“You can’t leave.” Goras stopped Ceres before he walked away. “I may have brought you in here, but haven’t you thought about why I’ve been here all this time too?”
“You must have a way out,” Ceres replied. “You’re the ranked one on the list! Doesn’t winning get you out?”
“Not unless you clear the tower. Since you’re so impatient to get out, that’s good for me too. We both get what we want – your exit from the temple, my reward from the tower. Let’s begin.”
Ceres still had no idea what Goras wanted from the tower but nodded in agreement anyway. He felt like he had already trained enough through all the fighting, and now that he was able to absorb energy directly on his armour – though only a little.
That already solves the issue of not having an energy source to alleviate his hunger state, preventing him from going full feral when alone.
With this Ceres had achieved enough to make the trip alone to Rockhold City himself. “I don’t need supplies if I can just leech off the radioactive materials along the way!”
Goras too was excited, following Ceres to the tower’s ground floor. “I won’t be able to join you after the ground floor, but I can tell you the effects of every floor. There’s a total of a hundred floors – but new effects only kick in every 10th floor. You will always fight the same opponent, who will not receive any special effects. Instead, you will be receiving all the negative effects.”
Ceres memorized the effects of each section of the tower that Goras explained, desperate to begin. His friends could very well be suffering up there!
Once Goras was done, Ceres immediately rushed into the arena and attacked the dummy statue in one swift motion. The dummy statue had no chance to even fight back, crumbling in an instant as Ceres used his spear-hand to pierce the core in a single blow. The wall behind the arena began to open to reveal a staircase going up to the next floor.
Goras was shocked and outraged when it saw that. “Hey, that’s not fair!”
“Really? Why do you care how I clear the tower?” Ceres was confused.
“No, nothing. Carry on.” Goras quickly calmed itself down.
Ceres quickly climbed up the staircase, disappearing from Goras’s view.
“Pull up the terminal,” Goras uttered, a crystal terminal rising out from the floor. The screen displayed a live video of Ceres using his top speed to smash floor after floor. “Maybe finally this one can clear the tower…the dream is finally within reach.”
***
Ceres had already made it to the fiftieth floor within an hour. Even though there were no living beings within close proximity of him, he was able to sustain himself solely on the radiation coming off the crystal walls. The entire tower was radioactive, fuelling his body.
“The only thing that is truly hard is me climbing all these stairs!” The steps on the staircase were designed for slovesa far larger than the human body, so Ceres had to effectively continuously clamber over every step to get up. “Can’t there be some kind of white door, red door thing instead?!”
Ceres eyed the dummy statue standing in the middle of the arena. All the floors on the tower were carbon copies of each other, except for the effects. That was the real killer. He took a deep breath, clenching his fists and stepped onto the arena.
Immediately the five cumulative negative effects began to affect him. His body shrunk by a third, his movement was slowed down, the arena was covered by a fog blocking his vision beyond a meter and the place where his feet touched became searing hot.
The fifth effect was a new one, which was a sudden strong wind draft. The wind drafts would suddenly launch him in the opposite direction based on his direction of travel in intervals of five seconds.
Ceres was already prepared for all of these, having memorized the effects of the tower. He quickly ran straight, relying on his ability to sense emotions to find the dummy statue’s core. Despite all the negative effects on him, he was more than capable of trashing the dummy statue directly.
In fact, the restraints on him helped him to train even more to work to his maximum strength.
Even the sudden wind drafts did not impede him but helped him as Ceres calculated the pattern of the wind drafts, twisting his body in the opposite direction just as the wind draft was about to activate, allowing him to gain a speed boost towards the enemy.
At the same time, Ceres had to dodge the energy beams that the dummy statue was firing, and continuously move before his feet were melted by the scorching hot tile. The adrenaline pumped in Ceres’s body as he fought hard, clearing up to the sixtieth floor.
Another effect activated as Ceres began the fight again – this time energy beams came from the ceiling too. He dodged and weaved through the arena, calculating the stacked effects as he sprinted at the dummy statue, crushing in one punch.
“The trick is to clear each floor before you spend too long under the effects!” Goras had told him, emphasising the nature of the effects.
