Chapter 82: Chapter 79: Grodaws and Mawsies

Ceres regretted staying here.

As the grodaw in front of him squealed happily while rolling in a fenced mud bath, he awkwardly used his protective gloves and a scrub to check and remove any foreign objects that was stuck in the hair-like bristles.

“What the hell am I doing here, using mud to clean maggots?” Ceres murmured to himself as he sat down, while he grabbed the ‘cleaned’ grodaw and threw it back into the crowd of grodaw beyond the fenced mud bath.

The ‘cleaned’ grodaw squealed in joy as it sailed across the air. It wasn’t everyday they got the chance to fly for a moment.

Reaching forward to grab the next grodaw, he went through the motions that he had learnt from the elderly man a few days back. It’s been more than five days since he landed here, yet the elderly man didn’t give any information apart on how to tend to the grodaws.

Ceres now had a routine of a grodaw farmer, herding the grodaws around specific areas and cleaning them. He felt more like a teacher leading a bunch of rowdy kids to different caves, having to continuously keep an eye on any rogue grodaw who got too excited exploring.

The grodaws mainly lived off any organic material, which included algae, bacteria and fungi that grew on rocks nearby. Surprisingly, the underground network of caves had groundwater flowing through it, allowing the elderly man to tap off it and have a continuous source of water.

This also made the caves vibrant in life, with mushrooms and algae growing in sparse amounts over the expansive caves that were connected by tunnels and narrow corridors. Ceres had yet to explore most of it, most of his time used to keep track of all the grodaws that he brought to graze around.

Following a grazing map provided by the elderly, Ceres had yet to find any other signs of human habitation despite going through more than a hundred different caves. He also had not seen any sign of what the elderly man referred to as the ‘Chosen’.

Instead, he used the time to examine himself and the changes he had experience since awakening in the vat.

The greyscale vision had hardly returned as frequently ever since he had a stable supply of food in the form of grodaw meat from the elderly man, only experiencing it about two to three times a day.

He still saw the grodaws as dim blue spheres with sparks of pink when his vision swapped, though he didn’t have any other form of lifeform to compare against apart from the bright flashes of red he saw during his fight with the Keepers and the orange hue of the elderly man.

As for his body, he had verified his weight had almost increased by 50%, while his height shot up all the way to 1.8 meters, an entire 10 centimetres taller than what he used to be. His muscle mass was significantly larger than before as well.

Reaction speed and strength was through the roof and while he had yet to repair anything mechanical, he had a feeling that his hands were defter and more precise.

“What I can say is that weird things have happened to me while I was in the vat, but the question remains as to who put me in the vat and why? Cardenia? Was it to improve me…?” Ceres pondered. The very last thing he recalled was the fight with Chad, to which he had still no idea if he had won or not.

“Rockhold… The Chosen…” He recalled the elderly man mentioning those two terms. Ceres vaguely recalled something about Rockhold. “Where did I hear about it before… Something about gang violence and fighting for control…”

It was back in Uncle Dawn’s workshop where he heard the news about Rockhold, a few months before the qualifiers. “Huh, back before I met Ardan and joined the Gladius… where are my friends?”

He noted that the air pressure was fairly high, though it felt like nothing on his new body. “Seems like the elderly man can handle it too. We might not be that deep… but maybe deeper than the inner zones?”

“Am I still even in New Saint? I must be...” He clearly recalled the firefight in the research lab, remembering the Athen Defender exosuits. “But none of the exosuits were the standard enforcer design…”

His hand instinctively clenched as he recalled the harrowing fight in which he was attacked first, causing the grodaw that was expecting a peaceful wash to squeal out in pain, struggling to get out of the crushing grip.

“HEY CERES, FOCUS!” Ceres was smacked in the head by the elderly man. Both of them wore protective suits as the grodaw’ bristles become poisonous when they are threatened. Though Ceres already proved immune to it, he still wore it out of dignity as he did not have any other clothes.

