chapter 184

The ship shook with every impact. We were surrounded by space monsters, all of them only about one-tenth the size of the ship. The ones that had been charging us to take a bite out of the ship had been killed.

The shield ring around the ship deflected so many incoming spikes, and those that would have still hit the ship were deflected by our regular shields. That meant there were skills amongst the remaining space monsters, and I wanted them.

A quick glance showed me that the shield was holding up magnificently. “Approach the largest cluster of space monsters, get into my innate ability range.”

Everyone did their job almost immediately as the engines made us surge forward. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on my awareness, extending it as much as possible. Already a large portion of my mana was gone as I used it to loot the space monsters that had been charging us, at least as many as I could before they were killed.

While trying to get as many skills as possible was one of our main goals, the safety of this ship came first. It didn’t take long for us to get there, having already crippled a lot of the main cluster of space monsters.

Then I felt it, the first one inside my range. It didn’t have any skills. The only things I kept were some of the crystals that grew inside space monsters; every other material I let my innate ability handle, as that actually took less mana than if I were to select more to keep.

Sometimes I didn’t have any time at all to choose, because when another one died, it forced the one that I was currently understanding to finish turning into loot almost immediately.

Everything went by so fast, but whenever I felt a skill inside a space monster, I focused and forced myself to keep this one in my mind at least long enough to make sure that I didn’t turn everything into currency.

The blackness was at the edge of my mind. My mana was gone. My innate ability stopped triggering, but I kept my consciousness. Damn, it was hard to keep myself awake without any mana after exhausting my mind so much.

Signalling that I was out made all the turret AIs switch to more crippling shots for a few remaining space monsters. There was a lot of loot to be gained in this space portal, and we did not want it to close prematurely.

“That’s the last of them. Do I have permission to start looting?” Bob asked as he got up from his station.

I almost gave permission, but then I felt it, and so did everyone else. Those last few kills brought FH over the threshold, and everyone else as well, besides me.

“Before that, everyone rank up. This way, all of us will be D-ranked.”

Everyone knew that we didn’t want to linger in a vulnerable state for too long. They headed off to their preferred locations to rank up, and FH adjusted our heading so we would not drift too far away or hit anything while she was ranking up.

I was not prepared for the quiet that followed. The ship seemed eerily silent, and even my bond network felt like a ghost town. Usually, there was always someone communicating through it, but right now, the only things that remained were functions that were required for the ship to run smoothly.

It was curious that, in the same way as inside a body when a person went through a rank up things would keep working, it would apply to a ship as well. She really was alive, wasn’t she, in every sense of the word.

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Looking back at the tactical screen and the cameras that were showing the outside, the battle here was pretty fierce, but the nearly 400 space monsters didn’t pose any threat to us. Those new shields had really made us quite a tank.

We wouldn’t be as strong without everything being able to strengthen through rank-ups, improving absolutely every part of the ship each time she did, and this time would be no different. In fact, it would have an even greater effect, as each rank-up brought a more significant upgrade than the last.

It also felt good to finally be able to start advancing my own rank as well. It had been too long, even though I was barely satisfied with my skill progress. The biggest advance over the past month have been my resistances.

This torture device installed inside of me was exactly what I needed. It had helped me advance all of my resistances tremendously, getting a lot of them easily past journeyman proficiency.

It was a good idea to make my resistance skills average be shown by one skill that I could expand if I wanted to see all of them individually. My age was still 34, even though it had been the same for quite a few years now. Was I really going to live forever if I didn’t die from something unrelated to time?

That feeling was quite liberating, but also scary. Normally, immortality came with the terrible consequence of watching all you love die, but my crew members were as immortal as I, at least it seemed like it, although I could never be 100% sure of that. Was I ready to live so long?

The ship’s diagnostics were once again going crazy as everything went out of spec. This time, I triggered the rank-up protocols, which made all the alarms shut up as they understood that they needed to recalibrate everything.

With everything growing stronger, including our defensive and offensive capabilities, one thing had become clearing obvious: our biggest weakness right now was the armour of the ship. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a good solution for fixing it right now.

The best lead we had was a couple of metal bars we found in a wreck a while ago. FH was pretty sure that she had identified the planet they originated from, but the problem was that we weren’t ready to tackle that challenge, as that planet was one of the most dangerous tomb worlds that we knew of.

But that ship that had those metal bars in it wasn’t that advanced, so there must be some way of getting them without getting destroyed.

Spending time in this new area, where we were currently clearing the space portals in made it quite clear that space portals with only one or a few enemies inside were a rarity. Crippled space monsters were still required, or space monsters that couldn’t survive a trip to the nearest solar system.

It also seemed that most space monsters had the instinct to stay and protect their wounded members. Of course, not all of them, but we had found pretty big clusters of space monsters near crippled ones whenever we scouted a space portal.

Pretty much, we had wasted a lot of time clearing those formed space portals, as this was a lot more efficient. The problem was that most of the space portals out here were F-ranked. With everyone now D-ranked, those would not give us anything besides materials and resources, which were also a step behind our current needs.

All in all, we were going to need to start being more selective. Fortunately, FH had gotten good enough to distinguish between the different ranks of space portals with her scouting skills alone. It would mean more time scouting and travelling, but at least we would be making good progress.

One by one, they all came out of their rank-ups. Bob started harvesting while Lola was fussing over everyone so that she could get a new baseline for everyone’s strength. It was quite a wonderful time, as everything was once again so lively.

While our destination now was the Four Leaf Station, we weren’t exactly in a hurry to get there, so we would be hitting the best space portals we could find on our way there.

That station will also be a milestone, as it’s the Adventurer Guild headquarters in the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s called the Four Leaf because it’s run by four Dukes, each one running one of the four sectors of the station. The reason for that was so that one power wouldn’t be able to own a station so important.

It was the number one place where adventurers went to sell off their best loot, but that was only scratching the surface. I guess the best way to describe it is that it was the adventure Mecca of this galaxy. There were so many opportunities there for an up-and-coming space adventurer that not going there would be stupid.

It is also quite a dangerous place, which is why it’s not recommended to go there before your spaceship can handle D-ranked portals. We should be able to easily handle D-ranked space portals; in fact, I believe we could do C-ranked as well. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find one so we can report clearing one, as that would open a lot of doors.

“Captain, I have managed to successfully retrieve two skill stones. They are big, so can you please come and inspect them?” Bob sent me a message.

Before I could get up and send the reply, FH spoke to me.

“Captain, there’s no need to go. I can feel what the skill stones are. One is named Improved Projectile, it strengthens physical projectiles that are shot. The other one is named Minor Tracking Shot. This one seems to adjust course if it is no longer going to hit its original target.”

“So not bad, but also not good skills. Do you want to absorb any or hold off until we can see what we can purchase at the station?”

“I think we should hold off. Items that are required to remove skills seem way too expensive to use them so liberally.”

“Understood, FH.” To Bob, I sent a message informing him of the skill stones and that they should be put into storage. Through our bond, I could feel him being quite grumpy as space monster cores were always quite big and took up a lot of space.