It didn't take long for an additional 20 drones to be constructed, even when they were different from the first 20.

  I hadn't really thought of their names yet, but I had 10 hovering mining drones and 10 wheeled drones to command.

  The 20 Jeff's were idle along the cargo wall. Curled up and just sitting there. I didn't know if they were charging or just waiting so I left them alone while focusing my attention on the new 20. The miners had 8 limbs with various mining tools. From drills, lasers, giant clamp hands for holding or crushing rocks, and some just had hands like the Jeff's. The camera was different for both the miners and the science team.

  While the Jeff's had the singular camera that ran on a track around it's body, the miners had a giant dome with flat surfaces like a 50 sided die. Each flat surface had a camera within, so the miners had something like a giant singular insectoid eye. Capable of seeing in every direction around it. The way the drones flew and hovered boggled my mind, because they just had this disk inserted into the slot on their bottom that let them have no gravity. I had no idea how it worked.

  The science team had more cameras then the Jeff's but way less then the miners. It was similar to how microscopes had different lenses, but they were cameras that twisted and turned. Some also zoomed in by extending their lenses out further. It was interesting to watch them all test their functions before being turned on. The wheels didn't look like anything special. Just 4 tires made out of the same stuff the Jeff's feet were. The wheels were on small robotic arms that worked as a type of suspension, and they could scale walls just like the Jeff's. It felt like over kill but I wasn't going to swap them out. Their limbs were mostly smaller hands then the rest. Tiny delicate fingers made for dexterity rather than strength, but some did have the normal long fingered hands. They had pretty much every scientific tool at their disposal inside their body, so they were a bit wider then the others.

  The tallest were the Jeff's, the science team members were about my height, and the miners were the shortest since they didn't need legs or wheels. It was getting tiresome addressing them mentally so I got to thinking of some names while they stared at me in silence. I expected the drones to be bad at flying but I'm just a fool. I should increase my Intelligence next chance I get.

  "What should I call you... Hmmmm." I rubbed my helmets chin while looking deep into their lenses.

  I was drawing a blank while they all looked at me. Just waiting and not a single movement between them.

  "We'll worry about it later. Mining squad, go idle with the Jeff's. Science team, follow me." I'd think of something later.

  I led the science experts to the labs. Which could barely contain all of the drones but it would work.

  "Alright, so I need you girls to study something for me." I said while putting the rings and things I had been carrying around in a skin sack on the center table.

  "These are items I got from several Dungeons. I have no idea what they do or what level they are. I want you to try and identify them. Once you figure that out we can compare the data to the stuff I have stored in a skill I have." I finished giving my orders and the drones wheeled around the table.

  Some passed the items around while others immediately began to look at the items. Holding them up to their lenses and just spinning them around. There was a lot of items on the table and I was glad I didn't have to carry them around anymore. I felt like a caveman using the skin bag.

  As I was walking out of the lab I wanted to smack myself in the head. 'Why didn't I buy a bag or maybe even a magic one?!' I lamented my foolishness in leaving as quickly as I did. I'd have to make a list of things I wanted next trip I made to a station.

  I took the elevator up to the command center to check the distance left, and we still had about 2 hours to go. I took a look at the security cameras and saw that Gill was still lounging in the recreational area, so I went down there to bother him.

  "Gill, is there a Guild base there? You wanted a ride to the planet but where exactly are you going?" I asked while floating up to him.

  "Yeah we moved our HQ to the moon, but not many of us actually stay there. Most of us go out to do missions since we need the money." Gill didn't bother turning around.

  "I see." I looked at what he was watching but I didn't understand it.

  Some action drama show I didn't feel like watching so I left.

  'Guess I'll find something to do.'

  ...

  I hadn't found anything to do.

  I was bored while I fiddled with my designs of the base I was going to build, but they were done already.

  When we finally got close enough to the planet to drop out of the weird FTL tunnel I got a good look at the AP and it's moon.

  The planet was huge. The Fenthis-17's scanners were measuring the planet to be 15 times Earths size, with a 209,900 km diameter. That makes the Gravity like 225 times that of Earths. The atmosphere was thick and full of multi colored clouds. Some were red, some blue, but most were purple. I could kind of see the surface below, and it was green. Likely covered in jungles and forests. Not much of an ocean, at least from this side.

  There was such a large quantity of mithril, adamantium, and that unknown material that the scanners could actually detect them from space. 'Sweet! Rare minerals!' I was excited about that. I couldn't see any activity that spoke of a mining operation though.

