Walking out of the dormitory, it took Gerald some time before he found the cafeteria. Walking in he noticed there wasn’t much people in sight in the massive hall which helped him find Ahren in the far corner of the hall.

He started walking in his direction, noticing upon closing in that he had an empty tray in front of him and a full one across.

“Hey man, you waited for me?” Asked Gerald, his friend, sitting before the second tray.

“No shit man, I have been sitting here for an hour and a half already. I would ask how was your trip to the shitty throne if we weren’t eating the same thing every day.” Answered Ahren peeling away his eyes from a projected terminal of his watch device.

That answered Gerald’s worry of skipping on a lecture in the time he was choosing system options. He would rather avoid attention for the time being.

On the thought of the system, he made eye contact with Ahren and mentally activated his Eye of insight.

Nothing… expected outcome.

It was stated that abilities will work only on female crew, after all. But what constitutes crew? He was in dire need of experimentation on the subject.

Gerald took the spoon and scooped up orange goop before him on reflex, his mind once again in clouds. He regretted it almost immediately.

“Wh-Pff-t is that” he almost spit out the food, stopping himself at the last moment.

“What? Did It taste worse than yesterday? Maybe a bad batch came in.” Ahren commented not surprised, like it was a common event.

That’s when it hit Gerald. It is a common occurrence! In this world there are many wondrous advances in science, technology, physics, but what this world definitely lacks is food. Because of overpopulation, literally every planet is overcrowded, consuming a vast majority of land on feeding its own population leavening very little for export. And there are entire industrial complexes outside of planets in need of food too.

All of this resulted in farm owners being one of the wealthiest caste in the Empire despite the Imperial mandates that they have to grow the fastest growing and efficient crops possible, before grinding it to paste in order to bring out the most amount of calories. Only the select few are exempted from this resulting in food prices beside nutrient paste meals a luxury item.

“Just gobble it down. We have to talk about what the professor said at the end of a lecture” Ahren stated with impatience.

Gerald gritted his teeth, grabbed the whole plate and wolfed down the whale blob down in a few seconds.

“Sorry, I was distracted at the end, what did he say?” Gerald asked, curious.

“We have to procure a starship, by the beginning of next month.” Answered Ahren seriously. ”My father have already promised me a Tier 2 medium interstellar destroyer – Jackal with assembled crew when I was joining the academy. When I video-called him when you were gone, he answered that it is already prepared.”

That information put a frown on Gerald’s forehead. He already had a quarterly mission to own a starship, but he hoped that in three months he would have time to build or at least assemble one himself with the help of his profession traits.

Suddenly an idea entered his mind, but he put it aside for the time being.

“That is great news! Congratulations! I have heard that the latest iteration of Jackal is quite good for its price.” Gerald said with a smile, remembering a conversation of two students he passed at the end of lecture.

“Thanks, I have heard that it costed him around 3.5 million star coins, coupled with experienced crew, and I don’t have to worry about falling behind this semester.” Said Ahren with pride and relief in his tone. ”What do you plan for yourself, though? Will you contact your elder sister or family mansion?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

At the mention of his elder sister, Gerald felt a sudden wave of emotions he could not wrap his head around.

Looks like my alter-ego had quite mixed feelings about elder sister.

“My family mansion indeed has at least three Tier 2 patrol vessels, but I have something different in mind” Gerald answered mysteriously.

By now the cafeteria was beginning to fill up.

“Come on man, tell me, don’t you see that I served you lunch. You can repay me by sharing your super secret plan” Ahren told, holding an empty tray in one hand and poking Gerald’s shoulder with it across the table.

“Nope” Gerald parried the `attack` with his own tray.

“Looks like you are having fun, my `love`” Before they could continue to bicker, an icy female voice interrupted them from the side.

Gerald turned to the direction of the voice. It took him a second to recognize a female before him. Beside their table with long blonde hair, clear skin and immaculate academy uniform stood his irritated fiancée Aveline de Granville with her arms crossed.

