The world spun around Ceres as he entered the white door, causing his head to swirl in pain. Soon he found himself stumbling into a snowy ice cave.
Ceres had never seen snow before apart from virtual worlds and holodramas, so the pure snow-white view of the ground and the frozen stalactites slightly excited him.
He was not even sure if it was still underground, seeing as it was able to snow. The heat and high pressure should not even allow this cave to exist, yet it did, striking a stark contrast to the both the surface and underground environments Ceres had gotten used to. The visible foggy breath that came out from his nose fascinated him.
[Welcome, #102 (@*(#NJSD. Prepare for your final glorious battle.]
Ceres had roughly gotten the basic idea that the temple was something of a trial or test of sorts. Would there be a reward if he got his name to the top of the list? He had no idea whom the other people ranked higher than him. Slovesa or another alien race?
[Choose your difficulty.]
Before anything could even appear in front of Ceres to show him the various difficulties, he quickly shouted: “The easiest!” Ceres wasn’t suicidal – he just wanted to leave the goddamn temple.
[Confirmed. Selecting opponent now.]
Did that mean Paska was his next opponent? According to Misa and Yan, none of their members ever made it out of the labyrinth. Seeing as only he and Paska were ‘qualified’, wasn’t it a given that they had to fight? Ceres did not expect any slovesa to still be alive in the temple.
[The hunt has begun. Dishonourable actions are forbidden.]
Ceres tensed up, unable to tell where the opponent was through the frozen landscape. He quickly scanned for emotions, noticing something similar to the real monsters that he had been fighting – except the core was noticeably larger.
The core glowed purple and red, as it seemed like the opponent was also searching for Ceres. Ceres now had the information advantage, quickly taking in his surroundings. He had zero experience fighting in anything remotely close to ice and snow. He had lived his entire known life on the surface of a scorching mine planet.
Ceres trudged through the snow warily, trying to find an advantageous position to flank the enemy. It seemed to be a 1v1 battle, seeing as Ceres could not sense any other living beings in range. He scaled a rocky outcrop nearby, trying to get a height advantage so he could see further.
As he reached a cliff overlooking the rest of the cave, he was shocked to see that his enemy was an actual slovesa. “Holy shit, it’s a slovesa for real.”
Based on the size of its core, it was a middle-class slovesa, looking like a lean rock golem similar in shape to the one he fought during the qualifiers.
However, its exterior was a lot more ornate that the plain-looking virtual one that he fought, the surface carved with the same glyphs as Ceres saw before but in red instead. It towered more than 5 meters tall when upright, giving a sense of authority as though it was a top-ranking leader amongst the slovesa.
The limbs of the slovesa were all notoriously customized, with this middle-class slovesa featuring two tails instead of the usual one, along with an additional limb. Extra limbs like this usually signified that the slovesa was much stronger, as more energy was required to articulate the extra limbs.
Ceres cursed, knowing the fight would be much harder than what he experienced in the qualifiers.
This would be his first actual fight against a real slovesa.
However, he himself was not the same as well. He now had the advantage of the black scale armour along with general enhancements to his strength and speed, along with the ability to spot the exact location of the slovesa core.
Not every slovesa’s core was near the centre of the body as humans expected – slovesa could easily function with a core far off centre. There were already known cases of slovesa’s hiding their cores on the ends of a short tail, making it harder for opponents to damage it. However, the slovesa also run the risk of losing their body if their tail was broken in half.
Ceres could see that the enemy’s core was situated deep within its right shoulder, so he began to plan the ambush. It would take a good amount of penetrating power to pierce the core in one hit.
The enemy slovesa had the same idea as well, heading towards the rocky outcrop which Ceres was on to gain information, but it had not spotted him yet.
Just as it approached the base of the rocky outcrop, Ceres immediately dropped down right on top of it.
Ceres lifted the mace over his head as he fell and began to swing downwards at the right shoulder, but suddenly an energy beam hit him squarely in the chest, melting a part of his black armour.