  "There she is. The massive treasure chest that no one can open." Gill said while walking up from behind, just coming out of an elevator.

  "So no one has been able to start mining or doing anything with it?" I asked while looking at the various scan data points.

  "Nope. We found it first, and we know what it's worth, but we don't have the man power or funds to get started. While others could possibly start mining the resources, they would lose a lot just getting the stuff off world." Gill said while smirking.

  "Why not just sell it if you can't mine it?" There was a lot of mundane resources as well. Iron and the like.

  "We thought of that too, but the only Guilds able to buy keep low balling the price. Basically asking for us to give it away." Gill leaned down to look at the data over my head.

  "You won't care if I try my hand at mining it right? Because I'm definitely going to at least try." I tried to look up at him, but my helmet blocked my view.

  "We were actually going to ask you to. Christinia, the Guild leader, has this idea that you could do it for some reason. Don't get me wrong, I saw the video of you nuking a planet, but I doubt bombing the surface would be enough to mine it."

  "I couldn't just bomb it so thoroughly the planet cracks into smaller pieces?" I wasn't going to, but it was an idea.

  "...No I don't think so. Pretty sure not even you could destroy a planet this big." Gill sounded skeptical.

  "Not yet anyway." I muttered while using the scanners on the moon.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Yeah the moon is just rock. We got unlucky with that part." Gill said while the scans did in fact come back with tiny amounts of mundane materials.

  The moon itself was tiny. About 907 km in diameter, or 2 times smaller than Earths moon. It was the same dull white color, and covered in craters.

  "No kidding. Oh there's the base." I muttered as the scanners detected a small structure.

  I willed the ship to approach the moon, setting a course for the structure. It only took a few minutes before the Guild base noticed us and hailed.

  "You're trespassing- Oh hey Gill. Is that..?" Another greyish alien the same race of Gill asked.

  It sounded like a woman, and she had actual hair. That or it just looked like it. She was wearing casual attire. It was so bland it was kind of disappointing to see an alien wearing it. It was a turtle neck sweater. A turtle neck. In a completely different universe. Ridiculous.

  "Hello, Fraya. Yeah this is him. The Dark Lord Azurath." Gill said and I cringed internally.

  "Greetings, just call me Azurath or Az." I gave a lame wave.

  "Nice to meet you and welcome to the Guild Az!" Fraya smiled

  "I'm going to setup a base somewhere on the moon and then find a way to extract the planets resources." I say, skipping the small talk.

  "Woah, you'll really do it? How did Gill convince you?" Fraya looked shocked.

  "He actually asked for permission to do so before I could properly ask. Though I was going to wait until we met with Christinia." Gill replied, still smug as ever.

  "Can we skip that part then? I want to start right away before I hit level 5. Trying to get good skills related to R&D and a few other things." I asked, really not looking forward to any talks with important people.

  "Oh? When do you turn level 5?" Fraya asked, looking pleased like I just said it was my birthday.

  "In... 17 hours and 38 minutes." I checked the Quest timer.

  "It's fine. We'll talk later." A new feminine voice spoke up from somewhere but I couldn't tell where.

  "That was Christinia. She's a powerful psychic of our species." Gill could probably tell I was confused.

  "Well you heard her. We'll talk later Az. See you!" Fraya smiled then ended the call.

  "You can just go over the base and I'll jump off the cargo ramp." Gill said while going back to the elevator.

  "If you say so." I spoke after him and he gave a wave over his shoulder.

  As we got closer to the base, I could see what it was. It was poorly built and it looked like a scrapped ship turned into a habitat. I don't think it was capable of flying anymore, since it seemed to be folded into an L shape. A few rooms stuck out of it's sides, likely additions to the ruined ship. 'For being seemingly high leveled, they sure do look poor.' I thought as I checked on the security cams.

  Gill was standing on the cargo ramp, and when we passed right over the Guild HQ he jumped. I lost sight of him pretty fast since I was flying pretty high.

  "Time to start looking for a resource dense zone. Hopefully." I muttered as I started scanning.

  ...

  This moon sucked.

  It barely had any iron deposits.

  Or anything really.

  Thankfully it did have everything I needed to begin construction. I could match what I needed in the designer app with the sensors on the ship. So once I found a spot with all of the needed resources nearby, I landed.

  "Alright Newman's, it's time to mine." I spoke into the intercom in the command center.