“Didn’t I already tell you not to hurt them? You’re damaging my property here! Look, you grab it like this...” The elderly man sat next to Ceres in the fenced mud bath, demonstrating the master skill of a true grodaw farmer.

The queue of grodaws waiting to be cleaned immediately avoided Ceres and swarmed the elderly man. Ceres felt slightly defeated upon seeing that.

“First you feed it an alga covered pebble or small rock, then you rub it’s tummy counter clockwise four times, finishing off with a pat down through its bristles...”

“I already know how to do it, I was just distracted… Are you really not going to tell me your name?” Ceres tried to change the topic away from his mistake. He hardly knew anything about the elderly man, apart from the fact that he must have been down here for a long time for his skin to be this pale as though it had never seen daylight before.

Not even the inners were this pale!

“What good is a name down here? There’s only you and me for now. Once you’re done here, I’ll bring you to town and they can sort you out. If they can’t, then you’ll be my helper for a good long while, hehe...” The elderly man chuckled.

“Town? There’s a town down here? I thought you were the only human living here!” Ceres exclaimed.

“Why would you think that? Then who do I sell the worms to?”

“But, when I brought the grodaw out to graze, I didn’t see any signs of humans at all.”

“Why would I let them graze anywhere near humans?! They are poisonous! The townspeople would kill me if I let them get close while grazing.” The elderly man scoffed. “And the Chosen hardly come here at all, unless they were really starving. They got their own grodaw farmers.”

Ceres didn’t mind the rebuke, instead getting excited. Maybe he could find out more information at the town on what the hell happened to him. He had hoped to get it out from the ‘White Fang’ that he saved previously, but he fell down the chasm instead.

“We’ll be leaving to town in about three hours, pick up the grodaws that you previously cleaned and pack them into the… Where’s the cleaned grodaws?”

“Err, I threw them back into the crowd…”

“WHAT’S THE POINT OF CLEANING THEM IF YOU PUT THEM BACK STRAIGHT INTO OTHER DIRTY GRODAWS!”

Harassed by the elderly man for the next hour, Ceres had to re-clean up to ten grodaws and packed them into a medium sized container. The two of them then began to prepare for the trip to town, Ceres following the lead of the elderly man. They stocked up on food and water, as well as a few additional lanterns in case they had to camp along the way.

The ‘road’ to town was more like a series of interconnected tunnels and caves. There was no proper path and potentially dangerous wildlife, so Ceres had to continue wearing the same protective suit.

“Don’t we have any weapons for the trip?” Ceres asked. He knew from the Gladius and Bee Strathon that it was common for miners and explorers on Athen to bring weapons along to defend themselves. Most of the planet was still untamed and its depths had yet to be fully explored and exploited.

Even if it were explored, it was unknown when animals whose natural habitat has been replaced would suddenly shift locations due to the large scale mining operations happening all across the planet.

“Sure, here ya go.” The elderly man handed him a similar staff used to herd the grodaws, while the elderly man brandished his own. Ceres looked at the staff glumly, which looked as though it would crack at any given time.

“Don’t look down on this staff, boy. If you swing it hard enough, you can easily squash most of the wildlife here. Well, except a few.” The elderly man grimly smiled.

Having no choice but to trust the staff and its flimsy construction, Ceres packed the necessities into the pockets of his protective suit, hoping it would be enough for the trip.

It would take the two of them more than 12 hours to reach the town. If it was a direct paved road, it might only have taken 5 hours, but with no tunnelling equipment or mapping sensors, it was impossible to implement such infrastructure.

The two of them eventually set off from the house, but not before making sure that the remaining grodaws were fenced in and had ample food to last the next three days.

“Why do you live this far away from town?” Ceres asked as they trekked through a fairly narrow tunnel, the grodaw container mounted on his back while he used the staff to stabilise his footing, following the elderly man.