The enemy slovesa’s tail was able to emit high-intensity energy beams, the end of the tail melting hot as the tip vaporized as a side effect.
Snow surged from the feet along the skin of the slovesa towards the tail, as though it was continuously providing coolant to serve as a heat sink.
Ceres grunted as he was knocked off course, causing him to hit the ground awkwardly. The enemy’s slovesa immediately used its two tails to jab at Ceres, forcing him to roll away before recovering and lunging at the slovesa.
The enemy slovesa brought its fist forward to meet Ceres’s spiked mace, but the spiked mace proved to be stronger, crushing and smashing apart its fist. Immediately, Ceres noticed the core changing colour, sensing that the enemy slovesa was about to be much warier in its attacks.
Ceres chased the slovesa as the slovesa tried to keep a distance, trying to leverage the fact that Ceres had no ranged attacks. As such, Ceres stuck as close as he could to the enemy, not allowing him to gain the ranged advantage. His black-scale armour would not be able to withstand multiple hits of the energy beam.
The fight became a continuous chase, with Ceres cutting off the slovesa’s retreat path as much as he could. This infuriated the slovesa, who rapidly turned around and launched a three-pronged strike towards Ceres using its tails and arm.
Ceres was forced to back off as he could not defend all three sides, and he was not confident of his black-scale armour being able to handle a direct attack from such a strong opponent.
“Fall, you insolent alien - die and let me climb the ranks!” The slovesa roared, almost making Ceres go deaf.
“What the… you can talk?” Ceres was stunned. Wasn’t slovesa communication based on radio frequencies? How was he able to decipher it with his ears?
The slovesa did not reply, instead taking advantage of Ceres’s momentary confusion to leap back and charge up two energy beams on its tails, firing them directly at him.
Ceres jumped out of the way as the laser beams arced across the floor in a straight line, scorching the ground with burn marks that stretched for hundreds of meters before fizzling out. The slovesa quickly dipped the ends of the tail in the snow and ice to rapidly cool it down, no doubt preparing for the next attack as superheated steam gushed out from the contact surface area.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Ceres activated his maximum speed that even he himself was not aware of, sprinting towards the slovesa who was now caught unprepared for the sudden acceleration.
Ceres jabbed his spiked mace forward as he stabbed it into the slovesa’s waist directly, completely crushing and removing a chunk of the slovesa’s main body. Ceres’s momentum brought him far behind the slovesa, who raged at his missing chunk.
“How dare you hurt me, you disgusting alien? I have spent centuries collecting the parts to make this body. I will tear your body apart into pieces and rise!” The slovesa roared, but Ceres didn’t get shocked again as to why he could hear the slovesa. He now had already just attributed it to the enhancements inside his body.
He had all the time in the world to figure out why later – right now he needed to win.
Ceres turned around to see the slovesa moving even faster, the gaping chunk on its body already covered with rock collected from nearby but not as densely packed as before. It seemed to move even faster than before, no doubt because of the reduction in weight.
“This is tough. I have to smash the core directly otherwise it will only get harder and harder to win!” Ceres too charged towards the slovesa, sliding under the swiping motion of the slovesa arms before grabbing onto the base of the tail underneath it.
“I hope this isn’t the groin or anus area. Wait do they even shit?” Ceres randomly thought as he used his grip to pull himself up and over onto the back of the slovesa.
The slovesa violently trashed around as he tried to shake off Ceres, but instead, Ceres swung his spiked mace and smashed the base of the two tails repeatedly.
Finally, the slovesa made a smart move to roll on the ground like a donkey. Ceres barely made it off, almost getting squashed between the large slovesa body and the ground.
He took advantage of the now exposed slovesa who was struggling to get back up, striking at the nearest spots in range while avoiding the flailing swings of its tail.
“ENOUGH!” A sudden invisible explosive force emitted in all directions from the slovesa, repulsing Ceres away and irradiating everything within a 10-meter radius. A huge steam explosion occurred as the surrounding snow and ice rapidly vaporized.
