Chapter 40: Chapter 38: Rank One Player

“So again, the control of settlements and humans in general is always limited by two factors: time and information which are also interlinked with each other. Quantum science and exotic materials found across the galaxy has helped us transmit information and receive information faster than the speed of light, as well as transport goods faster too, but they are fairly reliant on warp beacons that were previously establish. An unguided warp is possible but requires extreme navigation skills that only a few people in the Empire has ever pulled off before. One of them, most notably, is Grand Admiral Metria, who survived alone in a failing warship just in the Neadrsa Fields…”

It was the second day since Ceres was illegally drugged and brought to the facility, or more specifically the training camp.

He had grown to entertain the company of Leonard Athen, who has been a veritable fountain of weird information that nobody asked for – a random information generator of sorts.

It reminded him of Ardan’s usual theoretical nagging, especially about installing the nerval jack into the asshole. He wondered how far has Ardan gotten along on that aspect.

Not that he really wanted to wear an exosuit with an ass plug.

Gwen however, couldn’t stand him at all, and stood as far away from Leonard as possible in the large white lab room they were in. There was already an incident at dinner yesterday where Gwen had already slapped him once for his incessant ramblings that had food spilling out of his mouth.

Not a very good start for Leonard in his hunt for human interaction, but he appreciated Ceres staying and listening to him. 

Today was a general test to see the actual capabilities of the trainees, as they had only been demonstrating their abilities in the VR server, while the main competition was held in realspace!

Right now, they were in a dedicated room that was more aligned to understanding their body parameters and strengths, which was a vastly different objective to the medbay pods that took note of different vital signatures.

No matter how good someone’s brains and reaction speed are in their nervous system, if their body couldn’t execute the commands, they won’t be able to do anything!

In fact, the concept of NEIR only occurred when a human was connected to anything that had a nerval plug. Outside of that, most humans would never be able to move as fast as an exosuit wearer, simply because their bodies were not designed to!

Though there were some nations that touted extreme human modification to the point of having an implant in every nook and cranny or complete muscles refactoring, the vast majority of human star nations didn’t do it for either dignity or costs.

The Council that guided humanity on a galactic scale also took a slightly dim view of extreme human modification that brought them closer to machines, or cyborgs if you will, but it was highly suspected and a great conspiracy that some of the galactic human councillors were pure machine already!

However, the star nations who went against widespread modification didn’t do it out of morals, but rather out of technical incapability! It could probably bankrupt an entire star system to just modify one human into a full robot that had the same capabilities!

To this effect, it was cheaper and more efficient for the Loeric Empire to implement simple training as much as possible, such as injecting fairly cost-effective modified serums to boost physical reaction speed or modifying the exosuits, mechsuits and warships to be stronger!

Why build robots when you could ‘grow’ genetically enhanced humans that could do the same for minimal cost from the local population?

There were limitations to how much they could push the technical boundaries, which were all encapsulated in their ranking of a D-Class State!

In this context, Ceres, Gwen and Leonard had to undergo stringent physical examinations and test to see what areas they had to improve in. Naturally, all resources will be funded by the Dynasty of Hawthorn, but only up to the point where they could win the competition easily, nothing more.

They also only had a few month of training, which limited how much Ceres could potentially nab, and even if he did steal any serums or enhancers, he would have no idea on how to escape! He hardly knew where the exit was as it seems that the exit to the facility kept changing on a daily basis, and the pattern seemed to be random.

He knew the facility must be in space in order to achieve such an effect, perhaps a floating habitat or a small ship that was continuously docking at random places.

He wasn’t about to try to open one of the possible 17 exit airlocks and throw himself out. Even if he got out, how was he supposed to get back onto the planet? He hardly knew anything about flying in space – he couldn’t even pilot a starfighter!

“You know, this is my first time in space, how about you guys?” Ceres asked as they waited, wondering if the so-called five families regularly sent their kids into space too for training.

He wouldn’t be surprised at all considering the financial differences between them and the students from the inner zones. The five families who reigned over the inner zones must be yet another step above!

“Second time for me, I recently went to the spaceport to prepare for my coming-of-age ceremony,” Gwen replied. The ceremony was an event where the five families would gather all kids of that same age of 21 and do a sort of ritual, where they would have to pledge allegiance to their own family head and friendship to the other families.

It was more like their social debut as a proper functioning adult of the family.

“I’ve been in space my entire life.  You guys came from the planet? That’s amazing!” Leonard started to inspect Ceres and Gwen carefully for any differences between his body and theirs. Gwen instinctively shuddered and stood even further away.

Ceres heard about nomadic space tribes before, so he was much more shocked at the fact that Leonard managed to formulate a normal answer without going down another rabbit hole.

He was half expecting him to rant on about how to live in space – which was a deep question that was bugging his poor planet-locked mind.

Gwen stood in place silently, finally having an answer to a question that had been bugging her since yesterday.

“I knew it wasn’t possible that I forgot such a guy existed in the Athen Family, it was more like I never met him before! In fact, I think he isn’t even going to be part of the coming-of-age ceremony when we turn 21! This is very suspicious, but it is rude of me to ask such a personal question to a member of the Athen Family,” she thought to herself.

Gwen was big on etiquette and expected members of the five families to act accordingly, which was also a major reason why she heavily disliked Ceres for his seemingly easy-going speech, while she hated Leonard for continuously being rude at meals and pretty much every other time too, or specifically his entire existence was rude.

“Why are you living in space when you’re part of the Athen Family? You’re the same age as us too, so seeing as how strong you are, you should have been paraded by the family up there with Chad Athen. I didn’t see you in the qualifiers either. How are you getting into the main competition” Ceres asked nonchalantly, causing Gwen to be utterly shocked that Ceres dared to ask!

