chapter 199

When I made it back to the ship, there was no relief for me in being able to go to bed. I needed to continue fighting this migraine while explaining to everyone the choices I made, hoping that they would accept the skills that I got them.

Sam and Dean were quite pleased with their builds and almost immediately went off to start absorbing the skills. Bob looked at me dubiously. Lola was the first to speak.

“Needles? Where am I supposed to get needles?”

“Well, the idea was that you would make your body produce them, kind of similar to how humans grow fingernails. With the other skills, it should allow you to remain in contact with whoever you manage to stick with the needles.”

“I can see that, and making a body part that’s able to make needles sounds fun. It doesn’t change the fact that needles aren’t that dangerous.”

“That’s where the Loaded Needle comes in, and Enhanced Needle. What I was thinking was perhaps using poisons or other such dangerous materials. The enhanced part should allow you to pierce most skins, especially if you rank it up.”

She looked at me, then back at the skills. “I don’t see any poison skills. Most that I know of would barely even work on someone like you, let alone something stronger.”

“I either didn’t find the skills to make everyone’s builds even stronger, or they were simply too expensive. That’s most definitely a missing part of your current build, but already you have a lot of skills to absorb and learn to use.” She cut me off then.

“That’s way too true. It’s going to take months, but I also now see what you mean by these needles, and I’m actually getting more excited the more I think about it.” She paused then, before continuing.

“The other skills also sound extremely useful, especially the fact that I should now be able to bring all of you back if, for some reason, you die, but there is a strict time limit of perhaps a few hours, so best you not get killed. Is that understood?”

“Loud and clear, Lola. Loud and clear.”

“Captain, the hell is this? I was expecting something that would make me a living tank, not a fortress,” Bob started as soon as my conversation with Lola wrapped up. Lola didn’t leave like Sam and Dean, instead settling herself in to watch the show.

“I will admit I took a gamble on this. In my mind, this sounds strong. Perhaps not individually so, but if taken into account, our entire operation, I believe it’s beneficial. There’s still room for you to become that living tank, as you said. You’ve got plenty of open skill slots even after absorbing all of those.”

Bob hesitated, then looked back towards the skills. “Explain more?”

“What I’m thinking is you in charge of defences and logistics, operating the entire theatre of our combat forces. We’re going to keep expanding. My limit of how many AIs I can have under me is constantly increasing, and we could probably get a few more skills to make that even bigger.” Hopefully that made sense to him.

Bob stayed quiet for a long while, occasionally picking up one of the stones, then putting it back down.

“All right, Captain. I will take this chance. Hopefully, these skills work like you expect them to. If they do, I think I will understand better why humans are sometimes called mad geniuses. What about the other skills I asked you to get?”

“Yes, Bob. Wherever I purchased skills, I purchased a lot of others, making sure that they would be ones that you could sell near Earth that would be useful for humans. They should also help cover our tracks, but they did cost us nearly 40 credit coins when put all together.”

He simply shrugged. That was basically four billion credits, and he just shrugged. Hopefully, they will make that investment back and then some. Both Bob and Lola left after that, as they would have a lot of work to do to absorb all those skills, even before they start properly figuring out what they do.

“Captain, about my skills?” FH finally spoke. I gave her a mental nod, so she continued. “Thermal Sink and Radiant Thrust seem like an excellent combination for the heating problem. Sorted Mind and Data Vault, brilliant. They would work perfectly with the storage system that was delivered not long ago. Even Swarm Boost I can see being extremely useful, but the rest?”

“I know that Material Shaping Bay seems limited in what it can do, and our current machinery can do a lot better, but it’s an inventory-type skill, which means more storage. The same goes for Munitions Storage. They were relatively cheap inventory-type skills.” I got the feeling of understanding from her, but she was waiting for more.

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“As for the rest, I will admit they are a gamble, like Bob’s skills. I have no clue about their real extent and what they could actually be used for, but I’m really hoping that the Ghost-Mass Payload will help give even more mass to our hard-light weapons, making them even more powerful.”

“Materials required to remove skills are quite expensive. At minimum, 10 credit coins to remove one skill, more depending on how high-ranked it is. Are you sure it’s worth it, as these skills might not work as we want them to?”

“It’s just money. We can always make more. All of you are worth the investment to get you the best possible build. Unfortunately, there are tiers to money. Stuff like removing skills and buying good skill stones is something we can grind out quite easily. To get access to higher tiers of wealth, we need to start with good skills. There’s no way to make an absolutely legendary build from the start.”

“I know, Captain. Everything’s an investment in future strength. I will try this out.” She went quiet after that, and one of the skill stones that was laid on the table crumbled.

Finally, I could get that sleep. When I woke up, it was to an alarm. That was strange because I hadn’t set one. Well, that wasn’t entirely true; there was one meant to remind me that in six hours the auction would start.

That woke me up completely. I had slept for way too long, but my headache was gone. Everything was still quiet; everyone was working on absorbing their skills. I did have a message from FH.

“In case I’m too focused on absorbing skills, you were sleeping way too much, and I almost woke you up, but I did some research. Apparently, what you did, hearing so many skill stones and properly examining them, is something deeply exhausting. You need a longer rest to recover.”