Ceres, however, was feeling a bit terrible. The sudden removal of effects and continuous increase and decrease in his body size between floors made him a bit nauseous. He took a breather on one of the large steps heading up to the next floor, thinking more about the tower.
The tower was built by the first Uniter according to Goras, but Ceres assumed that was centuries ago. How old was Goras for him to be trapped here all this while? What rewards did one get for reaching the top of the tower? Why could Goras not clear it on his own?
Regardless, he knew he had no choice but to work with Goras. Even if Goras did not pull him into the red door, he would have to fight him in the end if he continued his plan of fighting one rank above.
Ceres resumed climbing the tower, breaking through easily to the seventieth floor. “The effect should be a second wind draft…” He stepped into the arena, all the effects kicking in when he suddenly felt temporary dizziness.
The effect had changed. Ceres quickly recovered as he dodged the incoming energy beams from the dummy statue and the ceiling, continuously moving around the periphery of the arena. Ceres did not feel any second wind draft and did not dare to attack when he was dealing with an unknown effect.
After ten seconds, the dizziness hit again, causing a migraine in his head. “Is it every ten seconds?” The dizziness lasted for a second, but it was already bad enough as it threw Ceres’s calculations completely off.
This time, Ceres still managed to defeat the dummy statue, but only after spending five minutes getting used to the effect. His brain was continuously running at full speed, calculating separate timers for the effects.
As he proceeded through each subsequent floor, the battle became easier and easier until it was second nature to him to develop a migraine every ten seconds. Ceres felt slightly irked that he got used to being dizzy. “It’s like I lived my whole life with this condition.”
On the eightieth floor, Ceres groaned as he stepped onto the arena. “Why do I even want to clear this tower? It’s so hard! I want to just go back down and lie on my comfy bed filled with feathers…. SHIT!” Ceres got nicked in the shoulder by two energy beams, sending him sprawling onto the arena from the impact.
Why did he suddenly speak out loud? Ceres knew he wasn’t the type to suddenly stop and complain about what was happening. If there was even the slightest chance of improving his current condition, he would work on it instead of wasting energy regretting and complaining.
He quickly recovered before suddenly getting hit by the dizziness, while a wind draft knocked him backwards onto a scorching tile. He quickly recovered and kept running.
“It’s a new effect again! But I don’t understand the effect?” Ceres was confused, running around the periphery of the arena. He was already accustomed to the dizziness, but why did he suddenly tell himself that he did not want to clear the tower?”
Out of nowhere, Ceres’s body just stopped moving. “Oh god, life is so difficult! Why do I even have to move? Can’t I just lie down and chill? Please let me go down this towe… FUCK!” Ceres screamed as he got hit squarely in the chest. He forced himself to move to dodge the energy beams.
“It’s a bipolar effect! Every twenty seconds!” Ceres told himself. Goras had told him the effect was supposed to be sluggishness, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Ceres could not exit the arena, so he had to deal with getting hit every twenty seconds. This meant that for each subsequent battle, he had to finish it within twenty seconds or else risk getting hit again.
It took a harrowing ten minutes for Ceres to finally defeat the dummy statue, breathing hard as he laid down on the arena.
“Okay, okay. I feel like I really want to just lie down…” Ceres muttered to himself. His body continuously regenerated, drawing in energy from the crystals embedded in the wall that continuously radiated.
Ceres became slightly angry at whoever invented the temple. “The designer must be a god-damn masochist! How the hell can anybody clear with this kind of effect!”
Ceres hated himself for even being ‘lazy’ for a moment – he had worked hard his whole life up to this point! For him to even utter words implying that he should give up was like a self-betrayal. “That’s not who I am, focus Ceres! Clear the tower and get out, you’re almost there!”
The subsequent floors were a harrowing experience, Ceres getting even angrier and angrier at himself for even having a lazy side to be manipulated by the tower.
By the ninetieth floor, he was seething with rage, already given up on what effects Goras had told him. “Whatever the effect is, I don’t care!”
