In a galaxy that stretched millions of light years.

whooosh~~

A fleet of dark space ships with eye-catching spherical curves whizzed through space. In this array of ships, a single humongous ship with a red banner of some odd creature stood out. This was the mother ship of the fleet.

In it stood a tall, handsome man with black hair and gray sideburns twirling his mustache.

“Don’t break the ranks. Maintain the formation!”

With a stern expression and arms clasped behind the back, he excluded a natural air of authority. And naturally, he had the status and power to back that as he was one of the Great Noble Pirates.

Unlike normal space pirates, who are mostly known to be uncultured and vile, the noble pirates were the very opposite and were rich and proud. They were also usually ranked high in society and held immense wealth and a network of connections with the elites of society, especially those who wanted their dirty work to be done.

Today they had a good harvest. They had captured a merchant ship that belonged to the alanska family, one of the richest financial groups of the Andromeda galaxy. While it might not seem like much of a loss for the financial group, it was a huge harvest for the pirates.

While Arthur stood there twirling his moustache, fantasizing about how he was going to spend his fortune, a high-ranking officer walked up to him in a slight hurry and reported.

“Sir Arthur, sector d seems to have found something quite interesting” with a playful expression; obviously in a good mood because of the harvest.

‘Hm?’ exclaimed Arthur who was snapped out of his daze.

“Tell them to bring whatever that interesting thing is here... and oh! Perhaps I’ll reward them if it’s something better than the harvest. I’m sure they will have a fun time with that,” he said with a slight chuckle.

“Ha ha, yea I’m sure they will,” the high-ranking officer responded with a smile and rushed off to instruct his subordinates.

‘Well, whatever it is, I hope it won’t take too long,’ Arthur thought with a soft sigh.

It seemed to be that he was in luck today as the high-ranking superior returned with two other mid-rank officers and a cage minutes after their report.

“Sir, here is the weird entity, or should I say the person sector d found,” the high-ranking officer reported.

“Well then, bring him out... I want to have a closer look at this person,’” replied Arthur.

Following his orders, the high-ranking officials and the 2 other officers helped bring out the ‘boy’ who was pitch black, like the dark endless space. Arthur’s fascination could be easily observed by the interesting expression he had as he observed ‘its’ unique appearance.

‘It’ looked nothing like a person, but since its figure and characteristics resembled a boy’s, they regarded it as a male. The oddest and the most interesting thing was its cyan crystal eyes and a mysterious gem-like object embedded in ‘its head which had a similar colour to its eyes.

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“Hmmm this has to be my first time seeing something like this,” Arthur said.

“However, this definitely looks like something that could sell well, problem being we don’t have an idea what it is”

The soldier replied to that comment immediately, as if on command.

“Yes sir, after the brief inspections that were conducted, we can confidently tell there is no creature in our database that has anything resembling this otherworldly appearance. We could not even understand what type of life form it is.”

Arthur’s eyes gleamed with greed

‘The rarer it is, the better’

‘It won’t do well for the higher ups from marquise rank to get to know about the entity until we get more info on it,’ he thought.

The noble pirate’s hierarchy was absolute and a very good reasoning was needed to disobey orders from the higher ranks. Any disobeyers could otherwise face great consequences from the Great Noble Pirate Alliance.

Suddenly his resolution became even firmer

‘No, the information about us finding this should not be leaked! I’m sure those higher ranks will try to use any means to covet this treasure, especially now that I’m about to rank up’.

The world of the pirates was a very harsh one with enemies everywhere and it took extreme vigilance and experience to reach the status of a Noble.

However, his luck seemed to run out as an officer rushed into the control room, almost stumbling and falling on the way.

“S-Sir, Duke Marcus has ordered for you to meet him immediately at headquarters. He says there is something important to be discussed.”

‘DAMN IT!’ Arthur raged internally

It took a couple of seconds for him to regain his composure as he calmly stood there, calculating his next move. He could not show his anger outside and that would look like a rebels action for someone who could not recognize the situation.

‘To think a goddamn Duke would snoop into my business. The rats have infiltrated deep this time. Whatever that entity undoubtedly has to be valued a lot.’

To the officers that didn’t know about the internal conflicts, the situation seemed strange as Arthur stood there silently with his eyes closed.

‘P-perhaps he’s trying to contain his happiness at getting the honor of meeting a duke personally?’ The officer that reported the news thought.

“Report back to the duke that it is my honour to get such an opportunity and that I will get there as fast as I can to the headquarters,” said Arthur gloomily

“Yes, sir!”

With the rushed footsteps of the informant fading away, a heavy atmosphere hung over Arthur as he tried brainstorming for ideas on how he could somehow hide his discovery of the strange entity.

Just as he was about to come up with some futile ideas, he heard sirens going off with the sight of one of their ships exploding. Through the fire emerged something that could only be described as horrifying.

An enormous worm the size of 800 feet tall, something that was around twice the size of the normal ships in fleet had destroyed a ship in the left flank and was lunging for the mother ship, maybe because of its size that trumped the others.

Arthur had a stern look as he tried to calm down the soldiers on the ship. However, Arthur’s worries were necessary as they quickly regained their composure after their initial shock and quickly got back to their positions as per training.

‘Shit, to think a great worm would attack us, my darn luck’

“ENGAGE IN CODE RED, GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE”

Despite the turmoil in his head, Arthur barked out orders in a loud but calm voice, which made it seem as if the current situation did not even shake him.

As he watched the soldiers quickly enabled defence system and put up the barrier in an attempt to save enough time to warp as far as possible, an epiphany hit him.

“John, get here right now”

Among the chaos, no one noticed Arthur whispering orders to his closest aide.

John seemed to listen intently and, after a short while, nodded to Arthur and left with a few more soldiers that guarded him.

Reaching the backend control room, his eyes gleamed as he ran a scan and saw a nearby planet; k-065. He then watched as his subordinates take the boy-like entity and put it in a white spherical pod.

“The lord’s plan is really perfect. Drop him off on a nearby planet and play it off as a loss that happened during the attack. That way there’s no way the Duke can inquire about the creature without drawing suspicion on himself. How meticulous hehe”

When the creature was fully loaded in the pod launching system, he ordered to drop it right on the coordinates of the planet.

With a loud clank, he watched as the pod was dropped from the ship with a sinister gaze.

“Dont worry, little boy, we’ll be back to get you soon……”