Before Ceres knew it, he noticed the front of his black scale armour was glowing hot as though it had just been dipped directly in lava, causing him to yelp and roll about on the snowy and icy ground in a desperate attempt to cool it down.
Ceres quickly recovered and noticed that the large 5-meter-tall body of the slovesa had disappeared, the large amount of steam generated from the explosion obscuring his view. He quickly scanned for the core and noticed that the slovesa’s core was still present. However, the slovesa’s core was enlarged and had upgraded to a higher class of sorts.
Ceres did not exactly know at the time that it was a class transformation to a high-class slovesa from a medium class, but he knew for a fact that the strength of the core was of an entirely new magnitude.
“Wait, I thought mid-fight battles upgrades were only allowed for main characters!” Ceres complained internally, before realizing that Paska also upgraded during his fight.
Ceres still held out hope as being the ‘main character’ but the reasoning was getting thinner by the day. “It’s like my transformation doesn’t mean anything anymore!”
He resolved to fight more cautiously in the future, observing the newly upgraded slovesa core closely. “Better stop creating more competition - can’t let them breakthrough or ascend that easily!”
If Ceres had studied more about the slovesa during his time in school and the museum trip, he might be aware he may be one of the rare few humans to witness a slovesa’s evolution in person – and the only one who could see the core directly with his own eyes.
The current understanding of how a slovesa evolves is very badly understood – not even their reproductive method had been completely comprehended.
Ceres was naturally unaware of all of this, this being his first real slovesa encounter. However, he had no time to think about it – with the slovesa core suddenly charging towards him. Ceres quickly swapped back to normal vision just in time to see a human-sized fist punch him directly in the abdomen, sending him flying.
Ceres twisted his body mid-air to land, before being immediately forced to parry a few punches and kicks from the new high-class slovesa body that was eerily shaped and similar in size to his body.
It was as though it was made to copy his stature, except for the prominent tail at the back that allowed the high-class slovesa more avenues of attack than Ceres had.
Finally, Ceres managed to come up with a hypothesis on the spot – the high-class slovesa consumed its large body and concentrated the material density within the core, enlarging it and enhancing its strength to reach the next class. This meant even though the resulting body was smaller, its energy and strength were much higher.
The density of the material was even more compressed, like a sheet of metal folded ten thousand times over or pressurized volcanic crust material.
“Fuck!” Ceres tried to use his spiked mace to counterattack a few times, but the high-class slovesa dodged with ease, exploiting the numerous openings Ceres had in his techniques. Ceres’s mind raced as he tried to analyze the fighting movement of the slovesa and focus on its weakness, but it was hard to do under the intense fighting pressure.
“Despite your disgusting carbon-based body, I must thank you for allowing me to evolve. Now, the resurgence of my clan is unstoppable. All shall be beneath me!” The high-class slovesa mocked as he continued landing hit after hit on Ceres, causing the black scale armour to finally crack.
The intense pressure did not scare Ceres with the fear of dying – instead, it galvanized him.
He had already had two life-and-death battles over the last three days, making him grow more accustomed to it.
His fighting spirit soared as he tried every trick in the book in order to stay even in the battle. The strength and speed of the battle continuously fluctuated, the shockwaves rippling the air and the tremors causing icicles to fall from the ceiling, crashing around them.
Though Ceres could generally stay on par with him, the extra tail and apparent lack of joints in the slovesa’s limbs enabled it to attack from ridiculous angles. How could he exploit any openings when the slovesa’s arms and legs could bend in any direction?
“I need some advantage of my own. The spiked mace attack is too slow to hit him!” Ceres cursed as he received another blow on his waist.
Racking his brain for the answer, Ceres suddenly was cognizant of the same ‘hunger’ that was rising in his body. He let himself delve deeper into the ‘hunger’ and channelled his anger and rage like before, hoping something within could help him.
Instead, it distracted him, causing more and more pieces of the black armour to be crushed as the high-class slovesa landed more and more hits.
Ceres choked as he stumbled backwards, his consciousness slightly fading.
