Elsewhere

The ship was back in orbit and they were going through their notifications. All had received 10,000 experience for completing the dungeon. Duke smiled as he saw their reaction to the added experience. For Lya and Mira this was their first dungeon ever and they still had mixed feelings about the adventure. Well it gave them great gains the seeming risk from that massive serpent made them hesitant you try another one.

Duke had minor gains in a few of his Abilities but had not received enough experience to even level. He quietly TELEPORTED back down to the surface and started planting dungeons. One, by one, he covered random spaces with dungeons. He spent the next few hours planting 1,000 more dungeons on the surface. He pointedly avoided the area around the Emergency Shelter dungeon, not wanting to have to deal with those desperate souls. A voice in the back of his mind kept reminding himself that he would get experience if he killed all of them but he pushed it back down into the depths of his mind.

Upon returning to the ship, he found all three women waiting for him. A raised eyebrow got a response from Mira. “You going to jump us to the next location, or should I engage the stardrive and start heading us for our destination?”

“Give me a minute to locate our next stop and we’ll be on our way. I take it, you all decided on the plan to leave the heavy cruiser here and let the Landassians know where they can pick it up?”

“Oh, no, not at all. We’re going to leave it here for now and come back with a crew to man it. We’ll have to take it to a rather sketchy place to get its registry changed and get it repainted, but we are going to have a heavy cruiser of our own. That’s just too valuable a ship to not hold onto.”

“And how are we going to know that the crew we hire won’t turn on us the second we put them in control of the ship?”

“We’ll have to vet them very well. Maybe introduce them to the previous crew and explain what happens when someone crosses us, even if they have a much bigger ship.”

“I’m not sure I like this plan but we have some time to figure it out before we get to that point. We have three more stops before we get to the station you identified for us, right?”

“If your jumps are still around 10,000 light years then, yes, three more stops.”

“Then let’s get to it then.” Duke TELEPORTED the ship to the next stop and waited while his Mana regened. A strong sweep of the scanners showed the world to be as dead as the star charts had shown..

While Mira parked the ship in orbit, Duke dropped down to the surface and began seeding dungeons. It took him a few hours to seed his typical thousand and when he was finished, he was greeted with a welcome notification:

*** Your DUNGEON CORE CREATION Ability has ranked up to Adept 3. Th cost for new dungeon cores can now be variable. The base cost remains 5,000,000 Mana but it can be increased to specify certain dungeon features. As your Ability continues to mature, the number of options and complexity of these options will increase. ***

Duke returned to the ship, smiling ear-to-ear. He didn’t hesitate to take them to the next location he had plotted out on the star charts. Again, he planted dungeons, experimenting a little with the type and parameters of the dungeons. He did not go back to investigate as he was in a rush to get to the final destination. He moved the ship to the last waypoint and repeated his dungeon creation spree.

When he was done, he sat on the bridge and looked over to the rest of the crew, “Well, this is it. One more jump and we will be heading to the spaceport to pay off some debt and start our next adventure. Does anyone need anything before we go?”

Duke spent the next few minutes RESTORING weapons and items before Mira took him back down to the engines to refill their Mana cores. Of course, that reminded the ladies that he could refill the Mana cores of their weapons. That took another fifteen minutes as they kept pulling spent cores out for him to refill.

“Now that we are all done with that, Mira would you come over here and pick the spot we should appear. I am assuming you want to approach like any normal vessel and not give away our extra capabilities. I know that I damn sure don’t.”

“Thank you for thinking of that before I had to bring it up. Yes, I want to enter the system on normal stardrive. So, put us right here.” She indicated a set of coordinates on the star map. “That will put us a few light days outside of the system and shouldn’t raise any eyebrows and it will only take a matter of minutes with the stardrive to get us into the system.”

“Sounds good. Everyone ready?” Receiving nods of acknowledgement, he TELEPORTED them to the last waypoint.

Mira took over and smoothly engaged the stardrive. When they emerged into the system, the sensors lit up with activity. The system had thousands of ships moving around it in countless formations but one stood out to Duke as he looked at the sensors. Most likely, because the sensors identified it as the Galactic Alliance Ship, Intrepid. It was listed as a dreadnaught and had dozens of escort ships in formation with it.

