World Seed: Game Start (41 page)

After
I finished up, I paid for the meal and went back out. When I got to a
nearby terminal, I pulled up the information and found out which
ships were leaving for Crailor. The journey information was listed as
well, stating that it was a hundred and fifty parsecs from X-23, and
would take three full days of travel to arrive. This seemed a bit
strange to me, since there were some destinations listed farther away
with travel time of only a few hours. When I asked the terminal’s
AI about this, it responded that those destinations made use of
interstellar gate technology to shorten the travel time. Since
Crailor was not a major world, it did not have such a luxury.

Nodding
my head slightly at the information, I went to the docking area for
the Nostromo, the cruiser that was leaving for Crailor tomorrow.
Since it was a pretty long journey, there tended to only be one or
two ships heading in that direction a week, and even less that came
back. I had my suspicions about that, but kept quiet for now.

Once
I got in the docking bay, I found that the cruiser was infinitely
larger than the shuttle I had flown up here on. If the shuttle was
the size of a public bus, then this cruiser must be the size of an
entire city! Only now did I fully realize how big the station I was
in must have been to support all of this. Likely, it was the size of
a small moon. Of course, most of that space would be taken by docking
bays, to accommodate all of the large ships.

It
didn’t take too long to find the ship’s maintenance crew,
as they were the ones running around handling machinery. Seeing that,
I approached the man in charge, who was yelling orders to everyone.
He was a blue humanoid, with two rows of slanted yellow eyes on his
head. “Excuse me, sir. I am here about joining the Nostromo as
a mechanic for this journey.”

The
man looked down to me, as he was a full head and shoulders taller,
before speaking. “Show me your ID.” After I did so, he
let out a sigh. “So you’re the one, huh? Oh well, not
like it matters much, we need all the help we can get. Not many want
to join this route.”

It
was now that I decided to voice my suspicion from earlier.
“Possibility of raiders?”

He
nodded his head slightly, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
“That’s right. Journeys without gate support are more
dangerous, because of the risk of raiding parties. Even more, we’re
going off into the edge of locally colonized space, which is popular
pirate country. If you’re going to be on the engineering team
for this trip, you need to be on call in case we get attacked or a
part fails at a moment’s notice. Understood?”

“
Understood,
sir.” Even with that condition, I would still have plenty of
time to cultivate.

The
chief engineer nodded his head again. “Good. You’ll get
paid based on your performance, but as you are becoming a temporary
member of the crew, you won’t be required to pay for lodging
and meals. However, naturally if the trip goes smoothly and you
aren’t needed, you won’t be getting paid either. Of
course, some people think that means they can sabotage the ship in
order to get a commission, but there is still constant security. If
you are discovered to have done so, we will not hesitate to jettison
you.”

I
gulped slightly, nodding my head. “Understood.”

Chapter 37:
Xeno-Time!

Since
I had already been accepted as a crew member of the Nostromo, I was
allowed onto the ship, and given my own room. As a possibly added
bonus, the room I received was at the edge of the ship, meaning there
was only a thick sheet of metal separating me from the vastness of
space. On the one hand, this meant that if the ship was attacked and
my section was damaged, I am pretty much a dead man. On the other
hand, it is the perfect place to cultivate void mana!

The
inside the ship was very different from X-23, as the corridors were
all much smaller. On the station, there might have been enough room
to drive a car down the hall, but in the ship, there was just enough
room for two people to walk next to each other. I did a few
estimations in my head, and figured that the ship needed at least a
hundred people in order to fully function. And that was a bare
minimum, not even taking into account everything else that could be
needed, such as rotating shifts.

The
facilities inside the ship were more like what you might find on a
military vessel than a transport ship. There was a kitchen and dining
area for the crew, but no tavern. There was a small recreation area
which contained an interactive hard-light hologram. Aside from that
and living quarters, most of the space on the ship was used for
essential systems or weapons. The thing that scared me the most was
that the chief engineer still seemed to think it might not be enough.
I had played some space games before, and a cruiser of this caliber
could generally take on a small fleet by itself.

As
the chief engineer(whose name I can’t pronounce, so I’ll
just call him Chief) told me, the ship was severely understaffed,
especially when it came to noncombat personnel. There was no lack of
soldiers aiming to join the forces at Crailor to help establish the
new world, but engineers, doctors, even chefs were all in short
supply. In total, there were only fifteen engineers. Three senior
engineers, including Chief, were stationed at the main power core on
rotating shifts. The rest of us all had the ship divided into twelve
sectors, and we were each in charge of our sector. Aside from eating,
we were to remain near our sector. That way, if an emergency were to
occur, we could all make it back in time to tend our areas.

Sadly,
my sector did not include the hologram chamber, so I was unable to
play with that. Hard-light holograms were still considered a work of
science fiction in the real world, so I always wanted to test them
out whenever I was in a game that had them. Naturally, there was no
trouble before we even left the station, so I went ahead and
practiced my cultivation. Although we had not yet left the station, I
could still sense the void mana slightly permeating the air around
us. With Celeste’s help, I was able to quickly isolate it and
began cultivating.

