Reborn With A Technology System In A Fantasy World-Chapter 278: First Hunt

For the first time, Adrian was truly in space. And it wasn’t just via teleportation, but he was flying through it.

The artificial sky of the Nexus fell away, replaced by the true, infinite black of the galaxy, scattered with the diamond dust of a billion stars. He felt a surge of pure excitement. This was his first taste of real interstellar travel.

"Load your missions from your PAD to the nav-computer," Greg instructed, his fingers flying across the holographic helm.

Adrian synced his device. A holographic star map bloomed in the center of the cockpit, a swirling galaxy of light. Forty-one red markers appeared, scattered across the sector. The computer automatically calculated the optimal route and highlighted the closest one.

<Mission: Clear Void Ravager Nest>

<Location: Sector 4 - The Shattered Belt>

<Threat Level: B>

Greg looked at the map and grinned, a feral expression on his green face. "The Shattered Belt. Nasty place. Lots of debris, lots of radiation. Perfect hiding spot for Ravagers."

He patted the console of the ship affectionately. "But you’re in luck. With this bad boy, we won’t have to suffer the travel time. We’ll be there in thirty minutes."

Just as he finished the sentence, he pushed the throttle forward.

The X-77 didn’t accelerate in a conventional sense; it simply left. The stars outside blurred into streaks of white light as the inertial dampeners kicked in, protecting them from G-forces that would have turned them into paste.

While the X-77 streaked through the incomprehensible tunnel of FTL travel, Adrian sat in the co-pilot’s seat, his demeanor calm but his mind split into two streams.

One half of his consciousness was locked onto Greg’s hands. He watched the Escort’s fingers dance across the holographic interface, analyzing every minute adjustment of the throttle, every subtle correction to the navigational deflector shields. He was decoding the syntax of flight, learning the muscle memory of a starship pilot in real-time.

The other half of his mind was occupied with a much darker, more dangerous calculus. The heist. He was here to hunt Void Beasts, yes, but the true prize was the Void Crystals.

The Concordat’s laws were absolute: all Void materials were state property, hazardous contraband that had to be turned over. Greg was here to enforce that.

Adrian had to figure out a way to extract the crystals, store them in his [Inventory], and destroy the evidence, all while under the watchful eye of a being whose power level he couldn’t even measure.

The thirty-minute journey felt like seconds. The singing vibration of the engines dropped in pitch, a sensation of deceleration pressing them into their seats as the stars outside stopped streaking and settled back into static points of light.

They had arrived.

Through the cockpit canopy, the Shattered Belt filled their view. It was a graveyard of a planetary system. Thousands of jagged asteroids, ranging from the size of pebbles to small moons, drifted in a chaotic, swirling river of dust and gas.

The local star was obscured by a thick, radioactive nebula that bathed the entire sector in a sickly, bruised purple light.

Arcs of untamed lightning jumped between the larger asteroids, illuminating the wreckage of ancient ships that had met their end here.

It was a sight of terrible, majestic destruction. Adrian was momentarily struck by the raw, chaotic beauty of it.

But then, his eyes caught movement in the distance. Against the purple backdrop, four blots of absolute, moving darkness tore through the debris field. They didn’t reflect light; they swallowed it. The place suddenly didn’t look so beautiful anymore.

"We’ve arrived," Greg announced, leaning back in his chair as he brought the ship to a relative halt behind a large, shielding asteroid. "Welcome to the Shattered Belt."

He pointed a green finger towards the distant, moving shadows. "There’s your mission. Go handle it. I’ll let the ship’s core cool down while you’re away. Unless you want to use the ship to get closer?"

"No," Adrian refused immediately, unbuckling his harness. "I’ll go myself."

He paused at the airlock, turning back to the Escort. "These Void Beasts... what do they actually do? The briefing said they were ’terrorizing’ the belt, but there’s no one here."

Greg swiveled his chair, his expression turning serious for a moment. "They don’t just kill people, kid. They kill space.

They radiate a field of entropy that destabilizes matter and corrupts energy. If left unchecked, a nest like this could expand the radiation zone until it swallows the nearby mining sectors."

His voice dropped. "As for what they are... the leading theory is that they’re echoes. Corrupted biological matter from ancient aliens that got exposed to the raw Void between galaxies. They’re what happens when life forgets how to die. The ones that used to be sentient... those are the most feared."

He waved a hand, dismissing the dark thought. "Anyway, before you go... I forgot to suggest you buy a protective suit. The radiation out there is potent. Not all space environments are safe, even for a Diamond ranker."

"I’ll be fine."

The airlock hissed open. The atmosphere of the ship was sucked away, replaced by the silent, freezing vacuum. Adrian floated out, drifting away from the white hull of the X-77.

