chapter 124
POV: Remi
The ship’s engines didn’t stop accelerating as we were still flying backwards. We had plenty of altitude to make the transition from flying backwards to forward. It was kind of crazy being inside the planet’s atmosphere, not moving forward, instead just dropping downwards.
That was only for a moment, as the engines quickly made us pick up air speed quite fast. The AIs were doing their job excellently. It didn't take too long for the main engines to go into idle, with us only being pulled forward with our side engines.
The side engine AIs didn’t much like being inside the planet’s gravity well. That was understandable because absolutely every technology that was using space fabric manipulation was having a tough time maintaining the strength that they had when we were in open space.
Since this was the first time we were properly near a planet’s surface, it was important to monitor everything. As I expected, most of our space fabric manipulation technology was good enough to handle this type of stress, even though some of the indicators were now in yellow.
The wing structures were also getting close to the yellow lines, but that was once again expected, as we were quite heavy right now, so they needed to support a lot of weight. Kind of wish that my crew members could help with this, but all of them were currently experiencing a breakthrough.
It will take time for us to go through all the data and start optimizing what we did wrong during the engagement, but overall everyone did an excellent job.
The fliers on this planet can be really dangerous, but luckily, there weren’t any truly big ones here. Still, it was crazy to think that one of those larger fliers could have easily killed all of us. It was a good thing that we had weapons with large enough calibres to take care of even them.
“Set the destination to the first research outpost.”
“Acknowledged,” came the response, which was a bit nostalgic.
It will be a bit of time before we will reach our intended target, as entering a planet isn't as simple as just dropping towards your target. The atmosphere and gravity make things more complex and not as straightforward as I wish it could be.
In fact, “keep our airspeed low and let’s take the scenic route.”
“As you wish, Captain,” FH responded back.
I had not missed the fact that she had been a bit, perhaps not sad, but close to it. There was a reason back on Earth why it was extremely rare to make something that couldn’t move around like us humans could into a truly complex AI, as a mind like that needed to have enough freedom so that they wouldn’t go insane.
That’s why I’ve never tried to really control the ship directly when we fly, because that would be taking away even more agency. Now that we are properly flying again, this should be better, but I also think some of that sadness is because she’s still the only one who hasn’t gone through mana rebirth.
Her core was just underneath and a bit behind me, separated by a metal floor. Her flame was quite close to being fully stable. I was certain that she was going to be able to have a soul like the rest of my crew, but I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen afterwards.
A part of me wanted to change almost everything here over to bio-cybernetics, even if it would lower this ship’s capabilities by quite a lot, but another part of me somehow knew that that wasn’t the best choice. Why that was, I had no idea.
Almost as if someone was reading my mind, a diagnostics report came in that had, for some reason, been prioritized important enough to open up its own small notification box so that I wouldn’t miss it.
Currently, we were in the most mana-dense area we had ever been in, and I could feel the strain at the back of my mind that always happened when I needed to keep mana from intruding into everything connected to me. If I didn’t constantly protect everything from mana intrusion, we would have already been a wreck on the planet’s surface.
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It was still a lot to protect, with some instabilities being recorded. The largest instability had been recorded with the adjustment thrusters, as they were basically just large electric engines.
While I managed to figure out quite a few reasons to not make the side engines traditional electric engines, as even now they would still work well enough even in this mana density, the ride would not be as smooth as it is right now.
Still, this report suggested that traditional electric engines would have had a bit more problems than we originally thought, even with all the information we had gathered. Perhaps it's down to the individual in how well something is protected, as otherwise things just wouldn’t make sense.
All of this meant that I really needed to trust my gut, so that’s why we aren’t changing anything else on board the ship into bio-cybernetics because of that same feeling. Most likely it would once again not be too bad to change everything over, but it wouldn't be the best choice to do so.
We continued to fly as I enjoyed the view from my captain’s chair. The full 360° view on all the screens sunk inside the walls gave a truly breathtaking view near a planet’s surface. When we were in space, basically all that they showed was just black emptiness, but now the sky was a soft blue with white clouds; the ground below was quite green but also yellow and blue.
It was obvious that this wasn't Earth, but to my instincts it was close enough and beautiful enough to not matter. A normal human wouldn't survive a day on this planet, as the atmosphere wasn’t really that suited for us, but this body of mine wouldn't care about that.
