Chapter 59: Chapter 56: Battle for the Crown!

Two minutes earlier..

Ceres was surprised that no one had taken the crown before him. He was delayed due to having to replace certain parts in his exosuit that were severely damaged from the fight on the rooftop.

Despite having a ‘functional’ exosuit much earlier than everyone else in the group, it wasn’t that easy to take down twenty hostiles on a rooftop. Some of them managed to exploit openings and destroy a few critical components on his exosuit.

Lucky for him, every participant was carrying the exosuit case with them, which made it easy for him to find new repair parts.

Having spent more than a good ten minutes repairing the exosuit, he finally made it to the crown to only see six idiots throwing rocks at the crown.

“Is this some kind of weird festival game? I can never really understand inners,” Ceres thought to himself as he sneaked up behind them, staying a good five meters away, hiding behind one of the many pillars of the subway platform.

He had spent more time adding certain safety features back into his exosuit, as his radical repair methodology could only make the exosuit run at the peak for a set amount of duration, before rapid wear and tear as well as certain limits would completely wreck the exosuit from within.

Not many components were designed to operate at their maximum limit for a long period of time and not in the way that Ceres used them.

The beatdown was fast and swift, netting Ceres yet another six cases worth of exosuit repair parts! He quickly stored whatever important repair parts he could carry into a single stolen exosuit case, but not before wearing the crown.

He had become the first King of the Jungle in his group!

***

[The second King of the jungle has been crowned, and it’s only been less than 20 minutes since the group stage for the exosuit repair category began!]

[Ceres is hot on the heels of Chad, who has been using his sheer body strength to fight for the crown, not even attempting to foil the plans of the other sixty-three candidates, claiming it for his own in no more than ten minutes since the start!]

[There seems to be a gap between the two contestants, only time will tell whether Ceres has any shot of winning against Chad!]

The viewers were in an uproar all over the planet, but for various reasons! Mrs Qiu and Lisa were indignant that the announcer would think Ceres had no chance, the customers on the verge of starting an unofficial riot.

They decided against it eventually, partly out of fear of the enforcement crackdown, but mostly because Lisa was glaring at them. No way she would let them ruin the competition when her friends were winning.

She too was angry at how the announcer kept downplaying Ceres so far. “Why do all the inners have it out for us? What’s the point of even letting us go into the competition then?”

The orphanage was abuzz with both excitement and fury, with the juniors amazed that one of them could be at such a height in the main competition, while others were furious at the same reason as Lisa.

Ann Lesion sat there with a deepening frown, worried beyond words as wrinkles formed on her face, her feet continuously shifting as she sat and watched the virtual stream attentively. She seemed to be thinking about something beyond the competition, her eyes slightly unfocused.

In the Gladius, Ardan was having a large argument with his Aunt Fye, who still truly felt that Ceres wasn’t as good as Chad, despite Ardan’s feverent support.

On the other hand, the other outers ,who suffered increasing harassment and bullying because of Ceres, hated it.

Every time his name was mentioned, it would stir the emotions of all the inners who couldn’t handle the fact that a ‘dirty’ outer was comparable to their best candidate.

Some of the inners would unleash their fury on their servants, helpers, employees or even random outers on the streets, resulting in police enforcers having to step in.

Henry Lesion lamented internally as he sat in the command center overseeing the deployment of enforcer squads to various sectors of the city, targeting the most likely areas of violence that could occur during the competition.

He knew very well that the implementation for formal protests and riots by the Dynasty of Hawthorn was a mere facade to show that they were open for trial by combat, but anything that disrupted the social order would be heavily punished.

Of course, Henry knew that the definition of ‘social order’ was terribly warped on Athen – large scale organized crime could happen in the underbelly of Athen because of the benefits they brought to the higher ups.

This was the true meaning of social order. Riots against the administration or individual violence was immediately cracked down upon. Only those who have the right to commit crimes could commit them.

How did Henry Lesion know which areas to target? Because the same exact thing happened when he was in the competition sixteen years ago!

The competition was generally much more docile than this, and such an uprising of anger or divide between the ‘outers’ and ‘inners’ only occurred when a dark horse came up from the outer zone, such as Ceres or Henry during their year.

In every other year, the status quo was that the inners would win everything as per usual. Anything against that served as a huge wave that threatened to disrupt the beliefs of the inners that they were superior, and to embolden the outers to take more drastic actions or have more confidence.

In the private viewing pod owned by the Dynasty of Hawthorn, Cardenia laughed as she drank more of the wine that was shipped in directly from her home in the Hawthorn system. “I can already imagine the sour face on Oliver Athen!”

“How dare he claim that his students can dominate the competition when a little orphan from nowhere can potentially compete with your supposed best candidate! I do hope Ceres has more tricks up his sleeves, his exosuit repair skills has definitely increased dramatically from the training camp!”

“I told you it would be a good surprise. It won’t be the only one, there will be more to come but he can’t show all his cards right now!” Senia smiled, evidently slightly happy that the training camp had come off so well.

Zachary sat in the corner, uncharacteristically quiet as he rapidly swiped through the video frames of Ceres repairing his exosuit in the first five minutes of the peace period. “You have truly given birth to a monster, Cardenia. I see no way for you to lose the wager. As long as Ceres doesn’t meet Chad before the semifinals, he will remain as the top four. And even if he loses the semi-finals, he will still have a chance for top three or top four, as long as he remains alive!”

The threat of death was real in such competitions with high intensity combat.

The examination council didn’t have such a foolproof device that could save every participant in every type of scenario. A stronger impact or more lethal force could mean that the life-saving device meant nothing.

