Goras walked slowly towards the badge while continuously firing beams at Ceres, forcing the black blood into a defensive mode. The energy beams he fired were nothing to scoff at – they were at the mythical class of slovesas.
If Ceres’s body took a direct hit, it would inflict grievous damage that maybe the black blood might not be able to absorb or heal.
With this, Goras managed to force the black blood away from the badge, threatening the host.
Snatching the badge from the pedestal, Goras was ecstatic, admiring the intricate carvings and detail on the badge. Before it could inspect the badge any longer, the black blood had formed into a larger black armour around Ceres, slamming into Goras.
Goras was sent tumbling, its mind in complete disbelief. “Was Ceres not a weakling?! How does he still retain such strength even while unconscious? I’m a mythical class!” It looked at Ceres, who was now wearing an obviously different black armour, though he was clearly still unconscious.
“So it’s the black blood that’s the real deal.. too bad Ceres’s weak body limits its strength,” Goras smirked as he placed the badge onto his chest, the badge swirling into its body, sinking it slowly. The black scale armour trembled with anger, rushing forward to try and grab the badge, Ceres’s body being manipulated like a ragdoll.
Goras wasn’t one to turn down a fight, so he gladly accepted the challenge. He was ranked top of the temple.
Despite Goras’s previous assumption that Ceres was much weaker than him, the black armour proved to be a completely different foe, fighting on par with Goras despite his previous preconceived notions. “What the hell am I even fighting?!”
As the fight went on, the black armour showed no sign of slowing down or even being hurt by the damage Goras was inflicting on it.
Goras was not completely certain he could even win this fight. “There’s no point fighting any longer, I already have what I want!” As much as he wanted to kill and finish off Ceres, it was better to get rid of him first and consolidate his gains. His objective had already been achieved after all – a minor carbon lifeform will do no harm to him.
“TEMPLE! Mark the intruder and open the exit door!” Goras yelled. The badge on his chest glowed brightly, linking to the temple and marking him as the highest authorized individual.
[Command confirmed – forcefield disabled. Opening exit door.] A white temple door suddenly appeared in the middle of the hallway behind Ceres. With a strong kick that could decimate a mountain, Goras launched him towards the white door.
Goras was afraid of what the black blood might do, and why should he fight an uncertain duel when he now owned the badge?
“Deactivate the exit door!” Goras ordered worried Ceres might charge back into the temple immediately.
The white door disappeared, and Goras let out a sigh of relief. No matter how strong Ceres got he could not overcome the spatial distortion effects of the temple.
Right after Ceres was kicked through the door, the crystals that served as the first emperor’s eyes began to glow. A large booming pulse created a shockwave throughout the entire temple as Goras laughed manically. He had won.
“Finally! After more than 300 years here, killing and slaughtering every rank 1 participant who entered, now I have full control over the first emperor’s body, as well as a badge to prove that I am the rightful inheritor to the throne! I AM THE UNITER!”
[You….! How dare you cheat your way into the temple!] The first Uniter roared, but his body was unable to move, only watching as Goras melded the badge into his body, featuring it on his chest.
“You have no right to talk about fair or unfair. You yourself cheated your way to the top, climbing over the bodies of your comrades and even eating them. Why can’t I do the same? Since I was born, the entire world was against me. I simply do not lie to myself. Everyone is my enemy!”
[No… you cannot repeat what I’ve done!]
“SHUT UP! I don’t have to reason with a dead ghost. You’re just a whisper of the original Uniter. You can barely control the temple now!” Goras ordered, and the first Uniter could not speak any longer, obeying.
“Now comes my true reward. The badge is just a symbolic token, but you… your body is the real prize. What would eating the body of a slovesa that has consumed more than a quadrillion cores taste like?”
***
In a dusty cave filled with forgotten machines and derelict crystal vats, a white door suddenly appeared and opened, with Ceres being flung out, smashing into the floor.
He was not yet conscious, the rapid transformation by the core continuously causing his body to creak and crack with bone-twisting sounds, the movements erratic. If anyone saw this, they might have assumed he was undergoing a sort of reanimation to become a zombie.
However, he was not alone in the cave. Multiple dark figures began to approach him, circling and observing Ceres while they emitted a low rumbling sound. They were the monsters of the first inner temple room.