As he stepped onto the arena, none of the effects activated. “Huh?” Ceres muttered to himself as he looked down at the floor, noticing that it was no longer the tower tiles.
Instead, it was the entrance to his workshop in Zone 17.
The same old dingy smell and rusted metal door greeted him, with sounds of tinkering inside beyond the doorway.
Ceres looked up, only to see his father figure still alive, standing in front of him.
“Hey, Ceres! What are you standing over there for? Come over here and help me!” Uncle Dawn Rigor beckoned towards him.
He stood next to the old 3D printer in the middle of the workshop, fixing the computer section.
Ceres couldn’t even move, completely stunned.
He looked down at his hands, noticing he did not have the black scale armour anymore.
Instead, he was back to being a young, scrawny boy, full of dreams and aspirations.
“Uncle Dawn, you’re alive?”
Uncle Dawn gave him a weird look, smiling. “What? Why would I be dead? I’m here right now aren’t I?”
Was everything just a nightmare?
Could he have just been dreaming about everything?
Tears began to well up in Ceres’s eyes, and he was about to run and hug Uncle Dawn when he noticed the mysterious white box in the trash bin near the door. “Why did you throw this away?”
“Huh? That’s trash! It’s spring-cleaning day here! You always leave the desks covered in utter filth, so I helped you clear the place a little. You can’t keep gorging yourself on Athen Chem-Fried Chicken you know?”
Ceres immediately knew it was an illusion, but he still could not bear to turn away from the sight of Uncle Dawn.
The sight was just so real, Ceres even felt wanting to just stand here forever.
Did it really matter if it was an illusion as long as Ceres accepted that it was real?
The first adult to truly believe in him, he was Ceres’s father figure.
However, for the tower to defile his image was completely unacceptable to Ceres.
“Are you really going to do this, Ceres? After all this time?” The fake Uncle Dawn frowned with a sad expression, causing Ceres’s heart to twist inside. Instead of shaking him even more, Ceres gritted his teeth and began to try and find the enemy.
He eyed the workshop, checking for anything else suspicious. Suddenly, he noticed a exosuit standing in the same posture as the dummy statue, being the odd one out.
Ceres roared as he charged, his body suddenly reverting back to normal as he lunged at the exosuit, breaking it apart in one hit.
The illusion immediately dispersed, with the arena reverting back to normal. Ceres slumped down onto the floor, still on the verge of tears as the memories of Uncle Dawn came rushing back to him, overwhelming him.
Ceres had always been aware of how alone he was now in the world after the five years coma but returning to the past really drove it home for him.
Deep down he had yet to admit it, but there was an extremely high chance that all his friends would be heavily implicated in the riots that he started.
There was no chance in hell the enforcers would let go of anyone related to Ceres. This meant Lisa, Braton, Ardan, Erik and Trissa were all in jeopardy.
“Am I already too late..?” Ceres mumbled to himself, before slapping himself hard on the cheek.
“If you have time to regret, you have time to improve!”
Ceres did not wallow in his sadness for long, ascending to the next floor. He had to if he wanted answers.
Standing in front of the arena, he took a deep breath, reminding himself not to be fazed for too long when he entered the next memory.
As he stepped into the arena, he suddenly found himself on a grassy plain, standing under a blue sky. He was still his full body size and was wearing black armour.
In front of him was a couple, having a picnic on the ground. “Radag, come here! What are you doing standing there?” The human woman beckoned towards him, while her partner was a six-armed ‘ant’ standing on two legs.
Suddenly, Ceres could feel the black goo rage inside his body. Something inside his skin was fighting to get out. Multiple human faces began to form on the black armour as Ceres grasped his head in pain.
The faces all strained to escape the black scale armour, their eyes bulging out like fisheyes. “Sa…sha..” The faces echoed in unison, before the black-scale armour suddenly took control of Ceres’s body, lunging directly at the human woman before impaling her with his arms.
Ceres’s arms began to mutilate the body, while her partner simply watched on. Ceres did not know what was happening, his entire body being a flood of pain and confusion.
However, he only noticed that the human woman was still smiling when her organs were getting ripped out. She mouthed a few words but could barely be heard due to the lack of vocal cords.
