Chapter 29 In space with a junkyard ship

When my foot stepped on the Forward Horizon’s ramp for the first time after the kill, I took a deep breath in and relaxed just a bit.

Lola had been monitoring the station's security, but nothing seemed to be happening. Most likely, I was attacked there not only because I made a mistake and went through there, but also because the security cameras most likely didn’t work there.

Everything had happened so fast, so I finally took the time to just sit down, lay my head against the boxes, and think things through.

How did he know that I had the skill stone?

“Lola, please go through the footage I’m sending you. See if you can find that person before our meeting in the alley.”

“Acknowledged.”

Perhaps he had some sort of ability to find skill stones, because I was certain that he was G rank like me. Probably had some affinity to speed or something like that, because there’s no way he would have been able to move that fast without it, even with the help of cybernetics specially meant for extreme speed boost.

It was a close fight, although I didn’t feel that he was as strong as me. Perhaps I could have taken him in a close-up fight that was longer than the one we had. Of course, the longer the fight is, the greater the chance of something going wrong.

From my pockets, I took out the coins he dropped.

23 platinum, one gold, and two silver—all of them 100 grams and completely pure.

So the entirety of him was worth 57,200 mana credits.

Damn, that’s a sad number.

“I found him. He was in one of the earlier bars you walked into and out of immediately. I suspect he has been following you ever since, keeping a good distance. Even using all the information you can gather passively. There was no trace of him.”

“So he was good at what he did. That means people know him, which might be trouble... but there is no trace of him left, so...”

“Lola, is this what happens when a looting ability is used on monsters?”

“Yes, if you look at the designs of the coins, you can see they are the same as people in the station have been using to pay for stuff. If something is worth a lot more than those coins, you would get bars as drops, but usually it's just gold coins—a lot of them.”

“So I’m guessing your looting ability can give you better materials than usual. And of course, your looting ability should not have worked on anything other than the monsters from the portals.” Lola explained.

“You know, when I was walking back, it was hard not to think about how much someone I walked past was worth. This ability could set me on a very wrong path.”

“I do not believe so. You are too consistent and already capable of extreme violence. I do not see a world where you just go out randomly killing just to get some credits.”

“Perhaps you speak the truth, but it's still a scary thought. It's hard to think clearly at that moment—everything happened so fast—but I’m pretty sure I saw everything he was, just for a moment, before my looting ability turned him entirely into currency. There was also something else there—like a choice, but not a choice to loot or not. Something else.”

“What do you mean by you saw everything he was?”

“Exactly what I said. Pretty sure I saw everything—the culmination of what he was. The blood vessels, his heart, his mana core, every bone, his cybernetics, even his soul—I could feel it all. And then they were all gone, made into currency.”

“Why did it have to work on people not from the portal? Wait—could he have been from a portal? Is that somehow possible?”

“That’s something I cannot answer. But even if it is possible, the chances that he would be one should be extremely low.”

“Yeah... that was just wishful thinking. Could probably be a pretty good assassin—making people completely disappear.”

“Once again, I don’t think that’s you. But you’re not wrong. Even in a firefight, think how much, morally, it would hurt the other side if they saw someone of theirs turn into coins.”

That made me shiver. One moment you were fighting with your brother, the next he was a pile of coins.

Yeah, that was going to fuck anyone up.

“Back to what you were feeling before the looting ability did its thing. You mentioned something about a choice—can you think back to it? What choice?”

“I don’t know. It happened too fast this time. I wasn’t prepared. But I also consumed his soul to make those coins. There’s nothing left of him anywhere—except in these coins. Yet there is no trace of him here as well. Everything is just pure metal. What if there is an afterlife, even if it’s just a 0.1% chance—did I take that away from him as well?”

“No,” Lola firmly answered.

“Wait—what do you mean, no?”

“So, this is something I have yet to tell you. It appears that souls are completely real. They do have some effect. Only biological life has complete souls, and it’s believed that it’s one of the reasons why they can control mana. It’s also been confirmed that souls leave the body upon death, and from approximately 7 hours to a couple of days later, they break apart”

“Wait, what? Why were you even searching? I’m just confused.”

“This research—I did for myself, to try to understand why AIs couldn’t control mana. So yes, everyone has a soul. It’s nothing special, just a part of life. But large collections of souls in one location do seem to share some information, but that’s about it.”

“Let me guess—most of that research was done by AIs?”

“Not as much as you would think, but yes. There’s a lot of other arguments made by more religious species. But most of the universe does agree with this viewpoint.”

“Well... okay. At least I didn’t condemn his soul. That does make me feel a bit better. Thanks.”