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At the mention of that name, Leonard shuddered, a hint of fright showing on his face for a brief moment before he return to his usual rambling proud self.

“Well, I don’t know, I guess I’m a secret trump card of the Athen Family! I was seeded directly into the main competition, so I wouldn’t partake in the qualifiers meant for rookies such as Chad!” Leonard laughed harder than usual, trying to hide his anxiety.

Ceres was amazed that someone could actually skip the qualifiers! If Chad couldn’t skip the qualifiers, how strong must Leonard be? Not one to easily back down against others, his inner fighting spirit soared.

A large resounding clap stopped the conversation abruptly, which the three trainees saw Senia walk into the large room in the same outfit as yesterday. “Either she must have a wardrobe of perfectly black blazer suits, or she didn’t bathe nor wash her clothes.” Gwen squinted hard at Senia, thinking to herself.

“Maybe, you’ve heard of gaseous cleaning? I guarantee you your lives will be forever changed once you try it. Leonard here hasn’t changed his outfit for a good three months in fact.” Senia remarked casually as she strolled forward to one of the smaller testing chamber inside the large room, seemingly able to read the disgusted expression of Gwen.

Ceres didn’t care, there were probably a few times where he didn’t bathe for a year straight in the electrical trashyard, although he kept that information to himself. Why bathe when you were just going to get dirty everyday?

“Get into the training chambers, all three of you. Just follow the instructions and everything will be done in less than an hour.” Three doors lit up with the names of the trainees in holo-writing above it, prompting them to enter.

As they entered, they noticed that it was a blank white room that had a grid pattern of tiles on each of the walls, ceiling and floor. In between the gaps were millions of tiny projectors and sensors. Ceres instinctively gasped as he recognized the design.

It was a hard-light materialization room!

Holograms usually continuously emitted photons, while hard-light was more like translucent exotic material that looked like light, but actually had a physical form. Ceres didn’t know much about the technology behind it, but he knew that this must have cost an astronomical fortune!

Only the Dynasties of the Loeric Empire would have such wealth to even purchase such a chamber, and three of them in fact!

“The 3^rd owner of the planet condensed his 150-year long reign into one of this training chambers, redeeming it in exchange for contribution points due to his rapid development of the planet’s industries especially in mining. Subsequent owners have bought this training chambers in the same manner, and it takes extremely long to get one of these training chambers. Please try not to damage it, the post-sales service is absolutely horrendous.” Senia spoke through an intercom system, impressing on them the absolute severity of what would happened if an accident were to occur to the training chamber.

Ceres wasn’t surprised, recalling the continuous marketing and lack of support of his old-gen Rawes 3D printer in Uncle Rigor’s workshop. As humanity grew across the stars, so did corporate shenanigans and monetization.

A robotic voice sounded throughout the room. “Testing script loaded, 20 years old. Database of Empire-wide students loaded. Testing of physical parameters now beginning.”

The trainees were immediately thrown into tests after tests, some being games that tested eye tracking and hand speed, others were focused on limbs, some focused on nervous system information speed, while quite a few were full on combat scenario with various styles of fighting.

The training chamber sped through a whole range of tests that had nothing to do with exosuit repair, only solely testing their body strength, build and weakness. Ceres’s body was strained to the limit, pushing his boundaries!

At the end of one hour, Ceres walked out slowly, his entire body drained, but he was still stable and only panting slightly. Gwen was sitting on the floor of the training chamber, drenched in sweat. She wasn’t doing very well in the tests as she had been focusing on formations and teamwork instead, while the remainder of her free time was on exosuit repair. She had hardly learnt how to use multiple guns, let alone unarmed combat!

Ceres was looking forward to seeing how he would compare up to Leonard, but he couldn’t see him anyway in the large room. “Has he already left the training chamber earlier than us? That’s amazing, I have a lot of work to do if I want to catch up with someone that strong!”

Ceres immediately regretted his thought as he saw Senia enter the room and drag out a Leonard who was fully knocked out on the floor, his arms and legs limp.

If it wasn’t for the rise and fall of his chest,  someone could have assumed he was a shut-in who just recently died an unfulfilled life while VR gaming.

“Wasn’t he supposed to be strong?” Ceres asked, as he didn’t consider himself to be as strong as Braton, but yet he was better than the supposed ‘best’ trainee?

Senia shook her head, replying: “We all have different definitions of strong, but you’ll see later. We’ll take an hour break while I try to wake up this weakling.”

Calling a few medical robots to lift Leonard to the medbay, Senia left, while continuously slapping Leonard’s face without hesitation, turning it red to relieve her inner stress.

Ceres turned to Gwen, hoping she could answer her questions. All Gwen could do was gape at Leonard who was being carried away.

“Exactly, right? Him collapsing at this kind of tests shouldn’t put him as the strongest!” Ceres tried to find common ground with Gwen, but Gwen vigorously shook her head, pointing to a holo terminal that was in the middle of the large room, displaying the test results. “No, take a look at his test results!”

Ceres took a hard look at Leonard’s score, noticing that he scored a zero in all the combat tests. But what he saw next shocked him hard. “I can’t believe it, I finally found him!” Ceres took up his multi and opened up his favourite game, Glucose Rush.

He had been trying to reach rank 1, but had always stopped near the top. Sure, he could easily dominate idiots like Adrian Seras, but he was a far cry away from the top player.

The ranking system was based on how many stages you could clear, and the highest stage always boasted the highest eye and hand speed! Ceres did a quick calculation of his own hand speed using the test result and his ranking in the game, extrapolating it to match Leonard’s test result.

“He’s the rank one player!”

 

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