One of the monsters tried to approach the flailing body of Ceres, snarling as it carefully stepped forward. In a flash, an elongated black whip extended from Ceres, slicing the monster’s head off with a sharp edge.
The other monsters leapt in fear, immediately retreating a few steps. They watched with restraint over the next three hours, as Ceres’s body underwent an insane transformation.
A few more hours passed before Ceres finally groaned as he woke up, his body aching and hurting all over. The disassociation he had with his body since he left the research lab had gotten even stronger. As he recalled what happened in the final tower, he bolted upright, observing his surroundings.
“Where the hell did he send me..?” Ceres looked around, noticing that there was a significant number of crystal computers and broken vats. It looked similar to the research lab he first entered in the slovesa temple when Goras pulled him in.
Ceres was very pissed off by the betrayal of Goras, but he had to first understand what the hell happened to him. He flexed his fingers and arms, not fully accepting in his mind that this was his body.
The unimaginable pain was slowly fading away, making Ceres think that what happened was just a dream.
“The core, where did it go?” Ceres checked his body, but could not find the core anywhere. He swore he recalled the black goo in his body forcing him to take it. Unless Goras stole it from him again.
Perhaps the black goo absorbed the core, but he was a baseline human to begin with. Could he even integrate a slovesa’s core into his body?
Ceres sighed. His current situation had gone far past what his logic could handle.
“At least I did not get knocked into a five-year vat.”
He decided to check his surroundings and find a way out back to the town where he could try to make sense of stuff.
Ceres assumed he was still within a part of the slovesa city, seeing as the crystal computers were all still present. Suddenly, a series of crystal computers lit up, slovesa glyphs scrolling across like a terminal screen.
Ceres quickly rushed over and read it. “Commencing final boss wave. ERRO*(@U#R Final boss unavailable. Initiating countermeasures. Commencing wave 1-19…. What the hell is this?”
Lights began to flicker on in the cave, as luminescent crystals formed a path that led straight down into a slowly brightening corridor. Ceres began to wonder whether that was the exit, but a sudden roar and stampede of monsters from behind him began to charge at him with reckless abandon.
With no time to decide, Ceres decided to jump out of the way, hiding behind the crystal computer as the horde ignored him and rushed past, following the marked line towards the bright corridor.
“That’s weird.” Ceres began to follow after them, checking behind his back to make sure that the monsters were not running from something.
As Ceres approached the corridor, he realized that he was not entirely sure how the temple was able to continuously generate such monsters of varying types. Wasn’t it a slovesa temple?
He shook his head, ridding himself of curiosity. It could be some sort of horrid bio-genetic lab for all he cared, but it wasn’t his concern now. Who knows what the hell the first Uniter was capable off?
The corridor led to a large bright hole, the size of a crater. It seemed to lead to a temple room, but just as Ceres tried to get near the edge of the hole to see what the room was, a sudden force field ejected him out through the hole.
Ceres yelled as he fell for a good ten seconds, free-falling before crashing into the middle of a white circular room.
Despite falling that far, his body felt very little pain, the residual ache from the transformation dulling his senses to everything else.
“Wait, this is the first temple room!” Ceres realized that he had fallen through the monster gap that he first saw when he entered the inner temple room.
Looking at the horde of monsters who were fighting someone though, he then began to doubt himself. Wasn’t he the only one in the temple?
Switching to his new vision mode, he noted that there was a single human fighting off the wave of monsters with a spear.
Surprisingly, the body shape looked very familiar, so Ceres began to approach the human.
The human was a young adult, stabbing rapidly with the spear while continuously staying on his toes, dodging around the swipes of the monsters. Ceres felt a weird sense of familiarity with this style, as though he had done it before. Was it someone he knew?
As Ceres approached, a few of the monsters turned and began to charge at Ceres. However, with a simple glance of Ceres’s eyes, the black goo pulsated, causing a sudden emotion of fear to be invoked in them, causing them to remain in place, unable to move.
“Huh, that’s new.” Ceres could feel the energy being sapped from his body, while he could tell the monsters were truly afraid. However, another group of monsters that he did not focus on did not portray the same fear, instead rushing him.
With a few quick punches, he quickly targeted and eliminated the monsters’ cores, crushing them in his hand. The scared group of monsters were still locked in place, causing Ceres to become curious.
