Footsteps echoed in a silent tune as Noah walked alongside the hull of the ship, observing the infrastructure and mechanisms of the spaceship.

Shock colored his eyes, surprised by the fact that the spaceship could operate despite the severe lack of crew members necessary to man this ship. The fact that they were still flying in the air, and not crashing straight down, even with everyone dead or in the ruins was proof of the craftsmanship and self-maintaining mechanisms built into the ship— truly a work of art like no other.

‘And these are just the ships of some pirates who are constantly on the run. I wonder what the galaxy looks like.’

— We will soon have as much information as necessary though I doubt we can use much of the information coming from a mere pirate.

‘Heh, you will be wrong there, partner. Honestly, to have a clear understanding of the region, few people are better than the active criminals of that location. After all, they need an even deeper understanding to not get caught by the forces while on the run. ’

Of course, that severely depended upon the premise that the criminal was one of the bigshots of the criminal world, wanted throughout the region with an infamy befitting his name, rather than being small-time crooks that could be found literally everywhere and would thus be on constant pursuit for their lives.

But clearly, the Forty Thieves could be…

‘Wait…. Morgiana talked about a bounty on their heads, right?’

— ...

Sigh!

Noah had the urge to punch himself in the face, realizing that he had lost valuable funds by devouring those pirates like a good dinner.

However, he soon gathered his thoughts. There was no need to have such a mindset. He was about to get rich anyway, getting the rights on this planet would ensure him of that; plus there were more pirates to kill out there— pirates that would surely have a bigger bounty than the small fishes he devoured.

And he also had another contingency, Omid’s head. Surely, he would bring much more rewards than anyone in this place, right?

— Are you not worried about making enemies with the band of pirates?

That would really be a huge pain in the ass. They could somehow attack Earth to take their revenge on me and we can’t have that now, could we?

He tilted his head when he finally arrived at what could be called the garage of this spaceship before snapping his finger, acting as though he had struck a jackpot.

“I guess this means I just have to eradicate their whole organization, right?”

While having no enemy was without a doubt the best possible outcome, having all your enemies dead and buried was without a doubt a very close second on the list.

Furthermore, Noah had no intention to hide himself like a coward. That was just not his style. He wanted the world to know his name, sing his glory, and marvel at his mere presence.

Desire leaked out of his mind, the desire to become renowned throughout the universe and alongside him… The name of the glorious thirteen constellations would also be known.

‘Heh, who knows? Perhaps the others are already known?’

During Project Ark, a few of the constellations had been chosen to helm the ship that would travel the galaxy in search of their new home.

He did not know what happened to them but he knew his friends. They would never die without leaving a big splash on the radar. Perhaps they even created a new civilization on another planet and became known throughout the galaxy. Anything was possible for that crew.

— You seem to have rekindled some hope.

‘Without hope, I would have gone crazy long ago.’

— Even more crazy you mean?

“Tsk, tsk, tsk. This is why I can’t discuss things with you. How can anyone see me and think that I am crazy?”

Shaking his head in disappointment of the ignorant bunch of people who knew nothing about his glorious self, he started fiddling around the garage space.

The garage was huge and from the traces he saw, as well as the few pictures hanging around, it was used to house the large group of Mecha that had deployed not long ago.

“Didn’t know they made Mecha this small nowadays.”

He hadn’t been able to really notice it when it was on the camera video but here, looking at the different containers, he could get a better understanding of how tall they were and he was pretty unimpressed by their relative size.

In his memories, even the smallest Mecha was in the 10-meter range and those were rare cases. Most boasted a size that was far more impactful and had a towering presence.

Most Mecha could not be controlled by one person as they worked on the principle of Full Neuronal Link and the Dive System. They were generally manned by groups of five specially trained soldiers so that they could share the strain and the pain that would follow the integration of man and machine.

This was one of the reasons why the constellations were special cases. After all, they were part of the very few who could control a Mecha without any assistance. This gave birth to faster response times and more fluidity in combat.

Finally, only the Constellations could use the Dive system without having their mind fried instantly or howling in severe pain. Their mental resilience was on another level.

‘Heh. Good times.’

— Humans are truly as barbaric as they come.

“True. But such sacrifices were necessary for our survival. If it was not us, it would have been someone else. The whole sacrificing a few for the many.”

— I cannot comprehend such a concept. We are everyone. We are all part of the Great Mind. We do not sacrifice the few for the many or the many for the few. That is the ideal society.

Noah scratched his head by reflex, though all this did was scratch his metal-plated helmet, “We already had a discussion about this. I am not some grand philosopher or societal researcher, I just know that I refuse to have my awesome self be absorbed and part of some great whole. I am me. I am the best. I am Noah. Nothing more, nothing less.”

