Krovukk was big. Bigger than most. It was partially because of his race as a Karkaris. Shark-people did tend to be bigger than most, but he was big even for them. He didn’t really like the nicknames people gave his people. Blueskins, Bluebrutes or blood sniffers being among the most common ones used.

Like all stereotypes, there lay a nugget of truth to all these names. The most common one? Karkaris were strong and some tended to be more muscle than brain. When they towered over you at two and a half meters, looking down at you with their huge arms, it wouldn’t take any of them much effort to snap you like a twig. And because of this, they tended to resolve their problems using their most prominent attribute. Force.

But something a lot of people forgot was that Karkaris were honorable, or supposed to be. They used to be known for being reliable, and their word meant something. Nowadays? It was still there, somewhat, but it had become more of a clan thing. Some clans were honorable, some weren’t.

Right now Krovukk would not appear honorable. He was towering over the last few stragglers of the hideout they were cleaning out. One of them, a terrified human, rushed at him. One sweep of his axe and the man was cut in two, his guts spilling all over the place.

A healing potion would not be enough for that man.

Krovukk drew back his massive weapon and continued to plow through the human crew blocking him. Some stood their ground, but half of them were already running. It’s not like they were [Warriors] or something. They had already taken care of the guards and the leader, there were only non-fighters left.

The hallway he was standing in was soon empty of people. A few bodies lay dead, but he had let most of them run away. The goal was not to slaughter everyone. It was simply to destroy the smuggler base.

The asteroid they had chosen to turn into a base wasn’t the biggest. It was clear it was an abandoned mine that they had transformed. Fortifications and defense weren’t great. Their first line of defense was of course to stay hidden. Once found most smuggler dens weren’t long for this world.

Krovukk found a room that had been used to keep an eye on who was coming. Dice and cards were on a table that overlooked the entrance from above. He picked up a handful of dice and threw them on the table.

Luck seemed to be on his side, maybe he should play once they all got back. Below he could spot a few stragglers running away. One of them looked behind, spotted him above and stumbled, before hurrying out of there.

Krovukk sat down, job done. Now it was up to the little guy to set everything up before leaving.

A few minutes later, someone walked out below at a leisure pace. The figure was small. Just under one meter. This one was not a dwarf however, and you better not compare the two very similar yet different species.

Like dwarfs, they lived underground, like dwarfs, they were smaller than most other species, but contrary to Dwarfs, the Skraa didn’t resemble humans, but were closer to rats, or mice if you wanted to be nice.

Skraa, Rat-people or Scrap lovers, were some of the names people used, they actually had a decent reputation as a people. The little furries were the ones to come up with the current rune system used in every modern ship and home.

If you asked a dwarf, they had stolen the technology and were nothing but a waste of space, but some argued that even if that were the case, they actually spread the technology to the rest of them, unlike dwarfs who were very possessive of their technology…

It had catapulted them all to the modern era and made a lot of new things possible, space flight being one of them and later the colonization of Dust which had saved them from extinction when the old-world exploded into pieces.

The little Rat looked up at Krovukk.

“All clear!” He yelled up. Krovukk got up from his chair, scooped up dice and jumped down. He landed heavily and dust blew up from the rocky ground as he landed.

“Kro, you don’t have to show off your huge size every time.” The rat joked.

“You’re just jealous, you know what they say about small feet...” He said while looking down at the Skraa’s tiny boots.

“Yeah yeah, very funny.” The ratman responded.

“You done setting up the charges down there?” Kro asked just to be sure.

“Yepp, it’s ready to blow this place up. Where are the other two?” The rat had a hard time keeping up with Krovukk’s huge steps as they talked, and before long he jumped up on the huge shark man's shoulder.

“They should be outside with the ship. I hope they don’t take any prisoners though. It’s just not worth the effort.” Kro’s rumbling voice echoed in the tunnel going out.

“No, even the captain shouldn’t be greedy enough to try and capture some nobodies for a few extra coppers. And he isn’t big on selling to slavers.” The rat man responded.

They soon came upon the main airlock into the base, closed their helmets up and walked out. There was of course no gravity out here, but that was not a problem. The most widespread enchantment everyone had made their boots stick to the ground.

As they came out, the emptiness of space greeted them along with a few ships parked on the bumpy asteroid ground. A few ships could be seen fleeing in the distance, which meant they had let some people get away. It was the right thing to do.

They were adventurers, not slaughterers, even if this was closer to mercenary work.

As they got closer to their ship, a ramp went down to let them in. The ship wasn’t the flashiest, a bit bulky maybe. Honestly it was closer to a fat and short screwdriver… but it had gotten them through many battles.

