chapter 192

“I must commend your crew’s ability to do bureaucracy. Everything seems to be in order. Is there anything else you would wish to declare before we leave?” The universal translator usually didn’t import meaning well, but it seemed FH managed to get a really good key for the language this individual spoke.

Before it all started, he sent his own universal translator key, but it was a cheap version. Everything up to this point had been by the book. They scanned with machines and skills our cargo hold, finding nothing amiss, as there was nothing to find.

This also gave me enough time to confirm that, yes, if you had an inventory skill, you needed to disclose it and let them scan it if you wanted to enter the station proper. So, this was a trap question, because I knew that they knew I had an inventory skill.

“Yes, I was wondering, is it required to disclose an inventory skill, because if so, I have one?” It was always hard to understand a new species’ body language. He had four ears, his mouth was strangely rigid, and overall, while he was humanoid, he looked nothing like a human.

That being said, similar features, it seemed to have similar tics. From what I had seen and interacted with, every person who had eyes and eyelids had a similar tick. When they were annoyed or angry, one of those eyelids might twitch, and his greyish-brown eyelid certainly did.

“Really, an inventory skill? That’s a rare skill, impressive. This is not in our records, and yes, it is required to get it inspected. With a big enough space, large sections of this station could be destroyed; even a small space could be devastating.” He then looked towards the one who first said he could sense our inventory skills.

“Please do not resist this skill scan. If you do, I would not be able to get any information. Nothing will be made public about your skill’s particularities or what’s inside, unless it’s against the law.” He said, at least I was pretty sure it was a he.

What followed next was truly unpleasant. It was like someone was looking inside me, inspecting one of my organs and how it exactly looked and worked.

“Everything checks out,” he said after he finally relaxed a bit, but I didn’t miss that his eyes glanced towards Bob. Whatever sensing skills he had, they were sharp. It would be best if they left as fast as possible. Who knows what else this one might pick up, as the ship itself has not one but two inventory-type skills.

The leader once again spoke up. “Excellent. Is this all you have to declare, or is there anything else?”

“No, this is all, as I would be the only one entering the station proper. Everyone else would stay here.” From his reaction, they most certainly knew Bob had an inventory skill as well.

“Excellent, excellent. But if that changes, be sure to follow proper protocol. We also don’t have a record of you purchasing an inventory skill. Where did you get one?”

Just in case, I looked through the relevant laws once again, FH was doing the same before I answered. All of that only took perhaps a second. “Adventurers didn’t need to disclose such information.” Oh, he was definitely angry.

“Now that we’re done, would you please show me out of the docks, please?” I said with a toothy smile. As most species found that a sign of aggression, not a pleased or happy facial expression.

Sometimes it’s nice to use the universal translator to your advantage, because it would show that I am making a positive facial expression, but we rarely can fight against the instant response our instincts want us to have.

No more words were spoken, but I got them out of the vicinity of FH, which was only a good thing. Outside, things were busy, as it seemed the docks of this station were cargo highways for the entire station.

Even here, this station was a step above everything else we had been to. Everything was clean, the walls had carvings, and very well-kept, tasteful plants dotted the walls every so often. I was pointed towards the stem, which was the center hub of everything on this station.

The information I had gathered made me picture the inside of the station as a dirty, overpopulated place full of criminal gangs and so on. Instead, what I found were clean streets, everyone looking as proper as possible, with obviously a lot of money spent on making each building look distinctly different and beautiful.

But underneath this facade, I soon noticed what was actually going on. It made me shiver, as cold sweat ran down my back, even though I confirmed nothing of the sort had happened.

This wasn’t some dangerous criminal underground; this was a political playground where everyone looked at each other with smiles while at the same time thinking about the best way to stab you in the back.

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The signs, once you noticed them, were everywhere. Absolutely everyone had one of four different colours somewhere on their person. That was no coincidence. The four Dukes who lived on this station all had colours representing their sigils: red, yellow, orange, and green.

Now that I knew what they were for, they were absolutely everywhere—some hidden better than others—and absolutely every building seemed to have certain colours as well.

There were also eyes on me, so I made sure that there were no colours like that on me, but those eyes never left. It took me a bit to figure out why they never left; it was because I was undeclared.

Shit, that’s going to bring trouble, isn’t it? But wearing one of the colours would probably bring more. I sped up just a bit, not to look suspicious, but to get to my destination faster.

The walk to the Adventurers Guild was nerve-wracking. More and more eyes were on me, and I was pretty sure some of the people watching me got into arguments with each other. No one seemed to actually fight, but then I remembered all the different fighting rings and arenas in this place. Oh, there were certainly sanctioned ways of using violence to get your way.

Yeah, I kind of wish this was a place of scum and villainy and not political intrigue, because that’s actually scarier. It seemed that there were invisible lines in this place that not even the four Dukes dared to mess with. All of a sudden, all the eyes on me disappeared.

It seemed that I had made it to the Adventurers Guild territory, even though I was still two blocks away from the building I needed to get to. This place looked exactly like a city on Earth, although the architecture was nothing like it. The biggest buildings were about eight storeys high, but the one I was going towards was fifteen.

