Chapter 73: Chapter 70: The Rising Tide

Leonard never came back to the Thorn Chamber, completely disappearing off the grid right after losing the match, leaving Ceres and Gwen alone with the brutal Instructor X.

“Well I never really liked that guy anyway, he was a pussy in combat. Serves him right for choosing a random exosuit pilot.” Instructor X chalked it up to pure shame that Leonard wasn’t coming back, but seeing as he was out of the competition, he didn’t really need to train anymore.

But the competition was still on for Ceres and Gwen. Gwen was fairly relaxed, knowing that she had fulfilled her end of the contract with Cardenia by making it to the semi-finals.

She was a lot more relaxed now, but still hungry for more knowledge and training – ready to push her perfectionist streak to the limit.

Ceres however, had to train much harder than he ever had before. He was fighting Chad Athen. The guy had dominated all his duels, using a straight on brawler exosuit and winning through sheer strength and prowess. Sometimes his strength was so great that his own exosuit couldn’t even handle it, the motors breaking apart from the acceleration.

“There’s no secret plan or trick you can play against Chad in a 1v1. It’s do or die, so you better master that weird strength of yours before it's too late. You need to figure out the conditions of controlling it! Don’t want you losing your bullshit ‘power of friendship’ or whatever.” Instructor X scoffed at Ceres.

He obviously didn’t believe Ceres had some secret power or mysterious strength, instead believing that Ceres had some form of mental block that was limiting his true talent in his daily life and could only be shown through intense scenarios.

“Such a cliché if you ask me. You really made yourself out to be the typical main character with your fake superpower.” Instructor X sighed.

The word mentioned by Instructor X triggered a memory within Ceres. He was reminded of the mysterious white box that was still stored away nicely in the workshop back in Zone 17. Didn’t he use to fantasize that the box could give him superpowers?

He hasn’t been back in a long time to Uncle Dawn’s workshop. Did the inscription on the box change, or did something happen to it?

“There could be a relation to that box, but I never had any reaction to it before. In fact, I was the only one who was not attracted to it from the very start. I’ll have to do more investigation into that box as soon as possible.“

Ceres was now well aware that his weird outburst of strength was not a normal thing. He previously thought that it was a side effect of the sudden jump in NEIR level post-installation or an adverse result of him entering a coma right after the nerval jack installation.

However, through the competition it was clear that he was the only one experience this ‘side effect’. Was there something different about him?

“I have no idea how to train your secret power, but in order to properly prepare you for the fight, you have to train against me. I’m way stronger than Chad though, so if you can barely win against me, you’ll roll Chad over easy!”

***

Henry Lesion was grabbing his head, trying to soothe a headache as he sat in his office within the city enforcers’ headquarters.

It wasn’t normal for a human during this modern age to get a headache – there were specific genetic modifiers that could easily fix that.

But this time, the number of violent cases that had happened was truly mind-boggling, causing the enforcers to go into overdrive over the last two days.

Many retired enforcers were even called back to duty as a backup force, as Henry expected the duel between Ceres and Chad to be the main trigger for subsequent unrests.

Henry tapped his finger as he stared at the desk, an holographic overlay displaying all the current reported outbreaks of violence. The violent actions of Ceres, Maddy and Trissa had truly riled up the citizens of New Saint, bringing the divide even more to the forefront.

[Mr Lesion, the Chief would like to see you now.] A robotic voice sounded throughout the office, coming from an automatic AI scheduler that arranged everyone’s meetings. No one actually had ‘secretaries’ anymore, the AI being much cheaper and smarter to handle everyone’s calendar.

Henry sighed as he grabbed his multi, walking through the office chock full of half-dead interns and ragged employees trying to sort the overwhelming number of incidents.

The ‘divide’ between the inners and outers had been getting wider and wider, especially with both sides hurting each other. On the outers’ side, it was Trissa who carved the words into her opponent’s back, and Ceres for almost killing Maddy, crushing all his limbs.

The outers were all enraged at Braton and Trissa’s inexplicable loss during their respective quarterfinal duels, which made them scream of corruption or manipulation by the inners.

Naturally, the inners were more than happy to rebut back with insults and jeers, both in reality and virtually.

The forums and messaging rooms were flooded with curses and mockery from the inners -mainly targeting the ‘complaining’ outers who couldn’t handle a ‘fair’ loss.

