17 Reward
Ed got back to his business face and sat back in his seat as Dea sat across from him. She seems to be in good enough condition for a serious talk, so he got back to his original business calling her.
"The reason I called you here is about Aya's promise, she told me she promised you that I would let you free," he explained.
"Um..." she nodded, "Could you please let her go too?" she asked hopefully.
"That is up to her to decide, but she would not be welcome back home or anywhere in human space. You must have noticed her and my change. We are no longer human," he told her bluntly.
"Anyway, as for your freedom, I can unlock your collar but I can't let you out of our ship anytime soon," he continued.
"Why? Didn't you say you will let me free?" she frowned.
"You basically kidnaped the only heir of the Terror family, do you think you will be able to get home without Aya? Your bounty might be even bigger than mine," he reasoned with her.
Dea was silent once she realized that what he said was actually true. Unless Aya went back and voluntarily said it was her idea to escape, then she would be treated like a criminal.
"The best I can promise you is to let you go once we reach somewhere the Terror family could not reach. What do you think?" he asked her.
"Yes, please," she agreed to his suggestion.
"Okay, that's all I wanted to say. If you don't have anything you want to talk about, you can leave now," he ended as he didn't have any more topics with her.
"Thank you, Captain. For a lot of things," he said before leaving him alone in his workroom.
Once she left the room, Ed got to another business, two of his missions have been completed, with that last encounter, Dea's favorability finally reached a slight trust level and he could submit his mission for the reward.
"hmm... for now let's see what the mercenary mission gives me," he thought as he redeemed his reward from the mission.
'Reward: 1 x full heal Nano-bot'
'Redeem now? (Y/N)'
He got a healing tool; it seems that he could keep it in the system if he didn't want to use it just yet.
"System tells me the details of this item," he commanded the system AI.
'Full heal Nano-bot is a consumable life-saving item. No matter how bad people wound it as long as they are alive then they would be as good as new after using this item... Beep...' the AI responded.
"Oh... this is really good, it is as if I have an extra life," he thought to himself as he looked at the other mission.
With a single thought, he claimed the reward from the system.
'Reward: 2 x pirate lucky spin'
'Redeem now? (Y/N)'
"Yes," he redeemed the lucky spin as he didn't need to ask the system for details the name already explained what it was for.
Another screen appeared in front of him. It was like a roulette game screen; it showed that he had two credits and could spin it twice.
Before he could see further, another notification popped up on his system screen.
'Rank up!!! Current rank Pirate Captain!'
'Congratulation!!! On advancing!'
'Reward: 5 x Pirate lucky spin'
'Redeem now? (Y/N)
"Oh, I fulfilled them already," he thought as he redeemed the reward, increasing his lucky draw chance to 7 draws.
"hmm... let's see what I can get from this roulette," he mumbled as he studied the roulette.
There was so much reward in the system's roulette that he could not check them all, but he could understand the basics of the rewards.
The bad spin would give him Pirate credit, Pirate credit could be used in the System shop to buy things in the shop.
He just ranked up, so he hasn't checked the system shop just yet, "I need to check it after this," he thought.
The other was consumable items like the full heal Nano-bot. There was quite a lot of consumable that he could get, some was good while some were bad.
The jackpot was a golden item chest, silver item chest, and bronze item chest, each of them could contain a piece of technology or blueprint.
There was a function that he could do five spins at once or do one spin at a time, from understanding some game mechanics, he knew that 5-time spin has a higher chance of getting a good draw even only slightly.
"hmm... I should save the other two spins and wait for another chance," he thought as he used five of his spin chances all at once.
The roulette in the screen spun for a few seconds before it stopped, then continued spinning again. It stopped five times before staying silent afterward.
When it stopped the first four times, he was very disappointed as all of them gave him pirate credit as a reward, in total he gained 350.000 pirate credit. He did not know how much 350.000 pirate credit WAs, but knowing that he could gain a million pirate credits with a single pull if he was lucky, then 350.000 felt like a bad draw.
"Please give me something good," he thought when it stopped at the last reward.
A silver box image appears in front of him as the roulette stops, a big text saying 'Silver Treasure' appears on his screen.
"Lucky!" he thought as he directly redeemed the silver treasure box. A medium-sized box appeared in front of him like it was conjured out of thin air.
He warily got close to the box, but he was not brave enough to open it directly.
"Altea, scan this box for me, check if there is anything suspicious," he commanded the Alpha-Charlie's AI.
"Reporting Captain, our scan could not pierce the silver box. Do you need me to send a robot to open it for you?" Altea asked.
"No, Just get ready for an emergency," he replied.
Ed was quite pleased that the AI did not ask anything about the box's origin, it seems to find the phenomenon normal.
He opened the silver box with a single press of a button as the box was some kind of advanced lockbox rather than a normal box.
Once he pressed the button, the box vaporized into thin air, revealing a single data chip.
He took it and inserted it directly into his smartwatch, letting the watch read what was inside the data chip.
It reveals a design schematic of some kind of laser weapon. But Ed did not have the required knowledge to make sense of what he saw.
With a frown he called the AI once more, "Altea, can you explain this for me?" he asked.
"Sure, Captain. Give me a few seconds for my system to scan the data," it replied.
After a few seconds, it started to explain the data chip's content, "This is a design schematic of a grade-B weapon system, it's called Aeon Laser Mk-V, from this data we could say that its performance is almost twice as good as Red Falcon's laser rifle," it explained.
"That's good, Can we adopt it for the Alpha-Charlie and Red Falcon's rifle?" he asked again.
"We need an engineer to adapt this design to our need as it's originally designed to be a handgun rather than a starship laser or mecha laser weapon. We also don't have the required material to build it," it replied.
"Engineer? Hmm... I think I need to give that 'man' another visit," he thought as he dismissed the AI.
Overall, his lucky spin was not that bad. He could build laser guns for his crew with the blueprint once he had the material, but for it, he would need to visit a market to buy the material.
"I need to visit a space station or a planet that has a material market," he thought. Of course, there were a lot of such places, but he could not visit them as pirates were not welcome in most of them.
He would need to visit a pirate base or planet owned by pirates if he hoped to trade for some material.
Of course, that came with another problem, Ed did not have any money on his person to buy such material that could be used to build a grade-B technology.
"Ha..." he sighs as it has been years since he didn't have any money to buy what he wanted, he usually could just buy whatever he wanted.
"There is no use in crying over it, I just need to find a way to make money," he decided to start his business in the pirate world.
He turned his focus toward another system screen that got unlocked when he ranked up the system shop.
It was filled with all kinds of consumables and technology, but it cost so much even for a simple blueprint. He did not have enough pirate credit to buy one.
The full heal Nano-bot that he got from the mission reward was sold for a million pirate credit in the shop.
"Damn, this system is really a pirate system, This price is robbery!!!" he retorted.
