chapter 191

The Four-Leaf Station star system was the sparsest one I had ever seen. It only had two gas giants and a small sun. In the habitable zone was the station. From the beginning of its construction, it was meant to be large and imposing. It certainly looked like it on our screens.

They had transfer gates, but all of them were quite far away. This place was not built for efficiency, where you could drop out of FTL close to the station, use the transfer gate to slow down quickly, do your business, and then start accelerating away. No, we had a slow journey ahead of us that would take nearly five days just to reach the station.

There were strict laws in this place. A speeding ticket here costs quite a lot and would be considered a lucky outcome. Fortunately, when leaving, you didn’t have to wait five days before you could start accelerating towards FTL transfer speed.

This system wasn’t as heavily trafficked as trade centres, where tens of thousands of ships were either approaching or leaving, but there were still thousands here. Or at least there should have been. Barely anyone was leaving, and far fewer than normal were seen approaching the station.

All of this was because of that black portal. Hopefully, that would mean less trouble and that we could finish our business here quickly. This place did not make me feel comfortable. There was simply too much power and danger here.

Some of the screens showed the two megastructures of this system, if you didn’t count the station. One was built to bring gas up from the surface of one of the gas giants; the other was built up on the sun to power not only the station but also the extensive defences of this star system.

Surrounding the main station itself were hundreds of smaller fortress stations. There were also thousands of laser stations that not only helped bring the power from the star but also doubled as attack platforms.

To successfully siege this star system, you would need a tremendous force, and all of this was not taking into account the Four-Leaf Station itself. Also, there were normally a few thousand adventurer ships here as well, ready to defend the most important station in this galaxy for us.

It was a bit strange to count myself as one of these adventurers, as I had never truly been a part of something so big. FH was constantly gathering information about all that was going on here, and all of us were sitting in the command centre, looking over that data.

Every once in a while, FH would show us an image of a ship we had been able to record. In other places, ships were quite uniform, as most of them were used as cargo transports. All of the ships, no matter who designed them, still looked quite similar, but not here. All the ships were different enough that FH had trouble finding two that were 90% the same.

There were some common ship hulls, but all of them were heavily modified, making them all look quite unique. It made our time approaching the station quite enjoyable. Looking at different ships sort of turned into a game of guessing their strengths and weaknesses and what special features they might have.

As we were only half an hour away from the station, I began to feel a strong power emanating from it. It was difficult at first to understand what I was sensing, but Sense Aura helped me realise what it was. I was sensing the presence of the four Dukes who inhabited this station, and who knows how many more titled adventurers.

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Four-Leaf Station was a standard design for an adventurer's headquarters. It had a central stem, where at the top four different sections were built out that resembled leaves. Each of those would be owned by four appointed Dukes. One of the key deciding factors in picking which Dukes inhabited the station was that they would not get along.

A weird requirement at first glance, but if your goal was so that no single entity would control the adventurers’ headquarters in this galaxy, it made sense. The power struggle was the point, with active fighting being strictly prohibited.

FH was compiling, as we spoke, an entirely new comprehensive entry into our database about the history of this particular station and the four-leaf station design the Adventurers’ Guild adopted 800 thousand years ago, which has become the standard in every galaxy.

“While this is extremely interesting, it’s time we focus,” I said to everyone, as all of us were quite distracted by everything FH had already been able to gather from the station’s web.

“No one besides me leaves our berth. We can trust the workers of this station to an extent, but I want as little contact with them as possible, so it’s best that everyone stays on board besides Bob, who needs to handle selling our cargo.” Everyone agreed easier than I expected.

“If you’re wondering why we don’t want to look around, this place feels oppressive,” Dean said, and I could now see the discomfort on almost everyone’s face except Bob, who seemed eager.

“Yes, this place seems off, probably too many powerful people fighting in ways that do not violate the rules. My first stop will be the Adventurers’ Guild offices. FH, did as much as possible from here, but it seems a face-to-face meeting is required in this station.”

“They’re not messing around here. As soon as we touch down, they will be here, fully scanning all of our cargo and each individual that leaves the ship. Also, remote verification is only good enough to get yourself docked, nothing more,” FH clarified, reminding us that this place took security extremely seriously.

In fact, they took it so seriously—and I was guessing that they had ways of even inspecting inventory skills—that I purposely left my atomic bullets behind. They should not know that our ship has inventory skills, and even if they do know, it shouldn’t matter if you are not planning on taking any of what’s inside further into the station.

The scanning started even before we touched down. It felt wrong to be scanned like this, but they didn’t seem to find anything to their dislike. The doors above us closed, and soon the outside of the ship was pressurised. FH was handling all the bureaucracy, but I was keeping my eye on everything that was happening.

There were different permissions to request to sell cargo, what type of cargo we wanted to sell, the crew manifest of who wanted to enter the station, and so on. And all of that was only when you wanted to deal with the stem of the station. If you wanted to enter one of the leaves of the station, you would need separate permissions from the authorities who governed it.

This place was a real bureaucratic mess, but all of this pain should be worth it, as this place had the best selection of skills and other resources available in this galaxy. If you can’t find something you’re looking for here, the chances are you will never find it elsewhere.

We had a lot of goals to accomplish here, but only a couple of hours ago, I thought of a new one that I really wanted to test out. During the battle with the Varani, we had been close enough to one of their ships for my looting ability to trigger.

We didn’t manage to destroy that ship, but our attacks did manage to kill a few inside, which allowed me to understand the Varani people to a deeper degree than I ever wanted to. Their species was not a good one.

This innate ability of mine didn’t trigger if something wasn’t alive, but what if I destroyed a ship inside a portal that hadn’t broken yet? The rules were different there. I believed that there was a possibility of my ability triggering on a spaceship in the same way it does when killing someone.

That should mean that I would be able to understand each part of that ship. It could be an alternative way for us to get the required knowledge to upgrade Forward Horizon into a larger ship.

All of this was guesswork, but hopefully, there would be a portal clear for sale that actually had spaceships inside instead of space monsters. This was low on the priority list, but I would truly like to know if this would work or not.

Everyone else stayed here while Bob and I made our way to the cargo hold. It was filled to the brim. Most of the volume was made up of crates holding finger-length and thumb-sized bars of metal. This was a stupid amount of wealth that we had to squeeze past to get to the ramp that was currently lowering.

Stepping out, we took our first breath of the air of this station. There were no contaminants detected, but there was an odd smell, similar to when you visit an overcrowded city.

We received a request to enter our berth by the authorities of this station. I gave FH the go-ahead to allow them in. Bob had his tablet out already, clicking away. Doing his job better than I ever could.

What approached was a team of the station’s workers, all associated with the Adventurer Guild. Each one of them was humanoid, but none of them was the same species. Already, FH was working hard, gathering all the required universal translator keys so no one could speak without us knowing what they said. That paid off almost immediately.

One of them leaned towards the one who was in charge. “I am sensing inventory skills.” Well, that sounds like trouble.