—But… Are you really still Noah?

Noah did not answer and finally managed to open the garage door like he had seen them doing so initially. He would have to jump after…

‘Ah…’

It was only after the door opened wide and the wind started rushing at full speed, thereby making him lose his footing and sucking him toward the exterior that Noah remembered that —

One, he was at a high altitude.

Two… He had no such thing as a hover or anything to slow down his fall.

“Fuuucckk!!!”

***

Plummeting helplessly toward the ground, swayed by the whims of the wind, Noah cursed inwardly as he fell down from the spaceship-like a shooting star.

He hated this feeling, falling from grand heights to surefire death. Experience had taught him a painful lesson as he discovered that fighting against gravity was never a battle that should be fought without the right equipment in place.

The pain of his whole body breaking down into pieces, pain of the broken bones poking through his organ, skin, flesh and blood, pain of losing all of his senses as his brain and cranium turned into mush but still having conscience as the body repaired itself— an endless cacophony of pain, misery, suffering and insanity awaited at the end of this flight.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The very worst part of the experience— the healing, ironic as it may sound. What would save him from a fall of this height… would inflict him the most pain. If he didn’t have to heal, it would have been a painless death, now, a living nightmare.

Due to the internal movements of the healing, his organs would tear, reforming again and again and again, all to heal everything to top shape. All the bones in his body would regenerate, rearranging in impossible angles as everything would be a mess. He would have to personally tear himself apart and set everything in line to fully heal to a human shape. The healing would give him more pain than he could imagine, yet he had to endure.

It would be an excruciating event for him, even as he already had experienced similar things in the past.

Well… He didn’t have much of a say… So, suffer he would, unless he found some way to break or cushion his fall, either by learning how to fly or slowing down the fall by some miraculous means. He turned to his partner.

Can you create some kind of wings, a jet pack, or anything that can slow down my fall?

— Negative. Either way, with terminal velocity fast approaching, you will only fall at a speed of approximately 250 kilometers per hour or 70 meters per second. You will not die either way.

I know I won’t die, damn it! Doesn’t mean it makes me feel any better.

The fall should last approximately 20 seconds by his calculations; he had a different way of doing things, but this was also a good occasion to test how far his regenerative abilities had increased and how much punishment this so-called armor of his would allow him to take.

—You are indeed very optimistic about this situation. If you had devoured the core of the ship, things would have been far different I can guarantee you that.

I have a conscience, you know? I don’t think eating the motor of a ship would let it end well. Morgiana is still there.

— Because you let her be there. You could have easily woken her up and gotten her out of that place, with you…

Did this for her own good, right? Otherwise, it would be too dangerous for her to survive and I wasn’t about to babysit her.

Noah was not totally emotionless, and he certainly did not treat righteous people like he was out for their blood.

If the situation did not demand his haste and if he trusted Morgiana enough, enough to count on her to have his back, he might have proceeded with another plan.

Sadly, however, things were not meant to travel that route. She was far too weak, by his standards, and due to her current state, he could not trust his back to her. They had not crossed that bridge yet.

Sighing, he looked below; the ground was approaching fast, and he was barreling straight for it like a fallen meteor. He was only a few seconds short, he did not plan on doing much even though he could have perhaps created a construct to help slow himself down. Why would he? Nothing would dampen the pain anyway. Better concentrate elsewhere.

Boom!!!

A deafening echo shook the heaven and earth as a literal explosion took place on the spot Noah crash landed, hollowing the ground in a crater-shaped hole … His weight, accompanied by the speed and momentum was enough to tear through any material this planet could throw at him and the result was there for everyone to see…

Getting up from the ground, Noah coughed again and again, almost coughing his lungs out. He could feel his whole body rattling, and his muscles going numb from time to time, there was even a faint feeling of iron in his throat as if his blood had crawled its way up to his throat…

Even so,

“Ohhh…! I didn’t die??”

— What did I say?

He was starting to fall in love with his new set of armor. Ideas, immeasurable and inconceivable, began springing up in the depths of his mind— ideas envisioning the limits of what he would be able to achieve with his armor and how far he could progress with this concept.

Certainly, his childhood had not been the happiest; but there was one movie, one particular comic hero from the Previous Era that came to his mind when it came to the armor he was wearing.

As they shared thoughts, the Parasite was able to answer quickly.

— That is currently impossible for me. But I might be able to conjure something similar when we devour more knowledge and far more core pieces.

“Well, we are about to reach a self-serving buffet pretty soon.”

He looked around and estimated his distance from the gate. Thankfully, even though he fell from quite a high altitude, the deviation had not been particularly big.