Before
we left, Chief took each of the engineers on a tour of the ship,
making sure everyone knew and was able to perform their duties. This
included making us crawl through small air vents to reach enclosed
equipment, and being able to force our way past stuck doors. The
latter took quite a bit of my mana to work, as I had to use my
Technomancy to achieve it. Hacking the door open wouldn’t have
achieved anything for the situation, so I decided not to simply do
that.

Thankfully,
by the time we left, I had managed to cultivate 3% Void Affinity,
moving it up to the top three secondary affinities that my status
screen automatically tracks. I also experienced a large increase in
cultivation speed as soon as we left the station, even greater than
when I trained Plant Affinity in the forest.

“
All
crew, brace for warp speed in three, two…” After a loud
voice appeared on the intercom of the ship and spoke briefly, there
was a slight tug of gravity towards the back of the ship, which was
quickly dampened. “Proceeding at warp, estimated time to
arrival is three days and two hours.”

I
shook my head at the voice, and resumed my cultivation. With the
speed I was working at, I only needed a single day to get all the way
up to 5% and gain the related ability.

I
could clearly see why this ability was rated as two stars, even at
such a low affinity. The ability to set up magic nullifying areas
would be death to any mage. Furthermore, being able to suppress the
effect might mean that I’d be able to use my other magics to
breathe in space. That wasn’t something I was too eager to test
out, though.

With
the new ability in hand, I decided to explore my section of the ship.
After having a couple of meals here already, I was in no rush to head
to the mess hall. Aside from the ranking officers, all meals were
prepared by a cheap synthesizer. However, I came across a peculiar
sight as I wandered the hall. Well, more accurately, a peculiar
sound.

Although
I had not gone to the mess hall, it still occupied a large portion of
my sector, so I was able to faintly hear voices from within. And it
sounded like they were singing. I had not been present for the full
song, but decided to listen in to what was sung out of a mix between
curiosity and boredom. From what I could tell, it was the spaceship
equivalent of a sea shanty.

We
watch the stars, they guide our way

We
watch the planets dance and sway.

We
see the sun, our work be done

Don’t
cast your soul astray.

For
cast your eyes, up to the skies

The
moon has danced away.

We
watch the stars, they guide our way

We
watch the planets dance and sway.

Through
journeys long we sing our song

Let
starlight guide your way.

While
it was interesting, I did not feel like it was important enough to
inquire about. As far as I could tell, it was simply a song invented
by bored navigators, about how they use the stars for directions
because the moon is only a local body. And when they see the sun,
they’ve reached their goal, so their work is done.

After
listening in on that for a while, I made another round of the sector,
before heading back to my room. Aside from a pair of drunken soldiers
bumping into each other and getting into a brawl, there was nothing
really important to see in my part of the ship. As such, I made my
way to my room, preferring to eat an enrichment fruit over two blocks
of blue protein with a side of yellow…

After
eating, I began refining a pair of seeds with the Void Affinity. I
had a theory that, if I kept one of the seeds on me at all times, I
would be able to use it as a tool to cycle mana even if the element
did not exist around me, as they radiate mana of that element. As
such, I put one of the Seeds of the Void in my inventory, and used
the other one to enhance my grove. The result was rather intriguing,
to be honest.

My
grove ‘planet’ did not increase in size at all, however
at the same time the space around it expanded, a void forming around
the grove. After taking in more void mana, I noticed that only the
void expanded when I did this. However, when I took in a bit of water
mana, I was able to form a ball of water outside of my grove’s
‘atmosphere’, making it a completely separate body. This
must be what Sharon meant by being able to split her grove into
multiple parts. If I took in enough void and earth mana, I might be
able to make a scale model of the solar system. Maybe the bodies in
the grove will begin to rotate around each other if I cultivate
gravity?

Since
my Void Affinity did not help me to increase the size of my grove at
all, nor did it affect the balance of mana in my grove, I decided not
to further pursue that element. Instead, I went ahead and slept,
waking early the second day and began preparing the other seeds I
needed. Naturally, I had no means of gathering earth mana, since
there was not dirt, rock, or anything similar in this ship. They
didn’t even have a hydroponics bay, and relied purely on ration
packs and the synthesizer.

The
second day went fairly smooth. The only real work I had was in the
mess hall, when one of the soldiers accidentally broke the
synthesizer trying to get it to work faster. He wasn’t a mean
guy or anything, just hungry and tired of bland food. If I had to eat
that stuff, I would be hitting the machine too. Nonetheless, I did
the repair work with the aid of my Technomancy before heading back to
my quarters. Just in time, it would seem, to hear another
announcement from the captain. “All crew, be advised, we are
officially leaving protected space.”

Well,
that’s just lovely. I shook my head with a sigh as I watched
everyone else in the corridor tense up at the words. By that time, I
had only refined seeds for fire and water, so I finished heading back
to my room in order to work on wind, light, and dark. Like with
earth, plant mana will be much easier to gather when I am on a
planet, rather than simply pulling things out of my grove to
cultivate.

I’m
guessing the quiet lasted for about another eight hours, as I had
just finished refining both a Seed of Wind and a Seed of Light, when
the lighting of the ship turned red and a blaring alarm sounded. “All
hands, prepare for battle. Raiding fleet detected half a parsec
ahead.”