However, eerily he did not feel fear or fright. In fact, only ‘hunger’ was the dominant emotion and it was overwhelming his entire body. The black armour suddenly started pulsating like a heartbeat. Just as the slovesa threw a punch at Ceres’s head, Ceres’s body automatically dodged with a new level of speed.
“That’s it!” Ceres exclaimed as he let his body instinct fight, instead of trying to use his brain to think. He became akin to a rabid beast, swinging wildly and catching the high-class slovesa off-guard.
A single swing of the spiked mace finally landed on the slovesa’s arm, crushing the shoulder into rubble and sending the slovesa flying.
Now, Ceres was aware of his downsides – his brain was much slower than his enhanced body.
Not enough time and practice had been put into using his body properly. What was the use of the enhancements if his brain could not keep up with them? This was the reason why he was continuously lagging behind the slovesa.
The high-class slovesa got up from its fall, its arm broken and strewn across the floor. It ‘stared’ angrily at Ceres, who could somehow tell despite the slovesa having no eyes of any kind. “Do not block me any longer – your loss is inevitable!” The high-class slovesa roared as it absorbed more rubble nearby to form a new arm.
The seemingly infinite regenerative capability of the slovesa gave Ceres a sudden epiphany. Ceres finally grinned widely for the first time since the battle started.
Perhaps he had found his best training ground.
He recalled the ranking list, showing his name at the bottom of the list. The slovesa had also mentioned climbing the rank– was the slovesa’s name also on the list? “Could it be? Actual progression for me?!”
This meant the entire temple was dedicated to fights between the individuals classed on the list. Ceres wondered whether this high-class slovesa had been waiting here for an opponent – but found it to be highly improbable seeing as the humans conquered this system centuries ago.
Regardless, what better place did he have to hone his techniques and reaction speed to better utilize his new body?
The sudden calm posture and hidden sinister smile under the black mask of Ceres gave a pause to the high-class slovesa, who watched Ceres warily, wondering what the carbon lifeform was trying to pull off this time.
“Finally! Here’s my training arc!”
The world spun around Ceres as he entered the white door, causing his head to swirl in pain. Soon he found himself stumbling into a snowy ice cave.
Ceres had never seen snow before apart from virtual worlds and holodramas, so the pure snow-white view of the ground and the frozen stalactites slightly excited him.
He was not even sure if it was still underground, seeing as it was able to snow. The heat and high pressure should not even allow this cave to exist, yet it did, striking a stark contrast to the both the surface and underground environments Ceres had gotten used to. The visible foggy breath that came out from his nose fascinated him.
[Welcome, #102 (@*(#NJSD. Prepare for your final glorious battle.]
Ceres had roughly gotten the basic idea that the temple was something of a trial or test of sorts. Would there be a reward if he got his name to the top of the list? He had no idea whom the other people ranked higher than him. Slovesa or another alien race?
[Choose your difficulty.]
Before anything could even appear in front of Ceres to show him the various difficulties, he quickly shouted: “The easiest!” Ceres wasn’t suicidal – he just wanted to leave the goddamn temple.
[Confirmed. Selecting opponent now.]
Did that mean Paska was his next opponent? According to Misa and Yan, none of their members ever made it out of the labyrinth. Seeing as only he and Paska were ‘qualified’, wasn’t it a given that they had to fight? Ceres did not expect any slovesa to still be alive in the temple.
[The hunt has begun. Dishonourable actions are forbidden.]
Ceres tensed up, unable to tell where the opponent was through the frozen landscape. He quickly scanned for emotions, noticing something similar to the real monsters that he had been fighting – except the core was noticeably larger.
The core glowed purple and red, as it seemed like the opponent was also searching for Ceres. Ceres now had the information advantage, quickly taking in his surroundings. He had zero experience fighting in anything remotely close to ice and snow. He had lived his entire known life on the surface of a scorching mine planet.
Ceres trudged through the snow warily, trying to find an advantageous position to flank the enemy. It seemed to be a 1v1 battle, seeing as Ceres could not sense any other living beings in range. He scaled a rocky outcrop nearby, trying to get a height advantage so he could see further.
