Star Citizen Online: Isekai Edition

Obviously, the best thing about the entire aspect of Zehal working on the upgrades for the Obscurus was that it was entirely free. This was probably the best benefit from the entire ordeal because he didn't have to invest anything in it, and she did everything for free.

However, that was questionable because, well, they were taking her together with them on the mission against the Arachnids on the Ziras IV, and she would be getting one-third of the overall reward.

Thirty thousand or so Academy Points was a high number overall. Still, Arcatrurus was very satisfied with the outcome because having someone on the deck who was constantly carrying some upgrades on the ship was like heaven's gift.

Zehal was working on the various project digilently like a bee and during around two months that they would be spending on the Obscurus traveling to the Ziras IV and then back to the Phoenix Prime, she would do a lot of work.

When he saw how hard she was working on the upgrades of the ship and helping Red Queen with her projects, he seriously considered that having some living crew on the deck wouldn't be the worst idea around.

While the bots and droids were rather good and everything, in the end, there were large areas where they were absolutely inefficient and useless. Having a living crew would be rather useful in several situations, especially in one that required creative thinking, which was something that even the Red Queen was struggling with.

The Artificial Intelligence were not really good with any kind of creative thinking and creative work, that was rather a serious aspect of their weakness, and in fact, it was their most glowing weakness.

Only when they evolved to the true Machine life forms would they be able to remedy this weakness in their overall design. Arcturus hoped that the Red Queen would be able to repair this weakness of hers.

"The work she had done on my starship would otherwise cost more than several tens of thousand Universal Credits. Not talking about the fact that the quality of her work is absolutely superb, and I would be very hard-pressed to find a more qualified engineer to work on the starship than her."

Arcturus said as they continued eating.

Even though the Eternal Empire of Asurya was advanced very much compared to the other High-Level Star Nations and High-Level Civilizations, finding some freelance engineer who was capable of working on the most advanced technology wasn't an easy feat.

Most of these qualified people were already working either for the state, various corporations and companies, or for the Noble Houses of the Empire. There was a very high demand for people with such a high degree of technical skills and education within the Empire.

So, in a certain sense, Arcturus was very lucky that he managed to get Zehal onto his ship and carry out the upgrades for free. The work she was doing at the same time, was of really superior quality.

"Hopefully, she will finish all the things that they are working on with Red Queen during the time we are on the Obscurus."

He really hoped that it would last, though he even considered hiring her afterward if she would be open to the proposal. Zehal was rather a curious soul who loved discovering and researching new technologies, something that he would gladly provide her with.

He planned to travel around the entire Desolate Cosmos Territory and search for the advanced pieces of tech that could be adjusted by the Red Queen and then sold domestically within the Eternal Empire of the Asurya and the Andromeda Galaxy if possible.

They already had the engines from the very old space hulk whose schematics Arcturus obtained during the invasion of the Greenskisn into the Alaric Star Domain.

A certain part of his was already scheming on how to get Zehal working on those projects as well and join his ideas for creating a new corporation manufacturing space travel engines and other things that he would find during his journey.

He knew that the nature of the business would be very appealing to someone like Zehal because it would mean that she would get to work with very exotic pieces of technology, something that was rather rare within the Eternal Empire of the Asurya.

Many things, like the technology from the Mind Flayers, were under heavy lock by the Imperial Decrecee, and only a few selected scientists were in charge of researching and adapting things like Mind Flayer technology and similar objects that held strategic importance to the Empire.

Truth be told, even Jenaiel would be a good addition to his crew and Star Mercenary Band if she would consider it longer than one millisecond. He was aware that she held rather steep and deep disdain for the profession itself and the people who were doing this kind of work.

Zehal was much better than it in his regard, because she only cared for the benefits and what she could obtain from it. Really befitting to someone who was brought up in a Mercantile Clan.

Jenaiel meanwhile had that very deep-rooted pride of the Imperial Aristocracy, and he really doubted that she would agree to be Star Mercenary.

However, he knew that it would be a very good way for her to build something by herself without being tied to the House Luxford as she wasn't really receiving much support from the House Luxford due to her most peculiar situation.

So, being a Star Mercenary and Bounty Hunter was rather good to together a lot of resources if one knew how to play it smart. Most of the Star Mercenaries and Bounty Hunters were indeed small fries and not anything worthy of deeper attention.

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Many lacked the wits and brains to make a greater business, something that Arcturus already had a vision of in his mind.

Arcturus knew that he needed something else to make it big, and depending just on the missions from the Star Mercenary Association and bounties from the Bounty Hunter Guild would be very far enough from his consumption of the resources.

The luxurious lifestyle he wanted to live and experience cost money. A lot of money, like everything in the world, whether now or in his past life. Not to mention, he had the capability to reverse-engineer the technology captured or found during his journey.

The other Star Mercenaries, the best could do was to sell it to someone who would pay them peanuts in the face of its true value. But that was already the best that most of them could do in the face of some tech that they found during their mission.

"So, any penny for your thought on the Arachnids? You have been awfully silent about the entire endeavor that would take place on the Ziras IV."

While Arcturus wasn't always the most talkative person, she saw him conversing more with Artificial Intelligence than the living people, but for the past few hours, he was even more silent than usual.

"Thinking over the bugs... the longer I think about this dammed mission that you talked me into, the less certain I feel about it. There is a lot of unknown information about the Arachnid Nest on the Ziras IV, and even with the droids, I don't think that we have the necessary numbers for an operation of this caliber."