But somehow the words were transmitted directly to Ceres’s brain: “You will never escape the First Mother!”
The illusion broke again as Ceres collapsed onto the floor, panting hard with sweat coating his skin.
“What the fuck was that!?” He became even more horrified at the black armour.
If the illusion created memories of those who entered the arena, then did the black goo has memories too!?
He checked his armour again, but he saw none of the faces. In fact, it looked as though nothing had ever happened at all. Ceres got up, trying to consolidate what he knew about the black goo.
Was it sapient? Why did it have memories? He recalled the black goo that came out from the Keeper’s exosuit, and it seemed to be able to communicate as well, on top of being able to sense emotions - what exactly was this black goo made out of?
Ceres now was truly afraid to step into the next arena, unsure of what would he see. Would it be a random memory or his? But he had to push on to clear the tower, there was no turning back for him.
The next floor, however, was no longer an illusion effect. Instead, all the previous eight effects kicked in, shocking Ceres who was thrown off-guard.
Muscle memory allowed Ceres to immediately dodged the first few attacks, but a new effect suddenly robbed him of all sense of radiation, rendering his vision completely useless.
He now could not even sense the impending attacks of the energy beams.
However, he did not intend to avoid it either way. With his improved hearing and strength, he easily destroyed the subsequent dummy statues, finally reaching the 99th floor of the tower. As he entered the floor, it showed a vastly different sight.
It was just like the main hall of the temple, except much much larger. Ceres could barely see the ceiling or the walls on either side. A lighted-up path led straight down, and at the very end, there was a humongous throne, unlike anything Ceres had seen before.
On the throne sat a massive slovesa rock golem, adorned with golden glyphs that shined in contrast to the dominant black colour of its surface. The size and structure were unlike any other slovesa Ceres had seen or fought again. It was by far the biggest ever, yet an authoritarian pressure emitted from it, almost like whispers asking Ceres to kneel in respect.
Above the throne was a sign painted with the same golden glyphs that read: “The Uniter.”
It was the body of the first slovesa emperor!
“You can’t leave.” Goras stopped Ceres before he walked away. “I may have brought you in here, but haven’t you thought about why I’ve been here all this time too?”
“You must have a way out,” Ceres replied. “You’re the ranked one on the list! Doesn’t winning get you out?”
“Not unless you clear the tower. Since you’re so impatient to get out, that’s good for me too. We both get what we want – your exit from the temple, my reward from the tower. Let’s begin.”
Ceres still had no idea what Goras wanted from the tower but nodded in agreement anyway. He felt like he had already trained enough through all the fighting, and now that he was able to absorb energy directly on his armour – though only a little.
That already solves the issue of not having an energy source to alleviate his hunger state, preventing him from going full feral when alone.
With this Ceres had achieved enough to make the trip alone to Rockhold City himself. “I don’t need supplies if I can just leech off the radioactive materials along the way!”
Goras too was excited, following Ceres to the tower’s ground floor. “I won’t be able to join you after the ground floor, but I can tell you the effects of every floor. There’s a total of a hundred floors – but new effects only kick in every 10th floor. You will always fight the same opponent, who will not receive any special effects. Instead, you will be receiving all the negative effects.”
Ceres memorized the effects of each section of the tower that Goras explained, desperate to begin. His friends could very well be suffering up there!
Once Goras was done, Ceres immediately rushed into the arena and attacked the dummy statue in one swift motion. The dummy statue had no chance to even fight back, crumbling in an instant as Ceres used his spear-hand to pierce the core in a single blow. The wall behind the arena began to open to reveal a staircase going up to the next floor.
Goras was shocked and outraged when it saw that. “Hey, that’s not fair!”
“Really? Why do you care how I clear the tower?” Ceres was confused.
“No, nothing. Carry on.” Goras quickly calmed itself down.
Ceres quickly climbed up the staircase, disappearing from Goras’s view.
“Pull up the terminal,” Goras uttered, a crystal terminal rising out from the floor. The screen displayed a live video of Ceres using his top speed to smash floor after floor. “Maybe finally this one can clear the tower…the dream is finally within reach.”