Currently it was near midday, with the fake sun being high up in the fake sky, but the feeling of sunlight was so real that if I didn’t know it wasn’t real, I don’t think I could tell the difference. That was really impressive, and I wondered how they pulled that off.

What I expected was opulence from the Adventurers Guild, but everything, while not quite utilitarian, was only a step or two above. Things here worked efficiently, but I already had a time slot, which meant I only needed to wait fifteen minutes before I was let up towards one of the offices on the seventh floor.

Here, my identity was verified and confirmed. Then I needed to make myself an account on this station so Bob could finally start selling off our cargo. The standard currency here was called a credit coin. It wasn’t used for regular services, only for purchases that adventurers could make use of.

One credit coin was worth 100 million credits, yet even that credit coin wasn’t actually used for purchasing; it was a simple representation of the material worth you had.

“This makes your current account balance 863 credit coins, is that correct?” the Adventurers Guild representative, Werels, asked, a bit surprised by the number.

That was indeed the number Bob gave me that we would have after we traded in our materials. We should be getting a bit more when he manages to sell off the skills we no longer want, but that will take time.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Excellent, now this electronic display can be used to check your material vault and any deals you make with others. The coins represent what you have in your material vault.” She then handed me the small tablet.

“When you purchase something, an equivalent worth of those materials is transferred to whoever you bought from or sold to. They also get to pick what materials they want. Is everything making sense to you?”

“Yes.” Was my short answer, as FH had already filled me in. Basically, this entire station worked on a barter system, as regular currency simply didn’t work at this level. The only things you could truly trust were the materials themselves and the value they held. There were too many skills that could mess with digital currency.

“Do I understand it correctly that you can exchange materials with others to get what we want and then withdraw it?”

“That is indeed correct. In fact, a lot of adventurers do just that; they don’t even leave their berths. This doesn’t mean that this station isn’t the best location to purchase almost any ship component, the best equipment available for adventurers, and of course, the best skills.”

“Any auction coming up?”

“There’s one in four days. It’s not the biggest, but that’s only if you compare it to some of the other auctions on the station. If you were to compare it with other auctions in the galaxy, it’s the biggest,” she finished with a beaming smile.

She then explained all the rules and how to get into one. For the one that was coming up, the only thing you needed was to have more than 400 credit coins in your vault. Some of the truly big auctions had requirements of 5000 or more, and for some, you even needed to be titled.

“About titles, I was told that I had reached the first stage of my truth, but I don’t actually know what that means.” She had been quite jovial up to this point, but now she was fully serious.

“Is that so? Give me a moment.” She started to type on her keyboard. Unfortunately, no matter how I tried, I could not see what she was actually doing; it was somehow hidden.

“We’ll have someone here to test you in a moment. But let’s begin. What we call the truth is something that resonates with your being. Something that resonates with you helps you get stronger in a different way than ranking up does.”

“Not many achieve even the first stage, and that’s why there are no titles for anyone below. A truth can be anything—spreading hope, building something, being surrounded by a certain element—there is really no limit to what might resonate with you.” We were then interrupted by someone entering the office.

All they did was look at me for a moment, nod towards Werels, and leave. There was something different about him, and I guessed that must have been something his particular truth could sense.

“It’s confirmed. We’ll be adding that to your record.” A bit more typing, then she continued. “You will be given a title of Sir or Captain. Both are interchangeable, but since you own a ship, I would recommend you keep going with Captain.” I nodded.

“The next title step above yours is Baron. Above that is Count, and no, there are no male or female versions of those titles. Next is Duke, then High Duke. Our galaxy has three of them. Then there’s King; we have none. Then comes High King, and finally Emperor, of which there are only five in the known universe.”

She paused and looked at me as I tried to absorb that information. “So, we are a backwater galaxy then?” She tilted her head a bit in a weird direction, trying to parse what I meant, but then she smiled.

“Oh, that’s a nice way of putting it, but no, we aren’t. We’re really close; if we didn’t have any High Dukes, then yes.”

“If you reach the Baron title, you would be given a descriptor of your truth. No one can really sense what truth someone else has; only if they resonate with that truth can they get a sense of it. Oh,” she went silent when she saw something on the screen.

“Is your truth something to do with pirates? I see you have a nickname of Pirate Bane. If so, then I recommend you do have never registered that you have reached your first stage of truth. Truths like that are dangerous. You would be made the number one enemy of every pirate.”

“It is not,” I said as seriously as I could, because it actually wasn’t. She let out a sigh of relief but still looked at me like I was a dead man.

“For your sake, I hope you don’t run into more pirates, because with your track record, no matter what I write here, eventually they would not believe it. Please be careful.”

After that, there were a few more things I needed to fill out to finalise my registration as a titled individual. This title came with a strange amount of power. Whenever there was a crisis, I was now in the command structure above every other adventurer who didn’t have a title.

Now that that was done, it was time to head into the market and shops of this station and hopefully start finding the skills we were after and a heat exchanger we could buy that would boost Forward Horizon’s capability of staying in a prolonged fight by quite a lot.