“I already said the grodaws are poisionous! What more of a reason do you want? Do you think people are happy having toxic animals within range of them? Don’t underestimate the grodaws, if you lose sight and can’t track them, they can appear in the weirdest places and still survive.”

Ceres internally felt that it wasn’t really the real reason why he stayed that far, but declined to pursue it any further. “How did you end up as a grodaw farmer below ground? And who’s Anna?”

“Please, for the love of all that is holy, can you shut your trap for once! I used to enjoy these trips in silence, but I’m starting to regret bringing you along. Can you just remain as a silent useful young man with two hands?”

Ceres sighed. The next three hours of the trip proceeded in silence as Ceres marvelled at the intricate subterranean fauna and ecosystem.

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Significant amounts of mushroom clusters and insects dominated the floor, while flowing underground water created snaking paths that led deeper into the planet.

As they entered one particularly large cavern, the walls were dominated by a red glow, stemming from the lava river that flowed through.

Large branches that looked like sparkling diamonds webbed across the ceiling, stemming from multiple large trunks that were placed along the lava river. Ceres was shocked that life could even grow next to lava – how resistant must their surface material be?

The heat was searing, but as the elderly man and Ceres pushed through the cavern, suddenly the elderly man stopped, grabbing Ceres and pulling him down behind a large rock.

“Shit, it’s right there in our path. We’re going to have to wait for a while, backtrack about 15 minutes.” The elderly man cursed under his breath.

“Wait, wait, what did you see?”

“See for yourself,” The elderly man motioned behind him, to which Ceres took a chance to peek beyond the rock.

In the middle of their intended path was a large cave-dwelling scorpion-like isopod, as large as a lion. Its armour shell was glistening blue with dotted black spots. It stood there warily, its black bead eyes staring back at Ceres while it clicked its large claws together with a sharp snapping sound.

The tail was as large as a log, with a pointed sharp spike at the very end of it, causing Ceres to quickly hide behind the rock before he antagonized it any longer. It stared directly at Ceres as though it was leering at him.

“See what I mean? That’s a mawsie, a natural predator of both humans and grodaws alike. They are probably near the top of the food chain down here.”

“Hey, you told me our staff could easily squash most of the wildlife down here,” Ceres whispered back.

“Emphasis on ‘most’, boy. And have you not seen its shell? Mawsies live in lava as their natural habitat, how the hell are you going to crack that kind of shell? It’s literally fortified!” The elderly man couldn’t bother explaining to Ceres anymore, instead starting to make his way back where they came from.

But before the elderly man could make a move, he suddenly froze in his path as another mawsie leaped out from the lava river with a big splash, landing right in the path they came from, blocking them from retreating.

“Well, shit. Looks like it called for help,” The elderly man said, retreating back behind the large rock.

“What do we do, we fight?” Ceres asked.

“Are you crazy? It takes more than six people to take down a single mawsie. No, we stay absolutely still and hope they don’t see us.”

The elderly man’s wishes did not come through, as the two mawsie started to inch forward towards them menacingly.

The world in front of Ceres suddenly slowed down as his reaction speed spike. Time seemed to flow slower in his field of view as he watched every movement of the two mawsie moving closer towards him.

He marked all the limbs in his mind, anticipating the point in which the mawsie would pounce towards them. It was his first time fighting against them, but basic battle instincts drilled into him were good enough.

Grabbing the elderly man by the waist and lifting him up with his arms, Ceres began to prepare to run as fast as he could, his legs in a running start position. The grodaws in the container on his back squealed louder, somehow aware of the danger.

“Boy, what are you doing?” The elderly man whispered angrily as he tried to slap the arm gripping him. “You can’t hope to outrun them!”

“Just tell me where to go!” Ceres whispered back urgently. “Trust in me!”

Finally, the flanking mawsie pounced towards the large rock at the same time!

At the same instant, Ceres dashed out with the elderly man in hand, running full speed towards the original mawsie in front.