***
Ceres had already made it to the fiftieth floor within an hour. Even though there were no living beings within close proximity of him, he was able to sustain himself solely on the radiation coming off the crystal walls. The entire tower was radioactive, fuelling his body.
“The only thing that is truly hard is me climbing all these stairs!” The steps on the staircase were designed for slovesa far larger than the human body, so Ceres had to effectively continuously clamber over every step to get up. “Can’t there be some kind of white door, red door thing instead?!”
Ceres eyed the dummy statue standing in the middle of the arena. All the floors on the tower were carbon copies of each other, except for the effects. That was the real killer. He took a deep breath, clenching his fists and stepped onto the arena.
Immediately the five cumulative negative effects began to affect him. His body shrunk by a third, his movement was slowed down, the arena was covered by a fog blocking his vision beyond a meter and the place where his feet touched became searing hot.
The fifth effect was a new one, which was a sudden strong wind draft. The wind drafts would suddenly launch him in the opposite direction based on his direction of travel in intervals of five seconds.
Ceres was already prepared for all of these, having memorized the effects of the tower. He quickly ran straight, relying on his ability to sense emotions to find the dummy statue’s core. Despite all the negative effects on him, he was more than capable of trashing the dummy statue directly.
In fact, the restraints on him helped him to train even more to work to his maximum strength.
Even the sudden wind drafts did not impede him but helped him as Ceres calculated the pattern of the wind drafts, twisting his body in the opposite direction just as the wind draft was about to activate, allowing him to gain a speed boost towards the enemy.
At the same time, Ceres had to dodge the energy beams that the dummy statue was firing, and continuously move before his feet were melted by the scorching hot tile. The adrenaline pumped in Ceres’s body as he fought hard, clearing up to the sixtieth floor.
Another effect activated as Ceres began the fight again – this time energy beams came from the ceiling too. He dodged and weaved through the arena, calculating the stacked effects as he sprinted at the dummy statue, crushing in one punch.
“The trick is to clear each floor before you spend too long under the effects!” Goras had told him, emphasising the nature of the effects.
Ceres, however, was feeling a bit terrible. The sudden removal of effects and continuous increase and decrease in his body size between floors made him a bit nauseous. He took a breather on one of the large steps heading up to the next floor, thinking more about the tower.
The tower was built by the first Uniter according to Goras, but Ceres assumed that was centuries ago. How old was Goras for him to be trapped here all this while? What rewards did one get for reaching the top of the tower? Why could Goras not clear it on his own?
Regardless, he knew he had no choice but to work with Goras. Even if Goras did not pull him into the red door, he would have to fight him in the end if he continued his plan of fighting one rank above.
Ceres resumed climbing the tower, breaking through easily to the seventieth floor. “The effect should be a second wind draft…” He stepped into the arena, all the effects kicking in when he suddenly felt temporary dizziness.
The effect had changed. Ceres quickly recovered as he dodged the incoming energy beams from the dummy statue and the ceiling, continuously moving around the periphery of the arena. Ceres did not feel any second wind draft and did not dare to attack when he was dealing with an unknown effect.
After ten seconds, the dizziness hit again, causing a migraine in his head. “Is it every ten seconds?” The dizziness lasted for a second, but it was already bad enough as it threw Ceres’s calculations completely off.
This time, Ceres still managed to defeat the dummy statue, but only after spending five minutes getting used to the effect. His brain was continuously running at full speed, calculating separate timers for the effects.
As he proceeded through each subsequent floor, the battle became easier and easier until it was second nature to him to develop a migraine every ten seconds. Ceres felt slightly irked that he got used to being dizzy. “It’s like I lived my whole life with this condition.”
On the eightieth floor, Ceres groaned as he stepped onto the arena. “Why do I even want to clear this tower? It’s so hard! I want to just go back down and lie on my comfy bed filled with feathers…. SHIT!” Ceres got nicked in the shoulder by two energy beams, sending him sprawling onto the arena from the impact.
