Dynasty of Hawthon over Athen, where the best equipment and VR pods as well as workshops are available for you. You will train there starting from tomorrow onwards. Your absence from the orphanage has already been conveyed to the orphanage administration.”

“Upon completing the competition, only by achieving 1^st place in the competition would you then be allowed to continue using the private facility. No outside communication with the outside world is allowed for the duration of the training. If you accept this contract, if and when you do win the competition you must wear the crest of the Dynasty of Hawthorn on your award ceremony and credit Cardenia Hawthorn as your patron.”

“The future patron contract after winning the competition will be discussed further when the time comes. Do you agree? If you need the written version plus the small details of the contract, it’s available in paper.”

Hardly anyone used paper nowadays, and despite Ceres being an absolute amateur in social interactions, he knew that people only used paper when they wanted to keep something away from the public net!

Paper was the best form of information keeping to absolutely prevent potential hacking, and some companies still have documents printed on paper till this day to prevent high level espionage.

Humanity in general has had enough of rogue Ais and hackers who threatened to destabilize society, so most star nations had backup procedures in the event the digital network failed.

This raised the suspicion level in Ceres even higher, prompting him to ask for the written version. He stood there for about five minutes, reading through every single detail on the paper while racking his brain as fast as he could.

“This absolutely doesn’t make sense, the only thing the Dynasty of Hawthorn gets out of this is that they trained someone who won a graduation competition on a backwater resource planet! There must be even better people than me that they can train, why train me?” Ceres thought to himself.

“The reason is simple,” The elegant lady answered as though she saw through the confusion on Ceres’ face.

“I see myself in you, and I want to help empower the people of Athen. By using you as a test case in which I can see the true potential of the orphans through the training camp, I can gradually expand how many people can be trained, which may involve entire batches of your fellow friends. If it’s too hard to understand, think of it as generousity from the Dynasty of Hawthorn.”

“For now, I can only provide for the participants that I’ve selected from the upcoming competition who seem promising, and you’re one of them. I believe the resources at my disposal should be dispersed to those who are capable rather than dividing it based on those who are born at a certain area on this planet!”

Ceres racked his brain further, but his lack of experience couldn’t possibly lead him to discover any lies. Even if the elegant lady was lying, Ceres could still reap the benefits of the training himself!

“I’m not about to throw away a free training camp, and I especially don’t care what she gets if I win the competition. That’s my short-term goal and it’s the right opportunity to take!” He signed the contract on paper form, sealing the deal.

The elegant lady smiled widely as the strict lady kept the signed contract in her clothes, seemingly sliding between the seams.

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“Well then, Ceres, I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at my visitor hall in the morning. I assume you have already learnt where it is during your school trips to the inner zones.”

Ceres was absolutely shocked at himself. Though he knew about the Dynasty of Hawthorn, he actually didn’t know who this person was, yet he agreed! “Sorry, Miss…? How would I know where your vistor hall is?”

The elegant lady was absolutely stunned. Letting out a heavy sigh, she said: “Oh my, how low have I fallen. Take care of him Senia, and don’t forget to add more to my marketing budget especially in the outer zones. I want posters everywhere by the end of this month.”

***

 

“Wait, you met the owner, like T.H.E OWNER, of this planet in person, and you couldn’t even recognize her?” Erik was practically screaming, wondering what the hell was Ceres even learning in school or any of his museum trips his whole life.

“Chill out Erik, I wouldn’t have known myself too,” Braton tried to grab Erik who was standing up and gesturing wildly.

“Shut the fuck up! You couldn’t even recognize me on the looptrain when we were right next to each other!” Erik threw a dumpling at Braton, causing an ensuing food fight that lasted about five seconds before a flying spoon from Mr Qiu and a death glare from Lisa stopped the nonsense.

The whole restaurant was still rowdy, with everyone clamouring to figure out what deal Ceres got!

Some of the local residents even started to collect the chopsticks that the two ladies used, which potentially could be a family heirloom.

It wasn’t everyday you get to meet the owner of the planet, especially when there were only less than a hundred planets in the empire, compared to its trillion of citizens!

Ceres held his hands up in surrender. “Now I know, okay? And I’m going to go tomorrow so can we please stop wasting dumplings and have a nice meal before I leave?”

