Every space adventure starts with a solid bang.
I made sure mine lived up to that standard because, for someone who spent a past life as a completely normal guy doing nothing exciting, this moment was the absolute zenith of existence.
Ever since I reincarnated as a Viltrumite, I came to love space without even realizing it, jumping from moon to moon, landing on larger meteorites, and even going solo onto planets just to see if I could handle the isolation.
In fact, our biology was designed for this, and though we were not fish that could breathe in the void, we were definitely predatory alligators of the stars who could roam the sky better than any other species.
But even for someone who roamed the sky more than my peers, this was my first time in an actual space warship.
That new perspective made watching the planets of the system pass one by one feel like a dream realized on a scale no cinema screen could ever replicate, especially as the ship tore through the vacuum at a speed that made my blood sing.
The ship moved so intensely that it made the local gravity lanes look like stagnant water, while the distant suns began to blur into streaks of pure white light that stretched across the viewscreen like a highway to the end of existence.
"Hey Glenn, can we go there? That planet is producing a strange red light."
Kang leaned over the console with the wide-eyed curiosity of a kid who just found a new toy, pointing toward a crimson orb hanging in the distance with a look of filthy hunger that suggested he wanted to conquer it on sight.
"Commander, sir, that planet has toxins strong enough to melt most metals, and while we won't die, the ship will be destroyed if we enter the atmosphere."
Solvek, the navigator, didn't look up from his monitors, his fingers flying across the safety overrides to ensure the trajectory remained well clear of the chemical hazard that would strip the hull to the bone.
"Solvek, I am the second in command, so you should listen to my suggestions instead of lecturing me on planetary biology when I am just trying to explore."
"Sir Kang, I am only stating the fact that we would be stranded in a pile of molten scrap before we ever reached the dead zone if we followed your whims."
When these two were arguing, Virexa and Carliya could not be left out, adding their own noise to the bridge as they demanded blood and combat until the deck turned into chaos.
As for me, I did not even mind the metal vibration of the engines that threatened to overload my eardrums, let alone the bickering of bloodthirsty warriors.
This was the height of my expectations, and for a few glorious hours, I felt like I was finally living the life I was born to lead among the stars as a true commander.
But the major trouble with expectations was that they often outgrew reality.
Every good thing came to an end, and forty-eight hours later, my view changed completely as the absolute silence of the deep void began to settle into my bones.
"Are we there yet?"
"Commander, we have been in transit for exactly two days of a three-month journey."
"...can't we just teleport or something?"
"Sorry, Commander, but that would be impossible because the technology does not exist yet."
"Brat, you think this is some easy stroll through the stars?"
"Old bastard, if you dare insult the Commander again, I will tear your tongue out and paint the deck with your blood."
I once again realized cinema was a lie, and movies were just propaganda designed to make people think space was a constant thrill.
Even though they made beautiful pictures of space travel in my mind, the reality was that sitting in a metal box for months was utterly boring.
This intense pace suddenly started to feel like crawling. After all, the void was endless.
It reminded me that even with this advanced tech, this was still Viltrum before the purge, and the absolute peak of strength was not yet reached.
I knew the other space powers possessed their own fleets and methods of travel, but whether any of them truly mastered the trick of teleportation was a question I could not answer from inside this cage.
The lack of instant travel left me wondering if I could just bypass technology entirely and master some kind of portal magic for the sake of convenience.
Even though my main power was healing, I still possessed the blood of Doomsday in my veins, but for that potential to actually manifest, I first needed to hunt down a real master of the mystic arts.
.
.
.
On a road without end, progress became a completely meaningless concept because only those with a singular, unshakable purpose could keep walking through this abyss without losing their minds.
Thankfully, I possessed one that stayed fixed in the center of my thoughts.
To become invincible.
It was a simple purpose, and yet the most troublesome, because it demanded constant growth without pause or a single second of hesitation.
Even though I possessed enough power to flee anywhere in the universe and escape everything, my gut told me running meant losing too much, and I absolutely refused to live a mediocre life ever again.
