Chapter 61: Chapter 58: Intense

Ceres couldn’t watch the replay anymore, not because he couldn’t handle watching Maddy mutilate Erik’s fingers, but because of his uncontrollable rage and fury that seem amplified beyond reason.

His emotions have never really been kept under better control despite him getting used to his NEIR level over the training camp. Instead, Ceres became more expressive and emotional over each month.

Braton noticed Ceres clenching his fist so hard that blood was legitimately starting to come out. “Hey hey hey chill out, they can fix Erik’s fingers easily, I agree that asshole is a bastard fuck that we should rip a new one in, but save your anger for another day! If you throw a tantrum here, you’re gonna get disqualified and you’ll never have the chance to face either Maddy or Chad!”

Braton tried to hold back Ceres who was about to smash the table into pieces. However, regardless of whatever Braton said, Ceres seemed to still be overpowering him in his anger, almost breaking out of Braton’s grip.

Braton was in shock. How could Ceres have that much strength to fight a pure bodybuilder like him?!

Suddenly a video message came into Ceres’ multi, putting it up on the holo-monitor as the monitor was still linked. It was Erik!

The video that Ceres and Braton was watching was five hours back in the past, and Erik had already been picked up by medics and was in the hospital.

[Hey Ceres, not sure if you won your group stage or not, but it should have ended by now and I’m sure you did. I lost my group stage badly, and I’m in the Seras General Hospital - ward 3C, Bed 37, so come visit when you can.]

[The Director already dropped by once and my injuries are already healing so don’t worry too much about me. They cut off all viewings of the competition here because it was inducing trauma in some patients so I don’t exactly have the latest news on what's happening, but come if you can.] Erik showed a weak smile before the video cut off.

Ceres took a deep breath, calming himself down. He felt something was absolutely wrong with him, he shouldn’t get so angry to the point that he almost disqualified himself.

He even felt the urge to kill Braton just because he was holding him back!

“Is this nerval jack effect still occurring to me even after six months of training? I never read anything about it!” Ceres chalked it up to having not practice long enough with his new NEIR level.

What he didn’t know is that emotions are not usually affected to this extreme when nothing was plugged into his nerval jack. Deep in his body, the chunk of black goo pulsated slowly in resonance with Ceres’s breaths.

Braton finally let out a sigh as Ceres relaxed. He gingerly rubbed his arms as he stared at Ceres in curiousity.

“Brother, when did you get so strong, was that the ‘power of friendship’ shit that you and Erik were talking about during the qualifiers? How can it be stronger than my body?” Ceres just shrugged, not really thinking about it too much.

He had already tried it before, but he didn’t manage to find out the scientific conditions to trigger such an effect, only having a rough guess.

“Was that Erik? Who did this to him?” a tense voice came from behind them, giving Braton a scare. “What the fu… Trissa?” Ceres was startled, completely oblivious that Trissa was here in the winner’s lobby too! From the look of Braton’s shocked face, he too was completely unaware of the same fact.

“Wait did you just talk to us?” Ceres finally heard Trissa’s voice for the second time.

Since they met in the qualifiers, they had never exchanged any words with each other, only nods and shakes of the head when they were planning out.

Even during Loeric Day, he only got to see Trissa talk once properly, but Erik was still the one speaking for Trissa most of the time.

However, he didn’t have enough time to think about what the hell was happening before a sharp pointed glare from her stopped him right there and then.

Trissa snatched Ceres’ multi away, showing an extremely determined face unlike the usual aloofness that she usually portrayed when they were hanging out together.

She watched the video message of Erik, her face darkening rapidly as she crushed the multi with her hand at the very end of the message to vent her anger.

“Hey hey why did you crush it! Erik’s fine in the hospital, why are you angry?!” Ceres exclaimed in sorrow. Braton rolled his eyes at the hypocrisy.

“Why didn’t he message me first?” she muttered under her breath, with Ceres and Braton not catching any words. Ceres just stared in shock as he watched the pieces of his multi drop to the floor.

“My god, I don’t think I actually remember my user code for Glucose Rush.” Ceres dejectedly got down on the floor, hoping to salvage something.

Trissa finally noticed the blood in her hands plus the metal pieces of the multi embedded deep in her palm. “Sorry” was all she said when she left to the toilet.

