Duke left the group in the Inn and headed to the hangar level. His first thought was to go talk to Mira but decided to check out some of the other ships first to give her a bit longer to settle herself. He walked around the hangar trying to decide which ship to check out next. He had fourteen intact ships including the Iron Reaver. He knew why he had chosen the Iron Reaver as the first ship to check out and it had nothing to do with who had crewed it. It was simply the biggest ship of the bunch, by a lot. The next closest in size was roughly half as large so it was, naturally, the next ship Duke checked out.
This ship had an overall narrow wedge-shaped design with slight extensions that Duke expected acted like wings. It reminded him a bit of the ancient space shuttles of Earth but the black paint gave it a much more stealthy appearance. Duke circled the 30 meter-long craft and came to the back where the only hatch was. Like on the Iron Reaver, there was an access panel that required a code or a key to enter.
The problem Duke was running into was that he had no idea who had come in which ship, or even what batch of dead hunters any of the intact ships belonged to. He had been collecting the corpses in his INVENTORY to collect the loot from and he knew there were quite a few things he needed to go through piled up. He was even sure there were keys scattered amongst the bodies. He tapped the access panel but received no reaction – apparently this one needed a key. Time for some housekeeping. Let’s sort through notifications and then get to INVENTORY management.
*** You have slain 72 opponents ranging from level 165 and 200, all in Tier 4. You receive 924,932 experience. You are now level 131 and have 144 Characteristic Points to spend. ***
Duke added 25 to each of his first five stats and added the remainder to his Psyche. As he looked at his Character Sheet, he started to realize just how high his stats were compared to the norm. Even his unmodified stats were monstrous compared to the norm. A normal person would have stats in the 200s in the peak of Tier 4. Even an exceptional individual with special bonuses wouldn’t be past the 400s in anything unless they concentrated their points. He had no stat under 1,000 and with his Title multiplier, his highest stat was in the 30,000s. I should just punch people for a while and see how that goes. Nah, magic is just too much fun.
Duke went through the rest of his notifications and noted several Ability increases. He had not been paying much attention but he spent some time going through these, thinking about where he might have a weakness or need to work on something.
*** You have increased several of your Abilities
Your TELEPORTATION Ability has increased to Grandmaster 43
Your REGENERATION Ability has increased to 151
Your OVERCHANNEL Ability has increased to Adept 81
Your MENTAL FORTITUDE Ability has increased to Adept 32
Your POISON Ability has increased to Initiate 17
Your ACID Ability has ranked up to Initiate 6
Your UMBRAL REAPER Ability has increased to Adept 75
Your CLEANSE Ability has increased to Practiced 41
Your RESTORE Ability has increased to Master 66
Your INVENTORY Ability has increased to Practiced 45
Your ARMOR SKIN Ability has increased to Adept 68
Your FLIGHT Ability has increased to Practiced 76
Your COMBAT SENSE Ability has increased to Practiced 24
Your DUNGEON SENSE Ability has increased to Master 29
***
Duke looked back over his Abilities. Most of my offensive Abilities are no higher than Initiate-ranked. Hell, WIND is still Novice-ranked. I can’t even remember the last time I even used that Ability. Every time I think I should change things up, circumstances lead me back to the same small set of Abilities. Not sure how to correct that, but I’ll just have to keep my eyes open for the right opportunity. Or I could, oh, how did I put it last time? Intentionally use the other Abilities. We’ll see. There are reasons I go back to the same ones. They get the job done.
Duke’s next task was the grisly task of sorting through the bodies in his INVENTORY. He contemplated pulling each body out and going through them one at a time, but that just seemed macabre and tedious to Duke. I wonder…can I use DUNGEON SENSE inside my INVENTORY?
Duke focused his DUNGEON SENSE inwardly and was able to use it to sort through the bodies, retrieving everything he could imagine as a key. He used IDENTIFY on each item he pulled out to verify that they were, in fact, keys. All but one were. The last was identified as a “Control Crystal” but didn’t have much more information than that. He shrugged and put it back in his INVENTORY. Next, he proceeded to try each of the 86 keys he had found on the lock to the ship before him. On the 26th attempt, the lock opened causing him to put all the other keys back into his INVENTORY.
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The entrance ramp that spanned a full seven meters wide lowered to allow him entrance to the ship. Inside, he found seats lining both exterior walls and what appeared to be some sort of cargo-securing system by Duke’s best guess. He moved further into the ship to find basic crew quarters and a galley. Finally, he found the pilot’s area where there were a pair of seats surrounded by controls and screens of unknown functions.
Duke let his curiosity roam as an idea hit him. He activated his SENSE MAGIC Ability since Mira had told him that most of the ships ran on some form of magitech. As his senses spilled out over the cockpit, he saw all manner of magic lines and symbols underlying all the controls and screens. It was like a runic language that was suddenly legible to him. It was fairly easy to read but the sentence structure was odd and hard to follow. He wondered if that was intentional, how the language was parsed, or no one was able to read it like he could. Despite the strangeness, there was a particular logic to the sentence structure of all the runes underlying the systems. Duke was fascinated and began to read everything.
