Destination

"Eh?! They actually sell such a thing!" Ed looked at the System shop in front of him.

Other than consumables, they also sell professional experiences such as ship piloting, unarmed fight, mecha piloting, and many more.

The price also varies depending on the profession and how much experience they were talking about. They sell one year, five years, ten years, and twenty years of experience.

"With this, I could actually become an expert in piloting mecha and other things without spending years of my life for the job," he realized.

"But the price is too much," he complained as a year of piloting experience already cost a hundred thousand pirate credits, and the five-year one cost ten times as much.

"System, can I use five one-year experience for myself?" He asked the system if it was possible to get more experience for a cheaper price.

"Answering to idiot Host, you would not get better in the profession with five one-year experience as you will just get the same knowledge over and over again," it informed him.

Ed was annoyed by the system who made fun of him but he just let it be as he could not stop it from doing so.

"then how should I spend my pirate credit," he browsed the shop for anything good, but he did not find anything to his liking.

In the end, he decided to buy melee mecha piloting experience and firearms experience for a hundred thousand pirate credit each, leaving him with a hundred and fifty thousand pirate credit that he decided to keep for when he needed it.

The melee mecha piloting experience he bought was so he could pilot his C-2 better, in the last deployment he was really close to death if not for his quick thinking, his piloting skill was too bad and it really needed to be remedied as soon as possible.

The firearms experience was because he would not always fight inside a mecha, he would need to be able to protect himself in case of emergency.

From his memory, he knew the original body owner could barely hit a target ten meters away from him as he did not get a lot of chance to train his marksmanship.

Ed himself had learned to use a handgun for protection when his business started to expand. He could say he was better than the original body owner in marksmanship, but it was not enough to make him confident in a real fight.

"With this, I should be ready for any combat situation," he thought to himself as he was quite confident in himself in close-quarter combat as he had trained in kickboxing and many other martial arts back on his world for self-protection.

Once he finalized his purchase, a lockbox made of an unknown metal appeared in front of him as if it was teleported there.

With a single press of a button, it opened up, revealing two cans of soda before the box itself vaporized into thin air.

"Huh? Is this the experience? I thought it would directly go into my mind," he thought as he picked up the first can.

Both cans looked similar, if not for a label telling him what was inside. The one he picked up was the marksmanship experience.

After a few seconds of hesitation, he opened the can and drank its content. He could taste lemon from the soda drink, it was refreshing that reminded him of a drink from his own world.

He did not have time to bask in the memory as a sudden burst of knowledge slammed into his head; it gave him a slight headache as it integrated into his brain and subconsciousness. He could feel his muscle tighten as muscle memory of a year of marksmanship training got engraved on it.

"Fuck! that was intense, they should have given a warning before someone buys it," he complained to himself.

It took him a few minutes to recover before he opened the other can of experience and drank it. This time it tasted sweet, like a red canned coke from his old world. He felt the same experience once more because the experience and muscle memory of piloting melee mecha got engraved into his body.

He was prepared this time and recovered faster from the process required to get the experience, with his new knowledge he could understand how noob he was in piloting the C-2, with such a mecha he could have finished the fight way sooner and with less risk.

Ed wanted to test the newly gained experience, but he knew that it was not time yet, he had a lot more to do before he had free time to explore his new toy.

"Altea, call Arnold to my office now, I have things to discuss with the man," Command the ever-present AI.

"Yes, Captain. I have notified him to come to your room in five minutes," It replied to him.

Two minutes passed and the former vice-captain of Star Chaser reached his room, "Sir!" he saluted him like in the military custom.

"At ease soldier," he played along with the former military man and signed him to sit in front of him.

Of course, soldiers are not supposed to sit in front of their superior when they were on duty but Ed did not plan to be a military, a little bit was fine to keep discipline but going too far would not be good for his pirate group.

Arnold sat in front of him but kept his silence and waited for him to talk with him as in the military, a soldier only talk when they were talked to or being told to speak.

"You can speak your mind Arnold, this is not the military," he reminded the man.

"Yes, Sir," he replied at Ed.

Seeing the man continue to be that way, he did not insist for him to change, "I called you here to talk about our next destination, as you can see, the Alpha-Charlie will be repaired in a few days and I want to leave this star system before reinforcement from Terror family reaches this star system," he informed the man.

"Where do you think we should go?" Ed asked the man as his advisor.

"We should get out from Terror Duchy or even the Balot Kingdom. If you want to find somewhere, we can recruit more people to man the Alpha-Charlie, then we should go to a pirate base in the dark cluster," the man suggested.

Terror duchy is the territory owned by the Terror family, which is part of the Balot kingdom. It was a Grade-C nation that had hundreds of star-systems in their territory.

To be safe, then they need to leave the nation and go to a remote place where no nation has a claim as their territory.

The dark cluster was one of them, it was a part of the star cluster that was covered with way more dark matter than normal. No nation wanted such a troublesome place as there were a lot of space creatures that live in the dark cluster.

It was the place where pirates and alien races chose to live in; they built their own space station and colonized their own planet away from Galactic Alliance's reach.

"Have you been there before?" he asked the man.

"No, Sir. Star Chaser was not big enough to take a mission into the dark cluster, but we still have a lot of information in our database, the closest pirate base that is open for visitors is Millenium Base, they are one of the few friendly pirate bases in the Dark cluster," the man explained.

"How long will it take for us to reach the Millenium Base?" Ed asked.

"Considering this ship has an alien tech FTL drive, I'd say around two weeks at most," he replied.

"How about our preparation? Do you think we will be able to reach it with our current strength?" Ed asked his new advisor.

"It would be risky Sir, we don't have enough mecha to defend our ship and with our alien tech, This ship is basically a juicy target for the pirate," Arnold answered honestly.

A lot of pirate groups would attack them if they knew they only have three mecha with them, as they usually have at least a squad of six mecha with them and could easily outnumber them.

"They don't know we only have three functioning Mecha, for all they know, we might have twenty mecha with us," Ed told him.

Light carriers such as Alpha-Charlie could easily carry 20 mecha with them, and if they push it, then it might be able to carry 24 mecha.

"Yeah, we might be able to bluff them, but it would be safer if we disguise our ship as a normal pirate ship," Arnold suggested.

"Okay, I will tell Altea to give the Alpha-Charlie a makeover," Ed agreed.

Actually, the Alpha-Charlie was practically undetected when it was dormant, but if the pirates have good enough sensors as the Star Chaser then they might be able to spot the alien starship.

"Anyway, there is another matter we need to address. What do you think is a good name for our pirate crew?" Ed asked his new advisor.