“Took you long enough!” A tall blond man said as the ramp closed behind them.

“It was deeper than I thought… And I admit to scaring a few stragglers.” The ratman said with a huge grin on his face.

“Let’s get going no?” Krovukk said.

“Yeah yeah. Levy you heard him, take us away!” The blond man said towards the cockpit.

“Aye aye Captain!” A mocking voice could be heard as the engines started humming in a deep rumble.

They flew for a few seconds before Krovukk, the ratman and the captain started walking to a window in the back.

“Wait! I want to see it too!” The voice from the cockpit chimed in.

“Hurry up Levy!” The captain yelled.

Another blond man with a heavy beard ran out of the cockpit, down a ladder and through the main deck room towards them.

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The ship slowly drifted towards empty space as the three waited for their pilot to hurry up.

“Three!” The rat started.

“Two!”

“Wait! Wait for me!” Levy yelled as he ran towards them.

“One and a half!” The rat teased as the man finally arrived beside them at the far end of the ship.

“Are you ready? It’s not everyday we get paid to blow shit up.” The ratman said with a huge grin.

“No, you already blow enough shit up without encouragement.” Krovukk said with a smile.

“Oh shush you brute.” The Skraa responded.

“Can you two stop flirting so we can get to the fireworks people?” The captain said, getting everyone to look out through the window.

“I think we are almost too far…” The pilot said, but before he could finish his sentence, light poured through their window as all the explosives went off in the asteroid behind them.

It was beautiful. The asteroid not only cracked in a thousand pieces, but the magical explosion shone bright blue in all directions.

“I think we might be too close.” The captain said as the result of the explosion came hurtling towards them at high speed.

“Xar! Did you use everything?” Krovukk asked, uneasy.

“What? No… I would never.” The ratman said.

“Levy get moving!” The captain said to the pilot.

“Let me see the rest then, what you didn’t use.” Krovukk continued to interrogate their little explosives expert.

“A man’s bag is a very private affair, Kro. I’m not sure I’m comfortable to share my very private belongings with a big blue brute like yourself.” Xar teased his friend.

“You did use everything! You crazy little furrball.” Krovukk laughed.

“Like I said, it’s not everyday I get paid to blow shit up.” The ratman said with a shit eating grin on his face. Krovukk’s rows of teeth could be seen as he smiled back at his friend.

“Levy isn’t going to make it before the wave hit’s us. You could have warned us Xar.” Their captain reprimanded their smallest member lightly.

“Honest mistake captain. I did think I needed to use most of it. It was deeper than I thought.” He shrugged.

“Well, this is going to waste a shit ton of mana, luckily for you my friend, we get paid enough that it won’t matter much.” The captain sighed.

Just before Levy got back into the cockpit, a wave of blue containing a lot of small rocks and debris hit the back of the ship. It trembled for a few seconds as everyone held onto something.

Soon, the rumbling passed and the stillness of empty space could be felt again.

“Levy, how much did that take on the shields?” The captain yelled loud enough to be heard in the cockpit.

“Sixty percent. That was a massive hit. Gonna cost us at least twenty big mana crystals!” A voice could be heard from the cockpit.

“Oops?” Xar said, not looking apologetic in the least.

“Well, I guess it’s my fault also for wanting to look at it from up close, but you should have told us we were too close.” The captain said while looking at the little rat on the blueskin’s shoulder.

“Oh come on, it’s fine, no? We got the job done, wasted a bit of mana… but it was beautiful, no?” Xar said.

“Yeah yeah. Let’s get out of here and get our payment, shall we?” The captain said while a smile formed on his face at the prospect of getting paid.

“Yeah, plus we don’t want to linger here too long in case they have friends nearby.” Krovukk said.

“Incoming!” Levy yelled from the cockpit.

“You just had to jinx it, didn’t you big guy.” Xar said sarcastically to his big blue friend.

“I guess I did.” He responded.

“Seriously guys, we got incoming. Can you flirt later?” The captain said.

“Oh no, the captain has found us out Xar! Whatever are we going to do.” Krovukk joked as he moved out to the main turret gun.

“I don’t know Kro, I think we’ll have to run away together into the sunset.” The rat joked back as he hopped away towards the mana crystal stash room.

The captain joined Levy in the cockpit soon enough. Five small ships were inbound on their position. Fighter ships, which meant they had already been in the area, or more likely, they had another hideout close by.

Xar was pulling out mana crystals and feeding them to their shield generator to get it back up to full strength before the fighters could engage them while Levy flew them away from the incoming forces.

All the while, Krovukk took position on their main gun, rotating it towards the enemy fighters. The captain took his position as co-pilot as always. His job was to use his skills to boost the crew and the ship.

