Chapter 23 In space with a junkyard ship

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An early chapter for today :)

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“So let’s begin with just explaining the basic looting ability,” the tester said after we made ourselves comfortable on his chairs. He didn't have an AR system to show me his name, but he did have a name tag—even with it seemingly being translated into my language, the name simply didn't make any sense to me.

“There are different categories that abilities fall into. The looting ability is in one of those categories that’s quite unfortunate. That category is ‘uncontrollable.’ You can try to make it trigger like it did with the testing device, but if you were to kill a magical monster that has been born inside a portal, that ability will trigger automatically.”

“Skills like that are usually quite exploitable by others. For example, there are some shield abilities that trigger whenever something is about to hit you that could hurt you. The thing is, enemies could use many weak attacks that would hurt you just a little, which would make you trigger that shield ability every time, draining you of magic quite fast and leaving you vulnerable.”

“For example, others could use the fact that your skill is automatically triggered by sending a lot of small monsters at you that you have to kill, leaving you empty of magic to use other skills.”

“Yeah, that sounds bad. But is there a possibility that my variation—you called them quirks—would make it so that I could control whenever I use it?”

“Unfortunately, there hasn't been a case of that in recorded history of the Adventurer Association, and it's been around for a really long time. The thing is, this isn’t even the worst consequence of this ability. It’s how it operates that’s the real problem.”

Honestly, I was getting a bit sick of receiving these setbacks. Why couldn’t I just get an ability that would allow me to telepathically control stuff or something like that? So I braced myself for what was to follow.

“You see, whenever someone with your ability kills something—or if one of your party members does so—that monster is turned into basic materials. At the face of it, it’s not really that bad and in some cases even preferable.”

“You see every creature is composed of a certain amount of magic. The looting ability allows you to transform that magic value into basic materials, like gold. That’s where the mana credit value comes from—it’s a formula based on the looting ability.”

That didn’t sound that bad.

“You see, the problem with that is not everything is worth the amount of mana credits you could get from it if you used your looting ability to turn it into basic materials.”

“For example, some claws of magical beasts on the open market are a lot more expensive than the basic materials equivalent, because of their properties and what you can do with them. Because of this, no other party wants a looter. A portal clear that could have gotten them tens of millions—if you find the right monster—might only get you a million or even below that.”

“So what you’re saying to me is that basically no one wants a looter around because if you get lucky with a monster which has parts that are extremely desirable, it would simply be turned into basic materials and would lose a lot of its value because of it?”

“Yes, that’s exactly the problem. It’s even more problematic for space adventurers because space monsters have armor that’s basically worth a thousand times more than the looting ability’s magic conversion formula.”

“That sounds really bad. But once again, perhaps because my ability isn’t the standard version, there’s some wiggle room?”

“In that, you might be correct. I’ve known a looter that could only loot high-end technology. Some monsters have laser guns—even propulsion-based projectile weaponry. Only those would be turned into basic materials. If that’s the case, you’re basically good—you just won’t be able to enter portals with monsters carrying those.”

This kind of sucked. I hoped that the looting ability was going to be something more awesome.

“Could the looting ability turn the mana of monsters into something else than basic materials?”

“That’s also a possibility, but usually it’s just that you could only turn it into one kind of basic material. You would just have to test it out to find out. For that, you would need to go to a more magic-dense world and clear some portals.”

“Well, thank you for your help.”

“No problem. I will probably have a boring day just waiting around. This made it at least a little bit more interesting.”

With that, I left, and instead of heading to do my last test, I sat down on one of the benches that was against the corridor. I guess I just needed to hope that the variant I had would fix the problem with my ability.

“Lola, did you get that all?”

“I did. Perhaps we should go through the paperwork before you head to the next test. And by the way, I found out that you don’t actually have to take that test, and I recommend you don’t.”

“Just take the revealing crystal accessory they will give you and make sure the crystal is the correct size for the chip. Afterwards, you would just need to purchase the librarian and the program for 125,000 mana credits so we could get constant updates and track your progress.”

“Acknowledged,” I said back. It seems that that froze her for a moment.

“Let’s start with the first page. We’ll start by filling out your name and go from there.”

It took me about 30 minutes to write everything down. It was a good thing that I had a habit of always bringing a pencil with me just in case I needed to write something down.

The last location was in more of an open room with multiple side rooms and waiting areas. There was even a counter, with a small shopping area.

There was no line at the moment, so I just walked up and showed the person behind the counter the test paper.

“Oh, someone who’s actually registering. You seem to have fingers—let me just see if I have something that would fit it,” she said while going through a box underneath the counter.

It didn’t take her long to pull out an awfully fancy-looking ring that would fit one of my fingers with a revealing crystal set on it.

The ring itself wouldn't matter as I wasn't going to wear it, but the revealing crystal—that was a problem. It was too big.

"Are there any others I could choose from? And I wish to skip this part of the test."

"Yes, you can have a look at this box. Give me that paper—I will fill it out. But note that you would be given free information about your affinity if you choose to go through the test."

"Yes, I know that, but still—it's a no."

She just handed me the box with all kinds of different rings and necklaces. She did seem a bit annoyed as she filled out my paperwork and occasionally glanced at me, seeing what types of accessories I was looking at.

It took a bit of digging because there were quite a lot of different types of accessories here, with all of them having revealing crystals fastened into or onto them. Eventually, I found quite a small revealing crystal that was set in a ring that obviously wasn't going to fit any of my fingers, as it was way too small. But this revealing crystal was quite flat, which means that I could use it for the chip.

"I’ll take this one if it’s fine with you?"