Why did he suddenly speak out loud? Ceres knew he wasn’t the type to suddenly stop and complain about what was happening. If there was even the slightest chance of improving his current condition, he would work on it instead of wasting energy regretting and complaining.
He quickly recovered before suddenly getting hit by the dizziness, while a wind draft knocked him backwards onto a scorching tile. He quickly recovered and kept running.
“It’s a new effect again! But I don’t understand the effect?” Ceres was confused, running around the periphery of the arena. He was already accustomed to the dizziness, but why did he suddenly tell himself that he did not want to clear the tower?”
Out of nowhere, Ceres’s body just stopped moving. “Oh god, life is so difficult! Why do I even have to move? Can’t I just lie down and chill? Please let me go down this towe… FUCK!” Ceres screamed as he got hit squarely in the chest. He forced himself to move to dodge the energy beams.
“It’s a bipolar effect! Every twenty seconds!” Ceres told himself. Goras had told him the effect was supposed to be sluggishness, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Ceres could not exit the arena, so he had to deal with getting hit every twenty seconds. This meant that for each subsequent battle, he had to finish it within twenty seconds or else risk getting hit again.
It took a harrowing ten minutes for Ceres to finally defeat the dummy statue, breathing hard as he laid down on the arena.
“Okay, okay. I feel like I really want to just lie down…” Ceres muttered to himself. His body continuously regenerated, drawing in energy from the crystals embedded in the wall that continuously radiated.
Ceres became slightly angry at whoever invented the temple. “The designer must be a god-damn masochist! How the hell can anybody clear with this kind of effect!”
Ceres hated himself for even being ‘lazy’ for a moment – he had worked hard his whole life up to this point! For him to even utter words implying that he should give up was like a self-betrayal. “That’s not who I am, focus Ceres! Clear the tower and get out, you’re almost there!”
The subsequent floors were a harrowing experience, Ceres getting even angrier and angrier at himself for even having a lazy side to be manipulated by the tower.
By the ninetieth floor, he was seething with rage, already given up on what effects Goras had told him. “Whatever the effect is, I don’t care!”
As he stepped onto the arena, none of the effects activated. “Huh?” Ceres muttered to himself as he looked down at the floor, noticing that it was no longer the tower tiles.
Instead, it was the entrance to his workshop in Zone 17.
The same old dingy smell and rusted metal door greeted him, with sounds of tinkering inside beyond the doorway.
Ceres looked up, only to see his father figure still alive, standing in front of him.
“Hey, Ceres! What are you standing over there for? Come over here and help me!” Uncle Dawn Rigor beckoned towards him.
He stood next to the old 3D printer in the middle of the workshop, fixing the computer section.
Ceres couldn’t even move, completely stunned.
He looked down at his hands, noticing he did not have the black scale armour anymore.
Instead, he was back to being a young, scrawny boy, full of dreams and aspirations.
“Uncle Dawn, you’re alive?”
Uncle Dawn gave him a weird look, smiling. “What? Why would I be dead? I’m here right now aren’t I?”
Was everything just a nightmare?
Could he have just been dreaming about everything?
Tears began to well up in Ceres’s eyes, and he was about to run and hug Uncle Dawn when he noticed the mysterious white box in the trash bin near the door. “Why did you throw this away?”
“Huh? That’s trash! It’s spring-cleaning day here! You always leave the desks covered in utter filth, so I helped you clear the place a little. You can’t keep gorging yourself on Athen Chem-Fried Chicken you know?”
Ceres immediately knew it was an illusion, but he still could not bear to turn away from the sight of Uncle Dawn.
The sight was just so real, Ceres even felt wanting to just stand here forever.
Did it really matter if it was an illusion as long as Ceres accepted that it was real?
The first adult to truly believe in him, he was Ceres’s father figure.
However, for the tower to defile his image was completely unacceptable to Ceres.
“Are you really going to do this, Ceres? After all this time?” The fake Uncle Dawn frowned with a sad expression, causing Ceres’s heart to twist inside. Instead of shaking him even more, Ceres gritted his teeth and began to try and find the enemy.
He eyed the workshop, checking for anything else suspicious. Suddenly, he noticed a exosuit standing in the same posture as the dummy statue, being the odd one out.