“They are catching up guys, they’ll be in range in 3… 2…” Krovukk said.

The rest never came, instead the main gun started spitting huge accelerated mana bolts at their enemies, making the whole ship tremble very slightly at every shot.

The fighters dodged everything as they were still pretty far away, but they were closing in. Xar was feeding mana crystals to the different systems of the ship to keep it functional.

The enemy had smaller weapons, and not as much range, but that wouldn’t matter as they kept closing in on them.

Krovukk wasn’t the best [Gunner] as he was only level 7. His main class was [Honorable Warrior] where he was approaching level 30.

They were adventurers, space combat was not their strongest point. It was also why they didn’t engage in space combat as much as possible.

One of the small fighters was in range now and started spitting accelerated pellets at them, most missed as Levy was dodging out of the way, but the shield took the rest easily, for now.

The shield hadn’t recharged fully after the big blast. It had barely recharged to half before they got chased by these fighters.

Soon, two of the fighters were shooting, and dodging became increasingly difficult as Levy had to take into consideration both gun trajectories. Then a third, a fourth.

When the fifth joined they were tanking a lot of shots on their shield as he couldn’t dodge everything. Krovukk had hit one of them with a few shots, but the fighter's shield held, for now.

He concentrated and used his best skill [Precise Shot], by instinct he moved the gun turret slightly down left and opened fire. The first shot hit dead center but the shield still held.

A second shot followed an instant later and took the fighter on the wing. This time the shield had gone out and the explosion made the fighter spin out of control. The pilot might still survive if he ejected himself now, but Krovukk paid him no attention and turned to the next ship following them.

He continued to aim manually, he wasn’t the greatest and he couldn’t use his skill again so soon, but the enemy were close enough it was tough for them to evade all his shots, and soon enough a second fighter was out.

Just as he turned to a third fighter, a red light blared in the ship, signaling that their shields were almost out. Levy was dodging better now that there were fewer fighters, but still, this would be a close call, if they even made it at all.

Suddenly, all the different systems stopped working. The ship drifted silently, the magical circuits stopped responding and even the red light stopped blinking. Krovukk, sitting in the gun tower looked back and saw the ship was completely dark.

Looking out he thought he could spot the fighters also drifting in the dark, their engines off, barrelling out of control. But he wasn’t sure as it was hard to see them with their engines off.

“Captain what is going on?” Xar yelled from the only room still giving off some light. The mana crystals pulsing a low and deep blue.

“I have no idea, Krovukk, is it affecting them too?” He yelled up at him.

“Yeah I think so, I can barely see them. Even their engines are off. They are completely dead like us I think, or in an angle I cannot see. They seem to–” He yelled down.

He was about to continue when a small light started glowing in the main room of the ship. The mana it gave off was strong. Too strong for such a small light.

Was this a new weapon? The enemy teleporting in? Was it this that was causing all of their systems to stop working? Krovukk had never seen a full mana outage like this before. He had heard about nullzones before, where mana simply couldn’t exist, but it had never been confirmed by anyone. It was an urban legend that didn’t exist.

No, they hadn’t entered a nullzone, their mana crystals wouldn’t be glowing if that was the case, as they would become empty. So what could it be?

As different scenarios went through his head, the light gained in intensity, lighting up the dark interior of the ship. The light gave off immense amounts of mana now, pulsing out in pure waves of mana, the systems were all online and blinking rapidly. Like they had no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

Soon, the light was so blinding Krovukk had to close his eyes, yet it was so strong that it seered through his closed eyes.

The light continued to gain in intensity, and the mana it gave off was so thick he could almost taste it. Krovukk had never felt mana so dense in his life.

It made him nauseous, it was too much. Like his whole body was overloaded with mana. Like using too many mana crystals or potions. He could feel his mana channels bursting in some places, spikes of pain as they popped in places, overloaded.

And suddenly, it was completely gone. Like nothing had ever happened. The ship was dark again, and the only reason he was sure it had happened was the pain he felt in different places where his mana channels had burst.

Slowly the ship came back alive, all the different systems booting normally. Krovukk quickly looked around them but he didn’t see the fighters. They must have drifted apart during the blackout.

“Levy, take us out of here will you, before they find our trace again.” Krovukk heard the captain say to their pilot.

“With pleasure.” Levy responded.

Krovukk started to go down the ladder to the main room. Before he could get down completely, he heard Xar cry out in surprise.

“Guys, we have a situation!” He yelled. Krovukk jumped down the last two meters to the ground and dashed to where Xar had yelled from.

Skidding to a halt in front of his little furry friend, he saw what the little guy had seen.

Indeed, they had a situation on their hands.