[Finally gonna get up and move, huh?]
[Didn't think you'd ever leave that place! You have any idea how many credits I lost betting on you?!]
[Gift from beyond the veil, 1x Random Gold Ticket] (NotSkelle)
I rolled my eyes and the ticket in the same motion as I ignored the Gacha. Despite its bluster, I knew it couldn't do anything to me, as long as I stayed alive.
[Spinning, spinning, spinning, done!]
[Cipher Pata]
|Common Item|
Elden Ring - A holy blade worn on the hands, formed out of shapeless ciphers, making it almost impossible to clash with. The power of the ciphers scales with the user's maximum energy levels.
I left the blade within my Inventory as I started slowing down. After centuries of practice, I'd figured out how to travel faster than light while keeping track of my position. Pair that with the advanced nav systems I'd had put into my armor, and I was only a few minutes away from Harvest.
My plan was simple. Follow the human ships until I got to Reach. Yes, the Spirit had a map of all of human space since the Cole Protocol had yet to be enacted, but I'd rather see them for myself since I was getting bored of being on the Ark.
Getting to escape Professor Ander's endless questions was also a big one. Tragic Solitude was better suited for endless questions than I was.
I was also going to start indexing the technology the Covenant and UNSC had. We had a decent database of what the humans used; now we needed one for the Covenant. I'd already given the Builders a heads-up that most of what the Covenant used was broken-down pieces of what we used to have, but I don't think they were really ready for the horror of it.
Most of the human tech made sense since it was made for humans, and I used to be one. Its simplicity also made it easy for the Builder to work with since they didn't have to change too much, just add their own flair to it while keeping it somewhat human-looking.
Covenant tech, on the other hand, was made to be used by several species that didn't get along, looked nothing alike, and were bound by a loose string of lies and mistranslations going back thousands of years.
Add that onto they near fanatical zeal; they treated everything even remotely related to us, and you understand why the Forerunners wanted nothing to do with the current Covenant.
Of course, I'd told most of the senior officials, my Princeps, and a select few ancilla the exact way this war would end, but that still meant we had another 20 years before the war with the Covenant ended.
I still hadn't told anyone about the Banished, about Cortana's Created and the Domain. About the Ur-Didact still resting within Requiem, angry and hateful after his time alone for so long. There were also the Flood samples still scattered around the galaxy.
Despite my warnings, several Forerunners tried and failed to find a cure. I had been able to cleanse the rings, but that was all I could do for now.
---------------
Man, I hate the Covenant, as do the Builders now, funny enough.
The only reason they still studied the tech I brought back was that they were using it to showcase what happens when superstition is placed above actual science and reasoning. Several had refused to even meet the Covenant, as if I'd let that happen, after they tore into a Covenant ship I'd stolen.
Turns out, if you kill everyone on the ship, there's no one left to stop you from taking it. So now I have a new supply ship for my fleet. Not that I need it, but it could at least keep the Spirit of Fire safe.
For now, though, I was back in human space. By their calendar, it was now 2534, and I'd just finished watching an official UNSC broadcast declaring the Spirit lost with all hands. I also noticed the ONI agents entering the lobby of the cafe I was in, so I got up to leave.
Oh yeah, almost forgot.
Since my return to human space, I've been flying around helping people who're under attack. Be it from Insurrectionists or Covenant, I've just been helping out while also blending in. Since I've done nothing to hide my face, ONI has started hunting me across dozens of planets for years now.
It's cute to see them struggle to catch up to me since I can literally fly. I also love listening to their commanders scream in frustration when I simply blast off into orbit, graffiti their prowlers, and shoot off into the void before they can catch me.
They have slowly started catching up, but I've been able to shake them for now. It helps that I don't really fear them, nor have a reason to, since they're just humans with simple propellant weapons. Not even Covenant weapons could hurt me, let alone now since I've got my armor on.
It did stink that I wasn't even given enough alone time to enjoy a coffee, but hey, it's all part of the game. You lost, btw.
Anyway, I was heading towards Reach right now. I've been to most of the outer colonies at this point. There were hundreds of them, but some were simply space stations, or a single city still in the shadow of the ship that took them there.
Because of that, I'd seen most, if not all, of them, so now I was heading inwards. My first stop was Reach because I wanted to see what it looked like when it wasn't being glassed, bombed, or invaded by the Covenant.
I'm sure ONI has picked up on this by now, but I'm confident they have nothing capable of hurting me, much less getting past my armor. I don't even know why they try to capture me when I've literally flown in space to harass prowlers, and torn a Covenant ship in half because it fired on me.
Humans. Always trying to control forces of nature; hope they learn quickly because I know where Earth is. I know about a lot more than I should, but that's the fun of it!
As I started running to begin the chase, the Gacha pinged as tickets were given to me.
[Gift from beyond the veil, 1x Random Bronze Ticket] (Ozev_10)
[Gift from beyond the veil, 1x Random Gold Ticket] (Gang_Goose)
I rolled the tickets as I ducked under a salvo of rounds, courtesy of the ONI agents catching up to me.
[Spinning, spinning, spinning, done!]
[Breathless]
|Uncommon Trait|
Your body doesn't need to breathe; your body still acts like you are breathing and receives all of the benefits from it, even if you don't breathe or are in an airless environment. You can also speak without air.
Oh dang, that's a good one. I didn't need to hold my breath anymore in the void. I could even use less of the oxygen supply. Neat!
[Chutzpah]
|Rare Trait|
You don't give a shit; panic and apprehension can get you when they have earned you. If you choose to, you can shrug off that panic and fear and show your audacity in the face of even god itself.
Eh, better than some of the other things I could have gotten.
I didn't get much farther when another ticket was given to me.
[Gift from beyond the veil, 1x Random Gold Ticket] (Gang_Goose)
Not wanting to get distracted, I rolled the ticket and kicked off the ground as I shot into the air. ONI didn't have a chance at catching me, but I'd rather not risk them bringing out something I never learned about playing the games and reading the books.
By the time I had cleared the city, the ticket was done rolling. I checked to see what I'd gotten as I shot past the cargo ships in orbit.
[Somas Winemaking]
|Epic Skill|
Danmachi - You are as great at making wine and other alcoholic products as the god Soma. But you still need experimentation to figure out the wines you can make with the resources. Even a god does not succeed every time.
Kinda useless, but alright I guess.
I closed the Gacha interface as I flew past the UNSC listening post at the edge of the system. I'd stopped by a few just to scan them, but nothing in them was worth taking. All the scanners and auspex systems our ships used were millennia ahead of what current humanity and even the Covenant had.
I did not doubt that human ingenuity would one day catch up, maybe even by the war's end, but for now the most they could do was send out a message saying they'd seen me. Unless there was a prowler nearby, ONI wouldn't see me again until I hit Reach.