After two full months of travel, I finally coped with destiny and this ruthless universe, dealing with the complicated love-and-hate relationship I felt toward the endless distance surrounding us in every direction.
Naturally, we did nothing during those two months except stop at five Viltrumite colonies that supposedly flourished under the Empire.
The flourishing surface was a massive scam, and all I saw were slaves happy to serve their masters, with centuries of obedience bred into their bones.
This deep rot left me with heavy thoughts about what it actually meant to be a conqueror and how it obviously took countless lives and dreams.
"I wonder if I can butcher a billion for a throne, or if I'm just talk who will flinch when it gets ugly."
Fifteen more days went by in this damn metallic cage after we left the last colony, and the atmosphere on the command deck became more chaotic than I ever expected, because the reason for it was actually me.
Regardless of my internal state, I realized something fundamental during this monotonous travel about the way my unique healing magic could sustain my entire crew without the need for a single physical meal.
Whenever I released my green healing zone, it completely erased the physical fatigue and the hollow hunger that usually plagued biological life forms after weeks of moving through the dark without seeing a single sun.
The energy acted as a direct substitute for nutrients by repairing the cellular breakdown caused by the deep, proving that my passive magic was much more versatile than I first realized.
On second thought, it was a completely useless discovery that gave me no real, lasting happiness because I possessed no desire to become a walking cosmic battery for a bunch of bloodthirsty soldiers.
Besides, these menaces were pure-blooded Viltrumites anyway, so a lack of food did not even affect our biology that much, since we were built from the ground up to endure the harshest conditions imaginable.
If anything made me jealous during this mission, it was not Solvek's skill or Carliya's hunger for battle.
It was Kang.
That bastard could sleep anywhere.
Even now, he checked out of reality completely and remained fast asleep for the last eighty hours straight, while the rest of these absolute morons contemplated killing each other for fun just to pass the time.
He just curled up in the corner of the warship and ignored the rising tension, proving that his talent for dodging responsibility was just as strong as his own massive physical power.
"Hey Commander, I am saying we should stop the ship from time to time so I can open the hatch for a breath of fresh air and see the world."
Just when I was drowning in a sea of ridiculous thoughts, old man Virexa broke my focus, and I offered him the most logical answer I could think of.
"You are blind, and this is space, so there is no air here, and you will not feel anything before you get lost in the dark."
"Damn it, still better than being stuck in this small space with this ugly bitch who does not know how to shut up."
"Do you wanna die right now? Are you just tired of having a tongue in your mouth that has not tasted blood lately?"
Once again, I decided to ignore them, because their constant bickering and the promise of impending murder served as the only thing keeping me from staring into the endless void while I waited for something to actually happen.
"Watch out, Commander, sir!"
"We are going to be a smudge on the front of that rock in about five seconds!"
Thankfully, something indeed happened, and that was me almost destroying the Deep Recon because I lost focus on my surroundings for just a split second.
"Don't worry, everything is in control, but you can take the sticks from here if you're so damn worried about it."
"Oh, thank you, Commander, sir."
The moment I finished my words, Solvek ripped the manual steering thrusters with a force that kept the controls steady as he threw the ship into a violent, gut-wrenching spiral.
The viewscreen revealed a spectacular, mesmerizing graveyard of grinding stone that stretched out as far as the eye could see.
Thousands of huge meteorites floated everywhere, crossing paths like a chaotic grid and smashing into each other because of the messy, overlapping gravity wells.
Just then, Solvek dodged a pair of mountain-sized rocks with inches to spare and slammed the fire controls in an intense rhythm, blasting a path through a cluster of debris while the poor warship screamed under the strain of his maneuvers.
"Nice flying, Solvek."
Honestly, that praise came from the heart because at the speed we were moving, even I did not have this level of control after two months of training, proving Solvek was the navigator and pilot for a reason.
"Anything for the Empire, Commander, sir, and I would gladly drag this ship through the heart of a collapsing star if it meant serving our glory."
"..."