She looked at what I picked and seemed a bit confused.

"You know, usually people that want to pick their own try to pick the biggest revealing crystal because—one, they are more expensive, and two, the bigger the revealing crystal you have, the more of a status symbol it is amongst quite a lot of adventurers."

"I didn’t know that, but I wouldn’t be interested in that anyways."

"That's nice to hear, because the size of the revealing crystal actually doesn't matter for its purpose. Anyways, I filled out the paperwork—have a good day."

"And a good day to you as well," I said as I headed towards my last destination.

This time, when I knocked on the door, I heard a response almost immediately.

"The doors open, please come in."

As I opened the door, I was in an office that was quite tastefully decorated, with objects I knew nothing of, as they looked quite foreign to me. There was a person sitting behind the desk, doing some paperwork.

“I finished filling out all the paperwork, and I’m done with the tests.”

“Oh, someone actually registering? Yes, I think I got the notification a bit ago. Please take a seat and hand me those papers.”

As I walked closer to take a seat, he scanned me with a wrist device, and started to look up something on his computer. I put the papers on the desk and sat down, just waiting. It didn’t take him long to look at me, then pick up the papers and start to go through them.

“So, you’re trying to register as a space adventurer. If you were to register as just an adventurer, there wouldn’t be any costs to it, but as a space adventurer, you would need an Adventurer Association quantum computer on board to accept missions and so that the association could always be in contact with you.”

“That would cost quite a lot of mana credits, even if the association is willing to compensate 90% of the value of the quantum computer for first-time registrants. Your part of the cost would be 100,000. Is this cost something acceptable?”

“Yes, that sounds more than fair.”

“Good, good. Let me just go through all the paperwork to see if anything’s wrong, and if not, we’ll get you registered with the association and your ship as well.”

For the next nearly ten minutes, he just went through the papers and filled answers into whatever software they were using to keep track of everything.

“Now, everything seems to be in order—which is surprising. I usually don’t see that, so well done. I would just need 100,000 mana credits from you. In what way do you wish to pay it?”

“Can I just transfer over the equivalent in this station’s currency?”

“Certainly, that’s more than acceptable. Let me get the transfer window open.”

I noticed a digital portal coming up with the relevant information, so I transferred the correct amount of credits.

“Already done. Superb. Let me just finish your registration. The printing of the card will take a minute. This card is what makes you an adventurer. You can use it to verify yourself and make yourself a digital verification code. You can also use it with the association’s quantum computer to verify your ship and yourself as the captain.”

“When you get further crew, they would need to use your card to verify themselves with the quantum computer as well. We recommend you do not lose that card, but there are ways of getting new ones—it’s just a lot of complicated steps, so I recommend you don’t lose it.”

I heard a noise coming from beneath his table. Immediately, he reached down and brought out a metal-looking card with my face on it and basic information about me, but there wasn’t my current rank or even what ability I had. The only decoration on the card, except for the basic information and the picture, was the logo of the Adventurer Association: that of five stars in a row.

As I took the card from him, I could feel that the metal was something I’d never been in contact with before. It seemed incredibly sturdy, but I could also feel that there were some signals coming from inside. As I interpreted those, I figured out that those were my codes. They were incredibly long and encrypted to high heaven.

“The quantum computer will be sent to your docking bay within the next three days. And that's it. Congratulations, you're officially an adventurer.”

“Thank you,” I said as I started to leave. All of this had still taken quite a lot of time, but I still had about two hours before my interview.

“Lola, using my adventurer card codes, can you get access to the association’s library and purchase that program with that library?”

“Yes. It's going to cost 125,000 mana credits. Do I make the purchase?”

“Damn, that's a lot—but yes.”

I was already outside the association’s compound and walking toward the stairs.

“I have everything downloaded and ready to go,” Lola said only about five minutes later.

“That’s good, but I can’t wait until I finish making the chip. You should be able to use the library, right? When I’m on the stairs, I will let the revealing crystal do its job.”

“That’s a good idea. That would allow me to do more specific research.”

When I finally made it to the stairs, I pulled out the stone with the revealing crystal and held it in my palm. As I moved, the revealing crystal that was originally white started to change.

If I had normal eyes, it would have just looked like the crystal now glowed a little, but I zoomed in quite heavily to see that this crystal was now the exact copy of my mana core. But this one was a lot easier to interpret.

If I eventually get skills, it should even show those here, which would be almost impossible to distinguish if I were to look inside of myself.

“Your current core is split into three equal parts. One is the basic affinity, another is the mind affinity, and the last one is something called the mechanist affinity.”

“As stated before, the basic affinity is the most versatile allowing for many different skills to be learned and will empower you overall.”

“The mind affinity will allow you to learn skills in that category and will boost your mental capabilities whenever you grow stronger.”

“The mechanist affinity is a strange one. It would explain why during your mana rebirth you were able to connect to everything and you didn’t reject any cybernetics.”

“It seems that this affinity will allow you to better understand machinery and everything involved with making things. Growing stronger would make you even better at understanding everything involving this affinity.”

I put the revealing crystal back into my pocket. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had, because if that became general knowledge, my enemies could find ways to take advantage of me.

Honestly, it would have been even better if I could have kept my innate ability hidden. But unfortunately, that wasn’t possible, and it was required that you revealed that during the registration.

As for the last affinity itself, I liked it a lot.

Now came the question: what sort of skills could I actually learn?

“Lola?”

“I’m already looking into what kind of skills you could learn, but I have some bad news. Even the most basic ones are around a million mana credits.”

“Well, shit.”