Duke put the visualization of the ship on the main screen and asked, “Think we can get out hands on something like that?”

Lya answered him with a laugh. “First off, you do not mess with the Galactic Alliance. And Second, you need a crew of at least fifty thousand to man a ship of that size. So, no, we are not getting our hands on anything like that. We have a perfectly fine ship right here.”

“Thank you, Lya. The Iron Reaver is more than enough for us. And if we need something bigger, we have another ship to modify already, right? Anyway, sit back and relax. I’ll get us landing clearance and then the real fun will begin.”

It took four hours to get landing clearance and to get docked. Duke and Aurelia eventually scurried off to their cabin for some alone time but came back out in time to watch the docking procedure. As they watched the ship become engulfed by the space station, the scale of it all started to become apparent.

The ship landed on a pad within the enormous hangar area they had been directed to. Duke was looking out one of the few actual windows of the ship and saw ships of all different sizes around. The smallest seemed the size of an average SUV while the largest was even bigger than the heavy cruiser they had left behind. It was nowhere near as well armed, but it was bigger. Duke guessed it might be a freight hauler, but he was too distracted by the sights to put more than casual thought into it.

It took all of ten minutes for the ship to be fully secure and the crew ready to depart. As they headed down the ramp, they were greeted by a group of individuals. There were seven of them, with six clearly being armed security guards and clearly not human while the seventh was too well-dressed to be simple security but appeared to be human. He greeted them.

“Welcome to Turin Station. I am Galvand and your liaison for the docking portion of your stay. The docking fee is one hundred thousand Mana per day. That is payable in filled cores or, if you are so inclined, directly into the station core.”

Mira looked at Duke who smiled in response. “Where is the station core? I’ll pay the fee directly.”

“Excellent, right this way.” He led Duke off to a central pillar of the hangar along with half the security guards. The rest remained at the ship preventing anyone else from leaving until the docking fee had been paid.

When they arrived at the pillar, Galvand unlocked a door with his handprint and a twenty-four-digit code. He entered it rapidly and if Duke had not been paying attention, there would have been no way he could have kept up with the code being entered. As it was, he was watching closely and the combination of his Intuition and Reason made it possible for him to memorize the code. The door opened to reveal a chamber lined with crystalline structures intertwined with magitech runes. Duke started to trace and translate the runes but was interrupted by Galvand.

“As I said earlier, it is one hundred thousand Mana per day for the docking fee. Simply channel your Mana into the red crystal over there and when you have hit one hundred thousand, it will light up and your daily fee will be fully paid.”

“Can I pay for multiple days at once?”

“If you like, certainly.”

“Is there any discount for multiple days payment at once?”

“If you have the patience and capacity to pay for ten days, that will cover you for two full weeks.” The amount of snark in Galvand’s tone had increased significantly as he offered the “impossible” discount. No one was willing or able to part with that much Mana or had the patience to sit for so long.

Duke nodded at the man and placed a hand on the red crystal and began pushing his MANA TRANSFER Ability with OVERCHANNEL. In a little over a second, he was pushing 25,000 Mana a second into the crystal. When the crystal lit up, Duke smiled and kept pouring his Mana in. He kept the rate steady at 25,000 a second. Every second that passed, he increased the look of strain on his face and body. When he hit the 1,000,000 Mana, he collapsed to the floor, gasping for air.

“That’s incredible.” Galvand said as he helped Duke to his unsteady feet.

“Please give me a minute. I’m tapped out and need to recover.” Duke gasped.

Galvand gestured to the guards to help Duke out of the chamber, and they jumped to the task, their strong grips helping Duke outside so the door could be closed and locked behind him. Duke tried to get his feet under himself and wobblily tried to steady himself.

Galvand handed Duke a receipt with an appraising look. “You are all paid up for the next two weeks. Please let me know if you need any assistance with the docks. Refueling, cargo handling, repairs, or anything else you might need for the ship.” He handed Duke what appeared to be a large coin with magitech script on it. “Use that at any terminal on the station and you will be able to reach me. Been a pleasure doing business with you.”

Duke steadied himself. “Thank you, Galvand. I believe our Chief Pilot has already secured the cargo services we require but if there is anything that we need, I will reach out to you first.” With that, he headed back to the ship, making his gait steadier and steadier as he headed across the hangar.