As he reached a cliff overlooking the rest of the cave, he was shocked to see that his enemy was an actual slovesa. “Holy shit, it’s a slovesa for real.”
Based on the size of its core, it was a middle-class slovesa, looking like a lean rock golem similar in shape to the one he fought during the qualifiers.
However, its exterior was a lot more ornate that the plain-looking virtual one that he fought, the surface carved with the same glyphs as Ceres saw before but in red instead. It towered more than 5 meters tall when upright, giving a sense of authority as though it was a top-ranking leader amongst the slovesa.
The limbs of the slovesa were all notoriously customized, with this middle-class slovesa featuring two tails instead of the usual one, along with an additional limb. Extra limbs like this usually signified that the slovesa was much stronger, as more energy was required to articulate the extra limbs.
Ceres cursed, knowing the fight would be much harder than what he experienced in the qualifiers.
This would be his first actual fight against a real slovesa.
However, he himself was not the same as well. He now had the advantage of the black scale armour along with general enhancements to his strength and speed, along with the ability to spot the exact location of the slovesa core.
Not every slovesa’s core was near the centre of the body as humans expected – slovesa could easily function with a core far off centre. There were already known cases of slovesa’s hiding their cores on the ends of a short tail, making it harder for opponents to damage it. However, the slovesa also run the risk of losing their body if their tail was broken in half.
Ceres could see that the enemy’s core was situated deep within its right shoulder, so he began to plan the ambush. It would take a good amount of penetrating power to pierce the core in one hit.
The enemy slovesa had the same idea as well, heading towards the rocky outcrop which Ceres was on to gain information, but it had not spotted him yet.
Just as it approached the base of the rocky outcrop, Ceres immediately dropped down right on top of it.
Ceres lifted the mace over his head as he fell and began to swing downwards at the right shoulder, but suddenly an energy beam hit him squarely in the chest, melting a part of his black armour.
The enemy slovesa’s tail was able to emit high-intensity energy beams, the end of the tail melting hot as the tip vaporized as a side effect.
Snow surged from the feet along the skin of the slovesa towards the tail, as though it was continuously providing coolant to serve as a heat sink.
Ceres grunted as he was knocked off course, causing him to hit the ground awkwardly. The enemy’s slovesa immediately used its two tails to jab at Ceres, forcing him to roll away before recovering and lunging at the slovesa.
The enemy slovesa brought its fist forward to meet Ceres’s spiked mace, but the spiked mace proved to be stronger, crushing and smashing apart its fist. Immediately, Ceres noticed the core changing colour, sensing that the enemy slovesa was about to be much warier in its attacks.
Ceres chased the slovesa as the slovesa tried to keep a distance, trying to leverage the fact that Ceres had no ranged attacks. As such, Ceres stuck as close as he could to the enemy, not allowing him to gain the ranged advantage. His black-scale armour would not be able to withstand multiple hits of the energy beam.
The fight became a continuous chase, with Ceres cutting off the slovesa’s retreat path as much as he could. This infuriated the slovesa, who rapidly turned around and launched a three-pronged strike towards Ceres using its tails and arm.
Ceres was forced to back off as he could not defend all three sides, and he was not confident of his black-scale armour being able to handle a direct attack from such a strong opponent.
“Fall, you insolent alien - die and let me climb the ranks!” The slovesa roared, almost making Ceres go deaf.
“What the… you can talk?” Ceres was stunned. Wasn’t slovesa communication based on radio frequencies? How was he able to decipher it with his ears?
The slovesa did not reply, instead taking advantage of Ceres’s momentary confusion to leap back and charge up two energy beams on its tails, firing them directly at him.
Ceres jumped out of the way as the laser beams arced across the floor in a straight line, scorching the ground with burn marks that stretched for hundreds of meters before fizzling out. The slovesa quickly dipped the ends of the tail in the snow and ice to rapidly cool it down, no doubt preparing for the next attack as superheated steam gushed out from the contact surface area.