This momentary lapse in response was enough for Aveline to sense weakness.

“I have heard about the requirement for a starship, I hope that my dear would be so kind to prepare one for his fiancée too.”

Ahren suddenly found something extremely fascinating outside a window to the side.

“Don’t you have your own family?” Gerald asked honestly.

However, this question was definitely not what Aveline expected, because she froze for a second. Even Ahren flinched slightly at the corner of Gerald’s eye.

“You…You” His fiancée seems to be shaking in place. “How dare YOU!”Aveline shouted pointing her finger at him, face red. ”I was patient with you so far, yet you dare to humiliate me like this?!”

“Humiliate? What are you talking about? I have only asked you if you have any ships belonging to your family, that they are willing to spare?” Gerald was extremely taken aback about this sudden outburst. “Besides, isn’t it you who humiliate yourself and me in this situation, screaming and trowing tantrums in the middle of a cafeteria?! Is it how a noble lady like you should behave?” Gerald added, gesturing around him at the surrounding students. Quite a few of them turned their attention towards them after Aveline shout.

Due to the extremely fast escalation of the situation, Gerald did not have a spare moment to dive into memory lane beside confirming that the person before him was indeed his chosen spouse.

Fortunately, at this comment miss tomato seems to realize the situation she is in and throwing one last scathing look she departed, but not before throwing her last piece.

“You will pay for this.”

Gerald returned his attention to his friend only to see absolute disbelief written on his face.

“Who are you, and what you have done to real Gerald?”

Gerald panicked for a split second before realizing that his friend is most likely joking.

“What? She deserved it.” He doubled down.

“That I don’t deny, but after being an absolute simp for her literally form the first day at the academy, this sudden 180 seems surreal.” Ahren commented, smirking.

That made him pause and turn contemplative. He focused and tried to remember information about Aveline de Granville.

She was a fiancée chosen by his father for him, back when he was still alive, at the age of 14. He remembered that when they were kids, they played together quite often. Aveline was in fact from the Yellow Dragon star system, the same star system which he is officially the lord of since his father’s passing 5 years ago. Granville family is formally a branch of Gretz family split around two generations ago, they do not have a formal Imperial title, but are a major political force on the second habitable planet of Yellow Dragon star system named Armaghast.

Unfortunately both Armaghast and Hyperion, his homeworld, do not have any specialized industries with the majority of their meager population working on farmlands without proper equipment and on poor soil, making his entire star system quite impoverished especially since 50 years ago when their star gate was lost due to chrysalis swarm.

From the memories he unveiled, Gerald was indeed quite smidgen with Aveline. However, as before arriving at North Star military academy his fiancée reciprocated his advances, in the course of this per longed absence from home she became more cold and arrogant thou these 2 years.

Poor home and simping boyfriend should not have been enough of a reason of her attitude towards the lord of her territory, however. Either she is extremely dumb or something else is beneath the ice.

“Yea, I have had quite the epiphany in the last hour, she should learn her place.”

“Wow” Ahren whistled and thought of something. “That’s why you had that thousand yard stare at the navigation lecture, and ware gone soon afterward. I am proud of you, man.”

Gerald did not say anything and only smiled.

They both stopped talking afterwards and both seemed to be in their own worlds, staring outside a window at the busy scenery outside.

“We should have a starship formation lecture next in 5 minutes.” Ahren broke the silence after a while, looking at his wrist.

“Hmm… Hey man, could you send me the schedule again, I deleted it by mistake” Gerald lied.

“Sure” Ahren poked his wrist device, which Gerald remembered was called simply terminal and summoned a hover screen on which he deftly selected couple of buttons and closed it.

“There, let’s go” Ahren turned away in the direction of the exit.

For some reason Gerald had trouble remembering some trivial things like terminal handling, probably due to it being simply muscle memories for the old Gerald which he thought nothing of. These devices due to their prevalence however seemed quite intuitive, so with the demonstration now he was sure to master it after the lecture.