“That was spicy, what the hell is going on between Erik and her? I don’t think she would react like that even if Lisa got hurt.” Braton suspiciously pondered. “No way Erik secretly made up with her and got a girlfriend ahead of us, right? I mean look at my stunning personality and body.”

A bell rang throughout the lobby, and a few doors that led into the lobby opened up to allow teams of medic to come in and check the now arriving winners of the group stage from the exosuit repair category.

Ceres took a good look at the group of participants entering, only to suddenly lunge at one of them out of rage before Braton stopped him by hugging his waist.

“I really hate to say this again, but you will be disqualified if you start a fight! You’ll have your chance to fuck up Maddy don’t worry about it!” Braton shouted as Ceres squirmed in the waist lock of Braton.

Maddy looked at the two of them and laughed as he went to join Chad. As he sat down, he held a slight cocky smirk on a face that Ceres and even Braton would have slapped so hard into space if given the chance.

If Trissa wasn’t in the toilet right now cleaning up, she might have done something even worse to Maddy.

[Winners, please listen up! The following will be a brief for the next stage of the main competition! You have been filtered down into the best sixteen of your category, and you will all be randomly assigned a duel partner in a simple elimination tournament!]

[For the melee category, all weapons styles must be declared first! The weapon must only work at melee range, which means hybrid weapons like gunswords are not allowed! The 1v1 will be a straight up duel on a continuously shrinking arena over ten minutes, first one to fall or get pushed out loses! Exosuits are allowed!]

[For the ranged category, the duel will be held in a randomly generated field of 500 meters wide. Time limit is fifteen minutes, the area will shrink too, and first to fall or get knocked out loses! Exosuits are allowed!]

[For the exosuit repair category, weight category can be selected and must be declared one day before the duel. The arena will be decided after the weight category has been chosen. Three random types of exosuits that are damaged will be provided for the participant to choose from. Exosuit repair time is three hours, while duel is fifteen minutes! Arena will shrink in size over time!]

[That’s all for the competition format, the next set of duels will be the melee category, happening the day after, followed by the ranged category on the next day, and exosuit repair category on the following day. This means you will have a three day gap between each duel, so you have ample time to prepare! You are free to leave this lobby now.]

As soon as the voice mentioned the last sentence, a large bang was heard as one of the doors were broken down, where a single participant dashed out immediately from the toilet out of the lobby. The rest of the winners who were in the lobby were shocked, while only Braton and Ceres knew exactly who it was and where she was headed.

You are reading story Ceres’s Chaos: A Tragic Space Opera at novel35.com

***

“Hey guys, how you’re doing?” Erik muttered weakly as he held an icepack to his cheeks, the mark of a hand reddened on his face. He was lying in a hospital ward that had 60 beds inside, with patients being visited by worried parents and friends.

“Damn she got you good, lucky we weren’t here at the same time.” Braton took a seat next to Erik while Ceres immediately went to check the condition of Erik’s fingers.

As an exosuit repairer, their hands were their prize! Losing mobility in the hands was a death sentence for their future career.

“Don’t worry, Ceres, doctor said I still got a good chance of getting back my fingers. Worst case is I got to amputate them and regrow new ones to attach them, so I’m okay.” Erik tried to move his fingers but his hands was bandaged so tight he couldn’t even wiggle them, and each wiggle gave him a sharp pain that caused him to wince.

“That fucker, I’m going to kill him!” Ceres vowed to himself, furious since learning about this whole incident.

He knew very well that regrown fingers didn’t work as well as real ones, and Erik would have to spend a lot of time to regain full functionality. In fact, he would never ever reach back the same speed and precision he had with his real fingers.

“Haha look at you stupid outers, all being vengeful and shit. You can’t do anything to Maddy or Chad and you know it. You might think you’re some sort of superstar because you’re marginally better than your peers, but you know jackshit about how to 1v1 duel them. You can’t run forever, outer.” A voice came from the bed next to Erik, turning the heads of Ceres and Braton.

“Who the fuck are you?” Braton got up as he loomed over the outer’s bed, staring into his eyes with his arms crossed. “That’s one of the guys who held me down.” Erik said without emotions.

Ceres took a good look at the guy, whose face was pummelled and almost unrecognizable, but he did see a few features that matched the video replay that he watched. Ceres got up and walked over to him.