Erik slouched in his seat. “Why is it you that always get the cool stuff? Where’s my workshop? Where’s my power of friendship? Where’s my secret training camp? How come I never got any of these opportunities?!”

“Hey relax, you got the whole VIP Gladius room to the three of you now, and you can use my workshop anytime! Your time will come, and I promise I will drag you up with me when I win the competition” Ceres solemnly promised.

“Yea and you got your own little girlfriend now!” Braton smirked as he elbowed Erik jokingly, while Trissa didn’t seem to hear it. In fact, she seemed to be in a continuous daze staring at Ceres perpetually, only breaking out of it regularly to pop a dumpling in her mouth.

Ceres was a bit too afraid to ask her about what she was thinking, especially after seeing her tendencies in the VR stages.

The party was still going strong, with them sharing stories about the fights and events that happened in the qualifier stage. Ceres enjoyed every moment of it, having a good time with his friends.

As the night went on, it was finally time for the team to head back to the orphanage. Ceres made a detour to the workshop which he hasn’t visited since Ann Lesion brought him there.

He still had a nagging question as to what she was so flustered about when she visited the workshop, and he had a slight inkling that it was related to the mysterious white box!

That white box could potentially be the key to his superpower too, though he only believed maybe 30% of it. Right now, it was probably one of his greatest secrets, and he couldn’t let anyone take it until he figured out what it does!

“I can’t bring the white box to the Hawthorn private training facility, even though their workshop will probably do a better job of analysing it!” Ceres felt a strong feeling that he had to protect the box, which he emotionally treated as Uncle Dawn’s urn.

It was Uncle Dawn’s last project, and he would make damn sure he would always have it within reach!

Having been already prodded by the orphanage director, he was highly reluctant to endure more suspicion.

He especially didn’t trust the Hawthorns, who was in a higher position of power than him! He could hardly do anything if they decided to march in and take his white box!

Ceres decided to stow the white box away in a hidden compartment of the workshop, as he didn’t want Erik to also be drawn to it and touch it. As he carried it with his bare hands, forgetting to wear the gloves, five smaller pinprick needles formed on the surface of the white box, injecting even more black goo into him!

The injection was only skin level, and it was still in small amounts were miniscule, meaning Ceres hardly felt a single thing as he continued clearing up the workshop.

The droplets did the same thing as before, moving slowly through the skin without alarming him before finally dissolving into the blood stream, biding its time.

***

At the top floor of the Athen’s family office building, an older gentleman was sitting on a sofa, casually browsing his multi reading the latest news.

His eyes scrolled through the screen, but in reality his cybernetic implants were already wirelessly connected, his brain split into four cores allowing him to process multiple stream of information. How else was one at the top of society expected to keep up with the happenings of a planet?

Finally, the older gentleman spoke. “We have good information from our sources that Ceres, the most promising of the outers, have been selected to participate in Hawthorn’s training camp. It is imperative that we make sure nothing wrong happens to him while he is at the training camp. I’m counting on you to make this right. If anything were to go wrong...”

A younger male with a perfect handsome face sat opposite him, smiling widely while he leaned back into his couch. “Of course, I will recommend the best doctor we have to take care of him. I will personally make sure this happens, with or without her approval.”

The older gentleman put down his terminal, massaging his forehead in pain as wrinkles creased across his face. “I never expected her to actually try to win this wager. You assured me that she was going to roll over easily with this wager! Accepting it is one thing, but the amount of resources that she’s putting into it could jeopardize the whole issue!”

“I will not let Chad lose, even he asked me to let him lose! The university plan is one of the various steps into elevating Athen into more than a backwater planet, and if the first step fails… Then I’m afraid of our future together, Imperial Prince Zachary. You must understand how critical this very step is!”

Zachary continued smiling gently; he wasn’t in the least bit concerned about the future unlike the older gentleman. “She is doing exactly what we expected her to do, and we will kill two birds with one stone. Don’t worry about the future, Principal. You will get your university and authority, and I get my supporters and backing in a succession race. A fair and simple deal where you benefit the most!”

“I assure you, right now the only winner of this game will be us.”

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