One by one my crew members woke up, amazed at their new strength. I would really like to give them a couple of months to just get used to all the changes, as they have basically been reborn, and are now once again having their bodies upgraded just days after their previous upgrade.
“Captain, do we have some time to run tests on all of you? The fact that I only managed to get so little data when we were all still in G rank is truly unfortunate.”
I honestly didn’t know what to answer back, but fortunately Sam did speak up, and I would have hugged and kissed him if it would have been appropriate for a captain to do so.
“Lola, but can’t you run tests on yourself? You would be the perfect subject for your own testing.”
Lola was silent for a moment, but then she rushed out, heading towards her workshop. We all watched her go, shocked.
“Brilliant,” I heard Bob say, and I fully agreed. Sam truly was a genius at this moment. If we only had time for a proper celebration.
“Let’s get to work. Sam, Dean, we need to show force when we land if we don’t want some idiots trying to take our ship. Bob, get this cargo off my ship as fast as possible.”
“Yes, Captain,” all of them responded back.
Now that I had my crew members back, I headed towards the mana detection device. It was time to start gathering data on the portals on the planet and some hot spots we might want to avoid.
It was always strange to use this device, and thanks to my connection to my AIs we were able to categorize everything as I was seeing it. The number of portals was staggering, but the amount of life on the planet was even more so.
There seemed to be constant fighting going on, and I could understand why, as the portals continued to pump out more and more monsters. There were also clearly some monsters who had broken free of their portals but also entered other portals.
The outposts that survived on this world must be truly tough, and the people there even tougher. The amount of effort it would take to retake this world and make it safe for colonisation would be tremendous, but if you could do it cheap enough, it could be worth a lot.
Basically, everything down there that survived would be upgrades for our current materials. In fact, I think it’s better if we start classifying our status.
Right now, our baseline is rank F. While not everything is upgraded, a large enough percentage is. We have some units that could be classified as rank E, but if we started hunting down on the planet's surface, we should easily be able to get our baseline to E or even D rank.
That would have been the original plan, but now if we survived the A rank space portal, and with FH being reborn and hopefully being able to rank up, we should get out of here just in case someone’s after us and head towards someplace where we could hunt space monsters, as I’m guessing those would be the only ones powerful enough for FH to start ranking up.
There are a few places we could head towards, but Titan’s Feast would most likely be the best. Also, I would just like to see that tremendous space monster, as it should be quite the sight.
“This is Forward Horizon requesting landing clearance.”
“This is Research Outpost Falcon 7, permission granted, sending coordinates. And I have to say, while you worried us with your entrance to the atmosphere, it was quite the show.”
“Glad to be of some entertainment. Estimated time for arrival: an hour and five minutes.”
FH took care of this conversation. I just had to sit back and basically concentrate on keeping the mana from messing anything up so we could fly as steadily as possible.
While I could do this subconsciously, I thought it best to learn how to also actively do this, so if it became necessary, we could survive in a more mana-dense area than we should be able to survive.
Thanks to the side engines, landing was simple and safe. They had built a runway outside the outpost walls, but the number of monsters outside would have meant quite a lot of fighting if we wanted to land safely.
I purposely didn’t go outside just in case someone could do something to me, as who knows how strong the people were here. Most of them seemed to have bows or swords, and honestly, if the buildings and the wall weren’t made out of metal, I would have said that we were in a medieval village. Bob was as efficient as ever, but that couldn't be said about the ground crew of this outpost.
In three hours, everything of theirs was off the ship, but I did see them eyeing the rest of the cargo. Our ship’s weapons seemed to be a discouragement enough for them not to act. I was glad that we decided to keep the turrets out so everyone could see our weapons.
When everyone was back on board and we’d gotten our payment in the form of precious materials, we took off. It was time for us to head towards the second research outpost. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t found the perfect place for FH’s mana rebirth.
There was a lot of good loot we can get by just killing monsters that came to attack during FH’s mana rebirth, and thanks to my innate ability, it should be a perfect opportunity to hopefully get the inventory skill if I could just find a place that had enough of the correct type monsters in a close enough cluster that hunting them would be viable.
It was also truly a shame that I couldn’t show off my looting ability with the fliers who attacked us, but even then, with all the extended range, only a fraction were close enough that would have been influenced by my looting ability.
In a way, that was even worse because those who got close had multiple skills that were also quite strong. Who knows what we could have gotten, although hunting those skill stones down would have been a pain in the ass, as they would have been falling towards the ground the same way as the bodies of those fliers did.