With the Radiation Absorption skill up to 17%, even when there was barely any light from the stars, Ning's body still improve quite a bit.
With this, the next 30 years he was going to spend on top of the ship was more akin to spending about 250 years in the stars. It wasn't much, but it was something.
Also, because he was moving so fast, in the next 30 years, he would go nearly 15 lightyears away from where he had started.
Which was a lot higher distance than the mere 4 lightyears he had spent nearly 20,000 years flying through space last time.
So, he would also be hit by more radiation in general because of the distance. As such, Ning was at least going to have his body improve by quite a significant amount.
Ning was still being bombarded by the interstellar wind, but this time around, he didn't need to worry about trying to speed himself up every time he was slowed down over the course of the many years.
Since he was attached to the ship, he could simply focus on other things such as looking at the beautiful stars or planning out his next set of moves.
However, it didn't take long for Ning to be out of topics to think about. As such, over the course of the many days he remained up there, he slowly fell into the same lull he had learned to do so many years ago and fell asleep.
Ning woke up some years later, unknown exactly how long had passed. He looked at the vast sky above him and realized that the patch of sky he had looked at before had changed.
He couldn't help but be a bit confused. "System? How many years have passed?" he asked.
<78 years and 9 months.>
"Woah! Really?" Ning was surprised. He hadn't expected to fall asleep for so long, but it made sense in a way. After all, he had learned to fall asleep for centuries when he was flying on his own.
78 years was nothing by comparison.
"How many light years have we traveled?" he asked.
<The crew mates woke up twice to jump the ship another 40 Lightyears forward.>
"So… we're about 80 lightyears done with the 122 lightyears journey?" Ning asked.
<Yes.>
"Hmm… that's farther than I expected to go while I was out here, but not bad. "We only have… what? Less than 42 lightyears to travel? That should be fine."
"When did the crew last go into Cryo-sleep?" Ning asked.
<About 19 years ago.>
"Wake them up," Ning said.
Ning teleported back into the cryo room and brought out Saphandra.
"Did you forget to say something?" she asked when she came out and looked curiously at her surrounding.
"It's been nearly 80 years since we last spoke," Ning told her.
"What? No way," Saphandra said. "You called me out the moment I went in there."
"Yes," Ning said. "That's what the space is supposed to feel like. Given how safe the ship appears to be, I might start doing that again as well. Although, I have way too much energy and it feels quite scary to just pour myself into any random object."
Just then, one by one, the crew members started opening their eyes. The girl with the pink skin, Lieutenant Ziri as she was called, woke up first and walked out.
She was a little disoriented, but that was just everyone that walked out of the cryo-chamber. So, she went around the room, helping others land on their feet and take a few breaths.
Then, they went around helping each other.
Before Ning knew it, all the 11 crew members of the ship were all awake.
The captain checked the logs to see if anything had happened during the time, and to his surprise, found out that he had been woken up nearly a decade earlier than they had planned.
"Lieutenant Ziri, there seems to be a problem with the ship's AI, can you take Lieutenant Hargill and go check?" the captain asked.
"Aye, captain," the lieutenants replied.
"Wait, there's no problem," Ning said. "I woke you guys up."
"Why, master?" the captain gave a confused look.
"We're jumping again," Ning said. "This time, we are going to go all the way to the service station."
"I… don't think the Space Drive had cooled yet, master," the captain said.
"Hmm… since you have such a freezing system, why don't you cool the space drive with that?" Ning asked.
"The metal that makes the machine loses quite a bit of durability if we heat it and cool it rapidly. We do use the cooling system to just keep it from becoming super hot in the first place," the captain said.
"Well, I'm here so you can forget about said problems," Ning said. "Go to your stations, we will be jumping non-stop."
"Yes, master," the captain took the crew, except for Froxby, who went back to the room with the Space Drive along with Ning.
A cylinder with a space stone was already in the machine, ready to jump in case of emergency. However, Ning could feel the slight heat coming from the machine still.
"System, fix it," Ning said.
With a single command, the system not only immediately cooled the whole thing but also reverted the metal back to its original form so that they were still very durable.
Lieutenant Froxby let the captain know of the changes, so when everyone was ready, the captain jumped once more.
Ning felt the turbulence and understood they had teleported. Froxby moved again to replace the cylinders and they jumped once more.
Within 4 jumps, Ning felt the heat in the room and was even a bit surprised that Froxby could handle it.
However, he simply cooled the machine down and fixed it again before teleporting a few times more.
By the time the 2 different sessions of teleportation were over, FRS Icefall had arrived at the Federation Service Station of Sector 3.