  I had decided to name the mining drones Newman-1 through 10, and I smiled as 10 flying drones flew out of the cargo bay and immediately started scanning around. They knew where the general location of the resources were from the ship scanners, but they needed to find the stuff close to the surface.

  "Jeff's, recycle the metal paneling from your crates and turn them into refineries." I spoke into the intercom again, waking up all of the Jeff's.

  They got to work immediately, pouncing onto the piles of panels and ripping them apart. Cutting with plasma then welding the pieces into something I designed earlier.

  "Set them up outside of the cargo bay and on the moon please." I ordered them after they tried to get one fired up inside.

  I watched them work for a bit longer, then chose to let them work in peace when I didn't see any problems. I made my way down to the lab, to finally give the science team their names.

  "Alright, I've got a name settled for you girls. Sally-1 through 10. Determine who's who by oldest to youngest." I gave the order and since it was a tiny software alteration, it was done instantly.

  "Sally-1, Has there been any progress?" I asked, and a robot I had luckily singled out correctly rolled up to me.

  It didn't say anything but it did send a report to my HUD's interface.

  It was a simple report, but it also hurt my eyes to look at so I modified it. It would be blue like my system windows the next time I received one.

  "Good work. Keep it up." I gave a thumbs up and Sally-1 rolled back to the table.

  I thought about asking the rest what they had one by one but decided that I would leave them alone for now. I had a gut feeling that when I hit level 5 something would happen. I felt like I needed to be laying down or somewhere safe for what was to come. I don't know why I felt this way but I wasn't going to ignore the feeling when it kept pestering me. I went up to the recreational center and sat back on a couch for some mind numbing tv.

  I scrolled through some channels while looking for something interesting and I found a show about the authorities catching crooks and interacting with druggies. It was space cops. So I naturally settled on watching it for the next 8 or so hours.

  ...

  I was in my bed in the captains quarters, laying on my back on a bed way too big for me but it was soft.

  I kept my suit on. The gut feeling kept telling me I needed to be in a safe environment, and my suit had proved to be my safest space.

  I was staring at the quest timer as it kept creeping toward 0.

  "Jerald, will I hit level 5 instantly or will it wait for me to read my notifications?" I asked while the timer hit 1 minute and 43 seconds.

  "It should be instant. Though it is not uncommon for users to be unaware of new abilities until they first read about them."

  "What happens when someone hits level 5?" I asked while it hit 1 minute and 9 seconds.

  "Usually it's just a level up. It is a milestone so you get some bonuses."

  "Why don't I get Stat Points when I level up at all?" The timer hit 38 seconds.

  "I don't know. You should have received at least some. There isn't a listed reason in the remnants of your old system." Jerald sounded weirded out.

  "Maybe I leveled up too fast. Or the quests gave me plenty of stats. Is the weird gut feeling normal?" The time hit 5 seconds.

  "What? What gut feeli-" Jerald was cut off as everything started lagging.

  The world was lagging.

  Jerald was stuck repeating the same last microsecond of his words. When I tried to get up I rubber banded back to the bed. 'This doesn't help me feel like this universe is real.' Which was a real problem. No matter what I saw, who I interacted with, or experienced anything this universe had to offer. It all felt like a game or dream. None of it felt real but I knew it was. I was losing my grip on reality and this was making it worse.

  I tried to speak but the same rubber banding problem made me shut me up every time. Every time I breathed I would get rubber banded to the previous breath. It was giving me vertigo as my heart was forced to beat irregularly. Thankfully there wasn't any pain, but I was getting dizzy from the improperly fired neurons in my brain. The only reason I could do anything at all or remember the fact I was lagging was likely due to my EA skill doing that Soul Cultivation thing.

  I stopped trying to do anything, even when I closed my eyes they were forced open. So I was just staring up at the ceiling, and at a blank blue window. The timer had vanished but the window remained.

  Eventually everything just stopped. Time wasn't moving. I couldn't move, and I couldn't feel anything inside me moving. You can't feel your heart beating most of the time, but when you notice it you can't un-notice it. It's the same when it stops. I was forced to stare at a blue window in complete silence. For some reason I wasn't scared. The gut feeling I had telling me that this was normal.

  Then the window started to change before me.

  It was turning green.

  Then words glitched onto the screen.

  'Oh that's not good.' I thought as I was forced to look at the corrupted text. I was still calm for some reason, my instincts telling me I was fine. Even when the situation probably said otherwise.

  The window began to grow as everything got taken over by green. The words corrupted even further until it was unreadable. My vision turning green and white.

  Then the text opened like an eye.