With things spiralling out of control, it eventually reached into the real world, resulting in more incidents of crime and assault just for being born or living in a different zone.

Even legal riot fights between organized riot groups were getting more violent and there was a significant increase in weapon and ammunition purchases across all of them, as though they were expecting something big to happen soon in the city of Athen.

Apart from that, there were opportunists who took advantage of the currently strained enforcers to plunder and arson, targeting both vulnerable Zones, businesses and competitors. Riot groups were hired as private security or even to attack others.

More importantly, a small group of rebels have been rumoured to be operating within the city, apparently advocating to remove the Five Families from power.

They used the current discontent the outers had with the city administration and examination council, bolstering their forces and gathering more sympathizers.

Of course, Henry was on-top of all of this, keeping track of any dangerous elements and trying to pacify anyone he could reach out to.

He recalled the days of his competition sixteen years ago, and while mass riots didn’t break out as seriously as this – he had this sinking feeling that this current outburst was only going to get much much worse than he had ever seen.

He entered a large conference room, with a single man sitting at the head of the table, wearing a black custom police enforcer exosuit. It was quite a sight to see an exosuit within headquarters itself, but the person wearing it was almost never seen without it.

It was Major Derfas, head of the Derfas Family, a retired military man who decided to come back to his original home planet. A stoic face coupled with a military buzzcut, he conveyed the stereotypicl no-nonsense look that was part and parcel of being in the Loeric Empire’s Legions.

Now the head of the enforcers in New Saint, the man was known to go to the frontlines personally to subdue rebels or illegal riots and protests, being one of the most respected enforcers on the ground.

A holographic map of the city floated in front of him, with buildings and certain streets glowing red or yellow.

Major Derfas stared at the map, watching the worst outbreak of incidents he had ever experienced in his ten years of being the head of enforcers. Naturally, he had to call in someone who had experience.

“Henry, you’re the in-house expert in “post-competition stress”, seeing as you instigated one yourself back then. Why is this shit happening, and why is it getting worse than before?” Major Derfas asked directly.

Henry Lesion nodded, using his multi to project a few graphs over the map showing the recent spikes. “Sir, here are my conclusions: The amount of crimes committed by citizens are the same regardless of which zone they stay in, inner or outer. However, most assault and murder cases are reported to occur between residents from different zones.”

“You mean both inners and outers are fucking each other instead of their own kind. Which is not normal.”

“If you put it that way, then yes… sir”

Major Derfas tapped the table, thinking deeply. He could understand the ‘divide’ between outers and inners, but was a single graduation duel match that important to the outers?

“They’ve been cutting each other throats since day one, but why now?” Major Derfas asked.

“It’s related to the duel. Ceres putting Maddy into a coma and crushing both his arms have emboldened many outers to fight back against inner abuse, especially in their workplace.”

“So, what you’re saying is that inners have already being abusing the outers during work?”

Major Derfas himself was considered an ‘inner’ but years of service in the military through multiple wars have made him numb to such… ‘minor’ grievances of the difference between Zones.

He had fought alongside others from all over the star nation, with no one caring if you were from a backwater planet, asteroid, nomadic ship or even the top of the capital. All humans were the same in the dirt trenches on a far-flung planet when the enemy was right in front.

He could hardly believe that such a thing was occurring under his feet, and it took him ten years since he was elected as chief enforcer to see it all rise to the surface.

“That’s what I’ve always been saying since I joined … sir. You can’t hide this forever, and now it's finally rearing its head.”

“Inners are better than that, they won’t bully for no small reason. What reason would they have to hurt their own employed workers or colleagues? It’s not logical and it brews hate!” Major Derfas slammed the table.

“The number of cases begs to differ… sir. Emotions don’t follow a logical path, and this competition is stirring up everything else other than logic. Think along the lines of a match in the Council Galactic Soccer Cup. It is that level of fanaticism that we’re facing.”

Major Derfas sighed, leaning back in his chair, while Henry stood still at attention at the other end of the conference table.

“So the gist of it is: inners have been hitting the outers since long time ago, outers suffer in silence, a single outer wins a competition duel, outers hit back and inners hit back even harder in a never-ending escalating spiral. And we’re left to clean up? I want to know your perspective. We can obviously solve this in the short-term with more enforcers and deterrence. But what’s the long-term solution?”

