After dealing with all the hostile kurians, I approached the only ones that haven't raised a finger against me. The dealers from before.
"I expect some kind of cooperation now, at least."
"..."
"Give me the ore. The real one. Now."
And so it was done. From one of their storages, they took another box, the same size as before, but now I could tell there was nothing dangerous inside.
"ERM-33, as you requested."
I opened the box there it was. A green crystal that shined like no other. It was intact. The kurians had plans to use it as furniture and nothing more. Fortunately, they didn't sell it to any intergalactic organization. That'd certainly be more work to do.
"Magnificent."
With this, my steps towards ascension draw closer. But little did I know, that so did the one to perdition.
When I was about to teleport back to APOLLO, I noticed I could in fact, not.
"SHARP, what's wrong?"
[Something must be negating extradimensional movement properties, including instant transport]
[Detecting immense readings of hawking radiation and antimatter particles. Transdimensional Warp opening right at this solar system's edge]
[This is...]
"SHARP, manually bring APOLLO here right at this instant! They are here. They were indeed following us ever since the arm incident."
The Hex.