“One group is afraid, but the other isn’t. I’ve verified that they are both real monsters and not humans. What’s the difference?”
Ceres tried to look away, releasing his focus on the scared group. The energy within his body stopped depleting, and the group of monsters was no longer scared, attacking him.
“Interesting…” Ceres muttered as he quickly defeated them by piercing their tiny cores, heading over to the human who was finishing off the last of the monsters.
The young kid had not suffered a single hit so far, able to weave his way through the horde of monsters.
Naturally, Ceres could see the young kid for what he was, but it was not the same for the kid.
As he pulled out his spear from a dead monster’s body, the young kid stared at the last monster, who slowly walked over to him.
He found the monster to act very differently than before. He gripped his spear tighter and began to slowly circle the last monster, Ceres.
Ceres was slightly amused. Was this young kid his doppelganger? It seemed like every posture was similar to his own style of hit-and-run. “Could this be a temple replica of the young version of me? Seems a bit different though…”
Seeing the monster not making any moves, the young kid began to run up to the monster, lunging with a forward stab, his spear gripped with both hands.
The monster easily dodged to the left, before launching a fierce kick towards him.
He quickly blocked with the spear, but the force of the kick sent him back. Deftly flipping his body, he landed on his two feet, gritting his teeth as he planted the base of the spear into the ground, preventing him from sliding back any further.
This was not the typical boss monster that the young kid was used to. He grimaced as he spun his spear once into a ready position, preparing to attack.
However, the monster suddenly released a directed wave of pressure, causing his heart to panic! Fear began to erupt in his mind, but he used his willpower to suppress it as much as he could. He had been training here for close to five months now, waiting for his teacher to return. How could he falter here?
Ceres raised his brows, noting the increased fear just by his focus. He could now feel his body’s energy-draining, instead of being sustained by the emotions of the young kid. “Is this a new upgrade? I am able to invoke emotions in others!”
Putting the fear behind him and letting out a battle cry, the young kid charged, letting loose a flurry of jabs at the monsters while keeping his feet well-planted through every shift. Ceres dodged each spear jab with ease, the fight not even really being a challenge for him. “How much emotion can I invoke in him?”
Now that he was more acutely aware of what he was doing, Ceres could exert more energy towards his focus. He could feel some sort of circular organ deep inside his body heating up and pulsing as he tried to invoke more fear in the young kid.
The young kid began to falter in his moves. Instead of attacking relentlessly with bravery, he instead took more cautious moves, afraid of any counterattack. Despite his willpower, the fear in his mind kept increasing higher and higher.
It reached the point where he could no longer move, only staring at the monster who stood still in front of him as he trembled. He had no idea what had gotten into him, but it felt like he was doomed to die if he continued attacking.
Ceres started to sweat and breathe a little harder, the energy draining at a rapid speed. “It’s not very efficient, especially if I can’t suppress a single kid.” He stopped invoking fear in the kid, breathing deep as Ceres took out his multi-terminal, beginning to audio translate.
“Who are you kid, and why do you have the same spear technique as me?”
Instead of answering, the young kid, who looked like a lizardman to Ceres suddenly rushed up and tried to hug him. Ceres quickly backed away, wary of any sudden attacks. The young kid took out his own multi-terminal and translated too.
“Teacher, you’re finally here!”
Ceres did not know whom it was, trying to recall. He had spent the last few months alone in the temple with slovesas as company, so he could barely remember anyone from before.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you’re Ceres right? I’m your disciple!” The young kid excitedly said.
“I don’t have a disciple…”
“It’s me! Mercer! You taught me how to use the spear!”
“What? When?” Ceres was shocked. Now he recalled who Mercer was, but he didn’t remember properly teaching him to this extent.
“Well, more like your video recording taught me. I learnt all your techniques from your first spar with the captain!” Mercer proudly said. “I’ve watched it more than a thousand times!”
Ceres was a bit stunned. “Cough.. okay never mind that. Why are you still in this room? Are you trapped?”
“Huh? No, it’s my turn today to train and to try and find you! Anyway, we can exit now and meet the rest. The whole town has been waiting for you!” Mercer quickly took out a blue orb before walking to the centre of the room.