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Henry nodded, agreeing to the chain of events, but could not answer the question.

He too didn’t have a long-term solution, knowing that the hate between the two sides ran deeper than he could ever hope to clean up. The living standards and culture were just too vastly different from each other.

And with the hierarchical structure of the Loeric Empire, only nobles had a say in policy. Even the Derfas family, which the Major was a part of, only had a say in planet administration, but were not even considered a lesser dynasty, having to answer to the Dynasty of Hawthorn.

Major Derfas sat still for a while – his brain running at top speed to consider all his options. His job was to make sure no more incidents occurred, and that the stability of society must be kept. Otherwise it was his head that would roll.

“Alright, short-term solution, get the army in. Call the local garrison and ask them to assist.”

Henry shook his head in disagreement. “Sir, letting the military be involved in what is known as civil unrest may turn a lot of heads. We may be at risk of antagonizing more people locally, both outers and inners. We will have to declare martial law in order to make this happen.”

“I know, but we must show force here. We have given outlets for violence through legal riots and protests, even providing an avenue to apply for the license. But we also must make it extremely clear that we do not tolerate anything beyond that, especially not this scale of incidents.”

Henry nodded, not saying what he truly believes. Deep down he knew the licensed riots and protests were a complete sham, not actually providing anything of value. It was merely a peace offering from the administration to claim that they do have avenues of ‘feedback’ and ways of settlement between parties, but the license would be heavily scrutinized.

Riot groups hardly believed in what they were fighting for anyway, more like fighting for control over areas and prestige instead of pushing relevant social agendas to the administration.

He admired the Dynasty of Hawthorn for implementing such a policy. By forcing compulsory protest at legalized areas, they let the citizens see how useless protesting is.

The riot groups were all also fully focused on fighting each other instead of rebelling against the administration, like chickens fighting in an arena.

“Anything else I should know?” Major Derfas asked.

“Yes sir. Based on the data, we expect an even larger wave of unrest following the duel between Ceres and Chad, close to a 500% increase in crimes, and a potential formation of mass riots. I’m sure you know of the wager between Oliver Athen and Cardenia Hawthorn.”

“Yes, I am aware, but why would it affect us? The wager is only between the two of them, and at most the Five Families gets stronger. They aren’t the ones committing the crimes now, are they?”

“Yes, but the public have already taken sides. Ceres represents the outers, while Chad represent the inners. Regardless of who wins, one side is going to be extremely pissed. A lot of emotions are riding on this one. A city-wide mass riot might even occur right after the duel.”

“Hmm, you’re right. I too am personally invested in the duel. The future of the Derfas family relies on this wager outcome.”

Major Derfas was one of the elders in the Derfas family, also reaping the rewards if the university plan went through. The ambitious plan would make the planet skyrocket in fame, which would bring more prestige to the five families who were already grounded here in Athen.

They might even have a chance at being lesser dynasties.

He got up from his chair, walking up to Henry. “I don’t care about ‘inners’ and ‘outers’, you know me. I trust you, seeing that the same shit happened before when you won the competition 16 years ago. Now you have a chance to nip it in the bud. You will have every available resource given to you. Don’t let this shit escalate, you hear me?”

Henry saluted. “Yes sir. I won’t let it happen again. You can count on me.”

***

It was the day of the most anticipated duel. Hardly anyone had watched the melee and ranged category, all saving their time for Ceres vs Chad.

An absurd amount of emotional investment was placed into this duel by all sort of people: the five families, the gamblers, the inners, the outers, everyone that cared.

Even crew members from passing ship stopped by to watch the upcoming duel, not really understanding the stakes but the hype surrounding them affected them too.

The neighbouring planets in the Strathon system also had channels streaming the event, being one of the biggest duels to happen this year despite being a mere ‘resource’ planet.

Everyone loved a good ‘zero-to-hero’ story, so biographies of Ceres and Chad were being aired all over the planet, with Ceres being portrayed as the underdog.

A dramatic tearjerking story of Ceres’ childhood in the orphanage and his time spent trawling through the electric trash yard behind his workshop, and the death of Uncle Dawn all served as a good sob story and rallied many outers behind him and what he represented.

Some outers even swore that if the same weird thing happened to Ceres during the duel like what happened to Braton and Trissa, they were going to raise a mass riot regardless.

