Chapter 57: Chapter 54: Inevitable

[The sheer coordination skills that this participant is displaying right now is not usual in ranged combat! Who would’ve expected her to swap to a melee configuration all of a sudden! Who said Ceres’ team members are just random lackeys? They are all geniuses!]

A subdued silence took over the inner viewers, who were yet again dumbfounded by the amount of skill that some of the outers were displaying.

[What’s this? The participant, Trissa, is also from the same orphanage as Ceres AND Braton! Do they have a magical farm going on over there? Somebody find out before I lose my mind on the next student they send!]

[It almost looks as if the orphanage is representing all the outers and standing up to the inners, displaying their raw talent. Don’t forget we have still yet to see Ceres’ performance, and this will be the result of the so-called ‘experimental’ training scheme!]

The cheering for Ceres’ team got slightly larger and larger, with more people starting to place bets on Ceres for the upcoming exosuit category’s group stage.

The previously small minority of people betting grew larger and larger, forming a sizable crowd within the viewers both in reality and virtually.

Back in Zone 17, Lisa cheered as she saw her friend (only female friend) smash the other participants and win the group stage, advancing to the next stage.

The rest of the locals who had seen Trissa in the store with Ceres and the rest before but not her talking were slightly surprised at her individual capabilities. They had only seen the qualifiers where they worked together as a team.

This was where Trissa truly shined – in brutal individual combat.

In the private viewing pod, Oliver tapped the holster of his chair in frustration.

But instead of the principal of the Five Families College bursting out in fury, Oliver instead asked in a gentle tone, contradicting the red lines that were forming between his neck and ears.

“Weren’t they supposed to be ‘marginally’ better than us? What is this? How is this possible? Only Ceres received the training!”

“I swear on my life that’s the truth, but you must recognize that Ceres and his team are outliers. You already have an information advantage over them! Imagine the amount of support you would gain when the Five Families crush them.” Doctor Wu explained while the victory fanfare was playing as Trissa crossed the finish line, winning the race for her group.

Slightly satisfied at that fact, Oliver finally relaxed, leaning back into the chair and watching the latest reactions by the public.

Forums were going crazy over the overperforming participants and a huge amount of speculation started to build around how amazing Ceres performance was going to be.

Even the casino started to increase the odds of Ceres and his team winning the subsequent stages!

There was almost zero discussion on Chad Athen and his upcoming group stage, as it seemed like just a formality.

Even the participants in the group knew that their knockout was inevitable!

“Well, it might make the plan a lot better. With such high hopes resting on the shoulders of these outers, who can deny that we’re the best when our students smash them?”

***

Max checked his multi, showing the time to be fifteen minutes to the start of the group stage.

All sixty-four groups in the exosuit repair category were to compete during the same time in their respective twenty-five km wide sections of Zone 31.

The rest of the participants were using that time to plan accurately how they were going to pin down Ceres.

Max was the main guy leading the flimsy alliance of outers and negotiating terms with the other alliance of inners, both leaders trying to find a common ground while looking tough in front of each other.

Only one participant would make it out of the group stage, so it was only natural that everyone’s eyes were extremely tense, thinking of the different scenarios in which they may betray the other alliance and their own too.

Max used the time provided by the melee and ranged category group stages to convince others to his ‘cause’, slowly forming a larger group until he swallowed up all twenty of the outers into a single bloc.

The alliance leader of the inners had a much easier time, as it was unanimously agreed that all outers including Ceres should be wiped out first before doing any in-fighting.

Sometimes the best way to unite a group was to have a common external enemy, and Ceres fit the bill just right.

Despite all the continued conversation on how to quickly locate and destroy Ceres, the person in question was lying down on the floor of the rooftop and slept through all of it.

Ceres finally woke up, groggily looking at his surroundings. As he saw a timer showing 10 minutes left, he leisurely got up from the floor, not showing the slightest hint of tension or nervousness.

Max scoffed as Ceres walked towards to a new hoverbus that landed in the center of the rooftop, which was delivering their large cases that were close to a human size in dimensions.

It was the damaged exosuit in a case.

The participants had to carry it with them to their choice of location before having enough safety from other participants to open it.