Goras walked slowly towards the badge while continuously firing beams at Ceres, forcing the black blood into a defensive mode. The energy beams he fired were nothing to scoff at – they were at the mythical class of slovesas.
If Ceres’s body took a direct hit, it would inflict grievous damage that maybe the black blood might not be able to absorb or heal.
With this, Goras managed to force the black blood away from the badge, threatening the host.
Snatching the badge from the pedestal, Goras was ecstatic, admiring the intricate carvings and detail on the badge. Before it could inspect the badge any longer, the black blood had formed into a larger black armour around Ceres, slamming into Goras.
Goras was sent tumbling, its mind in complete disbelief. “Was Ceres not a weakling?! How does he still retain such strength even while unconscious? I’m a mythical class!” It looked at Ceres, who was now wearing an obviously different black armour, though he was clearly still unconscious.
“So it’s the black blood that’s the real deal.. too bad Ceres’s weak body limits its strength,” Goras smirked as he placed the badge onto his chest, the badge swirling into its body, sinking it slowly. The black scale armour trembled with anger, rushing forward to try and grab the badge, Ceres’s body being manipulated like a ragdoll.
Goras wasn’t one to turn down a fight, so he gladly accepted the challenge. He was ranked top of the temple.
Despite Goras’s previous assumption that Ceres was much weaker than him, the black armour proved to be a completely different foe, fighting on par with Goras despite his previous preconceived notions. “What the hell am I even fighting?!”
As the fight went on, the black armour showed no sign of slowing down or even being hurt by the damage Goras was inflicting on it.
Goras was not completely certain he could even win this fight. “There’s no point fighting any longer, I already have what I want!” As much as he wanted to kill and finish off Ceres, it was better to get rid of him first and consolidate his gains. His objective had already been achieved after all – a minor carbon lifeform will do no harm to him.
“TEMPLE! Mark the intruder and open the exit door!” Goras yelled. The badge on his chest glowed brightly, linking to the temple and marking him as the highest authorized individual.
[Command confirmed – forcefield disabled. Opening exit door.] A white temple door suddenly appeared in the middle of the hallway behind Ceres. With a strong kick that could decimate a mountain, Goras launched him towards the white door.
Goras was afraid of what the black blood might do, and why should he fight an uncertain duel when he now owned the badge?
“Deactivate the exit door!” Goras ordered worried Ceres might charge back into the temple immediately.
The white door disappeared, and Goras let out a sigh of relief. No matter how strong Ceres got he could not overcome the spatial distortion effects of the temple.
Right after Ceres was kicked through the door, the crystals that served as the first emperor’s eyes began to glow. A large booming pulse created a shockwave throughout the entire temple as Goras laughed manically. He had won.
“Finally! After more than 300 years here, killing and slaughtering every rank 1 participant who entered, now I have full control over the first emperor’s body, as well as a badge to prove that I am the rightful inheritor to the throne! I AM THE UNITER!”
[You….! How dare you cheat your way into the temple!] The first Uniter roared, but his body was unable to move, only watching as Goras melded the badge into his body, featuring it on his chest.
“You have no right to talk about fair or unfair. You yourself cheated your way to the top, climbing over the bodies of your comrades and even eating them. Why can’t I do the same? Since I was born, the entire world was against me. I simply do not lie to myself. Everyone is my enemy!”
[No… you cannot repeat what I’ve done!]
“SHUT UP! I don’t have to reason with a dead ghost. You’re just a whisper of the original Uniter. You can barely control the temple now!” Goras ordered, and the first Uniter could not speak any longer, obeying.
“Now comes my true reward. The badge is just a symbolic token, but you… your body is the real prize. What would eating the body of a slovesa that has consumed more than a quadrillion cores taste like?”
***
In a dusty cave filled with forgotten machines and derelict crystal vats, a white door suddenly appeared and opened, with Ceres being flung out, smashing into the floor.
He was not yet conscious, the rapid transformation by the core continuously causing his body to creak and crack with bone-twisting sounds, the movements erratic. If anyone saw this, they might have assumed he was undergoing a sort of reanimation to become a zombie.
However, he was not alone in the cave. Multiple dark figures began to approach him, circling and observing Ceres while they emitted a low rumbling sound. They were the monsters of the first inner temple room.
