Chapter 24 In space with a junkyard ship

I was already sitting in the same station security office I visited previously. There was still about an hour until the interview, but it was better to be here before than to be late.

Before, we had been a bit too reckless. I shouldn’t have let Lola figure out my last affinity, as we didn’t know how safe the communication relays we were using were. Fortunately, we might have a fix for that. The adventurer card had its own NFC that allowed it to confirm my identity to any device nearby.

What it also had was incredible encryption that made the best back on Earth look like a simple latch in comparison. Using the functions of the card available to me, we were almost done securing not the communication lines, but the communications themselves.

There would be slight delays as we needed to decrypt the communications on both of our sides and encrypt them when we sent them out, but those took milliseconds, so it wasn't too bad.

Of course, even if this seemed to be a perfect solution, we still implemented as many security methods as possible, as no one way was truly perfect. Now, however, with this done, I felt a lot safer communicating with Lola using relays not controlled by us.

“Lola, are you receiving properly?”

“Affirmative. And are you receiving this properly?”

“I am indeed. This is good news. Now can you send me those listings you found for the skills.”

I started to get data that I needed to decrypt, but my own board computer handled that part.

The situation was not the best. Skills cost a lot. I also figured out why they were called skills and not abilities like the innate ones everyone had.

They were called so because you actually needed to study and understand them to bring out their full potential. Innate abilities were something you naturally were good at. I really didn’t care why they made this distinction, but if they were doing so, there must be a better reason than that one.

It also seems like skills need certain sizes of mana cores. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean that G-ranked skills were cheap. The ones Lola provided me made me feel incredibly poor. There was nothing under 850,000 mana credits, and those skills were, let’s just say, not the best.

For example, Spark costs 1.3 million, yet all it could do was basically make a tiny ball of fire that you can then manipulate. It seemed to do very little damage, so I didn’t really understand why it was so damn expensive if just throwing a rock fast enough would have a better result.

For a moment, I thought back to when I was standing in the line to get registered as an adventurer. There was a person who was manipulating a coin-sized flame and another using telekinesis or something similar to flip a knife constantly. That gave me an idea.

It took Lola and I only a few minutes to find out why everything was so highly priced. The stronger skills that had better effects cost tens of millions to hundreds of millions. There were even a few skills that sold for billions, but mostly the high-end skills seemed to be exchanged with barter instead of just straight-up sold for mana credits.

Anyway, turns out that skills share experience. Not in the gaming sense where you grind for experience by killing others, but more in the traditional sense—like when you learn to do something like firing a handgun, a lot of that experience translates into firing a different type of handgun.

Learning to manipulate Spark, which takes very little mana to keep active, will translate into you knowing how to handle stronger fire skills like Fireball or Fire Whip, both of which seem to cost around 10 and 8 million. Those price points are not because they offer you a way to practice fire-type skills, those price points are because they can effectively be used in combat.

So from what I’m seeing, up to around five to six million and below are the beginner skills that don’t have much combat utility but are perfect for you to start learning how to control skills of that type.

One question I had was if there was a limit to how many skills you could learn. There was, but it seemed to vary from person to person quite a lot, and depending on what type of affinity you had.

I might need to sell off some of my radioactive materials to at least get a set of basic skills so that I can start properly training. Yet there was a problem with this.

First of all, my affinities were all quite rare, so only a small percentage of people had similar ones, and I’m guessing I might be in the extreme minority with the combination I have.

There didn’t seem to be any skills specifically for mechanists, but that didn’t mean that none of the skills could fit that affinity.

My basic affinity had the opposite problem. From what I understood, it could most likely be used to fuel a lot of basic skills, like almost all of them. The problem is, I couldn’t scale it. While I could learn Spark, there was almost no chance of me being able to learn Fireball or Fire Whip, for example.

My mind affinity was a bit easier. There were clear progression paths for that. And one skill I was definitely going to purchase was called Mind Guard.

It was a basic skill, but it cost around six million. It would protect my mind physically and mentally. So radiation, physical attacks, and other skills that could mess with your mind would need to get through this skill before they could affect me.

There was also a positive, and that was that my basic affinity would also help strengthen the skill.

Turns out there was a negative for having multiple affinities, and that was that your core was split into three parts, or however many affinities you had. So if you had one affinity, you could leverage your entire mana core, making that skill more powerful than if you had multiple affinities. When your core was split you were able to use less of your power to power those skills.

Fortunately, my basic affinity would also help with the Mind Guard skill. So, to sum it up, I had a basic affinity that would allow me to do basically anything, but it wouldn't help me too much when I got stronger. A mind affinity that focused on protecting my mind, attacking others' minds, and boosting my general capabilities related to my mind.