In the event of such a death, the participant wouldn’t be considered to be in the competition. The Loeric Empire had a longstanding unwritten rule that resources and awards should never be given to the dead, for they had no use for it.

Only decorative awards and positions can be given posthumously, but they should never block a living individual from earning something.

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It made no logical sense for the dead individual to occupy the third or fourth spot when there was a living participant right behind him able to benefit from the resources and in turn benefit the star nation.

“Are you implying that Ceres will die? Not possible! If he can survive the Thorn Chamber under that mercenary group leader I hired, he can survive anything the competition throws at him!” Cardenia squinted at Zachary, who put up his hands in surrender.

“I meant the complete opposite, that your success is guaranteed. I hope you won’t forget the help I’ve offered over the course of the last three months.” It would take an idiot to not notice that Zachary was very much intending for Cardenia to endorse him in the imperial succession race.

While he had been an annoying prick so far, it would also be rude of Cardenia to absolutely deny that Zachary had not helped her. It was not in the nature of the Hawthorns to only take and not return anything at all.

“And like I said before, I will consider it and talk more after I’ve actually won the wager.” Cardenia replied formally. Zachary’s face paled slightly at the mention of that but he quickly regained his usual confident demeanour.

It was not beneficial for him to negotiate with Cardenia only after the wager, because she would’ve have earned a lot of tangible rewards from the Athen family and her position would be even higher in the upper echelons of Athen society.

It would be better for him if they were both on an equal playing field. “Don’t look so sad, Imperial Prince Zachary, let’s compromise and meet during the semi-finals.” Cardenia teased, knowing that she had Zachary right under her thumb, but didn’t want to push her advantage too far.

She still had a slight appreciation for Zachary’s timely help when she was almost exposed by the question from the reporter about Ceres, but she wasn’t going to let go of her ‘crown’ in Athen that easily!

***

The group stage passed on without much of a hitch. Ceres pretty much outfought every opponent that came his way, using a combination of his exosuit repair skills, the continued switching of parts while exceeding their hard limiters and his unmatched scheming skills.

A good three hours and one minute passed in a blink of an eye, with Ceres smashing close to fifty of the participants while the rest were hiding, refusing to be pummelled.

The medical care might be good and able to regrow limbs, but they didn’t want to be in the hospital for a month or maybe even worse especially when they know the chances of them winning was low.

As he sat in a private hoverbus that collected him and flew to the next waiting area, he pulled up his multi to watch the other group stages that were still going on. He tried to find Erik on the participant list, remembering that he was in Group 8.

However, he saw that Erik had already been eliminated about an hour ago!

Ceres felt terrible, knowing his friend couldn’t make it past the group stage, but he also secretly felt relieved as he knew he didn’t have to fight him in the next round of duels.

As much as they conducted practice duels against each other in the Gladius previously, he couldn’t really bring himself to knock out Erik personally. He only hoped Erik exited gracefully, knowing that all of them had already overachieved by making it into the main competition.

While he was scrawling through the different streams showing each group, he noticed Gwen’s name in group 37 and tuned into their stream.

He still recalled the repetitive duels with Gwen and Leonard, so the three of them had grown fairly close to each other in the spirit of competitiveness and sportsmanship through the shared hatred of the Instructor.

Ceres was more interested in seeing how Gwen’s perfectionist streak would manifest in a combat scenario such as this.

Pulling up the stats on group 37, he noticed that the longest the crown has been held for was 1 hour, after which none of the participants held it for more than five minutes! “What is Gwen doing, doesn’t she know that she has to hold the crown the longest?” Ceres quickly tried to watch the specific video history of Gwen’s actions, and he was absolutely shocked by what he saw.

She wasn’t even trying to hold the crown, she was just targeting the others who were either holding the crown or unfortunate enough to be in her way.

Gwen had spent the first hour perfecting her exosuit in an isolated location, only going out regularly to attack. Each time she knocked out a participant, she would grab their exosuit and add on their parts to hers, boosting the capability of the exosuit way beyond its original design.

Instead of aiming for rapid minimum functionality, Gwen was aiming for sheer capability at a staggered stage!

Each win in a fight boosted her exosuit way beyond, adding either more thrusters, more defensive plates, or more power.

Of course, there were certain tradeoffs for adding so many systems, but her perfectionist streak made it work at a much better performance level than any other exosuit in her current group At her current stage she even had redundant systems, helping her to win even more battles.

As such, while she had to hide at the start, right now she was a walking behemoth, her exosuit not looking anything like the design. Her thruster pack was four times heavier but twelve times more efficient and powerful. Her instantaneous acceleration was massive, and no one could outrun her even if they tried to hide.

With this method, Gwen had successfully knocked out more than half of the group herself.

“Well, she seems to doing well for herself, but I would never do that myself.” Ceres knew it was just a difference in how they considered exosuit repairs. The different perspectives and focus will always result in different approaches and designs.

Before he could jump over to Leonard’s stream in Group 64, the hoverbus finally reached its location.

As the hatch opened and Ceres stepped out, he was greeted with a large waiting room, where the winners of the melee and ranged category group stage were there as well.

There was a buffet table of food and free-flow drinks, while large reclining chairs dotted the floor everywhere, numbering close to a hundred.

However, what was more impressive was that was a huge mountain of a human wearing the Five Families College uniform standing in front of him, glaring at him with seething anger as though they were rivals in their past life.

“It seems like I’ve won this round! The last fight may have been a draw in the qualifiers, but I’m now the undisputed winner! I got the crown earlier than you!”

“... Do I know you?”

 

 

 

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