Peli puts three beer mugs with some kind of black sludge in front of Ares, Chelou and me.

Worryingly, Chelou is already trying her best to suppress her gag-reflex.

Ares hesitantly asks:

“D-Do you expect us to drink this?”

H’Mara innocently smiles:

“It’s healthy! You can just see this as yet another trial if you want to. Be sure to finish the entire mug though, Peli hates it when his food is wasted.”

W-Well, if Peli made it for us, it can’t be that bad right…

I look over at Chelou who’s mumbling to herself:

“itsjustcola itsjustcola itsjustcola itsjustcola…”

Fuck…

I dare not smell the concoction before putting it in my mouth so I decided to just quickly take the mug and attempt to chug it…

That was a mistake… Halfway through I could already feel my body screaming at me to put the drink down… Whatever’s in this mug, my stomach isn’t a big fan…

I wanted to throw the mug away and just empty my entire stomach into the toilet. Unfortunately, my plan gets interrupted when out of the corner of my eye, I see Peli staring threateningly at me… Wait, was he always holding that chef’s knife?... I better finish the drink...

With tears in my eyes I finally managed to down the entire drink, only to be met with a H’Mara that’s dying of laughter and a slightly satisfied Peli… My fellow slaves didn’t fare much better, Ares refused to drink after smelling the concoction and Chelou only finished half of her mug.

H’Mara teased:

“Are you sure Ares? It’ll make you stronger~”

“N-Nah… I wouldn’t put my lips to that mug even if it would turn me into superman…”

“You’re also not finishing your mug Chelou?”

Chelou looks down dejectedly and shakes her head… Cute…

“Well, suit yourselves. Peli, deal with those food-wasters please.”

“My pleasure.”

Peli drags them to the kitchen where they have to clean all the dishes and prepare some food for tonight’s dinner.

W-Wait, their punishment isn’t that bad! I mean sure washing the dishes would cause me excruciating pain, but at least I wouldn’t have this foul taste in my mouth that won’t leave.

H’Mara grins:

“Well, looks like Peli only has to prepare one and a half ‘training-potions’ per day now. He was really happy someone finally managed to finish one though, so happy in fact, that I’m sure he would be absolutely devastated if you would suddenly stop drinking them every morning. And if you disappoint Peli, forget about ever eating his cooking again…”

T-This fucking cat… I’m starting to form a grudge.

“Oh, by the way, be a dear and finish the training-potions that your fellow slaves left behind. Like I said before, Peli hates wasting food, you don’t want to disappoint him do you?…”

Okay, it’s official. Grudge formed.

…

An hour or so passed, and after some more ‘convincing’ from H’Mara, I finally managed to chug the rest of that sludge, goodbye tastebuds… I’ll miss you…

Still reveling in my misery, H’Mara was suddenly interrupted when K’Aman, the ox-based Zoan, bursted into the cafeteria.

“H’Mara, I located an asteroid, one with a high likelihood of containing densers!”

“Densers?”

Questioned Ares from the kitchen.

Without acknowledging his question, H’Mara quickly left for the command center. Luckily K’Aman stayed behind and explained the situation to us slaves:

“Listen young’uns, H’Mara is searching for the Asteroid I found earlier. After she tethers our ship to it, you three will all take an asteroid mining rig with you and start looking for densers.”

He points towards the hall where three big vacuum-like devices are propped up onto a wall. Curiously, the end of the vacuums are shaped like drill bits and made out of, what seems to be, energy conducting metal.

Ares quickly asks:

“What are those densers you guys keep talking about? And how are we supposed to survive in outer space anyways?”

“You’ll just wear a helmet, the Sapien can wear a whole suit with air-tanks. As for those densers, they are dense stones of energy found on certain types of rare asteroids. They’re millions of years old and are one of the few energy sources that can power Flux-Guides. More importantly, they’re worth a ton. You’ll recognize them by their deep black color and hardness, if you think you found one, simply break the rock around it and suck it up in your mining rig.”

This time I speak up:

“W-Wait, I’m still not used to this torture-suit and I don’t even know how to operate one of those mining rigs, don’t we at least get a training-course first or something? This is a lot of pressure for a new slave, those densers sound expensive…”

From the kitchen, I can hear Peli laugh:

“Croakakaka! You’re a funny one kid, a training course… Croakakaka! Just try not to fuck it up… Oh yeah, and you only have an hour or so, we don’t want the ship to get too off course. “

I stare at K’Aman for a better explanation, or rather, just for some pity.

Instead K’Aman just awkwardly suggests:

“J-Just follow the lead of your fellow slave Chelou…”

Chelou innocently retorts:

“But uncle K’Aman, Chelou has never mined an asteroid before? Chelou has only done some chores around the ship up until now.”

Suddenly, the ship shakes a bit and we can hear H’Mara yell from the command center:

“Tether deployed, quickly send in the miners!”

Niku20

-Explanations-

Energy conducting metal: The combination of technology with metallurgy. Energy conducting metal can be strengthened or sharpened by injecting energy into it, you can even make the metal vibrate at high frequencies. Top of the line energy conducting metal will store the surrounding environmental-radiation to power itself, essentially perpetually energizing the metal, these metals are commonly seen in high-end energy-weapons.

Training potions: Invented by the top-scientist of the Lucien empire, this concoction supposedly helps with bodily strengthening and recovery after intense training. However, this has yet to be proven as the foul taste and smell prevents anyone from gathering enough testing-data.