Then finally, my mechanist affinity, which I had no idea how it worked or what skills could be useful for it.

“Lola, can you continue the skill research? Hopefully we’ll find something.”

“Unfortunately, I do not think that that would help much. I believe you would need to visit a skill shop. There, you could sense what skills you could use, and we could get a better idea of what would work and what won’t.”

“That’s good enough. Add it to the list of things to do. But right now, it seems it's time for my interview.”

I saw two security officers approaching me—one of them was quite bulky-looking, the other skinny.

“Adventurer Remi Graves?” one of them asked.

“That’s me. Are you here to take me to the interview?”

The skinny one raised his wrist to scan me and then looked toward the big one.

“That’s exactly right. Please follow us.”

They started to walk away, and I followed. The walk wasn’t too long, but they didn’t talk to me the entire way there.

I found myself in a decent-sized room, sitting on one side of the table while the skinny one sat down and the big one stayed standing. Hopefully, this won’t be too bad.

“Let’s start with the species-nation investigation. You are claiming that the Terran Cooperative’s claim of being a species-nation is wrong. Why did you leave your home system?”

That question came out of left field. And I didn’t like that I didn’t know the body language of these species.

“Lola, can you get me the universal translator keys for both of these species?”

“Acknowledged.”

“I wanted to explore the universe,” I answered.

“Any other reason?”

“A few, but I don’t think they’re relevant.”

Finally, Lola sent me the package with the note that it cost 500 mana credits to get those keys.

My AR system was now interpreting their body language, and now if they spoke in their native languages, I should be able to understand what they say.

“Let’s move forward then. Would you say your species is a social one?”

“To an extent, certainly.”

“Can you please expand on that?”

I took some time to think about how I wanted to answer this. Probably the best way is to go with the truth.

“We humans are a social species of necessity. We band together for support—be it to survive, reach a common goal, or even just companionship. There are clear limits to our sociability, and even in groups trying to achieve a common goal, there would be ones who would not agree with each other.”

“With us, there is a clear limit in how big our social circles are, and all of that depends on the reasons for those social circles.”

Now I could see interest in both of their eyes. The skinny one thought for a bit before he spoke.

“Let’s try an example. Let’s say there are 1000 humans trying to survive on a ship. Would there be any conflicts among them while they’re trying to fix whatever problem that ship might currently have?”

“Depending on how bad the situation is, definitely. But don’t get me wrong, there would be problems at any stage with so many humans. If you shrink that number down to ten, there would be less conflict, perhaps even none for certain things, but even that would be quite rare.”

“But you’re still stating that you’re a social species. That sounds more like an individualistic species to me,” the big one asked.

“We certainly can be individualistic, and like I said before, we only band together in social circles for necessity. Yet when we do so, those bonds are usually extremely hard to break.”

“So now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s say a human were to be taken in by another species, let’s say for a ship crew or a small community, could they develop those social bonds with those individuals?”

“Most definitely. I’d say most humans could. Of course, some might not, but that depends entirely on that individual and how they feel about those individuals around them.”

“Are there any limits to your species bonding socially with individuals?”

“Absolutely not.”

My words seemed to have shocked them a bit.

“You seem incredibly certain about that.”

“I definitely am,” I answered back, which made them look at each other. Unfortunately, it seemed like they were communicating in some other way than verbally, as I was sensing a spike of radio waves between them.

“To be honest, I don’t think we need more than this. You’re just confirming the observations we’ve been able to confirm on our own. Now, this investigation will take a while longer, but I can tell you that—most likely, in fact I’m pretty sure of it—the Terran Cooperative’s status as a species-nation will be stripped.”

That made me smile. They were way too overreaching with that.

“Now, for the second investigation. You had a run-in with the Crivordid Pirates. The information you provided was quite helpful. Currently, you are set to receive 2.2 million mana credits for the information you shared—but if you have anything more, that reward could go up.”

That surprised me a lot.

“I could get you full scans of their ships—their readouts, what types of weaponry they were using. I have it all, even video of the ships.”

They both glanced at each other for a moment.

“I’m sending you a link where you can add additional information—anything you have could boost that reward amount. But if you truly have what you say, that reward could easily go up by millions, and it would help us a lot with tracking those pirates down.”

“Lola, start compiling everything we have, but keep our ship out of it.”

“Acknowledged.”

“I’ll make the information available as soon as I can. Is there anything else?”

“No, that is it. We thank you for this help. You are free to go, and I hope you enjoy your stay at our station.”

With that, I left, heading toward my ship. Finally, something went my way. With that influx of credits—hopefully going to climb a lot higher than that 2.2 million—I might not even have to sell off any of my radioactive materials.

It was also time to start figuring out what kind of technology was considered standard here, and what kinds of upgrades I could do to my ship while I’m here.