chapter 96
Once again, I was dry heaving. My body felt like it was broken. Someone grabbed ahold of me and started to drag me. There was no point in fighting or trying to walk myself, I just couldn’t.
“Lola, is that you?” I managed to get out, although I’m not sure what I said was actually understandable. Wait, I can just use my bond.
“Lola, is that you?”
“Good, you’re recovering. Finally, your brain is starting to work again.”
Was I really that bad? Then I remembered the previous times.
“Yes, I’m starting to recover.”
She didn’t say anything back, but now I could see that we were in the medical bay in one of the beds. On the other side, Bob was also on a bed. Lola saw me watching him.
“Metal shouldn't get fatigued like muscles too, but it seems whatever he's doing it’s taxing him as much as you. Please tell me, you don’t want to go for another round?”
Her voice got soft at the end. It was easy to see that she didn’t like seeing us like this, which was understandable.
The bond between Bob and me was healing fast. It had been four days since we started. We both have learned so much during this time. Pulling up my status page, my Hardened Connection skill was no longer in the Novice rank nor the Apprentice rank. It was my first Journeyman rank skill.
Name: Remi Graves
Age: 34
Species: Human variant (bio-cybernetic) Male
Bonds:
AI: Lola, Bob, Dean, Sam (400+)
Ship: Forward Horizon
Items: FH-02, Revolver, +
Enhancements: Bio-cybernetics, Bio-nano machines
Body: rank F
Mind: rank F
Core: rank F
Innate ability: Looting variant
Affinity:
Basic: rank G 1/3 4/22
Mind: rank G 1/3 2/7
Mechanist: rank G 1/3 3/12
Skills:
Apprentice Mana Sense
Apprentice Mind Guard
Apprentice Telekinesis
Novice Command
Apprentice 6th Sense
Novice Sense Aura
Apprentice Impact Dampening
Novice Pierce Dampening
Novice Heat Dampening
Novice Minor Repair
Journeyman Hardened Connections
It was a miracle that I got it this far, not because of how terrible of a training method this was in the sense of our well-being, but because my core rank overall was too low to continue.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The more the skill grew, the more complex it became, but they need you to be able to handle that complexity. My core could barely support the complexity my Hardened Connection skill had reached. It could probably take another session of training, but it would add very little.
“No more training like this, at least for a while. This is enough. Getting past this skill’s protection would be tough for anyone. Of course, they could have some true master, but even then, I don’t think he could steal any of my bonds instantaneously.”
Tension left Lola as soon as she heard that.
“Finally. Does that mean I can go back and start managing logistics again? Because this has been truly trying.” We heard Bob say. He was speaking slowly, and there was pain in his voice.
“Yes, we’re done for now. Sell what you can, and I will give you a list of some raw materials to be purchased. We take off in 2 days.”
“Understood, Captain,” Bob answered and slowly got up, heading towards his office, that was the entirety of the first floor. We watched him leave, and as soon as he was gone, Lola hit me in the shoulder.
“Why did you make him work almost immediately? He needs more of a break.”
“He would have been feeling worse if he didn’t have anything to do.”
“I guess, but what materials are you wanting to buy?” She said in a way that I knew I would still somehow pay for making Bob go back to work so soon.
“Just the things we need to build for what’s to come and to secure our new base for the foreseeable future. Also, tell everyone not to leave. We will also not be going back into the city to purchase anything.”
“Wait, not even the skills?”
“No, not even those. We can't risk it. We'll just farm them ourselves. But I now need some quiet.”
“Understood, captain,” Lola said and left.
Immediately I composed the list of the things we would need. I sent it off to Bob.
My understanding of bonds was now miles better than it was before this grueling training. There were some implications discovered that I didn’t know if I wanted to tackle. Fortunately, they won't come into play for a little while longer.
The important thing for now that I learned was that the bonds I can make work like any other muscle. If I didn’t stretch them, if I didn’t exercise them, they would grow weaker in every sense of the word.
I have been lucky that I have been pushing myself to have as many bonds as I can. This has helped a lot, but I’m going to have to keep that up constantly. That means I am probably going to have to figure out how to make smaller AI cores so I could have a lot of complex bonds, otherwise we would run out of room on this ship.
My three affinities seem to give me an exceptional number of bonded connections I can have, and not getting to the limit would be a shame. Especially just because I would run out of physical space on the ship.
That’s for a little bit later as well. Right now I need to design a few things that would make farming portals easier.
Two days later
We were in our usual meeting spot. Most of the ship was in motion, as everyone prepared for takeoff. Bob was currently finishing his report.
“We are keeping about 20% of the cargo we purchased, as currently it's not optimal to sell it. The rest we managed to sell and make a 76% profit. And keep in mind, we still have 20% of the cargo left.”
“Well done,” Sam spoke out, and I had to agree. Bob had done really well. He finished with a few more statistics about how much space we had on the ship even after we purchased all the raw materials I would need.
“Excellent, and a lot of that we can offload into our base,” I spoke up as we were about to wrap up this meeting. “After we've secured the base we would be moving out and starting to clear as many portals as we can.”
“Don’t we need some transport for that?” Dean asked.
“I know that most use overland vehicles to get to portals, but that’s quite the dangerous way to go about it.”
“One out of six parties who go to clear a portal are attacked on their way back,” FH chimed in.
“So yes, we will be using the Mark II. It will also help hide our activities and allow us to completely clear out any portal. After we process the materials, it will be easier to hide how much we are actually able to pull out.”
It seems that everyone, including me, was excited for the loot that we were going to be bringing out. Most of the portals on this moon were F-ranked, although there were portals even two ranks above that. Although the highest ones were usually claimed by strong guilds.
We all saw the readiness marks appearing all around the ship, so it was time to go to the command bridge.
FH already had permissions and the flight plan for us. When everything was ready, the hangar doors above us slowly opened up. The side engines started to rev themselves, slowly pulling the ship up. They were supported by the smaller adjustment thrusters, keeping the ship incredibly stable.
The noise they made was just wonderful, and I kinda wish I could’ve heard them from the outside, but listening through the speakers was going to be good enough.
We started to fly through the air, side engines adjusting their position so they would keep us airborne but also start to move us forward. We couldn't go too fast, but a trip that would have taken an hour and a half over land was just going to take 20 minutes.
Quite far away, we could already see our landing spot.
“FH, do you have the access keys? Can you check if you can open up the hangar doors so we can land inside?”
It took her a few minutes as we got really close, but then we saw how the hangars started to open up.
“I managed to gain access to the entire system. We just needed to be close enough.”
“Do not land just yet. Let’s hover a bit. I want squadrons 8 and 9 to prepare to sweep the base and see if there are any traps or hostiles.”
As we got into position, the wing ports opened up. From them, 12 and 12 drones flew out, quickly descending and starting to sweep the base. We waited like this for 12 minutes, continuing to hover until we got the all clear.
“FH, please take us down.”
We descended, touching down quite fast. We had now reached our new base. Thanks to the sweep, we had a complete scan of the whole place. There was going to be much we needed to do here to make this place secure. We also had enough room to start making some additional credits for a form of passive income.
“Let’s go check this place out with our own eyes,” I said to everyone as I stood up.