Inside the case were a few simple tools and ample repair parts as the participants weren’t expected to find suitable repair parts in the designated zone.

However, the repair parts were only enough for one suit, so if it was damaged again, stealing others’ is the only way.

The exosuit did not come with any weapons except for brawler gloves. Ceres frowned, but he did not fret too much – he could easily craft a makeshift spear from scratch if he needed to.

[The rules are simple! Participants get a head start of five minutes to spread out over the area or maybe group up! Any intention of fighting is not allowed in this first five minutes of the group stage, so consider it a peace period.]

[Once the five minutes are up though, anything goes other than killing! The crown will appear at a random location, and every participant’s multi will receive the location of the crown every three minutes, so beware the wearer!]

[And if they are thinking about staying on the rooftop during the five-minute peace period, the rooftop is a no-go zone one minute after the peace period starts.]

[The match ends with a single participant holding the crown for more than three hours, or when the timer hits six hours!]

As Ceres held his case and stood at the edge of the rooftop, the cityscape seemed to extend indefinitely into the horizon, while a maze of concrete and metal that intertwine each other loomed below him with a good amount of natural vines and alien foliage that exploited the absence of humans since fifty years ago.

Howls and shrieks could be picked up if one listened hard enough, signalling the presence of unknown wildlife.

A mist covered the entire city, obscuring vision in the distance. The rooftop he was on was on the top of a dilapidated skyscraper, which meant none of the participants could barely see the ground without visual enhancements, only the rooftops of the other buildings.

He was on the highest rooftop, giving him a bird’s eye view of the entire area.

Max signalled his group to start following Ceres when the peace period began, while the hoverbus started to take off, leaving the sixty-four participants there on the rooftop.

The plan was obvious if you wanted to take down Ceres: stick to him like glue and don’t let him out of your sight and move as a group.

Each of the participants started to determine which rooftop they were about to jump too. Whoever gets the first move on a rooftop would have the time advantage against other participants who landed on the rooftop later.

The temporary lapse in control upon landing could be exploited by whoever was there first.

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One by one, the participants started to spread out across the rooftop, choosing their target rooftop. However, a good majority of them decided to wait and watch Ceres.

Ceres took a good ten steps back from the edge of the rooftop, adopting a running position. The rest of the participants tensed up, with some aiming to even go ahead of Ceres and corner him into their desired location.

Max and the alliance leader of the inners had already planned out the paths that they were going to ‘herd’ Ceres into before the five minutes were up!.

The group stood in front of Ceres, though not blocking him from jumping off.

[Without further ado, let the group stage begin! The peace period starts now!]

A blur dashed past the group, signalling that Ceres already had the head start and sprinted!

“Quick, follow path three and four!” Max screamed, with half of his group going off the rooftop in a split-second right after hearing that.

However, Max noticed something odd right after he gave the order. “Something isn’t right - Ceres would’ve known that we would follow him!”

The answer was soon apparent to Max: Ceres was still on the rooftop.

Ceres had dashed to the edge of the rooftop so fast that it looked like he was about to launch off, but it was a feint and he was dashing in the opposite direction!

“Shit, the rest of us, cut him off at path six!” Max himself chased after Ceres, who looked like he was about to perform a running jump. Max gritted his teeth and sprinted as fast as he could, jumping without seeing where Ceres actually was!

As Max launched himself off to try to reach the other building, he saw a glimpse of Ceres who was hanging just below the edge of the rooftop with two arms, smirking at him.

Max cursed as he focused on making sure he landed on the rooftop of the other building. The first rooftop was the highest in the area, there was no way his group was going to make it back.

An outer who landed next to him laughed. “That idiot has nowhere to go now, he has to leave the rooftop in the next forty seconds! And he has to leave to one of these rooftops, so as long as we keep our eyes peeled, we won’t miss him!”

Ceres used his raw strength to lift himself back up over the edge of the rooftop, staring at the leftover participants. He walked over to his own box, picking it up.

There were five participants left behind, most of them the slower ones who couldn’t keep up with the rapid sequences of events that had just happened in less than fifteen seconds, especially with conflicting directions that was issued by Max rapidly.