“Why did you do it?” Ceres asked quietly, his anger simmering from behind.

“HAHA, first question from the so-called ‘star’ and it’s such a dumb one. Why not? Maybe it's because the result would be the same even if we helped Erik, maybe it's because my entire family work in a company owned by the Seras family, and if they saw me defiant against Maddy, I’ll have fucked my parent’s and siblings jobs? “

”Or maybe it’s because I really don’t give a shit about some uppity small kids from the orphanage out in the middle of nowhere coming here and ruining my life! You know nothing about the amount of oppression and bullying that is coming from the inners because of your defiance, and we’re withstanding the burden for you! Didn’t think about that huh? You think we’re all some degenerates who love to hurt other people, but maybe you didn’t think that sometimes we’ve got NO CHOICE!”

“They say true meritocracy exists in the Loeric Empire, that with enough strength and talent we can rise to a higher social standing. If you truly believe that such a thing exist, then good for you. As for me.. I… I don’t have enough strength to not care about what might happen to my family after I defy anyone from Seras, nor do I have enough talent to make sure they don’t get affected… This… This is the better outcome. I rather get hurt and suffer on my own than let my parents suffer.”

The outer sniffed, on the verge of tears. Braton and Ceres couldn’t really bring themselves to get mad at him after hearing that. Ceres took a better look at the outer’s condition.

The outer’s body was in equally bad shape, with his face pummelled till even his parents might not recognized him, while his entire left arm was missing.

This was the cruelty of the Loeric Empire, if you want to succeed you have to fight, and that means plenty of losers left in the wake of the winners!

Ceres also couldn’t believe that Maddy had mutilated all of his group members and every other participant in the group stage! None of them came out unscathed, everyone forced to stay within the hospital ran by the Seras Family.

Some of them even developed chronic issues, resulting in even more income for the hospital as only hospital bills during the competition were covered.

Ceres still didn’t buy the justification, but partly because he had not many friends outside and was slightly sheltered in terms of his relationship circle.

He barely knew any outer that worked in the inner zones on an intimate level, the closest being some of the riot group leaders who he had a repair contract with, though they were the inner zones more to fight than work.

This led him to not having a clear viewpoint or perspective on how the society worked. It was only through what Max told him on the hoverbus and the story of this outer right here that painted a sad picture of the situation on the planet.

Still, he couldn’t understand why Maddy had to mutilate everyone he came across. Especially his allies.

“In case you don’t understand,” Erik said with a heavy sigh, “The Seras family owns the majority of hospitals that are used for the examination council. They charge the council and competition organizers the medical bill that the participants incur. Naturally, Maddy probably gets some kind of benefit or commission for hurting people this badly!”

Braton eyes widened, while Ceres was dumbfounded. That’s the reason?! It was so out of the realm of understanding of the two orphans that they just stood in shock for a good two minutes.

A hospital that mutilates people to gain potential long-term patients under the guise of ‘fair’ competition?

“Why the hell doesn’t the enforcers or city administration do anything about this?” Ceres shouted, while Erik just chuckled weakly.

“Didn’t you hear what happened in Ardan’s greenhouse? The enforcers are in on it too, and the Seras are part of the five families, which means they got ties to the administration. They ARE the city administration! And even if they weren’t, would you ever try to go against a family that owns more than 80% of all medical infrastructure in this city?” Erik said.

Erik didn’t use to be this cynical, but both the kidnapping at Ardan’s greenhouse and Trissa’s viewpoint affected him greatly, shifting his perspective of Athen’s society.

Gone was the naïve orphan who believed that everything was fine in the world.

Ceres’s belief was shattered slightly. Was everything he saw during Loeric Day a lie? Was the star nation not united? If such a divide in society can occur in the backwater city of Athen, how bad must it be on a larger scale across the star nation?

He had sincerely believed that true meritocracy existed, since he himself was a living proof.

Didn’t he rise to the top, gaining the attention of Cardenia because he was excellent enough to be chosen as the tester for the new educational syllabus?

But now after hearing their stories – perhaps he too was just being swung around like a puppet for reasons unknown.

In his usual fashion, Ceres added another goal to his current priority list. He didn’t have the resources to fix the divide, but he had the chance to get revenge.

“That’s it, that fucker is dead.”

 

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