Jin sighed as he stared off into the nothingness that was space. He was already tired of being in this black void and wanted to go back home. Jerrica was making small talk, telling Brittany, Addison, and Angela about Jin's childhood before his parents' death, but Jin wasn't interested in listening to these old stories.

They passed by the moon, looking at its dark side, being lit by many tall and powerful lights that were installed to simulate night lights.

Eventually, they passed the Aegis Corps space station, the fourth planet in the solar system, as the main planet was the third, then entered the asteroid belt, where the mining took place.

"Scanning for ships," Jerrica said, clicking a button that started scanning.

"Team one, anything on your end?" Mrs Horton asked

"Nothing, Director."

"Team two?"

"Nothing yet."

"Okay. What about you, team three?"

"I see a bunch of debris in the area I'm searching, but there's no sign of any life or the previous teams," Jerrica responded.

'A councilwoman taking orders from a lower rank is crazy.' Jin thought to himself.

He didn't even know why she wanted to join this mission, but there was nothing he could do about it now.

"Team four, what about you?"

Only static came through the coms.

"Team four?" Mrs Horton asked again

Once more, only static came through.

Jin shook his head. "We haven't even been here for ten minutes, and one team is already wiped out. I knew this was a bad idea."

"Repeat, team four has found a wreck!" A member from team four said, managing to get through

"Team four? Are you there?" Mrs Horton asked

"Affirmative. There seems to be some sort of interference in this area. Patching you through to a live feed now."

In each ship, as well as the computer back at the base, a live feed of team four's point of view was shown. In the area, there were pieces of scrap metal from a previous ship floating in space.

Jin took a closer look and noticed that the metal from the ship was bent outward, not inward. This meant the Láspi was already on the ship and attacked the people inside.

"They're dead," Jin didn't even need to check. "Turn the ships around. We should get out of here."

"Shouldn't we check to see if we can uncover anything?" Angela wondered

"Why? We're here to find out if the former teams survived; they did not. Look at the way the metal is bent. The ship didn't even explode. It was ripped apart."

"We found something!" Team two announced, showing their camera footage.

"All of the ships...they've been destroyed!" Mrs Horton clenched her fists, angered that she wasn't able to help her people.

"Thankfully, they've only managed to reach one asteroid before being found out, right?" One person asked

Jin squinted his eyes, seeing a person floating in space. Right when he was about to tell everyone about it and inform them to stay away from that person, the ship of team one started flying toward it.

"We've found a body! I repeat, we've found a body!"

"No! Stay back! That's clearly a trap!" Jin shouted.

"Delay that order. Push forward." Miss Lockman spoke, disregarding Jin's warning.

"Everyone, quiet! Team one, do not approach that body!" Mrs Horton shouted.

"Understood. We'll—" Something collided with their ship, destroying the thrusters. preventing them from flying away.

"We've been hit!"

"Fuck! I knew this was a bad idea! No one fucking listens to me anymore!" Jin unstrapped himself and teleported out of the ship and onto the roof of it.

He looked around, his mana concentrating in his eyes to spot the activity of the Láspi, but he couldn't see anything.

"Jin, what are you doing?" Mrs Horton asked

"Trying to save your team from being killed." There was no sound in space, so Jin couldn't hear where the ship of team one had been hit, but he could see the smoke coming from the thrusters after he kept looking around.

He flew over to team one as fast as he could, teleporting toward them when the ship was in his line of sight.

"Does that still look like a person who was drifting in space?" Jin asked, looking at the Láspi attack the ship with the body of a human, but with some parts of it reverting back to its original state.

"All teams, converge on team one. Go!"

Jin appeared in front of the Láspi and struck it in the chest with his palm, creating a lightning magic circle that fried the alien.

It screamed in pain, but no one could hear it.

'JINNNNN!'

"Stop speaking in my fucking head!" Jin increased the power of his spell, watching the Láspi explode.

"He did it!" The members of team one shouted in relief.

"If you see any bodies around here, then don't go after them. It's a trap. Brittany, where is the asteroid where the previous team managed to land on?" Jin asked

"Sending you the location now."

Jin hated looking at negative numbers. Space coordinates were always confusing.

He flew over to the place, seeing some destruction and half of a ship, then looked around to see if there were any Láspi around.

"Anything, Jin?" Mrs Horton asked

"No. Nothing. Nothing except for some parts of a destroyed ship that belonged to the previous team. The Láspinium here is intact, though."

"Láspinium?" She asked

"What I call the metal."

"Ah. Think you can mine some?"

Jin couldn't believe that she was thinking about mining the metal at a time like this. But he didn't say anything because he also needed some of the metal to help mass-produce his stimulant.

"I'd better see six zeroes behind my paycheck."

"Pay check? You weren't signed up to be getting paid."

"Six zeroes," Jin repeated.

"I'll see what I can do."

Jin didn't move.

"Fine. I'll wire you the money once we're done here."

"I'll destroy your labs if you don't." He went to mine the metal.

It didn't take him long, only two minutes to mine a whole boulder-sized chunk of metal. He cleanly cut it into multiple pieces and placed it in his subspace.

"Hmm?" As he looked down, he saw footprints, but it wasn't footprints from someone running, but someone walking. The weird thing about this was that the footprints led to the opposite side of the asteroid, where the metal wasn't.

When Jin followed the footsteps, he saw that they suddenly stopped, as if the person had vanished or left the rock.

"Fucking hell!" He looked in front of him, seeing another asteroid. That was normal; there were in the asteroid belt after all. But what wasn't normal was a giant slime monster rising from one of the craters in that asteroid.

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