All he had to do now was run. . . .

The drifting journey to his destination was pretty uneventful, all things considered.

He thought he would have met some Abyss Beasts along the way, or whatever they called those monstrous entities, but surprisingly, there were no such incidents; not even a single presence of those titanic beasts.

It was as if all of them had vanished or decided to hide themselves in their nests to avoid any possible trouble.

The thing they were fleeing from was the gate itself.

“Birds die for food and humans die for wealth. Can’t say there’s a saying more fitting for this situation.”

Noah muttered as he finally reached the colossal Star Gate looming in the air, floating in all its incandescent radiance.

The full majesty of the construct could not be conveyed from a screen alone. As he stood in front of it now, Noah couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of guts Omid had in him to even dare entering such an ominous place.

However, he did not insult the man for what he did. Greed was an inherent instinct that no human was truly above and Noah did not feel himself worthy nor did he have the hypocrisy to deny his own greed. Perhaps if he was in Omid’s place, he would have also chosen to risk his life.

— Noah…

“I know. This place is very dangerous.”

Noah was much more decisive than Omid. He did not hesitate in the slightest and did not let his vision be clouded by the greed he instinctively felt.

This place was far more dangerous than anything anyone could give it credit for.

Even someone as prideful and confident as he could freely admit the fact without an ounce of shame or tittering.

Honestly. I don’t even want to enter this place.

The existence of the Star Gate was of no consequence to him for the time being.

All he had to do was wait here, kill Omid, and then register the planet in his name, maybe have Morgiana help him with that and rekindle their sketchy relationship. The existence of the gate would make the planet worth far more than anything he could imagine.

If Omid did not come out then, while it would be disappointing, it wasn’t particularly problematic for him either. Omid was far from being the only space pirate out there. He could slowly hunt down the other members of their organization and get what he needed from their decapitated heads.

Sadly, this isn’t it.

He sighed and focused on the symbols that were on the border of the gate.

Now that he was closer and could see for himself, this was unmistakable Sumerian, a dead language from Earth.

In a moment like this, I wish I had a photographic memory or at least some type of technique that would allow me to browse my past experiences.

It was a shame but he did not dwell further on it. A photographic memory might have pushed him to suicide much more often if he had possessed it, so there was no reason to complain.

But even so, it was frustrating for a language he knew once in the past to now only be nothing but a faint smudge in a vast ocean.

Thankfully, all hopes were not lost. While he could not completely read the whole sentences, some words were easy to recognize such as ‘Stars,’ ‘Observe,’ and ‘Destiny.’

How mysterious.

His curiosity was piqued. An event that he had to experience for himself, he had to observe what was truly happening. He needed to learn the reason why such a thing was possible.

In the first place, how was this even possible?

A faint possibility pulsed in the back of his mind, but he rejected it.

He couldn't have lived alone on this planet that long. No matter how his perspective of time was affected or not.

— What if we stayed much longer than we thought in that place?

“That place?”

He mused. However, he was not sure.

Noah sighed. There were so many things he did not know and it was starting to irritate him.

He did not know what that place was nor where it was exactly. Only that he had a faint connection to that location and he needed to get something that belonged to him from there.

He was not an expert in the field of science and technology, but he did know that he had entered a wormhole or something similar when he had last fought against the Queen.

There were so many theories in his world about where and when a wormhole could lead you that it was mind-numbing.

But if Noah followed any of those theories then…

Either he was currently much further in the future than he would have anticipated, or he was not even in his home dimension in the first place.

Both possibilities were equally terrifying for him.

“Only one way to find out.”

He started advancing, his destination… the Star Gate looming like a gate to hell. His mind was made and there was no point in wavering any longer.

Sometimes ignorance was bliss and knowledge was a curse.

But Noah would rather live a cursed life filled with wisdom than a blissfully ignorant life. Only through knowledge and awareness could one grasp their own destiny and even go beyond it to reach the heavens.

— You might die.

Heh. I doubt it.

He snickered.

He knew very well that he may die at this gate. Everything was possible when chasing after the unknown.

But he did not fear his eventual and very much possible demise. Perhaps… He even felt anticipation toward such eventuality.

However, he would not surrender to death. Not now when the light of hope was finally gracing him with its incandescent shine. And that light came from the Star Gate in front of him. He could feel it.

“I am quite the tenacious man, you know?”

Failure was not an option.

Death was not a consideration.

He would win.

He would succeed.

Because he was Noah.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And so, Noah continued to self-hypnotize himself as he stepped into the gate. His thoughts were light, but his steps were heavy. This would undoubtedly be the first step toward him seizing back control of his glorious destiny.