Arcturus was rather a cautious person by nature, so the situation with the bugs was something that was constantly weighing on his consciousness, and it wasn't going away any time soon.

If not for Jenaiel's assistance, he would have accepted this crazy idea, and he still had his reservations about this mission. He especially thought that they had rather low numbers to undertake something like this.

While he had several hundred Battle Droids and the combat prowess of the ABD-Spectre MK II, while the Battle Droids were rather good, they were far from enough to take on the entire Arachnid Nest.

But Jenaiel seemed to be very confident, or she was just outright foolish and reckless... it could be a combination of both, so in the end, he was convicted by her and agreed to take the mission on the Ziras IV.

Fortunately enough, it wasn't one of the restricted missions, and there was no special warning, so it shouldn't have been that bad. If the Imperial Phoenix Military Academy suspected something suspicious, the mission would be marked with a warning sign that the mission was dangerous and that something suspicious was going on.

"You know, there is something that has been bugging me for some time already. If the Archnid Nest which was reported to be only in it's early stages of the creation was that kind of weak, then why the colonists of the Ziras IV were not able to deal with the situation by themselves? I understand that the Ziras IV is a newly colonized planet that doesn't really have many heavy hitters from the Professionals, but according to the Imperial Standards of the Colonizations of Foreign Planets, every single colony is supposed to have a standard garrison from the Imperial Army and Planeteraryy Defense Force that consist at least 10% of the local population. If you count in the advanced technology of the Empire and the obligatory defenses across the colony, then even if the Arachnid Nest was more advanced than the one that is reported at the Imperial Phoenix Military Academy, then they should have been able to destroy the Nest."

Arcturus looked at the information that was gathered about the Ziras IV and compared it to the Imperial Standards of the Colonization of Foreign Planets; he knew that the colony on the Ziras IV was supposed to have rather a strong garrison, and it also had a strong garrison and lot of military technology.

He knew very well, that the technological capabilities of the Eternal Empire of the Asurya was very high and the energy-based weapons of the Imperium were highly effective against the bugs and various Archanid Species.

So it was rather suspicious why they were not able to exterminate the Arachnid Nest with all of the arsenals they had there.

"I didn't think about that...yeah, it sounds a little weird; either the local garrison didn't really care enough to bring themselves to exterminate the Arachnids. It is also very possible that due to the various factors, it is possible that the local forces are reluctant to fight against the Arachnids in their fortified positions, especially when the Imperial Forces lack powerful Professionals that would break the tide of the battle."

Jenaiel stated her opinion on the matter because now that she had heard it from Arcturus, she too found it rather weird that there was no advance from the Imperial Forces on the planet.

They should have been able to destroy a smaller Arachnid Nests like the one that was created on the Ziras IV, but for whatever the reason, they were not, and that itself was rather suspicious on itself.

There was also the possibility that the colonists were already infected by the Bugs and someone was manipulating the defense forces on the Ziras IV to leave the Arachnids be.

"I, on the contrary, think that it is very highly possible that one of the high-ranking personnel of the colony on the Ziras IV is infected by the bugs. While I am aware that there are protocols on the protection against the Arachnids, there should always be some possibility to bypass it."

Arcturus knew from Irene that the Empire had rather extensive protection against the possible bug infestation in their cities. The Arachnids could infest people and insert a tiny worm-like bug into their brains, which would then control the person who was infested with the bug worm.

This was a rather serious problem for most of the Civilizations and Star Nations fighting the Arachnids, as the enemy often came within. Nothing was better than an indoctrinated slave to the will of the Bugs.

Once such indoctrinated individuals returned back to their targetted destination, they would start to create a cult or secret organization among the locals and convert them to their cause through the pretense of salvation and power.

They would do this either to grow as a tumor in the society, sabotaging either the effort of the military forces to defend against the Arachnid invasion of a certain world, outright helping the Arachnid, or even opening wormholes for the entire Arachnid Fleets.

There were even several cases when even the entire High-Level Civilization and High-Level Star Nations fell to the Arachnids, through the enemy within that destroyed them before they even realized.

If this were the case with the Ziras IV, it would be far more problematic than anyone initially anticipated because it would mean that the Imperial Forces were infected. The worst thing about this infection was the sheer possibility that it could not end with the Ziras IV.

The infected ones could have spread towards the other colonies of the Eternal Empire of Asurya and other regions under Imperial control.

If the Arachnids were indeed capable of bypassing some of the scans of the Imperial technology, then it would be possible that some of the infected Imperials across the different Star Systems in the Solitas Star Domain.

If it was indeed true, then it would be catastrophic for the Empire, and it would be a situation that would need to be resolved as fast as possible.

"That would be rather serious trouble... something like that infestation of the Arachnids on the Imperial Forces didn't happen for a long time already, and the last time it happened to the Empire, we lost several entire Fleets to the bugs many decades ago."

From there on, the Empire implemented rather serious contra-measures against the possible infestation of the Arachnids, which could happen at any given time. The infested Asuryani were dangerous as fuck, and the possibility that they could create cults that would then destabilize the entire world.

"You should try and report it to the Imperial Military if it gets to it. The significance that the House Luxford carries within the military is something that they would take into consideration and resolve the situation very fast... considering the number of your relatives in the Imperial Military, be it in the Army or the Navy."

Arcturus proposed because if there was a possibility that the entire colony was being slowly infested by the Arachnids through some new methods that the Empire couldn't detect, then it became a matter of national security for the Empire.