Ning stood in the hall of the ship, watching the entire solar system fly past him.
Nulwurn was far behind now as they had been flying at impossible speeds for a few minutes now.
Saphandra sat on his shoulders and looked at her arms. "I feel… weird," she said. "It's like I'm drowning or something."
"It's probably because we are out of the system with Spiritual energy in it," Ning said. He confirmed with the system and he was indeed correct.
"So, can I not use my powers again?" Saphandra thought and tried to pull on something.
"Stop!" Ning said. "You can use them, but if you do, you will end up like Aimee was when she was little blue."
"I'll be without consciousness?" she asked. "Well, I don't want that."
"Don't worry," Ning said. "If you ever do end up that way, I have a way to restore you. Although, from what I can guess, it will take a long time."
Ning walked away from the hall and arrived at the bridge of the ship.
"Captain, what's our status?" Ning asked.
The captain of the ship was a man named Gerrbax. He was human, for the most part, but part of his physique included a furry little tail that constantly moved around.
Aside from the captain, Ning had learned that there were about 10 more crew members and he had dominated all of them to do his bidding.
The crew members were mostly human, but some of them were a bit different physiologically, whether it be missing organs or some extra organs.
For now, they were unaffected by his will, doing whatever they thought was right.
"FRS Icefall is approaching the Heliopause of this system, master. Once we are out, we can activate the Space Drive," the captain said.
Ning nodded. "Don't jump until I've told you to," he said and left the bridge.
Saphandra flew a little behind him, looking at everything.
Ning walked through the narrow hallway of the ship and looked at the various rooms here.
Unlike the ship he had, which was a survey vessel, FRS Icefall was a Research vessel. It was made in the ice planet Frymston, and was tasked with researching any given planet to understand it better.
They were mainly tasked with finding planets that could be mined for their resources. Any life-less planets were unhesitatingly stripped of any resources, while planets with life were thought of with more care.
Ning saw many research equipment on the ship which he walked away from.
Finally, he arrived at end of the ship and opened the door to the space drive. There was a man inside, but Ning had already dominated him, so he was ignored.
Ning looked at the machine that was working in the center but ignored it to look at the capsules to the left.
He picked out one of the capsules and looked at it. Inside the capsule was a silver rock that acted as if it was without weight.
That was true as Space stones were without mass and thus were without weight.
Ning looked at the size of the one here. The space stone was large enough to barely fit in his closed fist.
"This is way larger than the small speck of dust I saw before," Ning said. "How much space does this space stone contain?"
<41000 cubic kilometers>
"Oh… only?" Ning asked. Granted he didn't have a good perception of how big a cubic kilometer was, it still felt weird to learn that such a big space stone was only so big.
"Didn't a speck of dust end up being like 500 Million something previously? Am I understanding something wrong?" Ning asked.
<A single cubic centimeter of space stone, in a universe like this where space isn't constrained, has about 234 cubic kilometers of space in it.>
<The same Space Stone can be turned into a Space Drive to teleport a ship up to 234 Billion Kilometers in distance.>
"Oh, so this one can help me travel up to…" Ning tried to do some mental arithmetics, but there were too many zeros to keep track of.
"41… Trillion Kilometers?" Ning asked.
<Yes>
<Which in lightyear is?"
<4.32 Lightyears>
"Huh?" Ning thought as he looked at the stone inside the cylinder. "That's not bad at all."
"What's not bad?" Saphandra asked curiously. She heard him talking to himself and knew he was speaking with his system, but she was curious too.
"Oh, uhh…" Ning had to explain everything he knew about space stones to her from what he could remember.
"So this little silver stone holds this much space?" Saphandra asked.
Ning went through the rest of the capsules and found that half of them had more stones, some which were larger, some which were smaller.
The rest were empty.
All in all, in the nearly 30 different capsules, there were about 100 to 150 lightyears worth of Space stones.
That… was not very much.
"Master, we are arriving at the Heliopause," the captain spoke over the speakers.
"Let's go," Ning said and walked back into the bridge.
He arrived just in time to see the boundary of the solar system where the heliosphere was kept in equilibrium by the interstellar wind.
He felt slight turbulence as he crossed the boundary, but it was barely anything to the crew members who were used to it.
"Should I initiate the Space Drive, master," the captain asked.
Ning looked out. "Where are we going exactly?" he asked.
"Since we were here on a detour to pick you up, we will have to return to the Federation Service Station located in this cluster of the quadrant, so we can drop you off and go back to work," the captain said.
Ning thought for a moment. "No need," he said. "Just go do your job as you want and don't even think that I'm here."
He wanted to see how the research vessel worked exactly.
"Even then, we still have to restock, master," the captain said.
Ning nodded. "I see, do what you must then. Start the Space Drive."