“Oh no, you don’t!” Ceres activated his maximum speed that even he himself was not aware of, sprinting towards the slovesa who was now caught unprepared for the sudden acceleration.
Ceres jabbed his spiked mace forward as he stabbed it into the slovesa’s waist directly, completely crushing and removing a chunk of the slovesa’s main body. Ceres’s momentum brought him far behind the slovesa, who raged at his missing chunk.
“How dare you hurt me, you disgusting alien? I have spent centuries collecting the parts to make this body. I will tear your body apart into pieces and rise!” The slovesa roared, but Ceres didn’t get shocked again as to why he could hear the slovesa. He now had already just attributed it to the enhancements inside his body.
He had all the time in the world to figure out why later – right now he needed to win.
Ceres turned around to see the slovesa moving even faster, the gaping chunk on its body already covered with rock collected from nearby but not as densely packed as before. It seemed to move even faster than before, no doubt because of the reduction in weight.
“This is tough. I have to smash the core directly otherwise it will only get harder and harder to win!” Ceres too charged towards the slovesa, sliding under the swiping motion of the slovesa arms before grabbing onto the base of the tail underneath it.
“I hope this isn’t the groin or anus area. Wait do they even shit?” Ceres randomly thought as he used his grip to pull himself up and over onto the back of the slovesa.
The slovesa violently trashed around as he tried to shake off Ceres, but instead, Ceres swung his spiked mace and smashed the base of the two tails repeatedly.
Finally, the slovesa made a smart move to roll on the ground like a donkey. Ceres barely made it off, almost getting squashed between the large slovesa body and the ground.
He took advantage of the now exposed slovesa who was struggling to get back up, striking at the nearest spots in range while avoiding the flailing swings of its tail.
“ENOUGH!” A sudden invisible explosive force emitted in all directions from the slovesa, repulsing Ceres away and irradiating everything within a 10-meter radius. A huge steam explosion occurred as the surrounding snow and ice rapidly vaporized.
Before Ceres knew it, he noticed the front of his black scale armour was glowing hot as though it had just been dipped directly in lava, causing him to yelp and roll about on the snowy and icy ground in a desperate attempt to cool it down.
Ceres quickly recovered and noticed that the large 5-meter-tall body of the slovesa had disappeared, the large amount of steam generated from the explosion obscuring his view. He quickly scanned for the core and noticed that the slovesa’s core was still present. However, the slovesa’s core was enlarged and had upgraded to a higher class of sorts.
Ceres did not exactly know at the time that it was a class transformation to a high-class slovesa from a medium class, but he knew for a fact that the strength of the core was of an entirely new magnitude.
“Wait, I thought mid-fight battles upgrades were only allowed for main characters!” Ceres complained internally, before realizing that Paska also upgraded during his fight.
Ceres still held out hope as being the ‘main character’ but the reasoning was getting thinner by the day. “It’s like my transformation doesn’t mean anything anymore!”
He resolved to fight more cautiously in the future, observing the newly upgraded slovesa core closely. “Better stop creating more competition - can’t let them breakthrough or ascend that easily!”
If Ceres had studied more about the slovesa during his time in school and the museum trip, he might be aware he may be one of the rare few humans to witness a slovesa’s evolution in person – and the only one who could see the core directly with his own eyes.
The current understanding of how a slovesa evolves is very badly understood – not even their reproductive method had been completely comprehended.
Ceres was naturally unaware of all of this, this being his first real slovesa encounter. However, he had no time to think about it – with the slovesa core suddenly charging towards him. Ceres quickly swapped back to normal vision just in time to see a human-sized fist punch him directly in the abdomen, sending him flying.
Ceres twisted his body mid-air to land, before being immediately forced to parry a few punches and kicks from the new high-class slovesa body that was eerily shaped and similar in size to his body.
It was as though it was made to copy his stature, except for the prominent tail at the back that allowed the high-class slovesa more avenues of attack than Ceres had.