One of the monsters tried to approach the flailing body of Ceres, snarling as it carefully stepped forward. In a flash, an elongated black whip extended from Ceres, slicing the monster’s head off with a sharp edge.
The other monsters leapt in fear, immediately retreating a few steps. They watched with restraint over the next three hours, as Ceres’s body underwent an insane transformation.
A few more hours passed before Ceres finally groaned as he woke up, his body aching and hurting all over. The disassociation he had with his body since he left the research lab had gotten even stronger. As he recalled what happened in the final tower, he bolted upright, observing his surroundings.
“Where the hell did he send me..?” Ceres looked around, noticing that there was a significant number of crystal computers and broken vats. It looked similar to the research lab he first entered in the slovesa temple when Goras pulled him in.
Ceres was very pissed off by the betrayal of Goras, but he had to first understand what the hell happened to him. He flexed his fingers and arms, not fully accepting in his mind that this was his body.
The unimaginable pain was slowly fading away, making Ceres think that what happened was just a dream.
“The core, where did it go?” Ceres checked his body, but could not find the core anywhere. He swore he recalled the black goo in his body forcing him to take it. Unless Goras stole it from him again.
Perhaps the black goo absorbed the core, but he was a baseline human to begin with. Could he even integrate a slovesa’s core into his body?
Ceres sighed. His current situation had gone far past what his logic could handle.
“At least I did not get knocked into a five-year vat.”
He decided to check his surroundings and find a way out back to the town where he could try to make sense of stuff.
Ceres assumed he was still within a part of the slovesa city, seeing as the crystal computers were all still present. Suddenly, a series of crystal computers lit up, slovesa glyphs scrolling across like a terminal screen.
Ceres quickly rushed over and read it. “Commencing final boss wave. ERRO*(@U#R Final boss unavailable. Initiating countermeasures. Commencing wave 1-19…. What the hell is this?”
Lights began to flicker on in the cave, as luminescent crystals formed a path that led straight down into a slowly brightening corridor. Ceres began to wonder whether that was the exit, but a sudden roar and stampede of monsters from behind him began to charge at him with reckless abandon.
With no time to decide, Ceres decided to jump out of the way, hiding behind the crystal computer as the horde ignored him and rushed past, following the marked line towards the bright corridor.
“That’s weird.” Ceres began to follow after them, checking behind his back to make sure that the monsters were not running from something.
As Ceres approached the corridor, he realized that he was not entirely sure how the temple was able to continuously generate such monsters of varying types. Wasn’t it a slovesa temple?
He shook his head, ridding himself of curiosity. It could be some sort of horrid bio-genetic lab for all he cared, but it wasn’t his concern now. Who knows what the hell the first Uniter was capable off?
The corridor led to a large bright hole, the size of a crater. It seemed to lead to a temple room, but just as Ceres tried to get near the edge of the hole to see what the room was, a sudden force field ejected him out through the hole.
Ceres yelled as he fell for a good ten seconds, free-falling before crashing into the middle of a white circular room.
Despite falling that far, his body felt very little pain, the residual ache from the transformation dulling his senses to everything else.
“Wait, this is the first temple room!” Ceres realized that he had fallen through the monster gap that he first saw when he entered the inner temple room.
Looking at the horde of monsters who were fighting someone though, he then began to doubt himself. Wasn’t he the only one in the temple?
Switching to his new vision mode, he noted that there was a single human fighting off the wave of monsters with a spear.
Surprisingly, the body shape looked very familiar, so Ceres began to approach the human.
The human was a young adult, stabbing rapidly with the spear while continuously staying on his toes, dodging around the swipes of the monsters. Ceres felt a weird sense of familiarity with this style, as though he had done it before. Was it someone he knew?
As Ceres approached, a few of the monsters turned and began to charge at Ceres. However, with a simple glance of Ceres’s eyes, the black goo pulsated, causing a sudden emotion of fear to be invoked in them, causing them to remain in place, unable to move.
“Huh, that’s new.” Ceres could feel the energy being sapped from his body, while he could tell the monsters were truly afraid. However, another group of monsters that he did not focus on did not portray the same fear, instead rushing him.
With a few quick punches, he quickly targeted and eliminated the monsters’ cores, crushing them in his hand. The scared group of monsters were still locked in place, causing Ceres to become curious.