Upon seeing Ceres and realizing that they were alone against him, they too jumped off the rooftop in any direction to get away from him, but one of them couldn’t escape without leaving his box behind, because Ceres was much faster, already sitting on top of it.

The participant pleaded with Ceres, but Ceres just yawned, showing no intention of fighting nor moving.

Max strained his eyes, keeping his multi open on the communications channel that the group had agreed on before.

A solid minute passed, but yet no one other than the five who were left up there had jumped away.

“There’s no way he can still be on the rooftop, it’s a no-go zone after one minute!” Max racked his brains as the rest of the group remain absolutely confused, before a message popped up on the comms – “He’s heading for the ground floor using the elevator shaft!”

Of course, the rooftop would need an access point, jumping off the edge was not the only way out.

The skyscraper must have had some sort of elevator shaft, and Ceres was simply throwing them off and intending to hide in the depths of the city to repair his exosuit.

“Half of you stay on the rooftops, the rest follow me down to the ground floor!” Max had enough of being tricked, accounting for every possibility.

It was very likely that Ceres heading to the ground was just a ruse to pull his group lower into the city while Ceres jumps onto another rooftop.

At this point, no one had actually found a proper place to set up and repair their exosuit yet.

The location would need to be somewhere secure with multiple escape points in the event that they were attacked during the repair.

The damaged exosuit didn’t require a lot of time to repair, but the concentration needed would be fatal if they were to be ambushed.

Max estimated that it would take him close to 30 minutes to actually get the exosuit close to 100% functionality, which would leave him more than enough time for the six hour long group stage.

Of course, he intended to backstab the inners after knocking out Ceres and hold the crown himself for the longest time. Maybe he could even hold it for more than three hours!

The 63 participants linked up, with half of them on the various rooftops surrounding the starting point, while the other half scouring the ground around the skyscraper, entering the lobby and checking each elevator shaft.

Max scowled as the next three minutes showed no signs of Ceres at all, not even a footprint or a forcibly opened elevator door in the skyscraper’s lobby.

“If there aren’t any signs of him leaving, then he must be still in the building! Who’s the fucker that said he was heading down here? Bring him to me!”

A sense of urgency took over the group as the end of the peace period drew near, each individual participant eyeing each other in the event of betrayal.

The suspicion was especially high between the inner and outer groups, who were only united by the sole fact that Ceres was threatening the both of them.

“Don’t be stupid! If you guys start going off at each other without stopping Ceres first, he will have enough time to repair his exosuit with the parts in his case. We only have maybe fifteen minutes before he’s battle ready, so we have to stop him before that!” Max bellowed on the communication channel, also noticing that the ‘fucker’ who reported that Ceres was heading to the ground level was being dragged by two others towards Max.

“Let me guess, you had to send a false message on your multi in exchange for something that he took from you while you were being an idling idiot on the rooftop, am I right?” Max sneered, knowing the possible actions of Ceres all too well.

Sometimes too much popularity and videos didn’t work well, allowing other participants to deduce their weaknesses and character. Max had Ceres pegged as an extremely opportunistic bastard.

“Well actually, he took both my multi and my exosuit case… So it wasn’t me that sent the message.” Max was lost for words as the timer hit 5 minutes, signifying that the peace period was over. A loud bell-like sound echoed through the area!

[Peace Period Over!]

At the exact same moment out of the floor right under the rooftop, an exosuit burst out of the windows, leaping towards a rooftop where the allied participants stood agape, trying to process what they were seeing.

Why was there an already functioning exosuit when the peace period had barely ended? The exosuit soared through the air, deftly landing onto the rooftop with a bang!

A cloud of dust erupted at the landing point of the exosuit, obscuring the vision of the participants who tried to get a better look at whether their eyes were truly deceiving them.

In the midst of the cloud, two amber eyes glinted at the head of a black mechanical body, while three flashing red lights indicated the exosuit’s operation! A robotic voice echoed within the pilot’s head, giving him a large smile.

[Functionality test: complete - All safety features and limitations turned off, 60%...30%...0%...unable to determine functionality!]

 

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