Many outers obviously did not subscribe to that, but they knew in their hearts that they too would be both suspicious and angry at the organizers and inners for sabotaging the duel.

The trust level in the medical system ran by the Seras Family plummeted, with many outers boycotting and resorting to smaller ran medical companies.

Some were even claiming that the Seras Family were the ones sabotaging the duels, giving the outers inferior treatment and so on. And they weren’t wrong to assume so, after seeing how Maddy mutilated everyone in his group stage.

On the inner side, they too started to trust the hospital less and less. The continuous cries of Maddy’s victims’ families that were inners too started to erode the Seras Family reputation.

Yet many held back their judgement, waiting to see the result of the duel. The inners mostly rallied behind Chad.

The story of Chad was slightly less sob-focused but more awe-inspiring, being written to sound like the epic of a legend being born with the best natural talent and strength, almost being seen as a myth in New Saint.

Exciting childhood events and minor competitions made him seem like the main character of the competition, while Ceres was just another dark horse that Chad was bound to defeat along the way to the championship.

The two titans were about to clash today in the arena, with only one winner. Everyone in the city was excited, waiting for the two participants to enter the stage. The announcer’s rousing voice blasted throughout the arena:

[It’s finally here, everyone! The sequel to the duel between the two giants of the exosuit repair category, and frankly the pinnacle of the entire competition – Ceres vs Chad! The last time we saw them confront each other was in the third stage qualifier, where Ceres and Chad had a stalemate with each other.]

[In that event, Ceres was able to utilize the large stage to continuously run circles around Chad, but this time the arena would be much smaller. In fact, the arena will be this very competition stage! No covers, no random terrain, just a flat plane! How will Ceres overcome this humongous mountain of an obstacle which is Chad!]

“BY TEARING HIM A NEW ONE!” The viewers gathered outside the dumpling store of Mrs Qiu all shouted in unison, followed by loud cheering.

The entire street was blocked off with more than a thousand people gathered, sprawled across the entire avenue sitting on home-made table and chairs, drinking beer and watching the multiple holo-monitors.

Back in the arena, the audience roared, being packed to the brim with excited fans who wanted to see Ceres in action personally, or Chad in the flesh. They had become temporary celebrities for just this day, their popularity skyrocketing to the top of the news.

It was in this moment that the two of them became larger than life. They may be fighting for their own personal interests, but their actions would ripple throughout the society.

Cardenia, Senia and Zachary were back in the Hawthorn’s private viewing capsule. “Can Ceres do it?” Cardenia asked Senia, who had been keeping track of Ceres’s training.

“It’s a 50/50, and that’s assuming Ceres pulls off his miracles again. The flat arena doesn’t really help him at all, it throws away many of the initial plans he had.” Senia replied.

Cardenia frowned at this, to which Zachary laughed. “Have more faith in him! He’s an amazing boy and will do right by us. We helped him so much after all. I have absolute confidence in him to win the wager for us!”

Cardenia resented how Zachary naturally lumped himself with her in the word ‘us’, though he had been supporting her this whole way. But now she was the one at risk for the increased wager, and she suspected that no matter which way the wager goes, Zachary will always come out on top of it.

Wasn’t that the first thing they taught the Loeric in the Imperial Academy?

“Well thank you for your vote of confidence in ‘us’, Imperial Prince Zachary.” Cardenia leaned back, scanning the sky around her floating viewing capsule to see who else was here. The sky above the arena was packed, with capsules filled with those from the upper society of Athen as well as members from the Consortium, all trying to get the best angle.

“Seems like everyone from the Five Families is here to watch my downfall. I can’t wait to see their faces when Ceres wins!” Cardenia smiled as she spotted Oliver Athen’s private viewing capsule.

She prayed to whatever god she knew, her mind only landing on the pantheon of gods the Ebusian Church worshipped. The Loeric Empire was a secular nation, but this particular wager had made Cardenia suddenly turn religious.

Inside the capsule of Oliver Athen, the principal was sitting on his usual leather chair, tapping on the holster as he watched the arena, waiting for his grandson to appear.

Chad was his pride and joy, and Oliver gave him the best resources. He considered Chad to be the pinnacle representative of the planet, and only wanted the best for him.

“With your guaranteed win, the name of the Athen Family will forever be enshrined in the history of the Loeric Empire!”