“One group is afraid, but the other isn’t. I’ve verified that they are both real monsters and not humans. What’s the difference?”
Ceres tried to look away, releasing his focus on the scared group. The energy within his body stopped depleting, and the group of monsters was no longer scared, attacking him.
“Interesting…” Ceres muttered as he quickly defeated them by piercing their tiny cores, heading over to the human who was finishing off the last of the monsters.
The young kid had not suffered a single hit so far, able to weave his way through the horde of monsters.
Naturally, Ceres could see the young kid for what he was, but it was not the same for the kid.
As he pulled out his spear from a dead monster’s body, the young kid stared at the last monster, who slowly walked over to him.
He found the monster to act very differently than before. He gripped his spear tighter and began to slowly circle the last monster, Ceres.
Ceres was slightly amused. Was this young kid his doppelganger? It seemed like every posture was similar to his own style of hit-and-run. “Could this be a temple replica of the young version of me? Seems a bit different though…”
Seeing the monster not making any moves, the young kid began to run up to the monster, lunging with a forward stab, his spear gripped with both hands.
The monster easily dodged to the left, before launching a fierce kick towards him.
He quickly blocked with the spear, but the force of the kick sent him back. Deftly flipping his body, he landed on his two feet, gritting his teeth as he planted the base of the spear into the ground, preventing him from sliding back any further.
This was not the typical boss monster that the young kid was used to. He grimaced as he spun his spear once into a ready position, preparing to attack.
However, the monster suddenly released a directed wave of pressure, causing his heart to panic! Fear began to erupt in his mind, but he used his willpower to suppress it as much as he could. He had been training here for close to five months now, waiting for his teacher to return. How could he falter here?
Ceres raised his brows, noting the increased fear just by his focus. He could now feel his body’s energy-draining, instead of being sustained by the emotions of the young kid. “Is this a new upgrade? I am able to invoke emotions in others!”
Putting the fear behind him and letting out a battle cry, the young kid charged, letting loose a flurry of jabs at the monsters while keeping his feet well-planted through every shift. Ceres dodged each spear jab with ease, the fight not even really being a challenge for him. “How much emotion can I invoke in him?”
Now that he was more acutely aware of what he was doing, Ceres could exert more energy towards his focus. He could feel some sort of circular organ deep inside his body heating up and pulsing as he tried to invoke more fear in the young kid.
The young kid began to falter in his moves. Instead of attacking relentlessly with bravery, he instead took more cautious moves, afraid of any counterattack. Despite his willpower, the fear in his mind kept increasing higher and higher.
It reached the point where he could no longer move, only staring at the monster who stood still in front of him as he trembled. He had no idea what had gotten into him, but it felt like he was doomed to die if he continued attacking.
Ceres started to sweat and breathe a little harder, the energy draining at a rapid speed. “It’s not very efficient, especially if I can’t suppress a single kid.” He stopped invoking fear in the kid, breathing deep as Ceres took out his multi-terminal, beginning to audio translate.
“Who are you kid, and why do you have the same spear technique as me?”
Instead of answering, the young kid, who looked like a lizardman to Ceres suddenly rushed up and tried to hug him. Ceres quickly backed away, wary of any sudden attacks. The young kid took out his own multi-terminal and translated too.
“Teacher, you’re finally here!”
Ceres did not know whom it was, trying to recall. He had spent the last few months alone in the temple with slovesas as company, so he could barely remember anyone from before.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you’re Ceres right? I’m your disciple!” The young kid excitedly said.
“I don’t have a disciple…”
“It’s me! Mercer! You taught me how to use the spear!”
“What? When?” Ceres was shocked. Now he recalled who Mercer was, but he didn’t remember properly teaching him to this extent.
“Well, more like your video recording taught me. I learnt all your techniques from your first spar with the captain!” Mercer proudly said. “I’ve watched it more than a thousand times!”
Ceres was a bit stunned. “Cough.. okay never mind that. Why are you still in this room? Are you trapped?”
“Huh? No, it’s my turn today to train and to try and find you! Anyway, we can exit now and meet the rest. The whole town has been waiting for you!” Mercer quickly took out a blue orb before walking to the centre of the room.