"And it was all because of the Commander's presence and trust that I was able to perform such a feat under this much pressure."
"..."
"And it was my fault to begin with that I did not warn the Commander about the gravitational zone before we entered the debris field."
"..."
"I failed as a navigator..."
For the next few seconds, he made me regret praising him as he kept blabbering and kissing my boots until I was finally sick of hearing his voice.
"..Alright, shut up and focus."
If this were some trashy Hollywood movie from the old world, a high-energy track would be playing in the background to match the destruction, but sadly, this was reality, not a dose of high dopamine.
The cinematic moment was short-lived as a particularly heavy impact forced Kang to wake up from his eighty-hour slumber with a miserable, bone-deep groan of a lazy pug.
"Ouch... bastards, did we hit something, and did not I order you to stay quiet while the absolute second-in-command was finishing his nap?"
"Shut up, brat."
Virexa did not even turn his head, staring at the viewscreen as if his blind eyes could see every jagged edge in the dark.
"Blasting these rocks is a rookie mistake; break one big problem and you just birth ten smaller ones that are twice as hard to track."
"I am sorry, Commander, sir, I messed up again."
"It's fine, I enjoyed the ride anyway."
"Oh... in that case, what exactly should we do to fix this mess before the hull gives out?"
"In ancient times, I once destroyed an entire planet with a single sneeze, but sadly air does not travel through space, so we have to do things the hard way today."
I stared at the back of the old man's head and wondered if senility finally rotted the last of his brain cells, or if he genuinely expected me to believe a Viltrumite's nasal congestion was a planetary-level threat.
"I hate to say the blind fossil finally said something useful, but he's right about the debris."
The debris field was becoming more dense with every shot, and if I wanted the best outcome, someone needed to clear the path manually while the ship flew without further destruction.
I excitedly unbuckled my safety belts because who could claim they were faster than me in space?
"Wait, Commander Glenn."
"..."
"I will go out and clear the path; for someone of your caliber, this is beneath you."
My excitement died instantly, and I sat back down.
"What are you doing? I am second-in-command, and I am still in the middle of my..."
Kang did not even finish his sentence before Carliya grabbed him by the collar and dragged him toward the airlock like a piece of unwanted luggage.
"You're going to help me clear the way, sleeping beauty, so try not to doze off while you're floating in the vacuum or I'll punch your head through a moon."
Against my will, she punched the cycle button on the airlock and launched herself and the screaming Kang into the freezing vacuum without waiting for a protest.
Once again, I sat and watched through the glass as they moved the meteorites out of the path, a mindless repetition of shifting stone that actually made me realize Kang was not a weak guy.
It was wrong of me to compare his durability to my own standards because any other Viltrumite would be reduced to a red mist after taking that many impacts while clearing the way.
After that accident was resolved, nothing really happened for many days, and the period of stagnation started all over again.
Time flew by without my notice until the navigation sub-routine signaled that we were only a two-day journey from the dead zone.
I leaned back in the command chair because the boredom started to rot my patience more than the long haul through the void.
"Solvek, is there any planet nearby where we can actually touch solid ground for a few hours?"
Solvek turned around with an over-the-top, excited energy that made it seem like he was waiting for me to ask that exact question for the last few days.
"We can loot whatever we want there, sir, and the markets are overflowing with specialized gadgets and black-market tech that the deep recon could use for the final leg of the journey!"
That was obviously a white lie because the deep recon ship needed absolutely no extra tools that could actually be installed on it.
I did not want to waste any more time, but the idea of a lawless world provided a much-needed break from the metallic walls of the bridge.
"Alright then, set the coordinates for Draxil, but if the crew starts a war over a snack, I am leaving every single one of you on that rock."
Solvek hammered his fingers across the console to lock in the new trajectory without waiting for a second confirmation.
And so.
Months of traveling through the void with such a remarkably friendly group of gentlemen was finally leading me to my second to last destination, the chaotic hunting grounds of pirates, Draxil.
.
.
.
( End Of The Chapter )