Finally, Ceres managed to come up with a hypothesis on the spot – the high-class slovesa consumed its large body and concentrated the material density within the core, enlarging it and enhancing its strength to reach the next class. This meant even though the resulting body was smaller, its energy and strength were much higher.
The density of the material was even more compressed, like a sheet of metal folded ten thousand times over or pressurized volcanic crust material.
“Fuck!” Ceres tried to use his spiked mace to counterattack a few times, but the high-class slovesa dodged with ease, exploiting the numerous openings Ceres had in his techniques. Ceres’s mind raced as he tried to analyze the fighting movement of the slovesa and focus on its weakness, but it was hard to do under the intense fighting pressure.
“Despite your disgusting carbon-based body, I must thank you for allowing me to evolve. Now, the resurgence of my clan is unstoppable. All shall be beneath me!” The high-class slovesa mocked as he continued landing hit after hit on Ceres, causing the black scale armour to finally crack.
The intense pressure did not scare Ceres with the fear of dying – instead, it galvanized him.
He had already had two life-and-death battles over the last three days, making him grow more accustomed to it.
His fighting spirit soared as he tried every trick in the book in order to stay even in the battle. The strength and speed of the battle continuously fluctuated, the shockwaves rippling the air and the tremors causing icicles to fall from the ceiling, crashing around them.
Though Ceres could generally stay on par with him, the extra tail and apparent lack of joints in the slovesa’s limbs enabled it to attack from ridiculous angles. How could he exploit any openings when the slovesa’s arms and legs could bend in any direction?
“I need some advantage of my own. The spiked mace attack is too slow to hit him!” Ceres cursed as he received another blow on his waist.
Racking his brain for the answer, Ceres suddenly was cognizant of the same ‘hunger’ that was rising in his body. He let himself delve deeper into the ‘hunger’ and channelled his anger and rage like before, hoping something within could help him.
Instead, it distracted him, causing more and more pieces of the black armour to be crushed as the high-class slovesa landed more and more hits.
Ceres choked as he stumbled backwards, his consciousness slightly fading.
However, eerily he did not feel fear or fright. In fact, only ‘hunger’ was the dominant emotion and it was overwhelming his entire body. The black armour suddenly started pulsating like a heartbeat. Just as the slovesa threw a punch at Ceres’s head, Ceres’s body automatically dodged with a new level of speed.
“That’s it!” Ceres exclaimed as he let his body instinct fight, instead of trying to use his brain to think. He became akin to a rabid beast, swinging wildly and catching the high-class slovesa off-guard.
A single swing of the spiked mace finally landed on the slovesa’s arm, crushing the shoulder into rubble and sending the slovesa flying.
Now, Ceres was aware of his downsides – his brain was much slower than his enhanced body.
Not enough time and practice had been put into using his body properly. What was the use of the enhancements if his brain could not keep up with them? This was the reason why he was continuously lagging behind the slovesa.
The high-class slovesa got up from its fall, its arm broken and strewn across the floor. It ‘stared’ angrily at Ceres, who could somehow tell despite the slovesa having no eyes of any kind. “Do not block me any longer – your loss is inevitable!” The high-class slovesa roared as it absorbed more rubble nearby to form a new arm.
The seemingly infinite regenerative capability of the slovesa gave Ceres a sudden epiphany. Ceres finally grinned widely for the first time since the battle started.
Perhaps he had found his best training ground.
He recalled the ranking list, showing his name at the bottom of the list. The slovesa had also mentioned climbing the rank– was the slovesa’s name also on the list? “Could it be? Actual progression for me?!”
This meant the entire temple was dedicated to fights between the individuals classed on the list. Ceres wondered whether this high-class slovesa had been waiting here for an opponent – but found it to be highly improbable seeing as the humans conquered this system centuries ago.
Regardless, what better place did he have to hone his techniques and reaction speed to better utilize his new body?
The sudden calm posture and hidden sinister smile under the black mask of Ceres gave a pause to the high-class slovesa, who watched Ceres warily, wondering what the carbon lifeform was trying to pull off this time.
“Finally! Here’s my training arc!”