Immediately, he felt it. It wasn’t just the cold. It was a prickling, burning sensation on his skin, a microscopic assault as the high-level radiation of the Belt tried to unravel his DNA.

It wasn’t a problem to Adrian, as his physiology easily resisted it, but he still equipped the Power Suit just in case.

Without further ado, Adrian ignited his thrusters and charged into the belt.

He didn’t have to hunt them. They sensed him. The four blots of darkness turned, screeching silently in the void, and rushed to meet him.

As he closed the distance, their forms resolved into nightmares. They were Void Ravagers.

They looked like massive, skinless wolves the size of shuttlecraft, but their bodies were composed of shifting, oily black sludge that dripped constantly into space. Where the sludge touched an asteroid, the rock hissed and boiled away. They had no eyes, only gaping maws filled with rows of serrated, translucent teeth.

They were fast, and they were coordinated. As they reached him, they split. Two flanked him from above and below, while the other two charged head-on, spewing streams of pressurized, acidic void-bile.

Adrian didn’t panic. He saw the attack vectors in his mind before they happened. He strafed right, dodging a stream of acid that would have melted his armor plating. The acid struck a drifting piece of debris behind him, instantly dissolving it into a cloud of radioactive vapor.

’They should have a poison trait,’ he noted.

This played perfectly into his plan. He didn’t need to brawl with them. He needed to erase them.

He targeted the first Ravager charging him. He didn’t use a simple blast. He channeled his new energy into the Mana Gun, adjusting the output through the energy veins.

"Burn," he whispered.

~FWOOOM!~

A lance of white-hot energy erupted from the gun, striking the beast center-mass. The Ravager didn’t just die; it detonated. The intense heat vaporized the oily sludge that made up its body in a brilliant flash of expanding gas.

But in that split second, just before the creature was atomized, Adrian used his [Inventory]. He focused his will on the core of the beast, the singular point of density holding it together.

[Target Locked: Void Crystal (Grade-C)]

[Retrieve?]

’YES!’

The crystal vanished into his storage a microsecond before the rest of the beast was consumed by the plasma fire. To an outside observer, like Greg monitoring from the ship, it would look like Adrian had simply blasted the monster into oblivion with overwhelming force.

[You have killed a Void Beast!]

[Void Crystal harvested successfully!]

One down. Three to go.

The remaining three Ravagers shrieked, their coordination breaking as they witnessed their kin vanish. They converged on him, a frantic, chaotic assault of claws and acid.

Adrian became a whirlwind. He used Phantom Steps to teleport behind the second beast, driving a Resonant Fist into its spine to stun it, then finishing it with a point-blank blast from the Mana Gun, snatching the crystal in the flash of the explosion.

[Void Crystal harvested successfully!]

The third tried to flee, sensing the predator. Adrian chased it down, cutting it in half with a wide-beam cutter mode he improvised on the fly. As the two halves drifted apart, dissolving into void-mist, he snagged the third crystal.

[Void Crystal harvested successfully!]

The final beast, the largest of the pack, roared and tried to self-destruct, its body swelling with unstable energy. Adrian didn’t give it the chance. He overloaded his suit’s shields and rammed it like a kinetic missile.

The impact shattered the beast’s form, allowing Adrian to retrieve what he wanted before it detonated.

[Void Crystal harvested successfully!]

The battle was over. Adrian floated in the debris field. The oppressively toxic feel of the sector seemed to lighten slightly with the beasts gone. He checked his inventory. Four glistening, dark crystals sat securely in his storage. The perfect crime.

He turned back towards the X-77, his thrusters flaring as he made a beeline for the ship, eager to move on to the next target.

Adrian landed in the open airlock and retracted his helmet as he stepped into the ship.

But as he walked towards the cockpit, a figure stepped into the hallway, blocking his path.

"Hold on," Greg said. His voice was no longer casual.

Adrian stopped. "What is it? The mission is complete."

"I saw the fight," Greg said, his eyes narrowing. "You vaporized them. Very thorough. But I’m not convinced." He held out a hand. "Where are the crystals, Project_Prometheus?"

Adrian feigned ignorance brilliantly. "Crystals? What crystals? There was nothing left but gas."

Greg stared at him for a long, tense moment. The friendly escort was gone, replaced by the Concordat Enforcer. "Is that so?" he murmured. A cold, thin smile touched his lips.

He reached into his jacket and retrieved a baton-like device. "Stand still for your search."

He waved the device over Adrian, starting from his feet to his head.

Adrian remained calm, while hoping his [Inventory] could truly remain hidden. But just then he saw the baton blink with crimson light.

~BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!~

<ALERT. DIMENSIONAL STORAGE MEDIUM DETECTED!>