Hours later, he came out of his rune reading fugue. He immediately noticed two things. One, he had been so engrossed in his project that he had completely missed dinner. And, two, he had a really strong understanding of how this ship operated and how to use its systems. He shook his head at himself and left to gather up his companions for the great adventure trip.
When he returned to the Inn, he found Lya and Aurelia both patiently waiting for him at the bar. Well, Lya seemed a bit impatient, but Aurelia was used to Duke disappearing for hours at a time.
“You missed dinner.” Lya informed Duke.
“So, it would seem. I assume you both ate without me then?”
Aurelia chuckled. “Of course we did. I know by now that if you’re late, you aren’t going to show up for quite a while.”
Duke started. “I’m usually on time.” One sarcastic glare from Aurelia altered his next statement. “When it’s important.”
“Quit while you’re behind.” Lya joined in.
“I’ve known you for, what? A day? And you’re already jumping on me like this?”
“Don’t be too worked up about it, Duke.” Aurelia added. “All the ribbing keeps you human.”
“I don’t think I’m human in anything but appearance anymore.” Duke mused.
“Maybe not, but you can still act human.”
“Like by being flawed and showing up late to dinner?”
“Um, yeah, like by doing that. Weren’t we supposed to be going somewhere?”
Duke opened a Portal to the hangar level and smiled. “Why yes, we are. Are you all ready?”
In response the pair walked through the Portal, leaving Duke staring at Travis behind the bar. Travis gave him a “don’t look at me, you put them together” look and went back to polishing a glass. Duke stepped through the Portal and closed it behind himself.
They found Mira standing outside the Iron Reaver with her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently. “So good of you to finally show up. We have a bit of a problem.”
“What’s the problem?” Duke asked, doing his level-best to maintain his calm.
“We don’t have enough fuel to make it there and back, maybe not even enough to get there at all. We’re going to have to stop and refuel somewhere.”
“OK, so how is that a problem?”
“Didn’t you see the ship’s account? We don’t have enough credits to buy fuel. We’re so far in the negative that no one will extend us credit.”
“I see how that sounds like a problem. I have a few solutions. The first being that we are not going to be using much fuel at all on this trip.” Duke held up a had to forestall questions and protestations. “The second will require a bit of instruction and learning. What does the ship use for fuel anyway?”
She looked at Duke with complete incredulity. “This really is the ass-end of the cosmos, isn’t it? How can you not know this?”
“Because where I am from, I can almost guarantee that we don’t use the same fuel as you do so, please humor me and answer the question.”
“Very well, the ship is fueled by two dozen magic cores. Of which, ten are depleted and need to be recharged.”
“Can they be easily removed and replaced?”
“Yes, that is how they are exchanged.”
“Excellent. Bring me a depleted and a full one please. Oh, and are they universal things, like do all these ships use the same cores?”
Lya jumped in, unable to contain herself. “Oh yeah. Almost every ship uses the universal cores. Most magitech runs off cores of one type or another.”
Mira went back into the ship and returned with two baseball-sized Mana cores. One glowed brightly with magic while the other was a dull grey. Duke examined them closely with all his senses. From everything he could tell they were ordinary Mana cores with an additional set of runes inscribed in them. His translation of the runes showed them to be designed for protection and power flow regulation. Duke’s smile broadened as he read how much Mana the full one contained – one million Mana.
Duke handed the full one back to Mira and concentrated on the empty one with his MANA TRANSFER Ability and slowly increased the Mana flow until he was channeling one hundred thousand Mana a second. In under a minute, the core was glowing like the full one. He handed it over to Mira with a smile. “Why don’t you take me to the rest of them so I can recharge them.”
“That’s…that’s not possible. No one can recharge cores like that. It requires magitech to regulate the Mana flow to that degree and a planetary collector to focus it.”
Aurelia put a comforting hand on Mira’s shoulder. “When Duke’s involved, the impossible is really just kinda improbable. You’ll get used to it.”
Mira led Duke to the core section of the ship which turned out to be directly above the engines in the most armored section. He proceeded to refill the spent cores and followed Mira up to the bridge to see Lya and Aurelia already having claimed chairs. The pilot’s seat was reserved for Mira which left Duke sitting at the communications console. He tapped Lya on the shoulder. “Sorry, but I need the navigation console for this trip.”
“You know how to use the navigation console and didn’t know what fuels the ship?”
“Something like that. You’ll see.”
Lya shrugged and switched seats. Duke pulled up the navigational maps. He found the console worked largely like the one on the black ship he had studied with a few additional functions that he wasn’t concerned about right now. He brought up a star system that was listed as uninhabited and a bit under 10,000 light years away.
“Everybody ready?” He asked.
“Ready for what?” Mira asked.
“This!” With a flex of will and a massive OVERCHANNELING of Duke’s TELEPORTATION Ability, the ship vanished.