"Come on! I thought I was supposed to listen to what you were hearing. Why did I listen to nothing? What was that about a black hole? What are you talking about?" Saphandra shouted in frustration.
Sitting there, listening to what was basically nonsense on her end was quite annoying to say the least.
"System, can she not hear our conversation?" Ning asked.
<These conversations are happening in your mind, so she can't hear you. Do you want her to?>
"Yes," Ning said.
<Understood.>
"Alright, you should be able to listen to our conversation from now on, but for now all you need to understand is that I found our next destination," Ning said to the spirit on his shoulders.
"What's the destination?" she asked.
Ning made the star chart visible to her and showed the wormhole that was next to the black hole. "This is our destination for now. We need to get here within the next thousand years," he said.
However, just then Ning realized something. "Wait, won't the time slow down around the black hole? I don't have a thousand years in total, do I?" he asked.
<Around the black hole, time moves at 10 times slower speed, and up to 100 times slower at the distance where the wormhole lies.>
"Ooh, that's the system? I can't tell if that's a male voice or a female one," Saphandra said.
"That sounds like a male voice to me," Ning said.
"Sounds kind of feminine to me," Saphandra said. "So, anyway. We have to go there. That seems far away."
"Haha, come with me, I'll explain how close it actually is."
Ning proceeded to tell her everything he learned from the system just now, as he walked the hallways of the ship.
"Woah! Another universe? Sounds fun," Saphandra said.
Ning arrived at the Cryo-room where all of the crew mates, including the captain, had gone into cryo-sleep.
"Well, they're asleep. Guess we have nothing to do but wait around for over a hundred years now," Ning said.
"A-are you seriously going to wait for a hundred years? Are you not going to sleep?" she asked.
"No, I have something I need to do that I haven't been able to do for over 3 different planets now," Ning said.
"Oh, what's that?" Saphandra asked.
"I need to absorb the radiation and grow stronger," he said. Ning returned to the bridge and sat next to the window, but the window simply wasn't large enough to let all the light in.
He needed to find another way.
"System, I need to sit outside the ship. You got anything for me?" he asked. The speed at which the ship was moving in made it impossible for him to just teleport out and sit down.
<You can use very powerful magnetic shoes.>
"Hmm, how about that, but in the form of a skill? So I can turn any part of my body magnetic," Ning said.
<You can buy that for 1.3 Billion energy. Usage of the skill will require constant usage of energy as well>
"Buy!" Ning said, and he was given the skill at once.
"Wait… that's it? You don't have to do anything else?" Saphandra asked. All Ning did was ask for something and the system gave it to him.
"Yeah, that's usually how it goes now," Ning said. "But there used to be a time when I had to wait around for all energy to be gathered up, actually. It all changed once I killed Genesis and absorbed him and the system. If only I got one more of those, I wouldn't even have to go through the trouble of such endeavors."
"I bet you would still, though," Saphandra said with a chuckle.
"No, not until I get back to Kumia," Ning said. "After that… I wonder what I would do after that. Well, I'll think of that at that time."
"Anyway, you should get into the Spirit space. I will be spending the next many years on top of the ship, basking in the starlight," Ning said.
"Wait, I have to spend an entire century alone?" Saphandra asked.
"Uhh… System, is the Spirit space not time-stopped like the storage space?" Ning asked.
<It can be, but it will cost you 100 times its original cost for that. The system wants the host to note that the time won't be stopped if the spirit is being healed.>
"Yeah, do it," Ning said. "In fact, turn all four of them into a time-stopped version of that."
<Understood.>
Once all 4 of his Spirit space was turned into a timeless one, Saphandra hesitatingly jumped into one of the open spots.
Once she was gone, Ning looked all around him and the silence. "When are they set to wake up?" he asked.
<Unless the ship AI wakes them up for something critical, they should be asleep for the next 30 years.>
"Huh, I thought they would sleep for longer," Ning said. "Although, I guess it makes sense that they would want to use their Space drive as soon as it is active again."
Now that everything was seen, Ning teleported out of the ship to the top and immediately used the magnetic skill to grab himself to the surface.
There was a slight distortion to the ship's course because of what he did, but the AI immediately fixed the course and the ship was back on track.
His breathing skill kicked in and Ning started looking around in the empty space with nothing but darkness all around him.
However, when he used his vision that required no light to see, everything was bright all of a sudden as if a million different fireflies had decided to light themselves suddenly.
Ning looked to the far reaches of the galaxy where nebulae covered a significant part of the sky. Then to another side where a star was much brighter than others.
He could see a million stars from where he was, and all those probably had thousands of planets in them that held life.
There were so many places he could go, but, he had his mind set. He would always choose Kumia over any of these planets.
