SOS CH 17 (Patreon)

When Noah entered the shower room, he looked around with curiosity at all the small installations with weird symbols on them.

He remembered then that he could easily learn the language and speak it thanks to his rather insane if not supernatural adaptation. Writing was something completely different and would take some time to adapt to and learn.

‘Ideally, I should settle down somewhere for a few years and learn slowly.’

It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do truly. Once he managed to get back to earth, he would quietly enjoy his position as hero and live off whatever bonus he would get.

He thought idly while testing different buttons and nearly screamed when scalding hot water fell on him.

‘Fuck!’

Cursing he tried different things, one of which felt like some weird vibrations before finally finding the right one.

‘Yes. I need to learn the language.’

He was still a little in a bad mood but — as the delicious hot water started flowing on his body, his mind melted and he nearly let out a moan of joy.

How long? How long had it been since he got something like a true hot shower? It wasn’t like he didn’t try to find his way. Taking ice chunks from the cold side and bringing it to the hot side was one way.

But this was different — This was civilization!

It was only after losing it that Noah understood how great civilization was. Everything was easier and you could act much more lazier.

This was great.

—- Aren’t you a little too relaxed?

‘Am I?’

— By now they should be starting to notice weird points in your situation and holes in your explanation.

‘Ah. I see what you mean. Well, indeed. As long as they aren’t too stupid, they should at least wonder how I managed to learn and use the universal language.’

— So…

‘But you see… It doesn’t matter. Even if I am suspicious, the gold is real, I am in their ship and Morgiana is under their control. I am powerless and they are strong. Why should they fear me?’

Noah chuckled. Over the short discussion, he had more or less managed to grasp the way those people were working. They were arrogant. They believed in their own strength and in only what they could see.

From their perspectives, no matter what kind of trap Noah may be preparing, those were inconsequential.

Why?

Because they were strong.

Because in their eyes, he was weak.

‘Arrogant people are truly funny don’t you think so?’

—- You should look in a mirror before speaking.

‘One. There is no mirror for me to admire my handsome self currently and two. I am different from them.’

Noah fiddled around and looked with curiosity as the bath near him started to filled with some gelatinous substance that disturbingly jiggled around and reminded him of the creatures that could be found in video games.

‘I am strong. I am prideful and perhaps even arrogant in the way of many. But the stupidest thing someone strong can do is underestimate the weak.’

Never underestimate the Weak. The weak have a way of fighting that belongs to them. The reason the weak manage to survive is because they managed to escape all the strong one.

It was a pretty simple principle but something many forgot.

‘You should understand this more than anyone, right? After all — you lost to humanity.’

—-.... We lost to you and the other constellations, not humanity.

‘And we were created by humanity. Ergo you lost to it. Hahah…’

He continued to taunt the voice in his head while testing different things. He was not just having fun. Though this was quite fun. He was trying to memorize different sets of characters and what they did. This could be useful in the future or be completely useless. But he had long since learned that being overprepared was better than having no preparation at all.

—- So what happening next?

‘I guide them to where I think is the ruin. Everything will be pretty up to there.’

—- Then?

‘Well…It’s pretty obvious what they will try to do, right?’

.

.

.

“Once we find the ruin, we kill the boy to avoid any possible traps.”

Sitting in the main room of his ship, Omid started giving orders to his officer. The order was curt and direct but no one was surprised. In the first place, there was no way they could let the boy go as he knew too much.

As Noah anticipated, Omid was indeed not stupid. Noah was simply too suspicious and many points did not make sense. But he was willing to act stupid and ignore all this because —

“This is indeed gold from this planet.”

The results of the analysis were unanimous and unambiguous. This gold was real and this was not something from another planet.

This couldn't be a trap. Omid knew very well that he was simply not worth it. Such a trap would have been used on big fish such as his leader Cassim or pirates like Captain Nemo.

Even so, this erased in nothing all the suspicious points about the boy and the strange unease he felt while close to him.

This was why – He had to die.

As cruel as it may look, such was the way of pirates and this was not the first murder he committed.

“Phaeia, keep an eye on him and see what you can glean.”

Everyone chuckled forcibly while the Cyclops scientist of the group, Phaeia, gave a small sneer,

“Very funny, Captain.”

She shook her head and continued to work on her pad. This kind of joke was nothing to the much less savory joke some of her crewmates would send to her. Being one of the sole women in a crew full of pirates was not easy.

One of the saving grace was that for many of her crewmates, she looked very ugly or simply disgusting.

The wonder of space truly.

“I already put a few sedatives in the food I gave him. They are not poisonous but they will easily be able to knock him out at any moment as long as I press a button.”

“Good. I knew I could count on you.”

He sighed and looked around, “We do not have much time guys. So this is a get-and-dash operation. If we judge that Dorothy is coming, then we will leave. Understood?”

“Yes!”

Money was good. But one needed to be alive to enjoy it.

This was why Omid could not kill Noah yet. They could not afford to waste time. Even now, their ships were preparing to fly toward the destination while everyone prepared themselves.

Things would have been so much easier if they could have a wide-scale detector. Simply being able to measure the distribution of the gravity on the whole planet would have helped find the heaviest places which generally was where the ruins were.

But life was never easy.

‘Let’s move fast before that bitch come.’

He could already see a difficult battle ahead.