Ceres roared as he charged, his body suddenly reverting back to normal as he lunged at the exosuit, breaking it apart in one hit.
The illusion immediately dispersed, with the arena reverting back to normal. Ceres slumped down onto the floor, still on the verge of tears as the memories of Uncle Dawn came rushing back to him, overwhelming him.
Ceres had always been aware of how alone he was now in the world after the five years coma but returning to the past really drove it home for him.
Deep down he had yet to admit it, but there was an extremely high chance that all his friends would be heavily implicated in the riots that he started.
There was no chance in hell the enforcers would let go of anyone related to Ceres. This meant Lisa, Braton, Ardan, Erik and Trissa were all in jeopardy.
“Am I already too late..?” Ceres mumbled to himself, before slapping himself hard on the cheek.
“If you have time to regret, you have time to improve!”
Ceres did not wallow in his sadness for long, ascending to the next floor. He had to if he wanted answers.
Standing in front of the arena, he took a deep breath, reminding himself not to be fazed for too long when he entered the next memory.
As he stepped into the arena, he suddenly found himself on a grassy plain, standing under a blue sky. He was still his full body size and was wearing black armour.
In front of him was a couple, having a picnic on the ground. “Radag, come here! What are you doing standing there?” The human woman beckoned towards him, while her partner was a six-armed ‘ant’ standing on two legs.
Suddenly, Ceres could feel the black goo rage inside his body. Something inside his skin was fighting to get out. Multiple human faces began to form on the black armour as Ceres grasped his head in pain.
The faces all strained to escape the black scale armour, their eyes bulging out like fisheyes. “Sa…sha..” The faces echoed in unison, before the black-scale armour suddenly took control of Ceres’s body, lunging directly at the human woman before impaling her with his arms.
Ceres’s arms began to mutilate the body, while her partner simply watched on. Ceres did not know what was happening, his entire body being a flood of pain and confusion.
However, he only noticed that the human woman was still smiling when her organs were getting ripped out. She mouthed a few words but could barely be heard due to the lack of vocal cords.
But somehow the words were transmitted directly to Ceres’s brain: “You will never escape the First Mother!”
The illusion broke again as Ceres collapsed onto the floor, panting hard with sweat coating his skin.
“What the fuck was that!?” He became even more horrified at the black armour.
If the illusion created memories of those who entered the arena, then did the black goo has memories too!?
He checked his armour again, but he saw none of the faces. In fact, it looked as though nothing had ever happened at all. Ceres got up, trying to consolidate what he knew about the black goo.
Was it sapient? Why did it have memories? He recalled the black goo that came out from the Keeper’s exosuit, and it seemed to be able to communicate as well, on top of being able to sense emotions - what exactly was this black goo made out of?
Ceres now was truly afraid to step into the next arena, unsure of what would he see. Would it be a random memory or his? But he had to push on to clear the tower, there was no turning back for him.
The next floor, however, was no longer an illusion effect. Instead, all the previous eight effects kicked in, shocking Ceres who was thrown off-guard.
Muscle memory allowed Ceres to immediately dodged the first few attacks, but a new effect suddenly robbed him of all sense of radiation, rendering his vision completely useless.
He now could not even sense the impending attacks of the energy beams.
However, he did not intend to avoid it either way. With his improved hearing and strength, he easily destroyed the subsequent dummy statues, finally reaching the 99th floor of the tower. As he entered the floor, it showed a vastly different sight.
It was just like the main hall of the temple, except much much larger. Ceres could barely see the ceiling or the walls on either side. A lighted-up path led straight down, and at the very end, there was a humongous throne, unlike anything Ceres had seen before.
On the throne sat a massive slovesa rock golem, adorned with golden glyphs that shined in contrast to the dominant black colour of its surface. The size and structure were unlike any other slovesa Ceres had seen or fought again. It was by far the biggest ever, yet an authoritarian pressure emitted from it, almost like whispers asking Ceres to kneel in respect.
Above the throne was a sign painted with the same golden glyphs that read: “The Uniter.”
It was the body of the first slovesa emperor!