“Anything for you, Master.”

“Don’t you start again—but I see that’s just another way of helping me take my mind off this.”

“We won’t get any more information without me going and killing someone, and I don’t want to do that. So it’s time to start fixing this ship. Do you have the data from the fusion experiment?”

“Yes. It’s quite promising.”

When I looked over the data, it was indeed quite promising. With a few changes, especially to the composition of the nano machine clusters, we could get a lot more power out of every second. The time the fusion reaction lasts should also now be for about 12 minutes. I bet we would be able to increase that even more.

“There’s still the problem of getting the fuel into the power core.” I told Lola

“I’ve been thinking about that. Fusion cores are basically the standard, so there should be a lot of spare parts for sale. Couldn’t we just buy the part that feeds the fuel into the core?”

That made me stop unpacking the new tools.

“Yeah, that’s an extremely good idea. We would still not be able to run a continuous fusion reaction, but how are the numbers for my plan to work around it?”

“It seems feasible. We would just be running a triangle of fusion reactions. Two of them would be working at the same time, while the third one would be refueled.”

“That would naturally rotate them and give us plenty of time to refuel each one to activate it when another is about to expire. It would also mean that technically, we could make more than three reactions if needed—but right now, even two would be an extreme amount of power.”

“Well, one thing we will certainly buy will be a gravity generator—or in this case, something to take away the acceleration we feel during FTL. That should take a lot of power.”

“Also, Lola, could you run calculations if we change from our current main engine to a fusion drive that uses hydrogen-3 as its propellant, to see the range and how often we would need to refuel? I believe that’s the most standard way for ships to move about, and it must be a standard for a good reason.”

“Acknowledged.”

When I finished unpacking the tools, I checked out the batteries they came with. They were really good—better than anything from Earth—and there was no way to charge them. It didn’t take too long to figure out what kind of connection they needed, so I started to design a charging port for these batteries.

Unfortunately, there was no way to make copies of these batteries, as they used materials that my printers couldn't make. It seems a lot of materials used plant or animal parts in their makeup, and this battery was no different. If I had these materials, then I could certainly use the printer, but there was no way of replicating them.

While I was working on this, I also researched more into materials. Turns out that there were equivalents to well-known fantasy metals. They still had stuff from the periodic table, but they were mixed with more biological components to create something even better, like the basic armour plating. Yet some of the properties of those compounds were fantastical.

Now, they cost a lot, and apparently, G ranks still used mostly basic materials or straight-up monster parts as weapons. It seems that bones were quite popular, especially for arrowheads. It was interesting to see that the very tip of material science was basically extracting materials from plant and animal parts that science could not replicate easily—only life could.

There was so much to learn, and sometimes I felt so overwhelmed, but with every new piece of information learned, the universe as a whole started to make a bit more sense.

With the way of charging my new tools finished, it was time to put them to work. Now, cutting through the armour plate was a joy.

It still took quite a while, and I was already thinking of modifying one of the drones to be able to use this tool. After cutting plenty of pieces from the armour plate, I took them back inside so they could be used to continue making new nano machines.

There was quite a lot of damage to my ship from that fight, but using the cutter on my ship armour made it so much clearer how weak it was compared to the new armour plating. This tool cut through it so fast.

Unfortunately, right now I wouldn’t change the entire armour—it just wouldn't make sense—but the currently damaged parts would be cut cleanly off and then fixed with the new armour plating.

The reason why I didn’t want to change the armour was because most of my ship was curved, and those pieces cost even more than the current one. The plan was also to go to one of the places that made these armour plates, so when I expanded the current ship, I could change the armour for cheaper…

“Lola, am I being stupid? Should I just change the armour entirely so the trip we would have would be safer?”

“It would cost a lot, but I think it’s the side of you that doesn’t like to spend on things you know will change later on that is, I think, a bit too loud.”

“And the price of it?”

“The prices fluctuate, but I think a million or two?”

“Did you finish the fusion drive calculations estimate?”

“I did, but you’re not going to like it. The maximum acceleration would be a bit lower. If we used two of them, the ramp-up time would be a lot shorter, and we would only need to refuel approximately once a month while constantly travelling.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“How much are the engines?”

“The standard ones—1.6 million each.”

“Well, we have the budget if just barely. Order the two engines and the armour plates.”

“Okay, everyone listen up!” I said out loud, and many of my drones quickly made their way toward me to listen.

“New plans. We’re going to take off all of the armour and the main engine.”

Like that, I continued to instruct them as they got to work taking off the current armour layer. I looked at the main engine, thinking what the best way to disassemble it was.