The mawsie in front immediately launched its tail forward as part of their strategy to flush the prey out from the rock, but Ceres dodged the tail deftly and sprinted past the mawsie, avoiding its snapping claws as well.

“WHERE TO?” Ceres roared as both mawsies immediately started to scurry after him, keeping up with him in speed. He ran with the elderly man in his arms, while the grodaws in the container were bounced around crazily.

The elderly man couldn’t speak, only managing to point with his hand as he struggled to breath under the fast-running speed of Ceres, the air almost knocking into him.

A mad race began between Ceres and the two mawsies, spanning over tunnels and caves. Ceres began to encounter more and more rivers of lava, which unsurprisingly had more mawsies inhabitants!

Attracted by the sound of the chase as well as the call of the two original mawsies, more and more mawsies join the chase, trying to cut off Ceres.

Despite carrying a grodaw container on his back and the elderly man in front, Ceres easily outran all the mawsies and avoided every flanking and trap, slinking past any of them who tried to cut him off.

Somehow his body was just able to move faster and faster than he had ever done before as the black goo pumped energy into his reinforced muscles. He swiftly moved through treacherous terrain and narrow tunnels, dodging stalagmites and dense mushroom forests.

As he ran for more than twenty minutes, the two original mawsies began to lose sight of him, but it didn’t matter as there were now more than thirty mawsies following him. Ceres didn’t know how much distance he had covered, but it was far more than anything he would be able to achieve before!

The elderly man was in full shock, almost unable to breath due to the rapid turns. But he continued to do his role of navigating, continuously pointing towards the path to town. He was surprised at the insane running speed of Ceres’, the landmarks that were supposed to help him navigate becoming a blur.

“Boy, at this speed you’ll be at the town in less than ten minutes!” The elderly man finally managed to speak, to which Ceres nodded and sped up even more.

Ceres himself was surprised at how much energy he had in his body and his stamina. “Another side benefit of the vat,” he thought to himself as he ran as fast as he could towards the town.

Soon, he exited a tiny tunnel and reached a large tunnel, seeing a large bunker door in the distance. “That’s the town gate ahead!” The elderly man exclaimed.

It was still more than two kilometres away, but Ceres sprinted anyway, putting his all into running.

As he neared the town gate, he noticed three layers of defensive barricades about shoulder height placed, with four guards in place with rifles.

“HEY, WHO ARE YOU? Is that Oswa? What are you running fr—HOLY SHIT!” One of the guards, the captain, roared as he watched a wave of mawsies appear in the distance, all charging towards the town with Ceres in the lead.

A klaxon alarm blared, with only two more guards coming out with rifles. “Lawson, you better be awake at the barrier control!” The captain spoke into his radio.

“Ya boss, I’m on it. When do I deploy it?” The radio responded.

“Deploy the barrier once the two of them are inside in ten seconds!” The captain ordered when suddenly he saw a flickering shadow leap over him and the barricades, landing on the ground behind with a loud thud. It was Ceres and the elderly man!

The captain was taken aback but returned to his senses immediately. “DEPLOY THE BARRIER!” The captain focused on the incoming wildlife rather than the fact that Ceres essentially leapt more than 20 meters. “Get power up to the defensive turrets, I’ll manually pilot it!”

As the wave of mawsies charged towards the town, the guards all rushed towards the barriers, mounting their energy rifles on the waist-high barrier and crouching behind. The energy rifles were fairly low and badly maintained. Ceres was surprised that they were even still functional!

Ceres tried to recover himself from the jump, staggering as he glanced around for the old man that he unconsciously dropped onto the ground from exhaustion. “Hey, old man, are you alright?”

The elderly man couldn’t answer as he was vomiting on all fours, the sudden deceleration causing him to puke the nutrient paste he had this morning.

No longer antagonistic against Ceres after witnessing his strength, he shook his head, instead pointing to the guards. “They need your help!”