1759 Great News The research department started by using the ready portals to link rocks and planets together. This didn't require much, and the only drawback was that most of these anchor points weren't suitable for life. So people coming and going had to wear suits. Not to mention letting spaceships pass through these wasn't possible.
Hye asked for the help of the pirate king. He was the one who inspired Hye in the first place with such an idea. The pirate king said he bought this portal before from somewhere and didn't get how to make it. Yet he got two more and didn't complain when Hye ordered to give these to the research department to study.
According to the pirate king, these portals worked by opening long-distance paths toward faraway points in space. At the same time, they had many weaknesses, like the need to be protected, the inability to control who'd pass through them, and their short life term.
Any of these two would only last for two weeks, no more. That meant they weren't able to be used as Hye wanted. Yet it was still something for the research department to start working on. As he left the research department with more work than ever, Hye finally had the first opportunity presenting itself in front of him; intel about races in the areas around here.
He already asked Lily to investigate this, and she didn't hesitate to let her trusted men handle this task. The results came so fast, not taking more than one week to arrive in Hye's ears.
[Are you sure?!! If this is true, then it's great news indeed!] Hye was sitting in his flagship's deck, trying to think of all the problems he had here, and how to counter them. In the middle of all this, he got the news from Lily, about the presence of a large gathering of races in the areas around.
[They told us lots of information, but we need to confirm this first] Lily paused, before adding, [Yet there is still one disturbing piece of news… According to them, most of these races were deserters, ones who ran away from the outer battlefield and got stationed here. Their ancestors were cowards, and I don't like that…]
[I won't judge anyone by their parents or family] Hye rolled his eyes, [Besides, we have our warriors, only lacking people to help us build this place and turn it into a heaven for us]
[You don't plan on recruiting any from them?!!]
[Who said so? I didn't say that!]
[Come on, you just said…]
[I said I won't judge anyone by what their parents did, not to mention long-term ancestors] Hye coughed twice, before adding, [Not to mention they didn't run far away from trouble. As you can tell, this area is filled with dangers from every corner, danger lurks all the time. So it's not that easy to survive here without fighting and defending their homes, right?]
[Good point, I heard they didn't have spaceships, but developed some sort of long-term weapon technology, enough to attack any target far away from their homes…]
[More reason to get them on board] Hye added, [Anyone having new tech is warmly welcomed here]
[What do you have in mind? Do you want to send a fleet over and try them out?]
[Start our relationship on bad terms? No, send delegates over there, try to speak their way using promises and good words. Let them know about how secure this place is, how well defended it is, how many ships we have, how many people we got…]
[Got it, and sing praises about you, right?] [Stop joking, we are speaking about something serious here]
[As if they didn't agree, you won't let them off the hook]
[I won't let them free indeed, but it's better to get them to join us with diplomacy rather than war]
I got it! Yet this will take a long time… I got a rough map from the workers here, with the locations of these folks. The closest is half a month away, and there are many who are a few months away]
[Take your time, but start acting right away] Hye paused, before asking, [Just curious, how many people are we speaking of here?]
[I don't have clear numbers for sure, but what I learnt is that there are around one hundred or more worlds inhabited here, forming around twenty coalition forces between themselves… I don't know if every world is just a world or a group of planets grouped together as a single little force…]
[Got it, start digging deeper then] Hye got excited about this. If every single world donated two billion people, then he'd gain hundreds of billions of people in just a few months.
He was so hungry for the population to warmly welcome such a huge gain. As he received such news, his mood shifted for the better.
More people meant a larger pool of talents, more workers for his mines, more hands to build cities over his planets, and great odds for the future prospects of his home base here.
Hye was in a very good mood for days, then he got his second chance in front of him.
During these days, everything looked so great on the surface. His warriors and people were going all over the place, studying their new home theirs, and redrawing maps for everything.
The research department folks asked to return back to the second Earth world, to get the benefits of time skip there. As for the delegates, they went to visit the different worlds around them, a long journey that'd take months to get done.
Hye knew he hadn't gained a single concrete gain so far, but this wasn't going to last. In a few months, he was sure he'd have tons of gains to make him feel pretty accomplished and satisfied.
Yet he learnt from all this that trying to rise up in the universe wasn't blocked just by lack of support, people, and resources. His greatest enemy was distance, time consumed to traverse large distances.
Visit freewe𝑏(n)ovel.co(m) for the b𝘦st novel reading experience