That actually made sense. By the end of it, not only did I have a migraine, but I felt exhaustion in the deepest parts of me. At least I no longer had the migraine and felt better. Then I remembered that in the future I was going to have more crew members, and I was going to have to do this all over again.

“Son of a bitch.” Taking a few moments to accept that future reality, it was time to get moving. It was a good thing that I had this ticket, otherwise with how few credit coins we had left in our vault, I wouldn’t even have been able to enter the auction.

The auction halls were at the very centre of the station. This auction district was quite different from the rest of the station. Buildings didn’t crowd this area; instead, there were walking paths, meandering creeks, and small lakes, all surrounded by some of the most beautiful parks I’ve ever seen.

In between this absolute marvel were large buildings that weren’t just squares, but artfully designed to fit with their surroundings. They were massive, yet somehow seemed to fit perfectly, not taking away anything from the natural beauty all around.

Now this is how you show wealth. Props to whoever designed and is maintaining all of this.

Thanks to FH doing all the necessary bureaucracy, I didn’t have to do anything else but prove my identity and that I had the ticket.

They set me up in a private box. There were refreshments, everything seemed like I could eat it, but they all looked so strange. Shrugging my shoulders, I started taste-testing everything. Only one thing tasted bad. For some reason, it felt like eating soap. Everything else fell between meh and amazing.

The auction started, but I barely paid attention to the opening act. It was some dance number, but it wasn’t anything special. The crowd did make a ruckus afterwards that seemed to indicate that they were all pleased by what they saw.

What followed next made me realise there were still plenty of tiers of wealth we needed to climb. The cheapest stuff seemed to go for three to four hundred credit coins. Some things were too big to bring out and show, like a battlecruiser owned by a retired adventurer that went for 1425 credit coins. That ship went for 142.5 billion credits. And it wasn’t even that impressive.

Perhaps building ships could be a good way to make a lot of credits. We would still need to get the materials, but eventually, we should be able to mass farm them.

There were also skills for sale. Some looked quite good, and they somehow managed to make it so that even from here, I was able to hear when skill stones calling for an affinity.

As time went on, the prices steadily started to climb, but eventually things levelled off at around 1800 credit coins per item. There was even a magic-tech heat exchanger up for auction that seemed quite fancy and meant for bigger ships. It went for nearly 3000.

“We are now getting to the end of the auction, with the last ten items being the best on offer.”

The first item was an artefact-grade laser pistol. It was sentient and would be able to melt through Forward Horizon’s armour in about 10 seconds, although it needed to be quite close, as the range wasn’t the best, with damage dropping off quite quickly.

Next was a set of four skills that didn’t call to me or any of my crew members. They seemed to be for a speedster’s build. Next were more weapons, and then an incredibly strong-looking shield that I thought about bidding on.

I wouldn’t have used it myself, but simply given it back to the auction for them to auction it off again. That way, I could turn this ticket of mine into spendable wealth. My 6th sense tingled in a way that indicated this wasn’t the best course of action.

When the next item was revealed, I understood why. It was a set of three skill stones, and they were all calling to my mechanist affinity: Presence Through Creation, Vision Through Creation, and Connection to Creation.

My mind raced with all the possibilities, and as soon as the auction bids started going in, my hand pressed the button every once in a while, making sure that I was not going to miss my chance of getting this skill.

My 6th sense was doing something weird. It usually warned me if something was a good choice or a bad choice, but this time, what I was doing was both. That puzzled me until I realised that the price had already gone past 6000 credit coins.

There were four other people besides me bidding, with the price finally settling at 8280. None of the others were willing to press the button. There was no grandstanding, no demanding answers of who was buying. This place wasn’t to be disrespected like this.

“Going once, going twice, sold.” The display in front of me lit green, showing that yes, I was the final one to win this bid. I didn’t rush out immediately to claim my prize. The next item was a helmet. The description listed the metal as unknown.

As a demonstration, they brought out an elf who tried to cut the helmet with a plasma light sword powered by skills. It blocked it completely, and even holding it against the helmet for nearly a minute only raised its temperature by 20°, which could start to be bad for some who might be wearing it.

It went for almost 12,000 credit coins. If I were to go just by valuation, this would have been a better purchase, but I think I could turn those skills I got into a lot more credits in the long run. The last item, however, made me hesitate a bit on my choice.

It was a singular skill stone. It was calling for all of my affinity, and I was betting this particular one was doing the same for everyone else. Cluster Inventory. The description was quite clear. This was the highest known volume inventory skill in the universe that would allow you to put anything inside of it.

It went for 13,200 credit coins. If we could have gotten this for FH, we would have basically doubled, if not tripled, our current volume—and that’s only with the first rank. It would have also worked with her already having a regular inventory skill. That’s definitely going to have to be a chase item for us.

Next, I was taken to a private room, where I exchanged the ticket for the three skill stones, making them disappear into my inventory. My 6th sense helped me dodge some encounters that would have ended badly on my way back to the ship.

“Everyone, we are leaving now,” I yelled as soon as I stepped onto the ship. Every second longer we stayed at this station, my feeling of dread grew. We needed to get out of here, and fast. To my surprise, everything seemed to already be ready for departure.

“We were expecting something like this,” Bob explained, looking quite amused.